words of salvation

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My first word, or rather the command of God, is to love God with all your soul, your heart, your mind and strength. To be able to love God we must strive with ourselves, for all the good things are acquired by work and suffering… Be thankful to God for all the good that you have, especially that He has enlightened you with divine knowledge and has saved you from evil delusions.

My second word is to love your neighbor as yourself. Love according to the law of the Lord, your enemies also, and do good to those who do you wrong. Love and help the poor according to your strength.

My third word is that you judge no one who sins, because our Lord told us not to judge so that we will not be judged. If you see someone sinning and you know that he will listen to you then admonish that person to leave their sin…

My fourth word is that you go often to church services, and pray regularly, especially pray in your heart when you are walking or working, remember God by praying, “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me”, or “Glory be to God”, or “Most Holy Theotokos help me”, and other prayers that you know. Study the Holy Scriptures, the life and writings of the Holy Fathers. Always remember God, your own mortality, God’s righteous judgement, Paradise and Hell. These thoughts and remembrances help us not to sin so easily.

“Spiritual Advice of the Elder Philotheos Zervakos” Translated by Archimandrite Polycarpos Rameras

moving within

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“Just as a child within its mother’s womb kicks and makes its presence known, so too does God move about within me. Sometimes He makes my eyes sparkle with joy, and sometimes he fills them with tears. Sometimes I cry aloud and other times I say to myself  “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me”

Elder Aemilianos of Simonopetra : The Way of the Spirit

 

the beginning middle and end

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We are approaching a beautiful time of repentance set aside for us in the life of the Orthodox Church.

It is a time of reconciliation and spiritual growth

Already the Church has been priming us with the beautiful Sunday’s of preparation… the humility of the tax collector, the coming to his senses of the Prodigal Son.  Judgement Sunday is a great call bringing us to our senses that we are not saved alone, our lives are not our own and the least of our brethren is Christ – the beggar, the prisoner, the crippled man.   That to pass by their suffering is to pass by Christ   Rejection.

These are but a little leaven softening the lump of our hearts.

It’s my favorite season of the Church – but I know I say that about all of the seasons set aside in the Church – I guess they all are my favorite, really.

As a mom I have tried to explain this word repentance to my daughters. I want them so comfortable with it that they could cuddle up with it like a blanket.

I want them to nestle in the Truth of Faith and embrace the timeless wisdom and Grace of the Church and live their lives in it. Because what I have noted is that in today’s relative everything goes world many ears have hardened to this word making it sound more like a punishment than a healing holistic way.

Repentance as a word and a way looks like an angry wagging finger rather than an inviting outstretched Hand.

The reality for most of us us that life happens. We get mired in the muck of it and the muck of it gets all over us. And so the Church guides us gently into Repentance.

The fruit of it is a heart returning to innocence – something like that of a child.  Another helpful explanation I have heard is that it is a cure or return to wholeness.  A monk, older than me, once told me that after years of not seeing a childhood friend who had entered Orthodox monasticism he made the journey to visit her and saw in her all of the qualities of innocence he remembered from when they were children playing together and this innocence, for me is now the image of repentance.

I suppose that’s why monastics also say that repentance is gift and our task.

It’s a heart given entirely over to Christ. A struggle.

Faith like a child, love like a child, forgiveness and innocence like a child.

I want that – I need that. don’t you?

friends of Christ

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A true friend is known in misfortune. he is our true friend and one who loves us who does not forsake us in misfortune.

Likewise, the true lover of Christ is he who abides with Christ in this world, and cleaves to Him in his heart, and uncomplainingly endures the Cross with Him, and desires to be with Him inseparably in the age to come.

Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk

the least cry of your soul

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Let us have confidence in God, remembrance and love toward Him  The Holy Mountain has shown us that the Grace of God is active everywhere   Do you know what Saint John Damascene calls Divine Grace : a vault of God

There where you are sitting, where for years you have been expecting God and not found Him… He all of a sudden leaps and enters you, embraces you, kisses you and fills you with the breath of His nostrils, with His love, His being, His Trinity!!

It is as easy for God to leap and come into our lives as it is for anyone to jump.

just as He leaps on the peaks of Athos, as Ge gets into the boats, the caves, the crannies… everywhere comprehending the tears and the pains of Athonites, so He comprehends the least cry of your soul, of the souls of all of us.

Elder Aemilianos

of Simonopetra Monastery

the most divine element

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Prayer is the most divine element that exists within man   It transports us to God and is the means by which we are bound to Him   Through prayer the communion of the Persons of the Trinity is made available to us and becomes the form of our own communication with God

Thus it is not a question of reciting this or that prayer, but rather that everything within us should become a prayer, that we should be praying in everything through all prayer

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elder Aemilianos of simonopetra monastery

the way of the spirit (p 224)

train your senses

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Christians are the “real” realists.  The Son of God by his Incarnation has demonstrated that the world is filled with symbols of God.  These symbols that God has planted in the world testify not only to His existence, but also to the goodness of His Creation.  By the example of His own life, Christ teaches us that through our senses we may commence our spiritual journey, and that He will receive us into Paradise in the full integrity of our humanity, body and soul united in communion with Him.

Vigen Guroian

the Fragrance of God