the heart of science

Great Orion Nebula and Running Man Nebula

“Scientific knowledge is divine knowledge, but when not balanced by ethics and loving wisdom, it can be disastrous. Human beings lived for tens of thousands of years as food gatherers roaming the forests of Africa. Are we sure we can survive another two hundred years with modern science, which may have landed men on the moon but which also built fifty thousand nuclear weapons that can destroy the Earth several times over? So, yes, we are in desperate need for scientists who are also saints, that is, who are free from egotistical passions and realize that their knowledge springs from divine wisdom itself.”

Kyriacos C.Markides
Inner River:
A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality


bread of Life

prosphoro baked

 

 

 

And the Holy Spirit changes this offering (prosphoro) to the Body of Christ, to the Bread of Life, to living bread for all. Bread which heals hunger in a decisive manner. Bread which grants true learning and true freedom. The only true education is the learning of love. The only true freedom is the abolishment of Death, which also abolishes the fear of being deprived of everything material.

“I am the Bread of Life.” (John 6: 35)

 

Prosphoro and Artos- Communion Bread and Blessed Bread


fermentation and life

prosporo - an offering

“The prosphoro teaches us patience.  It teaches us that everything in life goes through a state of fermentation.  The Orthodox Church chooses to work with fermented products – bread and wine – and not with unleavened or unfermented.  This teaches us a lot about the mystical way in which everything in life works : with patience and in a slow, quiet, inconspicuous,  discreet way.”

from the book : Prosphoro and Artos – Communion Bread and Blessed Bread



perfect love

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

“He has as yet no perfect love, whose disposition towards men depends on what they are like, loving one ad despising another for this or that, or sometimes loving and sometimes hating one and the same man.  Blessed is the man who can love all men equally.”

Saint Maximos the Confessor

First Century on Love


finding meaning

Church in Paris with Relics of Saint Helen

“People today are thirsty for spiritual renewal, but they don’t know where to look, where the spring is. They flock to secular psychologists and psychiatrists to find answers and meaning in their lives…. At the same time, so many people today ignore or are ignorant of the rich psychological tradition of the saints, the real psychologists.”

Kyriacos C. Markides

Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality



cultivate love

culitvate love

 

“Love is the most perfect fruit of the Holy Spirit, and it emerges within one’s life after one cultivates all the other fruits enumerated by St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians (5: 22– 23): love, joy, peace , patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Authentic, divine love is a quality of the soul that manifests last, after the cultivation of all the other virtues, starting with self-mastery and self-control.”

Kyriacos C. Markides
Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality


on the soul

Optina Elders

The human heart is not a splinter, and the human soul – not a cheap thing; it is more valuable than all the world.  All the treasures on earth and in the universe are not worth one Christian soul.

Saint Anatoly

Living Without Hypocrisy: Spiritual Counsels of the Holy Elders of Optina


the light of Christ

Panagia - Notre Dame Paris

 

 

“O Christ, the True Light that illumines and sanctifies every human being who comes into the world, may the brightness of your face become sealed in our souls so that we may behold the Ineffable Light , and guide our steps to follow your commandments through the intercession of your Most Holy Mother and all the saints. Amen.”

Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality