our task :: our work :: and God’s Grace

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sunflowers of the garden 2019

For the soul to repent it must first be awake. It is in this awakening that the miracle of repentance occurs. This is where human will plays a role. The awakening however is not something that rests solely with the man or the woman. The individual alone is not able to bring it about. God intervenes. Then Divine Grace comes. Without Grace a person can not repent. The love of God does everything. He may use something — an illness, or something else — it depends — in order to bring a person to repentance. Accordingly, repentance is achieved through divine grace. We simply make a move towards God and from then on Grace supervenes.

Saint Porphyrios

the humble person

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theotokos and flowers on my kitchen window sill

The humble person believes that all things depend on Christ and that Christ gives His grace and in that way he makes progress. The person who possesses holy humility lives even now in the earthly uncreated Church. He always has the joy of Christ even in the most displeasing circumstances. We see this in the lives of the saints. What was Saint Paul? He was a man like us. But what happened? He became and instrument of God, a chosen vessel. His words bear witness to this. ‘It is not I who live but Christ lives in me… for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” He was consumed by burning love for Christ. His humility raised him up to that state. To burn for God…. that is everything.

Saint Porphyrios : Wounded by Love

water the flowers

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sunflowers in the garden 2019

God has placed a power in man’s soul. But it is up to him how he channels it —- for good or for evil. If we imagine the good as a garden full of flowers, trees and plants and the evil as weeds and thorns and the power as water, then what can happen is as follows. When the water is directed towards the flower garden, then all the plants grow, blossom and bear fruit and at the same time the weeds and thorns, because they are not being watered, wither and die. And the opposite, of course, can also happen….


It is not necessary therefore to concern yourselves with the weeds. Don’t occupy yourself with rooting out evil. Christ does not wish us to occupy ourselves with he passions, but with the opposite. Channel the water, that isu, all the strength of your soul to the flowers, and you will enjoy their beauty, their fragrance and their freshness.

Saint Porphyrios

Giant Auburn Sunflower 2019

eternal Eucharistic joy

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The first Eucharist & the Last Supper

When the film of pride and the sleep of self-contentedness is wiped from the eye of my heart, I know I am but dust called by the Divine breath into life. Made in the Image of God, there is in me, the possibility of being born “from above” from beyond this world and entering into real life. Eternal life is a gift and a potential; never a certainty or a guarantee. God is ever offering Himself to us in hopes that we are willing to undergo the process of responding to the potentials that are opened up through Communion with Him. We cannot be saved without our consent. In Christ God has proposed marriage with humanity purely from love and waits for our response. We are unique creatures invited to taste the eternal Eucharistic joy of never being complete in and of ourselves alone, but only in response to breathing in the divine Grace and breathing out life and gratefulness beyond words. We are made for love and communion with God.

Treasure in Earthen Vessels

Stephen Muse

converse with Him

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Repentance is the Mother of Life. It opens its door to us when we take flight from all things. By means of the intellects intuitions, repentance renews in ys the grace that we have lost after baptism by leading lax lives. By water and Spirit we have put on Christ, though we did not perceive His glory. Through repentance we enter into His delight by means of the knowledge of those extraordinary intuitions that replace causes to dawn within us.

He who is deprived of repentance is deprived of the delight to come. He who us close to all things is far from repentance. And he who is far from all with discernment repents in very truth.

Saint Isaac of Syria

why did you chose Christ

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When you find Christ you are satisfied, you desire nothing else, you find peace. You become a different person. You live everywhere, wherever Christ is. You live in the stars, in infinity, in heaven with the angels, with the Saints, on earth with people, with plants and animals with everyone and everything. When there is love for Christ, loneliness disappears. You are peaceable, joyous, full. Neither melancholy nor illness nor pressure, nor anxiety, nor depression, nor hell.

Christ is in all your thoughts, all your actions. You have grace and you can endure everything for Christ, and indeed with joy. Just as Ge suffered so you to can suffer unjustly. Did you choose Christ to avoid suffering? This is our religion for our soul to awake and love Christ and become holy- to give herself over to divine Eros. And so He too will love her.

Saint Porphyrios

Wounded by Love : The Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios

the wings of the Holy Spirit

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S

Quite naturally then, a person is led to a state of mind, that is purely eschatological; to a mind that looks beyond this life and thinks only of the next. When someone possesses divine love, he or she no longer wishes to live in this present state of existence, but is concerned only about the future. This is because they realize that whenever the mind is drawn away and becomes preoccupied with something — with its problems, its life, or with some material thing, good or bad — but does not love God and runs the risk of forgetting Him altogether.

Saint Maximos seeks to life up the human spirit, and give it wings, so that it might soar to the heavens. This is why he uncovers for us the true meaning of life, namely that life is spiritual, it is upborne by the Holy Spirit. The wings of the Holy Spirit lift up the wings of the human spirit, freeing it from every weight and heaviness and enable it to rise upward.

Elder Aimilianos

The Mystical Marriage spiritual life according to Saint Maximos the Confessor

the outcome of love {blessed are the meek}

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“I cant give you an example of what real obedience is. It’s not that we have a discussion about the virtue of obedience and then I say to you, : go and do a somersault” and you obey. That’s not obedience. You need to be entirely carefree and not thinking at all about the matter of obedience, and then suddenly you are asked to do something and you are ready to do it joyfully. If you are busy at work, and not at all in a state of vigilance, and readiness and someone humiliates your, then by your reaction you will show whether or not you have obedience.”

“My obedience was the outcome of love, not coercion. This blessed obedience benefitted me greatly. It changed me. I became sharp-witted, quick and stronger in body and soul. It made me know everyting. I must glorify God day and night for granting me the possibility of living in this way, in this life. Obedience is something I have poured over and studied minutely. The other things that God has given me in my life came on their own. The gift of clear sight was also given me by God on account of obedience. Obedience shows love for Christ. And Christ especially loves the obedient. That is why He says, I love those who love Me, and those who seek me will find grace. Everything is written in Holy Scripture but in a concealed manner.

Saint Porphyrios

Wounded by Love : The Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios

sense and sensibility

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Christ is the summit of desire, there is nothing higher. All sensible things lead to satiety, but with God there is no satiation. He is everything. God is the summit of desire. No other joy, no other beauty, nothing else can rival Him. What is higher than the highest?

Saint Porphyrios

Wounded by Love : the Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios

Hosios Loukas Monastery : Greece

contemplate His compassion

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May God bless us and in His good, open His sea of compassion to us, so that we may all be found united together in the eternal and blessed life, where there is “neither pain, nor sorrow nor sighing, but life unending” and “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Oh what joy that can not be taken away! What a confident awareness that henceforth the torments of this toilsome life have ended!

What God is as great as our God!

He is a Father overflowing with compassion, Who does not take sins into account, as long as His repentant child says, “I have sinned against Heaven and in your sight.” Then at once the Father embraces and kisses Him and obliterates from His heart every trace of displeasure that the childs proflifacy may have occasioned!

I lose my senses when I contemplate His abyss of paternal compassion toward sinners.

Elder Ephraim : Counsels from the Holy Mountain