Category: Mystical Theology
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Truth and Existence: Conclusions to be Drawn
Reflecting on the previous posting on Truth and Existence, there are a number of conclusions that can be drawn for our lives and our communion with God: 1. God is generous. He does not begrudge existence to anything that exists. Even the devil is not begrudged his existence. 2. This generosity of God is not…
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Truth and Existence
Perhaps one of the greatest contributions of Orthodox theology to contemporary thought is the correlation between truth and existence. I am not well-enough versed in writings outside of Orthodoxy to know whether this correlation is made by others as well – I have to drink the water from my own cistern. This understanding has been…
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St. Silouan on Humility
From St. Silouan the Athonite. Enlightened by baptism, people believe in God. But there are some who even know Him. To believe in God is good but it is more blessed to know God. Nevertheless, those who believe are bless, too, as the Lord said to Thomas, one of the twelve: ‘Because thou hast seen…
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The Most Holy Mother of God
On August 15, the Orthodox Church (new calendar) commemorates the Dormition (falling asleep) of the Most Holy Mother of God. The feast is considered to be one of the 12 Great Feasts of the year and thus an integral part of the proclamation of gospel of Jesus Christ. Many who are not familiar with Orthodoxy,…
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Healing the Heart
The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasuries of grace—all things are there.…
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On The Day of Solzhenitsyn’s Arrest
Excerpted from an essay Solzhenitsyn released the day he was arrested. The next day, Feb. 12, 1974, he was exiled to the West. The essay can be found on pp. 556 to 560 of The Solzhenitsyn Reader. +++ I reprint these words here, for a similar version (from his essays in From Under the Rubble)…
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The God Who Is Beautiful
I suggested this as reading in a comment yesterday and decided to re-post it so that it would be more readily available. It belongs with the question of God and beauty that I started in yesterday’s post. Everything is beautiful in a person when he turns toward God, and everything is ugly when it is…
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With What Little We Know
I have written and posted at least three times that “I am an ignorant man,” which is to say that I do not consider myself a great source of wisdom and insight and that what knowledge I do have is indeed limited. It is also true that wisdom and insight are in short supply these…
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Seeking God
If I seem to avoid Church arguments on this blog site, there is a reason. For one, debates between Orthodox and Roman Catholics (or Orthodox and others) are interminable and unresolvable on the level of the internet. Most of us are arguing about things in abstract and are thus engaging in useless arguments. Secondly, it…
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The Habit of Prayer
Though created in the image of God – man has fallen far. The image is not demolished, but we have not fulfilled the likeness and we frequently distort the image beyond recognition. Part of the true human life described in Genesis, are the “walks in the Garden” with God. Man and God converse – they…
Amen ! Thank you Father