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The Heavenly Spaces
Read more: The Heavenly Spaces“The Church is the earthly heaven; in these heavenly spaces, God lives and walks about.” In these words of Patriarch Germanus, we get a glimpse of the dizzying heights of the church building’s significance. The Byzantines treated space as God’s dwelling place. Their architectural problem was to create harmony between the natural scale of the […]
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The Light of Beauty
Read more: The Light of BeautyEverything is beautiful in a person when he turns toward God, and everything is ugly when it is turned away from God. Fr. Pavel Florensky +++ In thinking about darkness and light – and their role in our apprehension of the truth – I cannot but think about Beauty, which is a primary place in […]
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Is This All There Is?
Read more: Is This All There Is?A comment deleted earlier today contained a short rant on the topic: “There is no such thing as sin.” I have no idea what the writer thought the word “sin” meant – and if I knew I might even agree. I certainly do not think of sin as a legal category. But when I think […]
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The Opacity of Sin
Read more: The Opacity of Sin“And this is the condemnation: that the light has come into the world and men preferred darkness to the light for their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). There is an opacity to sin: we do not see through it. Sin sheds light on nothing beyond itself. It refers only to itself and because of this […]
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Let No Anger Arise
Read more: Let No Anger AriseOne of the brothers asked Isidore, the priest of Scetis, “Why are the demons so afraid of you”? ” He said, “Ever since I became a monk, I have been trying not to let anger rise as far as my mouth.” +++ In a culture which speaks and only later repents (if at all) such […]
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There Be Dragons…
Read more: There Be Dragons…Today marks one of the greatest feasts of the Orthodox year (New Calendar), the Feast of Theophany, Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan river. Across the world Orthodox Christians will gather after the Liturgy to bless the waters: the ocean, a river, a spring, etc. Every feast day in Orthodoxy is connected to the Feast of […]
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Do Not Resent, Do Not React, Keep Inner Stillness
Read more: Do Not Resent, Do Not React, Keep Inner StillnessA very fine essay by Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA on essential practices of the spiritual life can be found among the abbatial essays on the website of the Monastery of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco. It is worth the read – even worth printing out and saving… An excerpt… …One of the […]
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Now Is The Change of the Most High
Read more: Now Is The Change of the Most HighThere is no doubt that God is changing the world – though most of this work is hidden. A strange part of this hiddenness is the work that God does within us. The work is not entirely hidden – I can look back and see change that has occurred in my life – it’s just […]
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Having Then Gifts Differing
Read more: Having Then Gifts DifferingA brother asked a hermit, “Tell me something good that I may do it and live by it.” The hermit said, “God alone knows what is good. But I have heard that one of the hermits asked the great Nesteros, who was a friend of Antony, ‘What good work shall I do?’ and he replied, […]
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Justin, My father passed in 2011 (indeed, a couple of days ago was the anniversary). Many of my memories of…
Fr Stephen, “The hands of my father.” Similarly to you, I remember my dad’s hands vividly. They were calloused and…
Truth be told Byron, I only minutes ago shared my post about my brother-in-law with my wife and she claims…
Byron, et al It’s always a false choice: either you’re out there “doing something” or you’re in Church praying. The…
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Just in case somebody here finds this useful, the best way for getting grease and grime off hands that I…