7 June 2021

Never Cease Longing

Our natural will is to have God, and the good will of God is to have us, and we may never cease willing or longing for God until we have him in the fullness of joy. Christ will never have his full bliss in us until we have our full bliss in him.

      Saint Julian of Norwich (1342–1416)

6 June 2021

This Good Reflection

You should often call to mind this good reflection: that in this world we are poised between paradise and hell, that our last step will land us in our eternal dwelling place, and that we do not know which step will be the last. In order to make the last step a good one, we must go on trying to make all the other steps good, too.

      Saint Francis de Sales

5 June 2021

Confession and Absolution

The recollection of sins is harmful. Have we asked for forgiveness? Then the matter is closed.

      Elder Porphyrios

4 June 2021

Credo

But here on earth the praise of God with its implied confession of belief in Him is accompanied by a declaring of the content of this faith, of simple judgment of fact, of articles of faith which the believer holds to be true. “Born of the Virgin Mary,” “of one essence with the Father,”—those are statements that one cannot pray and cannot sing unless one believes them to be true, even as one should not sing, “Blest and Holy Trinity, Praise forever be to Thee!” if one no longer believes this doctrine. The fact that modern Protestants do this nevertheless is a symptom of the decline of the evangelical churches and explains the greater strength of Catholicism. There is no church on earth without a real confession that it takes seriously. The Liturgy itself is an outgrowth of such a confession, and the Pope was perfectly right when in his encyclical Mediator Dei he reminded the liturgical movement of the Roman Church that the familiar dictum “Lex supplicandi lex credendi” [the law of praying is the law of believing, i.e., what is prayed is believed] not only can but must be inverted. Just as it is certain that in the history of the Church a dogma is usually first prayed and then defined as an article of faith, just so certainly the liturgy is preceded by confession of faith in the original Church.

        Hermann Sasse

3 June 2021

Healing in the Life of the Church

The spiritual life is something that needs to be learned, perhaps more so now, than at any time in the history of our world. As godlessness increases, so do the obstacles to spiritual progress. The degradation of the whole of our society, and the depths of depravity that have become a normal part of our age, have made this a dangerous time. Going it alone spirituality can leave one vulnerable to spiritual delusion. We all need a trusted and experienced guide who can help us avoid the pitfalls of the pride and self-will that would lead us down to perdition.

        Abbot Tryphon

2 June 2021

The Holy Trinity

The closer we approach God, the closer we approach each other, just as the closer rays of light are to each other, the closer they are to the Sun. In the coming Kingdom of God there will be unity, mutual love and concord. The Holy Trinity remains eternally unchanging, all-perfect, united in essence and indivisible.

        St. John Maximovich

1 June 2021

Food and Drink

For the good Creator made all things good and the Maker of the universe is one, Who made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. Of which whatever is granted to man for food and drink, is holy and clean after its kind. But if it is taken with immoderate greed, it is the excess that disgraces the eaters and drinkers, not the nature of the food or drink that defiles them. For all things, as the Apostle says, are clean to the clean. But to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is clean, but their mind and conscience is defiled.

        Saint Leo the Great