17 September 2021

On Divine Involvement

We believe that everything that happens is done with divine involvement. But if some think it's enough to pray and God will do everything for me, it's a deep misconception. Because God will never indulge in laziness, sloppiness, indifference, idle pastime, but God will always succeed in human efforts under two circumstances and two conditions: if it's real effort and if by doing this effort, a man does not attribute everything to himself, but turns to God with prayer and conscious of its limitedness, asks the Lord to help.
  

          Patriarch Kirill of Moscow

15 September 2021

On Fasting

The Christian fasts not for the sake of the body, but for the sake of the soul.

      Blessed Fulton Sheen (1895-1979)

14 September 2021

Holy Cross Day

With special reason, she [the church] celebrates the feast now at the beginning of autumn; the Cross is 'raised' against the rising darkness, a symbol of the might of hell. The Church wishes to 'raise the sign of the Son of Man' which will appear at His Second Coming (awaiting the parousia is thematic to the Church's Harvest Time). The feast belongs to the most ancient legacies of the liturgy and should be accorded greater attention.

      Pius Parsch (1884 - 1954)

13 September 2021

On Marriage

If a man and a woman marry in order to be companions on the journey from earth to heaven, then their union will bring great joy to themselves and to others.

        St. John Chrysostom

12 September 2021

Living By the Spirit

Your brother does not cease to be your brother because he slips or offends you; that is when he has most need of your love. Loving your neighbor as yourself means that you should not obey the sinful nature, which, when it is offended, hates and bites and devours. Rather, you should wrestle against it by the Spirit and continue loving your neighbor, although you find nothing worthy of love in him. Our righteousness is much more abundant than our sin, because the holiness and righteousness of Christ our Mediator far exceeds the sin of the whole world, and the forgiveness of sins that we have through him is so great that it easily swallows up all our sins, so long as we live by the Spirit.

        Martin Luther

11 September 2021

On the Tree of Knowledge

It was not in order to see outward things that “their eyes were opened,” because they could see such things already. It was in order that they might see the difference between the good they had lost and the evil into which they had fallen. That is why the tree is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They had been forbidden to touch it because if they did it would bring on the experience of this distinction. It takes the experience of the pains of sickness to open our eyes to the pleasantness of health.

        Augustine of Hippo 

10 September 2021

On Temptation

If someone asks, therefore, why God allowed man to be tempted when he foreknew that man would yield to the tempter, I cannot sound the depths of divine wisdom, and I confess that the solution is far beyond my powers. There may be a hidden reason, made known only to those who are better and holier than I, not because of their merits but simply by the grace of God. But insofar as God gives me the ability to understand or allows me to speak, I do not think that a man would deserve great praise if he had been able to live a good life for the simple reason that nobody tempted him to live a bad one. For by nature he would have it in his power to will not to yield to the tempter, with the help of him, of course, “who resists the proud and gives his grace to the humble.” Why, then, would God not allow a man to be tempted, although he foreknew he would yield? For the man would do the deed by his own free will and thus incur guilt, and he would have to undergo punishment according to God’s justice to be restored to right order. Thus God would make known his will to a proud soul for the instruction of the saints in ages to come. For wisely he uses even bad wills of souls when they perversely abuse their nature, which is good.

       Augustine of Hippo