Everything is constantly changing…

Chapter Ten (excerpt)

On Spiritual Struggle

1. Everything is constantly changing; nothing remains static. We perfect ourselves either in good or in evil.

2. We must learn how to live a heavenly life. And that is not easy, because up until now we have led a life of resistance and opposition. Take, for example, a family man who has a home and a family and who knows how to do his job well but is doing this job against his will. That is how inner resistance builds up. If we do not learn to rid ourselves of this inner resistance, we will not be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and dwell among the angels and the saints. For we have acquired the habit of always opposing one thing or another, as there is always something that is against our will. We have not learned to be obedient to the will of God but always want our will to be done. Well, in that case there will be no place for us in heaven.

Therefore, let us be thankful to God for everything. He knows why He has put us in the position where we find ourselves, and we will bet the most our of it when we learn to be humble.

We should always remember that whatever task we perform here in this life is for Him. He gives it to us; whether we are believers or not, whether we are pious or not, we must carry out God’s plan.

Book~ Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

He is in our heart…

Anton Stekolshchikov-A Baptism (1993)

God is at the center of every person’s life.  He is in our heart whether we accept Him or not.  He never separates Himself from us because He is the Giver of life Who gives life to every created being.  We have buried Him with our worries and worldly cares, which destroy the peace within us, and that is why we have no peace or rest.  No one on earth can give us unshakeable inner peace.  Money cannot give us peace, neither can fame, honor, a high-ranking position, nor even our closest friends and family.  The only Giver of peace and life is the Lord.  He gives peace, stillness, and joy to the angels and the saints, to us and to every created thing.  Therefore we must repent and turn to the Lord.

Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, “A Homily on the Dormition,” Our Thoughts Determine our Lives

Why is it so difficult to accept?

Anastasis icon: Holy Theophany Orthodox Church

…it is impossible to reject the entire Gospel.  Christ’s miracles and teaching, His consciousness of being the Son of God, His Transfiguration, Resurrection and Ascension, the visible and objective descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, and the entire multitude of saints that followed.  We shall have either to adopt the trivial and philosophically lame standpoint of rejecting all this or else, recognizing the objectivity and reality of all the cases of Theophany, to ask ourselves: ‘Why is it so difficult for me to accept all this?’  The answer to the question is clear.

Has there been in my life, as in so many others, a clear indubitable encounter with the Objective?  Frankly, I must answer: no.  But there have been many partial contacts: in certain rare instances of love expressed in entire self-denial; sometimes in prayer, especially during the holy service, you feel that you come out of yourself, that something which is not yourself has entered into you; in many situations, which cannot be explained except in terms of God’s manifest help.  This is faith no longer – it is knowledge, precise and comprehensible signals from the other world.  All the rest is faith, assisted by the love of God.

~Alexander Elchaninov, “Fragments of a Diary,” The Diary of a Russian Priest

hat tip: Daily Dynamis

We believers have such a large house!

Eastern Orthodox Holy Communion

The Divine Liturgy is truly a gift of the Holy Spirit to humanity. It is an initiation into the mysteries of the Spirit, a mode of the revelation of God and of all things heavenly. There is nothing in the Liturgy which is not revelatory of the Godhead and of the energies of the Holy Trinity.

Because we know and believe that God is our Father, we view the church, especially when we celebrate the Liturgy, as our true home. We come in and go out freely, we are happy to be here, we make the sign of the cross, we light our candles, we speak with out friends, and it is easy to see that the Orthodox feel that the church is their home. And the church is our home. Our family is the gathering (synaxis) of the church. Our family is not simply our children and relatives, however many we have. It is rather all of us, all humanity, including all those who have turned aside to the left or to the right, or who have perhaps not yet even thought about God, or dared to admit that their heart is filled with cries and groans, and that, with these, they hope to open heaven, or that God will answer them, but they are hesitate and are ashamed. The Liturgy is our family, our gathering, our house. And what a spacious house it is! Together with us are those who are absent, along with sinners, and the wicked, and the dead, indeed, even those who are in hell, but who may yet remember something about God. And who knows how many of these will find relief, be drawn out of Hades, and even dragged up from the depths of hell, thanks to the prayers of the Church, her memorial services, and divine liturgies.* This is our home. We believers have such a large house!

The Son of God does not come in symbols, or in clouds or still breezes. Instead, He removed his garments of light (cf. Ps. 103.2) and clothed Himself in the garments of human nature. Long ago, God made man a little god. Now, God Himself becomes man, and this is beyond anything that man could ever have imagined or hoped for.

Until now, God built bridges, so that He might cross over to us, and we to Him. Now He abolishes all distances, removes all boundaries, and comes to dwell with us forever. Unable to endure the loss of His creation, he sets aside his unspeakable glory and humbles Himself, definitely taking on our condition.

~Elder Amelianos: excerpts from “Way of the Spirit”

The cross and the sign of the cross…

Dmitri Belyukin’s Old New Church (modern)

The cross and the sign of the cross are the power of God; the Lord is always present in them. Similarly the icons of the Lord, of His mother and the saints also possess the power of God for believers and may accomplish miracles upon them. Why? Because, by God’s grace the Lord, the Holy Virgin and the saints are present in them. They are nearer to us than the images. This is true for experience often confirms this.

~St John of Kronstadt

spiritual, inner victory…

Vera Glazunova’s The Holy New Martyr Grand Princess Yelizaveta Fyodorovna (1997)

In this world, outward triumph means nothing—most important is inward triumph. Outward triumph will be given to Christ’s Church at the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our example of spiritual, inner victory is the life of our Savior. Outwardly He was defeated, crucified like an evil-doer and thief. But He accomplished the main thing for which He came into the world—His triumph over death; and any other triumph is meaningless in comparison. It was a triumph over the most fearsome and unconquerable evil that exists in the world. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Cor. 15:5). “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1 Jn. 5:4). Thus proclaim the Apostles, who beheld with their physical eyes our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’s ascetical labor of love for the human race.

Forty days after Pascha, at Solovki monastery, when it was a soviet prison camp, the Lord’s Ascension was celebrated by the faithful held therein. There, the host of imprisoned priests and laymen sang the great and beautiful words of the Ascension kontakion hymn, “I am with you, and no one can be against you.” Perhaps many of them went to their suffering and death with these words on their lips, firmly believing that the Lord Jesus Christ is with them; they are the victors, and no one can conquer them. They disdained their own flesh, they disdained outward victory so highly prized in this world, for the sake of following the Truth they had found in following Christ.

This, brothers and sisters, is what I would like to say today. But how very different we are from those new martyrs and saints who overcame the world! When we stand before God to repent of our evil and sins, our confession from year to year becomes less and less like a confession and more and more like a faint-hearted cry and complaint against life. The great power of Christianity is forgotten; we have forgotten that we must be conquerors in this world—conquerors of evil. Constant complaints about our neighbors, about our life circumstances, endless depression and despair—these things are woefully conquering the Orthodox Christian today.

Faint-heartedness instead of courage is becoming a major quality of the soul of modern man. “In your patience possess ye your souls” (Lk. 21:19). Many people, even in the Church, are forgetting about this patience and courage, forgetting that everything on this earth is sent from the Lord, even in these particular circumstances that God has called us to be in; forgetting that we must labor and force ourselves patiently and courageously. People seek a compromise, an easy path and self-justification, and as a result the Christian spirit is lost. However, a fearful Christian is not pleasing to the Lord. The spirit of God departs from such a person and leaves him one on one with his helplessness, his frailty, his terrible despondency, when instead he should be gaining at long last the wisdom to thank the Lord for all the trials He has sent; thank Him, because a true knowledge of God comes only through thanksgiving. Fallen man cannot come to know God in any other way.

~Author Unknown (perhaps Elder Emilianos?)

Sunday Bulletin of Holy Theophany Orthodox Church

prayer at death’s door…

Those who are at death’s door pray differently; they speak from the very depths of their hearts, even though they may not be consoled or aided by grace. Whatever form of death I am stricken by, be it illness, persecution or God’s withdrawal of His grace, if I gather strength enough to stand and say, “Glory be to Thee, O Lord: to Thee be all justice, to me all shame for my sins and transgressions”, God will ensure that my faith in Him shall conquer.

~Archimandrite Zacharias: “Remember Thy First Love”

In times of crisis…

In times of crisis, man reviews his whole life and can no longer fall into superficiality or light-heartedness. His mind concentrates on a single thought. He speaks to God in utter seriousness, and this is exactly what God awaits and longs for. When man cries from the depths of his heart, his lament reaches the ears of God and all Heaven hearkens unto him. The Lord sees in him the humility of Zacchaeus, the faith of the Canaanite woman, and the poverty of the blind man who cried out with all his might, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” And the Lord will draw near him and ask, “What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?” This is the question the Savior puts to all of us who are poor and blind, and sit by the wayside. The crowd, that is, this world and its deceptions, will rebuke us and discourage us from calling upon the holy Name of the Son of God. But if we persevere and cry the louder to the Lord, we will finally ask for the most important thing: “Lord, that I may receive my sight.” And God will unfailingly open the eyes of our soul and grant us spiritual sight. We will behold Christ, the true and living God, and we will hear His blessed voice saying, “Receive they sight: thy faith has saved thee.”

~Archimandrite Zacharias: “Remember Thy First Love”

but also to suffer for his sake…

New Martyrs of Russia

Suffering is the surest sign that man is specially chosen by God. He Who showed His love for us to the end through His suffering unto death grants us the possibility of suffering for His Name’s sake, that we may be more perfectly united to Him. “Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake” (Phil 1:29). If someone turns to God when he is sentenced to death, God will surely hear him. The thief was the first to enter Paradise not simply because he said, “Remember me, O Lord…” but because he pronounced these words on the cross, at the very moment when his life was suspended over the abyss of eternal darkness. If we, as humans, respect the wishes and last words of the dying, how much more does God hear the pleas uttered by them that turn to Him in faith when they are confronted by death!

~Archimandrite Zacharias: “Remember Thy First Love”