Lord, have mercy on families that are going through trying times. Pour Your abundant Love on them.
Featured image: Holy Trinity Orthodox Church, New Orleans. Founded 1864. source
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Fortunate, worldly people tell us, are those who live in crystal palaces and have all kinds of convenience.
Blessed, however, are those who’ve managed to simplify their life and become liberated from the web of this world’s development of numerous conveniences (i.e. many inconveniences), and were released from the frightening stress of our present age.
…Fortunate, worldly people say, are those who can enjoy the goods of the world.
Blessed, however, are those who give away everything for Christ and are deprived even of every human consolation for Christ. Thus it is that they manage to be found night and day near Christ and His divine consolation, which many times is so much that they say to God: My God, Thy love cannot be endured, for it is great and cannot be fit within my small heart.
– St. Paisios, from his 6th Epistle, on the Beatitudes
Even in spiritual drought God sends us consolation, as He knows our weaknesses. It would be to our advantage to live our whole life in spiritual dryness but to struggle.
In other words, if we could reach Christ through being utterly abandoned by God, through emptying ourselves completely, as happened with Christ on the Cross. Then man would also have great glory. We shall have glory depending on how much we empty ourselves and how much pain we endure.
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Wisdom consists not only of sharpness of mind, foresight and prudence,
but also skill and the knowledge of how to act.
Featured image: The lower walls of Holy Trinity Cathedral rise above a cornfield. One worker stands on the scaffolding. Jordanville, NY, 1947. Holy Trinity Monastery/Seminary Photograph Collection. source
If you want to serve God, prepare your heart not for food, not for drink, not for rest, not for ease, but for suffering, so that you may endure all temptations, trouble and sorrow. Prepare for severities, fasts, spiritual struggles and many afflictions, for by many afflictions is it appointed to us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Acts 14,22); The Heavenly Kingdom is taken by force, and they who use force seize it (Matt 11:12).
Featured image: Kizhi Pogost, Church of the Transfiguration (built 1714). Photo by Richard Davies.
If a man wants God to hear his prayer quickly, then before he prays for anything else, even his own soul, when he stands and stretches out his hands towards God, he must pray with all his heart for his enemies. Through this action God will hear everything that he asks.
Featured image: Photographer Kevin Dooley. Taken with Diana+ mini. source
The proud sin greatly who, after studying secular literature and having turned to the Holy Scriptures, consider all that they say to be the Law of God, and do not endeavour to come to know the thoughts of the prophets and apostles, but seek out from the scriptures inapropriate texts for their own thoughts, as if this were a good work, and not the most defiled kind of study: to distort the thoughts of Scripture and submit them to their own intentions, in spite of obvious contradictions…It is proper to children and charlatans to try to teach that which they do not know.
– St. Jerome, Letter to Paulinus
Featured image: RAT GAS graffiti, as featured in Hobo Nickels issue #1 Photographed by author (Alana “Hobo Nickels” Solomon).
Woe to those who are rich, who are full, who laugh, and who are praised. But good shall come to those who endure every wrongful accusation, beating, robbery, or compulsory difficulty.
This is completely opposite to what people usually think and feel! The thoughts of God are as far from human thoughts as heaven is from the earth. How else could it be?
We are in exile; and it is not remarkable for those in exile to be offended and insulted. We are under a penance; the penance consists of deprivations and labors. We are sick; and most useful for the sick are bitter medicines. The Savior Himself all of His life did not have a place to lay His head, and He finished his life on the cross — why should his followers have a better lot? The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of preparedness to suffer and bear good-naturedly all that is sorrowful. Comfort, arrogance, splendor, and ease are all foreign to its searching and tastes. Its path lies in the fruitless, dreary desert. The model is the forty-year wandering of the Israelites in the desert. Who follows this path? Everyone who sees Canaan beyond the desert, boiling over with milk and honey. During his wandering he too receives manna, however not from the earth, but from heaven; not bodily, but spiritually. All the glory is within.
Featured image: Chapel in Sinai. Photographer Bernhard Moritz, 1916. Library of Congress
If you notice a fault in one close to you you would like to correct, if it destroys your peace of mind and annoys you, then you also are sinning and, consequently, you will not correct a fault by a fault—it is corrected by meekness. And it’s good for us when they jostle us. The tree that the wind sways more is strengthened more at the roots, but the one that lives in the calm falls immediately.
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