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The Jesus Prayer AIC - Ongoing Formation – July 2006 This talk was an adaptation of The Power of the Name, by Kallistos Ware (1974) with an addition from The Payer of JESUS, by A Monk of the Eastern Church (1967). Introduction No authentic relationship between persons can exist without mutual freedom and spontaneity, and this is true of prayer. There are no fixed rules for those who seek to pray; and there is no mechanical technique, whether physical or mental, which can compel God to manifest his presence. His grace is granted always as a free gift, and cannot be gained automatically by any method or technique. Nevertheless, the Jesus Prayer has become for many Eastern Christians over the centuries the standard path, and ...

Blessed poverty ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ But what benefit will we derive from this great gift of God unless we discover the deeper meaning hidden in the depths of these words? In medical science, for example, there are many expensive and rare remedies that are unused and are of no benefit to those who don’t realize their value until they learn from specialists what the application of each one is. Now what does poverty of the spirit mean? The thing which ensures that we enter the kingdom of heaven. From Holy Scripture we’ve learned to identify two kinds of riches. One is admirable and the other is to be condemned. The riches ...

People are divided in this world into good and evil, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, noble and ignoble, intelligent and fools. They do however all have one thing in common. And that is pain. Because all people, without exception, will experience pain during their lifetime. As the saying goes: ‘It’s a marvel, if someone finds happiness during their life’. Therefore, we all live in the realm of pain. We know that pain is something personal, which one has to deal with alone. It’s our cross, which we have a duty to carry, just as the Saviour of the world, Jesus, carried His Cross for our sakes. So find comfort and rest in the paternal hand, which at this time ...

The Liturgy as Pedagogical Tradition The Liturgy preserves Apostolic, Christian teaching that predates the writing of the canonical New Testament and parallels the foundational, binding, oral traditions that originated the New Testament. This teaching communicates real, historical knowledge about the Person, the deeds, and the teachings of Jesus. What is this teaching? The teaching is the kerygma: the proclamation of Jesus as crucified and risen Lord, who was, is, and is to come; the teaching and retention of the idea of monotheism, a tenet not contradicted by the proclamation of Jesus as Lord. Another object of teaching is about the nature of God and the anamnesis (a memorial in the sense of re-actualization) of His saving deeds contained in the berakah, ...

If you want people to understand you, then you must become like them. That’s the move which God made: He became human, He spoke our language, He communed with us on all human levels except sin, and that’s how He managed to truly communicate with us. So, not only did Christ, Who came and saved us, meet us where we were, but He did something else as well: He surrendered Himself for our life. In other words, He forsook everything which was His and gave Himself up for our sake.

A. Posing the Problem How else could I begin my talk except by expressing my genuine gratitude for the honour of being asked to speak at your conference? It may be that you, as intensive care specialists, have encountered the greatest ethical dilemmas and are confronted by the most intense medical challenges to the conscience, more so than your other colleagues. And we, as the Church, if we want a connection with our mission, are constantly involved in the tension created by the way each person is hovering between life and death- literally and metaphorically- unfailingly seeing death in life and constantly discerning the outline of real life in death. The workplace of doctors such as yourselves is called Intensive Care or ...

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’. Come, let us ascend the mountain of the Lord 1. Who among those of us gathered here is worthy of becoming a disciple of the Lord and, with Him, to ascend from poor and lowly thoughts to the spiritual heights of sublime contemplation? This mountain is free of any shadow cast by the looming hills of wickedness and, at the same time, basks in the splendour of the true light. And within the glow of pure truth, it makes visible ...

In the beginning we’re drawn by God with the gift of grace, and once we’ve been drawn to Him, then starts a long trial period. Our freedom and trust in God are tested, and tested hard. At first, our petitions towards God, whether small or great, even our pleas which have only just been expressed, are usually fulfilled in a swift and marvellous way by God. When the period of trials comes, however, then everything changes and it’s as if the heavens are closed and He’s deaf to all our supplications. For fervent Christians, everything in life becomes difficult. People’s behaviour towards them worsens: they cease to respect them; don’t make allowances for them as they do with others; and pay them less ...

The Transfiguration, byzantine icon, 12th Century The story of our creation in Genesis is interrupted. The Divine Council says, “Let us make man in our own image,” and the work begins. But man’s creation is not like the creation of anything else. For the stars and trees, the earth and the sky, God says, “Let there be…!” And so it is. God looks at what He has made and declares, “It is good.” But for man, there is the discussion, “Let us make…” There is the formation from clay and the breathing of life. But God does not stand back, look at man and say, “It is good.” Indeed, God stands back, looks at man and says, “It is not good…” The first ...

The Transfiguration of the Saviour occupies a central position in the Orthodox Church and theology. It is the event that reveals the glory of the Church and of the faithful. It is the evidence of the new situation that entered history through the advent of Christ. At the Transfiguration, Christ manifested through His human nature the uncreated glory of His Divinity. At the same time, He caught up the men with Him in the uncreated divine glory. Moses and Elijah share the same brightness as the Lord. The only difference is that Christ is the source, whereas they are the recipients of divine brightness. The reason why Christ was transfigured before his disciples was the approach of the day when he would ...

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. There are blessed or tragic moments when we can see a person revealed to us in a light with a depth, with an awesome beauty which we have never suspected before. It happens when our eyes are open, at a moment of purity of heart; because it is not only God Himself Whom the pure in heart will see; it is also the divine image, the light shining in the darkness of a human soul, of the human life that we can see at moments when our heart becomes still, becomes transparent, becomes pure. But there are also other moments when we can see a person whom we thought we have ...

I want to go to Heaven even if I am the last one in, after the worst person in the world. May God place me in Paradise even if he’s put Nero and Hitler there, as well, even if it means that I shine their shoes. What do I care who God puts in Paradise? It’s His for Him to do what He wants with. It’s not up to me to say anything. I want to be saved and the rest is up to the Lord.

If you were God and chose to be incarnate for the purpose of redeeming fallen humanity, what method of redemption would you choose?  What sort of earthly life would you ordain for yourself?  If (you forbid) you are like me, then you would save mankind without incurring any inconvenience to yourself.  You would choose to be born into a wealthy family, and discharged from a first-rate hospital (your mother would be assisted by a celebrity doula, of course).  You would belong to a free and powerful nation.  You would live in the most technologically-sophisticated era so that you can enjoy the greatest comforts that human society can afford.  You would destine yourself to inherit or acquire power.  Needless to say, ...

Before I read of You In charts of the night, Oh, soliloquy of light, Everything was dark as rye, silent and deaf and dry. I belonged to someone else, To a king of charcoal and eucalyptus, It was as if I had survived in a hole of opaque mists Buried to my soul - But a silent memory of You Told me where to go. Among the cedars and silent pines, Everything within me was dry. We chewed dark breads, the sleeves of our coats Cut out from the night. With lambs, sheep and goats We crossed dunes and ruins Of palaces, and faces Blank as ghosts.   But I did not understand, as if walking in my sleep, This message blotted from the land, erased From the minds of men. You see them, Walking to and fro, lost in a confusion Of ...

The vision of God is presented in the Holy Scriptures in two different forms which appear to be mutually exclusive. Some passages characterize the vision of God as an impossibility. In the book of Exodus, for example, God tells Moses: “You cannot see My face; for no man can see My face and live,” while the psalmist notes that God “made darkness His hiding place.” In the New Testament, the Apostle and Evangelist John writes: “No one has ever seen God”, And the Apostle Paul adds that God is He “whom no one has ever seen or can see”. At the same time, however, the Holy Scriptures also detail numerous theophanies. For instance, Jacob says: “For I saw God face to face, ...

b) Sermon, mass and hymns There is a wide-spread impression that Luther gave prominence to the sermon to the detriment of the mass, but in fact he restored the latter, which had been completely marginalized. His aim was to establish a balance between the pulpit and the altar. Scripture was heard only from the readings and the hymns, which were in Latin. He restored it to its rightful position in the services. Apart from this, the sermon had become entirely distorted and its place had been taken by myths, legends and pagan lore. By the same token, the mass gave the message that the faithful would gain the favour of God and their salvation by retiring to monasteries and making donations ...

The great adversary of truth, which today brings people to perdition, is delusion. Because of delusion, dark ignorance reigns in the souls of those who are idle, alienating them from God. They don’t acknowledge Christ as God, Who enlightened us and brought about our rebirth, or they believe in Him and acknowledge Him only in words and not in actual fact. They believe that God revealed Himself to people only in days of old, but not any longer. They think that the testimonies in the Scriptures regarding God don’t concern them, but others or those who wrote them and they blaspheme the teachings concerning God, since they renounce true and conscious reverence.