DRIIIVΞR

2022-07-09 10:57:52 Satan's Kingdom Now Develops Unimpeded, Having Removed What Withheld It

https://russian-faith.com/explaining-orthodoxy-history-persecution/satans-kingdom-now-develops-unimpeded-having-removed-what Open / Comment

2022-07-07 23:13:13 https://inklesspen.blog/2022/07/04/the-disease-of-secular-humanism-and-the-cure/ Open / Comment

2022-07-07 22:12:49 Open / Comment

2022-07-06 10:46:30 https://www.patristicfaith.com/orthodox-christianity/not-for-cowards/ Open / Comment

2022-07-05 15:35:26 Misplaced Priorities
Our Laziness and Misplaced Priorities

Our laziness and misplaced priorities regarding the Sunday and holy day services, keep us from our obligations to God, and endanger the soul, for in keeping ourselves away from God's temple, we remain afar from the cure that comes from participating in the Divine Mysteries. Saint Gregory Palamas tells us that we "may remain uncured, suffering from unbelief in your soul because of deeds or words, and failing to approach Christ's surgery to receive... holy healing".

Orthodoxy is not a religion by which we can attain salvation in the privacy of our own home, for our faith is a communal faith, whereby we participate in the Body of Christ in a corporate way. It is in this life that we must participate in the communal life of the Church, for after death there is no treatment for that which separates us from God. There is no repentance after this life, because all people share the same end. Each of us is destined to see the Glory of God at the Second Coming of Christ.

Protopresbyter John Romanides tells us, "All people will see the Glory (Uncreated Light) of God, and from this viewpoint they have the same end. Everyone, of course, will see the Glory of God, but with one difference: The saved will see the Glory of God as a most sweet and never-setting Light, whereas the damned will see the same Glory of God as a consuming fire that will burn them."

Our laziness, and our misplaced priorities, keep us from the Divine Mysteries, and deprive our soul of the healing grace that comes with an encounter with the Living God. As the Hospital of the Soul, the Church has been established by Christ Himself as that place wherein we receive the cure, so that we may bask in the Eternal Banquet that awaits us in the after life. By depriving ourselves of the grace filled Mysteries in this life, that are only found within the life of the Church, we separate ourselves from the very treatment that ensures eternal bliss in the next life.

With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon Open / Comment

2022-07-04 13:26:01 Please take the time to respond honestly. Open / Comment

2022-07-04 13:25:42 Open / Comment

2022-07-01 10:52:40 At first a simple thought about evil makes it into the mind, and if it is kept in the mind, then a passionate motion arises from it, and if you do not extirpate the passion, then it inclines the mind to agreement, and when this happens, it leads the mind to the commission of a sinful deed. [Guard your thoughts], for if you do not sin in thought, you will never sin in deed.

St. Maximos the Confessor, Chapters on Love, 1.84, 2.78 Open / Comment

2022-07-01 10:52:16 Open / Comment

2022-06-14 17:34:36 "For years in my studies I was satisfied with being 'above all traditions' but somehow faithful to them.... When I visited an Orthodox church, it was only in order to view another 'tradition.' However, when I entered an Orthodox church for the first time (a Russian church in San Francisco) something happened to me that I had not experienced in any Buddhist or other Eastern temple; something in my heart said that this was 'home,' that all my search was over. I didn't really know what this meant, because the service was quite strange to me, and in a foreign language. I began to attend Orthodox services more frequently, gradually learning its language and customs.... With my exposure to Orthodoxy and to Orthodox people, a new idea began to enter my awareness: that Truth was not just an abstract idea, sought and known by the mind, but was something personal--even a Person--sought and loved by the heart. And that is how I met Christ."

Fr Seraphim Open / Comment