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God doesn’t compel me, He woos me. God doesn’t just passively leave room for my freedom, my creativity, He creates the space, the conditions, for me to discover and exercise my freedom and creativity. And as God has done for me, I must do for you.
Continue Reading...… the ascetical life helps us overcome the myriad distractions in our lives that come between us and God. How frequently, to speak only for myself, I become fascinated with some idea I have about God. That this idea is true is, from the point of view of our communion with God, is secondary. The spiritual life isn’t a collection of true ideas or wholesome feelings about God any more than it is about living a morally good life. To be sure, these all have their place but in service of pointing us beyond themselves to God.
Continue Reading...To be obedient means to live as a member of a community in which we work together for the flourishing, sanctification and salvation of each other. It is the end of mere individualism and the beginning of life patterned after the Holy Trinity.
Continue Reading...I can’t really love my neighbor unless I also love God. What causes me to have this realization, according to Bernard of Clairvaux, are the life’s troubles. These teach me the limits of human strength and my dependence not simply on my neighbor but on God. It is because we “suffer troubles” that we “begin to love God through our own love for ourselves.” As troubles wax and human strength wanes, we learn that “in God we can accomplish anything and without God we can do nothing.”
Continue Reading...Sunday, October 4, 2015: Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost & Second Sunday of Luke Hieromartyr Hierotheos, bishop of Athens; Hieromartyr Peter of Capitolia in Syria; Martyrs Domnina and her daughters of Syria; Gurios, first archbishop of Kazan and Barsanouphios, bishop of Tver; and Martyrs Stephen (Stiljanovich) and Elizabeth of Serbia Epistle: 2 Corinthians 9:6-11 Gospel: Luke 6:31-36 “But I say to …
Continue Reading...The Apostle Paul sets the standard for all of us, clergy and laity alike. We are every bit as much his spiritual children as were the Corinthians and as such he call us to be friends of God and of each other. Such friendship requires that we love God, each other and all we meet without reservation even when doing so causes us pain or loss.
Continue Reading...Love is not a sentiment, it isn’t a feeling. The cliché of my youth was that love isn’t a feeling but a decision. In part yes, but this begs the question. What is it that I must decide? How must I live in order to be faithful to love?
Continue Reading...The public proclamation of the Gospel doesn’t necessarily require we say to a person or a community that they are morally bad. It is rather to invite them and to challenge them to live a deeper, more sacrificial form of love. We aren’t so much saying “You’re wrong!”—though there are times we must—as we are saying “You can be better!”
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