The question in every life: How to truthfully discern what is from God what is obedience to Him (Lord, what do You want from me?) and what is from “this world” (and from the one behind it)? Questions about one’s calling. My own life is that of a churchman. But every year I feel more and more burdened-from weakness. Or is my real calling something different? I truly suffer from constantly asking myself this question. I live a double life-one consuming the other. Does God want this? Is this the condition of my salvation? When I ask this question, I have no answer. And I am 55!
What else is needed? Look—all of you who rush about in vain. Do not think that something else is needed. See the fight of light with darkness, the descent into death. It is at the same time the revelation of the power of evil and its destruction. That is where one would find the answer which everyone is seeking and often finding in pitiful idols. Lazarus and Palms: “Rejoice, and again I say rejoice…” at the very beginning of Holy Week and at the same time, the onslaught of darkness. (“I am deeply grieved, even to death…” and
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) and of light (“Now the Son of Man has been glorified and God has been glorified in Him…”) up to the bright silence of Holy Saturday. Where else should one search for the solution to problems? Where else can one see, feel the only ray of light which illumines and solves everything?
What God reveals to people is unheard, impossible, and the tragedy consists of this deafness. And this revelation can no longer penetrate Western life without ripping it apart. What is revealed surpasses and therefore tears apart life-the gift of joy “which nobody will take away from you.” Genuine Christianity is bound to disturb the heart with this tearing-that is the force of eschatology. But one does not feel it in these smooth ceremonies where everything is neat, right, but without eschatological “other worldliness.” This is, maybe, the basic spiritual quality of any bourgeois state of mind. It is closed to the sense of tragedy to which the very existence of God condemns us.
I don’t know. It’s so difficult to express it, but I clearly feel that here is a different perception of life, and the bourgeois state (religious, theological, spiritual, pious, cultured, etc.) is blind to something essential in Christianity.
—Alexander Schmemann
Journals
Category: FAITH
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Even all the incidents you experience are permitted by God so you can gain a spiritual benefit from them…
There are those who become nervously, psychologically or mentally affected by incidents. Others are affected spiritually by whatever events they experience; everything that happens to them makes them closer to God….
The people that you meet, are sent by God. Passing your way, they are for your own spiritual benefit, if you know how to benefit from them.
The righteous present you with an example and a blessing, while you benefit endurance, patience, and forgiveness for others from evil.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, WORDS OF SPIRITUAL BENEFIT VOL. II
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Truly God has many solutions… We think of our problems, using our human mind, which is limited. As for God He is unlimited in His knowledge and His wisdom. When matters become complicated, their complication is relative for us human beings. As for God nothing becomes complicated, everything is easy and the solutions are many. God interferes at the right time and in the suitable way. It could be a solution that never crossed our minds, one that we never thought of or expected…
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, WORDS OF SPIRITUAL BENEFIT VOL. II
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Some cannot wait for death, and some are terrified of death. This becomes a marker for which life I’m walking.
—Fr. Mina Dimitri -
We are called to reflect the light of God, we are called to reflect His light—not to be preoccupied with darkness. We’re actually called to be preoccupied with light, to be so focused, so obsessed with light, that we spread that light everywhere we go. And because of this, we often think that being modest means that we should hide that light—that if there are some fruits in me, that I should hide it. I’m very careful about what I say. I’m so scared that perhaps my pride will get in the way. I’m so scared that perhaps I’ll be judged if I speak about my Christianity, if I speak about the love of God in the world, and we hide it, but this is exactly what Jesus is saying we shouldn’t do because if we never use those fruits, and we keep them hidden under our bed, those fruits begin to rot.
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The reliance on people prevents total reliance on God, and outward comforts prevents true comfort.
—St. Isaac the Syrian -
All of us have problems, but where do we escape to during these problems? Do we run to people, do we run to priests, or do we run to God?
When we’re in a situation that requires saving, where do we go? We go to other saviors. I’m running to other things besides Christ.
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The practice of virtue and contemplation on the love of God makes one face death without fear or tears knowing that death is inevitable from one side and another side frees us from all our diseases.
—St. Antony the Great -
It doesn’t matter what our citizenship is, it doesn’t matter what our status is here or there, it doesn’t matter if we’re married not married, if we have kids or don’t have kids, if we have a job or don’t have a job—none of that matters because we are children of God. And as a father takes care of his child, so God will take care of us. And if we find ourselves in points in our lives where we feel like God has abandoned us, it is not He who has abandoned us—it’s we who have abandoned Him.
—Fr. Daniel Habib
SO GOOD QUOTES 