Milk & Honey

Be Watchful Over Yourself

Mary — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:27:51 +0000

St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite

By: St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite

So, brother, since the enemy watches you constantly, waiting for an opportunity to sow evil in you, be doubly watchful over yourself, lest you fall into the nets spread for you. As soon as he shows you some fault in your neighbour, hasten to repel this thought, lest it take root in you and grow. Cast it out, so that no trace is left in you, and replace it by the thought of the good qualities you know your neighbour to possess, or of those people generally should have. If you still feel the impulse to pass judgment, add to this the truth, that you are given no authority for this and that the moment you assume this authority you thereby make yourself worthy of judgment and condemnation, not before powerless men, but before God, the all-powerful Judge of all.

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On How to Perceive the Divine Mystery

Mary — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:26:44 +0000

Fyodor Dostoevsky

By: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.

Source

The Type of Marriage that Brings Blessings

Mary — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 03:14:21 +0000

St. John Chrysostom

If a man and a woman marry to satisfy their sexual appetites, or to further the material aims of themselves or their families, then the union is unlikely to bring blessings. But if a man and a woman marry in order to be companions on the journey through earth to heaven, then their union will bring great joy to themselves and to others.

From “On Living Simply”, No. 70, a collection of excerpts from the writings of St John Chrysostom, chosen and translated by Robert Van de Weyer.

The Nativity is a Day of Joy

Mary — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 23:13:18 +0000

Nativity by: Fra Angelico

This [Christmas] night bestowed peace on the whole world; So, let no one threaten; this is the night of the Most Gentle One -let no one be cruel; This is the night of the most Humble One – let no one be proud. Now is the day of joy, – let us not revenge; now is the day of good will, – let us not be mean.
In this day of peace let us not be conquered by anger… Today the Bountiful impoverished Himself for our sake; so, the rich one, invite the poor to your table. To-day we received a Gift for which we did not ask; so let us give alms to those, who implore us and beg. This present day cast open the heavenly doors to our prayers; let us open our door to those who ask our forgiveness… Now the Divine Being took upon Himself the seal of humanity, in order for humanity to be decorated by the seal of Divinity.

St. Isaac the Syrian (The Bible and the Holy Fathers for Orthodox compiled by Johanna M. Manley; St. Vladimir’s Press pg. 970)
Taken from: Here

On Loving God in the Depths of our Hearts

Mary — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:47:48 +0000

Jesus Christ

By: Diadochus of Photiké (c.400-before 486)

Anyone who loves God in the depths of his heart has already been loved by God.

In fact, the measure of a man’s love for God depends upon how deeply aware he is of God’s love for him.

When this awareness is keen it makes whoever possesses it long to be enlightened by the divine light, and this longing is so intense that it seems to penetrate his very bones.

He loses all consciousness of himself and is entirely transformed by the love of God.

Such a man lives in this life and at the same time does not live in it, for although he still inhabits his body, he is constantly leaving it in spirit because of the love that draws him toward God.

Once the love of God has released him from self-love, the flame of divine love never ceases to burn in his heart and he remains united to God by an irresistible longing.

Source

On Dealing with Sin

Mary — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:06:30 +0000

Confession- by: Boris Klementiev

God wants to help us deal with sin but He waits for us to come to Him, to invite Him, to welcome Him. Advent is a time for doing just that. Opening our hearts to the Lord with contrition filled prayer is the most important thing we can do to prepare for the joy of Christmas. Not to do so is to prefer to live in self-contradiction, a cold dark misery not worthy of human dignity.

To live in sin is a self-contradiction: it is to cleave to a word of doubt in our lives that stands against all that is truly human so that we permeate our culture with death and sew malice in our civilization. We are made to live in the truth with integrity, that spiritual harmony with God, the world and ourselves. Sin contradicts all of this. This absence of love, this misery diminishes our capacity to live with ourselves, the world and God.. To believe this fantasy is to turn in on oneself, fight against oneself, to be consumed in self-occupation. The fantasy proposes that the obedience of love by which we live by love is oppressive; therefore, we should protect ourselves and secure our destiny by our own cleverness and industry.

In the logic of sin, love not a gift but a tool — it must be calculated. This project is the opposite of being human which is a destiny attained by trust in God alone. Yet this lie is so spell-binding, I cannot free myself from its enchantment by my own power and resources. Stifling, crushing, perverting, defacing, subjecting to futility all that is good, true and beautiful about being human, this lack of interior harmony can become a un-spiritual cacophony. Without the ability to relate in truth, we cannot give the gift of ourselves in love to God, and without God we are unable to give ourselves in love to all those with whom God has blessed us in this brief moment we share together in this world. Made in the image and likeness of God who has entrusted Himself to us, we contradict our existence when limit ourselves to mediocre, insipid substitutes for the love we were made to share together.

This self-contradiction causes guilt. Engaging in various forms of mental hygiene to alleviate guilt does not make the disease go way. No method for meditation or psychological technique can free us from the self-contradiction in which we are trapped. Since all that is natural is subject to the futility of the self-contradiction in which we live, we need a power beyond and above our nature to free us from the misery that enslaves us.

Sin, the cause of guilt, has a horrific social dimension. This this self-contradiction is contagious — if I do not seek the antidote and I refuse the only medicine that can heal me, it kills not only me personally, but also those I most love, wounding them in ways “I am sorry” can never heal. Brutal, cruel, dehumanizing – this hostility threatens to break hearts, ruin lives, and shatter families. This cancer, this living death, robs us of the capacity to love — and without this capacity, what are we?

Advent is a time when we deal with the reality of sin in our lives by repentance and faith in Jesus, our Lord. In the face of our self-contradiction, God sent his Son to save us. The Word became flesh and revealed the meaning of our hostility on the Cross. He is the antidote for death and the medicine of immortality. In prayer, we submit our self-contradiction to the Cross, the Sign of Contradiction. In this mystery of divine contradiction – the Word of God who is Love speaks to our lack of love, his mercy overcomes our misery.

Here, the wisdom of Blessed John Paul II is powerful: If we open wide the doors of our hearts to the Redeemer, He pierces our hearts and moves us with saving sorrow. Contrition filled prayer deals with the contradiction of sin and the guilt it causes – this holy sorrow moves us to repent of what we have done and failed to do, to confess our sins, to beg for mercy and to do penance — which is to live in the truth of what the Lord has done for us, to make straight a pathway in our hearts and to prepare the way for his coming.

Source

On Helping Others

Mary — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:49:34 +0000

Mother Teresa helping a child

By: Fr. Alexander Elchaninov

You cannot cure the soul of others or ‘help people,’ without having changed yourself. You cannot put in order the spiritual economy of others, so long as there is chaos in your own soul. You cannot bring peace to others if you do not have it yourself. Often, we help other people, not by a series of conscious acts directed upon their soul, but rather by influencing them through our spiritual gifts, without ourselves seeing or knowing how we do so. Once (St.) Anthony the Great asked a visitor who said nothing at all, ‘Why do you not ask me anything?’ and the other answered, ‘It is enough for me to look at you, holy father’.

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The Nativity Fast

Mary — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:45:43 +0000

The Nativity of Christ

The Church journeys toward the birth of Christ God, steered by the ship that is the Nativity fast. She does so with the knowledge that unless she struggles up the mountain that is desperately too steep for her to climb, she will never know the breadth of the gift that is the mountain’s levelling by the hand of God. Resurrection unto life is the ultimate gift of the Incarnation, but unless a man understands that he is dead, he will never know the meaning of resurrection.

The fast is a holy and blessed tool that brings us closer to such self-awareness. It reveals to us who we are, perhaps more importantly who we are not, and makes us more consciously aware of that for which we stand in need. Then and only then, with eyes opened — even only partially — by the ascetic endeavour, we will truly know the life-giving light of the Nativity of Christ. We will hear with awe the proclamation of the hymn at vespers, taking the mystery presented therein as united directly to us:

Come, let us greatly rejoice in the Lord as we tell of this present mystery. The middle wall of partition has been destroyed; the flaming sword turns back, the cherubim withdraw from the tree of life, and I partake of the delight of Paradise from which I was cast out through disobedience. For the express Image of the Father, the Imprint of His eternity, takes the form of a servant, and without undergoing change He comes forth from a Mother who knew not wedlock. For what He was, He has remained, true God: and what He was not, He has taken upon himself, becoming man through love for mankind. Unto Him let us cry aloud: God born of a Virgin, have mercy upon us!
(Sticheron of Vespers of the Nativity)

We will never fully comprehend this ineffable mystery; some knowledge is properly God’s alone. But by His grace through the ascetic effort, we will come to understand — perhaps, most of us, only to the slightest degree — how this mystery is our own mystery, how His life is our own life, and how the salvation of Christmas Day is, indeed, our own salvation. And with this realisation, joy: joy far greater than a mere entrance into the temple on Christmas Day could ever bring us. This is the joy of the age-old journey of man, our own journey, come to its fulfilment in the awe-inspiring mystery of God Himself become a man. With this joy in our hearts, we shall embrace the hymnographer’s words as our own:

Today the Virgin comes to the cave to give birth ineffably to the pre-eternal Word. Hearing this, be of good cheer, O inhabited earth, and with the angels and the shepherds glorify Him whose will it was to be made manifest a young Child, the pre-eternal God.
(Kontakion of the Forefeast)

Source

On True Christian Love

Mary — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:17:20 +0000

Fr. Damascene Christensen of Platina

By: Fr. Damascene Christensen

True Christian love is not just a feeling or a pleasant disposition of the soul. It is a self-sacrificing, ceaseless, life-long act of heroism unto death. It is fiery yet dispassionate, not dependent on anything, not on being loved in return or having a kinship of blood. One no longer thinks of receiving something for oneself. One can be spat upon and reviled, and yet in this suffering there is such a deep, profound peace that one finds it impossible to return to the lifeless state one was in before the suffering. One blesses life and all that is around one, and this blessing becomes universal. Such love can only come from God. This is the only love that Christ is truly interested in, the love He came to earth to show and teach humanity. With this love He gave up His Spirit on the Cross.

Source

The Lord Is In Every Christian

Mary — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 01:18:40 +0000

St. John of Kronstadt

By: St. John of Kronstadt

Remember that the Lord is in every Christian. When your neighbour comes to you, always have great respect for him, because the Lord is in him, and often expresses His will through him. ‘ It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure’ (Phil. 2:13). Therefore, do not grudge anything to your brother, but do unto him as unto the Lord; especially as you do not know in whom the Lord will come and visit you; be impartial to all, be kind to all, sincere and hospitable. Remember that sometimes God speaks even through unbelievers, or disposes their hearts towards us, as it happened in Egypt when the Lord gave Joseph favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. (Gen. 39:21).

Excerpt taken from the book- My Life in Christ, by: St. John of Kronstadt.