Him Alone

"If men knew themselves, they would know God; and if they really knew God, they would be satisfied with Him and would think of Him alone."

-Ibn 'Arabi

St. Herman of Alaska

Today, November 15/28 is the day that St. Herman reposed after a life lived in total service of Christ.  St. Herman, pray for us, poor sinners!

New World

"Once you have reached the place of tears then you should understand that the mind has left the prison of this world and set its feet on the road towards the New World. It has begun to breathe the wonderful air which is there. It begins to shed tears. For now the birth-pangs of the spiritual infant grow strong, since grace, the common mother of us all, makes haste to give birth mystically to the soul, the image of God, into the light of the world to come.

This shall be for you a luminous sign of the serenity of your soul: when, on examining yourself, you find yourself full of compassion for all humanity, and your heart is afflicted with pity for them, burning as though with fire, without making distinction between one person and another.When the image of the Father becomes visible in you by means of the continual presence of these things, then you can recognize the measure of your way of life – not from your various labors, but from the transformation which your understanding receives.The body is then likely to be bathed in tears, as the intellect gazes on things spiritual."

-St. Isaac the Syrian

A Happy Life

I think one of the most nefarious lies you are taught growing up in the West is that eventually, through all the darkness of your life, things will improve and you will have the "American Dream."  A pious wife, loyal and docile children, a nice house, etc..  The reality is that this is not the understanding of life from the standpoint of a Catholic or Orthodox Christian.  We understand that happiness is not a guarantee given to us in this life.  This life is full of profound suffering and our salvation lies in carrying our burdens with Christ on our crucifixion.

If we carry out these duties in this life, than Christ Our Savior, will provide us the greatest of happiness in the Hereafter.  I even hesitate to call it "happiness" because that is a human concept.  What a saint experiences in Heaven goes far beyond what we can describe utilizing earthly terms.

So let us not resist the Crosses that Christ gives us for they are the means in which we make progress in our process of Theosis.  In the midst of the darkness of your sufferings, remember the Light.  The Light of Christ that flickers in this earthly abyss.

Transformed State

"In love did God bring the world into existence; in love is God going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of the One who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.”

-St. Isaac the Syrian

Lord, Have Mercy

Brethren, let us resolve to never harbor any ill feelings towards anyone else.  Let us error on the side of mercy.  Let us, when we feel the need to condemn, condemn ourselves.  We know ourselves and our own wretchedness.  Let us overlook the faults of our brothers and pray and do penance for them.

Let's say throughout the day with much weeping, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Sorrow

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

-Khalil Gibran

The Heart

“Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow.”

-Khalil Gibran 

Shelter

"Shelter the sinner if it brings you no harm. Through this you will encourage him toward repentance and reform — and attract the Lord’s mercy to yourself. With a kind word and all possible means, fortify the infirm and the sorrowful and that Right Arm that controls everything, will also support you. With prayers and sorrow of your heart, share your lot with the aggrieved and the source of God’s mercy will open to your entreaties."

-St. Isaac the Syrian

Merciful Heart

"What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them, the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance...by such great compassion, the heart is humbled, and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation. For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm him, that they be protected and receive mercy."

-St. Isaac the Syrian

Spectacle

"Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with the theatre, ballet, opera and the dance … It is so organized that at all times it is compelled to reproduce the central action which characterizes all good drama from the days of the Greeks to our own; two individuals are pitted against each other in a conflict that is strictly personal but no less strictly representative of a social group. One individual batsman faces one individual bowler. But each represents his side. For that moment, to all intents and purposes, he is the side. This fundamental relation of the One and the Many, Individual and Social, Individual and Universal, leader and followers, representative and ranks, the part and the whole, is structurally imposed on the players of cricket. Thus the game is founded upon a dramatic, a human, relation which is universally recognized as the most objectively pervasive and psychologically stimulating in life and therefore in that artificial representation of it which is drama."

-CLR James, Beyond a Boundary

Sunday Sermon: Fr. David Jones - Noise, The Exhaust of Hell

Pass Over in Silence

"What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence."

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Malice

"Even if we perform upon thousands of good works, my brethren: fasts, prayers, almsgiving; even if we shed our blood for our Christ and we don’t have these two loves [love of God and love of brethren], but on the contrary have hatred and malice toward our brethren, all the good we have done is of the devil and we go to hell. But, you say, we go to hell despite all the good we do because of that little hatred?

Yes, my brethren, because that hatred is the devil’s poison, and just as when we put a little yeast in a hundred pounds of flour it has such power that it causes all the dough to rise, so it is with hatred. It transforms all the good we have done into the devil’s poison."

-St. Kosmas Aitolos

Malcolm Marshall against Australia, 1991

Watching him bowl was such an ethereal and sublime experience.  Rest in peace, my brother Malcolm.