Tag archive for ‘Fathers’
An early creed
The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit…
Give me a word
A brother came to see Abba Macarius the Egyptian, and said to him, “Abba, give me a word, that I may be saved.”…
When peace of heart is a problem
A brother said to an old man, “I see no warfare in my heart.” The old man said to him, “You are a building open on all sides, and whoever wishes can pass through you and you are unaware of it. If you have a door, you should shut it, and not allow evil thoughts to enter through it; for then you will see them standing outside, banging on the door, and attacking you.”
When Tradition Fractures
St. Augustine Lives on in the Great Theological Conflicts of Today.
When it comes to St. Augustine, the great fifth-century bishop of Hippo, Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox all have a similar reaction: none of us quite know what to do with him. Or at least that was my impression, based on the conference I attended at Fordham University last June.
From the Little Mountain
From the Little Mountain takes you through a year at the Hermitage of the Holy Cross in West Virginia. This is a unique documentary of an Orthodox monastery in the 21st century…
The Spiritual Father in Orthodox Christianity
One who climbs a mountain for the first time needs to follow a known route; and he needs to have with him, as companion and guide, someone who has been up before and is familiar with the way. To serve as such a companion and guide is precisely the role of the “Abba” or spiritual father…
The Monastic Call
The early monastics flew into the desert not to escape the city and its newly respectable churches but rather to seek salvation at a time when increasing wealth and prestige might have been the undoing of the Church through a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle!) compromise with worldliness. In this manner the Church’s integrity in both desert and city was preserved…
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles
The Didachē is a short catechism, probably written in Syria during the second half of the 1st century. The Didachē is concerned with practical discipline and does not deliberately teach doctrine, but from the writer’s assumptions we learn a great deal about the development of the early Church in his generation.
Deacons and bishops at the end of the first century
By the time St Paul wrote his New Testament advice to elders and overseers, the Church had been growing explosively for several decades. By the end of the first century, St John’s disciple Ignatius wrote about how the orders of clergy interacted in his experience…
The River of God
There’s a river flowing through the Scriptures. Ezekiel saw it welling up under the temple of God. Zechariah saw the river flowing on earth at Christ’s coming. John saw the same river at the end of time flowing from the throne of God…
Cry Jesus
Try to attain the full measure of this Name [of Jesus], and you will find it on your mouth and in the mouths of your children. When you make high festival and when you rejoice, cry Jesus. When anxious and in pain, cry Jesus. When little boys and girls are laughing, let them cry Jesus. [...]
Consent
A brother overcome by lust went to see a great old man and besought him, saying, ‘Be so good as to pray for me, for I am overcome by lust.’ And the old man prayed to God for him. A second time he went to the old man and said the same thing, and once [...]
A safe journey
An Athonite hermit said: What guarantees a safe journey to eternity is effort, dignity, the sense of being unworthy before God, and hope: the spiritual oxygen, consolation, and certainty. Not misery and compelled obedience and forced prayer; not tears and sadness - these all come from Satan. Yes, I ought to weep for my sins, [...]
Worse than ignorance
Spurious knowledge, or ‘knowledge falsely so called’ (1 Timothy 6:20), is that which a man possesses when he thinks he knows what he has never known. It is worse than complete ignorance, says St. John Chrysostom, in that its victim will not accept correction from any teacher because he thinks that this worst kind of [...]
Vincent of Lerins: Finding the true faith (434 AD)
Vincent attempted, as did St John Cassian, to find a way that avoided the extremes both of Pelagius and of Augustine. His Commonitories [reminders] offer a guide to distinguish Orthodox teaching from innovation, the maxim now known as the Vincentian Canon: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est (i.e. only “what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all” is the catholic Faith of Christianity). Vincent taught that the ultimate source of Christian truth was Holy Scripture and that the tradition of the Church was to be invoked to guarantee the correct interpretation of Scripture…
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