Tag archive for ‘prayer’
A wonderful revelation to the world
It was Thursday. The day was gloomy. The snow lay eight inches deep on the ground; and dry, crisp snowflakes were falling thickly from the sky when Father Seraphim began his conversation with me…
Monastics: God’s radiomen
The monk departs far from the world not because he hates it, but because he loves it. In this way he will, through his prayer, help the world more in those matters that are, being humanly impossible, only possible by God’s intervention. This is how God saves the world…
Hope and prayer
The person who claims to be full of hope but fails to lead a life of prayer is a liar. Prayer is the sole ‘reason’ for hope, at the same time that it is its means and expression. Prayer is the referral to God’s decision, on which we are counting. Without that referral there can be no hope, because we would have nothing to hope for. Prayer is the assurance of the possibility of God’s intervention, without which there is no hope.
The Communion of Prayer
“Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12). Have you ever wondered what Jesus did when He prayed all night? Have you ever tried to pray all night? If your conception of prayer is a monologue of needs, information and requests, then your experience of prayer is either that it is very short or very repetitive…
Pray without ceasing
We very much pity those Christians who think that the best rest for their exhausted soul is to watch television news. This isn’t a bad thing, perhaps, but it’s a dead thing. You may spend all of the earthly time you have been allotted with such distractions, but you will never be at peace.
At the beginning of Lent
Contrary to what many think or feel, Lent is a time of joy. Unless we understand this quality of joy in Lent, we will make of it a monstrous caricature, a time when in God’s own name we make our life a misery. This notion of joy connected with effort, with ascetical endeavour, with strenuous effort may indeed seem strange, and yet it runs through the whole of our spiritual life, through the life of the Church and the life of the Gospel…
Hymn to St Michael from the Carmina Gadelica
Thou Michael the victorious,
May I travel under thy shield,
Thou Michael of the white steed,
Of the bright and shining steel,
O, Conqueror of the dragon,
Be thou at my back,
Thou ranger of the heavens,
King’s warrior, demon’s bane…
The Spirituality of the Celtic Church
If the rich history of the Celtic churches is a fairly recent discovery, their spirituality may be an even more surprising resource for a life-affirming, holistic, and faithful way of life for Christians in this “postmodern” world and, more importantly, the world of the future…
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