Tag: st-nektarios

  • Hidden Martyrdom: The Furnace of Prayer

    Hidden Martyrdom: The Furnace of Prayer

    Prayer, pastoral care, and perfection “Make the following a rule—first of all, anticipate trouble at every moment and when it comes encounter it as something expected. Secondly, when something happens that conflicts with you will and is on the point of irritating and upsetting you, hasten to bring your attention into your heart and strive…

  • A Return to Center

    A Return to Center

    prayer, parenthood, and perfection “Prayer signifies man’s turning toward God, the creature’s reaching forth to receive the light of the Uncreated… prayer is the most precious and indispensable means for man’s communion with God… By means of prayer, the energy of the true God penetrates man’s being and endows him with the strength to strive…

  • Champion and the Idiot

    Champion and the Idiot

    Love is an Apocalypse “I had heard a good deal about him before and, among other things, that he was an atheist. He’s really a very learned man, and I was glad to be talking with a true scholar… He doesn’t believe in God. Only one thing struck me: it was as if that was…

  • Beauty Will Save the World

    Beauty Will Save the World

    A reflection on my name day “Nothing is greater than a pure heart, because such a heart becomes a throne of God. And what is more glorious than the throne of God? Of course nothing. God says about those who have pure heart: ‘I shall dwell in them and walk, and shall be their God,…

  • Under the Paschal Light pt. iii

    Under the Paschal Light pt. iii

    The Light, Calling from the Dark Part i Part ii Liturgy brings people together where each participates in a mutual self-offering, every joy and sorrow of the week recapitulated in the eternal self-giving of Christ, caught up in His Cross and Resurrection—eros and agape—glorifying Him glorified, and partaking of His glory by the Mysteries of…

  • Meaning in Virtue

    Meaning in Virtue

    The Sunday of St. John of the Ladder “Above nature are chastity, freedom from anger, humility, prayer, vigil, fasting, constant compunction. Some of them men teach us, others angels, and of others the Teacher and Giver is God the Word Himself” – St. John Climacus, the Ladder My Theories of Religion course had us analyze…

  • Prelest or Life

    Prelest or Life

    Reflections on Luke 6:6-10 When Christ healed the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath, He asked, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or to do harm? To save a life, or to kill?” (Luke 6:9). The hearts of the Pharisees, hardened by self-love and legalism, are unable to perceive the…

  • Name Day

    Name Day

    “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done,     on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts,     as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation,     but deliver us from evil. “For if you…