The meaning of asceticism consists in the fact that the less one makes one’s hypostasis rely on nature, on the substance, the more one is hypostasized as a person. In this way asceticism does not deny “nature” but frees it from the ontological necessity of the biological hypostasis; and it enables it to be in […]
Read MoreThe cause of being comes from Him to all things that exist, according to the will of God the Father. Through him structure and preservation are given to all things, or He created everything, and dispenses well-being to all things, according to the need of each. Therefore all things are turned toward Him, looking with […]
Read MoreRecently, we were asked about a lecture on Icons, given at our parish several years ago by Retired Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, of Monastery of All Saints of North America, in Dewdney, B.C. This lecture was recorded at that time, and is posted on You-Tube. The URL below should take you there. Other lectures and homilies […]
Read MoreFreedom is a being’s power to flourish as what it naturally is, to become ever more fully what it is. The freedom of an oak seed is its uninterrupted growth into an oak tree. The freedom of a rational spirit is its consummation in union with God. Freedom is never then the mere “negative liberty” […]
Read MoreSt Maximus the confessor, following Gregory of Nyssa (On the Creation of Man 16-18, PG 44:177ff.), comes to the very root of the problem of human existence when he regards the biological mode of procreation as a result of the Fall (Ambigua 41, 42, PG 81:1309A, … ). Those who attribute this view of Maximus […]
Read MoreAt one time, in very late antiquity, Western Christians could speak with firm if dour certitude of a place of real physical and mental agony to which the vast majority of the race would be consigned at the end of days and to which even babies would be sent forever and ever if they were […]
Read More“God is not, in any of the great theistic traditions, merely some rational agent, external to the order of the physical universe, who imposes some kind of design upon an otherwise inert and mindless material order. He is not some discrete being somewhere out there, floating in the great beyond, who fashions nature in accordance […]
Read More“When I am sharply judgmental of any other person, it’s because I sense or see reflected in them some aspect of myself that I don’t want to acknowledge. I’m speaking here not of my critique of another person’s behavior in objective terms but of the self-righteous tone of personal judgment that colors my opinion. … […]
Read More“If children today are at greater risk for obesity than those of previous generations, it’s not simply because they’re less physically active as a result of being absorbed in TV or computers. It’s primarily because under ordinary peacetime conditions there has never before been a generation so stressed and so starved of nurturing adult relationships. […]
Read More“… why I speak of the horror of sheer limitless successive existence. The desire simply to perdure forever, the resentful refusal to die–which at a deeper level is also the refusal to die into the now. But that sort of dying, that relinquishing of the past–that’s precisely what life is. It’s also a matter of […]
Read More
RJB
March 13, 2023
Uncategorized
No Comment