The Orthodox Faith, described perfectly by complete strangers to Christianity, who only had to enter into one Divine Liturgy to discover an escape from darkness, and an entrance into Grace, Love, and Eternity.
Fr. Dcn. Michael: Keeping an Eye on Christ
We all know those people who, for whatever reason, can never see the beauty in anything of God or His people. For them, every silver lining has a dark cloud in front of it, every happy story has a sad ending, and no good deed goes unpunished. We can blame it on the circumstance of their life, or just life in general, but everything they see in God’s wonderful creation is somehow distorted when viewed through a tainted, dirty, negative lens. This perspective is often self-serving, where each bad account of the world and humanity simply helps to prove their already established negative impressions. When seen through this “bad eye,” the world does indeed appear very bleak and unsalvageable.
What It Means to be Truly Human
From time to time, God is kind enough to show us all His presence…and the aim of all of these assurances is so that we can be transformed, and become signs of His grace, His love, and His mercy to the world…So we venerate the image of the weeping icon of Mary, because she was the first human being since Adam and Eve, to be “truly human”…because to be truly human, is to be the revelation of God to His world.”
Blaming God for the 1%
It is a common practice in today’s world to blame God for when things become chaotic in our lives. It is a trait that is found in all human beings, where we have this knack for ignoring the 99% of our lives that are going well, and concentrate on that 1% that isn’t working as it should be. But we learn throughout the Gospels somethingfundamentalto our understanding of why bad things still happen to good people…and it is that our Lord never came to this world to save us from that 1%...He came to save us THROUGH that 1%.
The One Word Which Describes Why We Are Not Saints...
We are bombarded by this day after day in our society…and even those who faithfully do attend Church, who do have a strong prayer life, who do try to fast and bring God into their lives…every one of us is affected by some measure of Philavtia (Self Love). We too often love ourselves more than God. And when a human being becomes too full of themselves…there is no room for the power of the Holy Spirit to grow within them.