Word from the Desert

Meditations on the Orthodox Life from the Early Church Fathers, Ascetics, Saints and Righteous

Navigation

Quotables

Prayer, fasting, vigils, and all other Christian practices, however good they may be in themselves, certainly do not constitute the aim of our Christian life: they are but the indispensable means of attaining that aim. For the true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts, vigils, prayer and almsgiving, and other good works done in the name of Christ, they are only the means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. Note well that it is only good works done in the name of Christ that bring us the fruits of the Spirit.
~St. Seraphim of Sarov

In order for one to understand the Saints and Fathers of the [Orthodox] Church, it is not sufficient to merely read them. The Saints spoke and wrote after having lived the mysteries of God. They personally experienced the mysteries.

In order for one to understand them, he too must have progressed to a certain degree of initiation into the mysteries of God by personally tasting, smelling, and seeing. You can read the books of the Saints and become very well versed in them with a ‘cerebral’ knowledge without even minutely tasting that which the Saints tasted who wrote these books through their personal experience.

In order to understand the Saints essentially, not intellectually, you must have the proper experience for all that they say; you must have tasted, at least in part, of the same things as they. You must have lived in the fervent environment of Orthodoxy; you must grown in it… A Whole new world must be born in a Westerner’s heart in order for him to understand something of Orthodoxy.

~Alexandar Kalomiros, Against False Union, 1959

The mysteries of our Faith are unknown and not understandable to those who are not repenting.

~Archpriest Nicholas Deputatov, ‘Awareness of God’ in the Orthodox Word Magazine, July-August 1976

About

‘Word from the Desert’ is an email regularly sent out on the Yahoo! Orthodox Convert List-Serve and is reprinted here with permission.

To receive these meditations via email you’ll need to join the List-Serve. If you would prefer utilizing an RSS Reader with this regularly updated site, please click on the link below to get the xml feed for your Reader.

Meditations RSS

Friday, March 7, 2008

12:48PM

Sweet seemed to me the taste of the fruit of knowledge in Eden...

…when I took my fill of eating, but the end of it was gall. Woe to thee, O wretched soul! See how uncontrolled desire has made thee an exile from Paradise!

O God of all, Lord of mercy, look down compassionately upon my lowliness and do not send me far away from Eden; but may I perceive the glory from which I have fallen, and hasten with lamentations to regain what I have lost.
I lament, I groan, I weep as I look at the cherubim with the sword of fire set to guard the gate of Eden against all transgressors. Woe is me! I cannot enter unless Thou, O Savior, dost grant me free approach.
O Christ my Savior, boldly I put my trust in the abundance of Thy mercies and in the Blood that flowed from Thy divine side; for through Thy Blood Thou hast sanctified the nature of mortal man, O loving Lord, and hast opened unto those that worship Thee the gates of Paradise that of old were closed to Adam.

Canticle Nine from Matins of the Sunday of Forgiveness

12:48 PM |

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.

Post a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »

Author:

Author Email (optional):

Author URL (optional):

Post:

↓ | ↑

All HTML will be escaped. Hyperlinks will be created for URLs automatically.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.