Word from the Desert

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

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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

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Sunday, June 8, 2008

1:18PM

A Hymn for Ascension Day

On this day the new bread of the spirit
has gone up to heaven.
The mysteries were revealed in Your Body
which has gone up as an offering.
Blessed be Your bread, O Lord!

The Lamb has come to us from the house of David;
the priest, from the stock of Abraham,
has become for our sakes the Lamb of God,
the new minister of sacrifice.

His Body is the victim, His Blood is our drink.
Blessed be the new sacrifice!

He has descended from heaven like the light;
is born of Mary as a divine shoot;
as a fruit He has fallen from the Cross;
and is offered up to heaven as the first fruits.
Blessed be His will!

You are the offering of heaven and of earth,
immolated and at the same time adored.
You came to be a victim,
You ascended as a singular offering,
You ascended, Lord,
bearing with You the offering of Your sacrifice.

St. Ephrem the Syrian
4th century

1:18 PM |

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