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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 3/10/2010 9:34 AM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 3/10/2010 9:38 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/10/2010 11:25 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/10/2010 11:32 AM (GMT -6) | | "Prayer is essentially standing face to face with God, consciously striving to remain collected and absolutely still and attentive in his presence, which means standing with an undivided mind, an undivided heart and an undivided will in the presence of the Lord; and that is not easy."
--Metropolitan Anthony Bloom
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"Much preparation and many prerequisites are involved in the selection of priests and bishops for that great office. The Apostle exhorts: "If a man is blameless" (Tit.1,6), let him be appointed priest or bishop. He also recommends that such a person should not be "a novice" (1Tim.3,6), not a novice because he must have previous spiritual experience and thus have been baptised to that great office, he must have purified himself, as we shall see later, and only then may he proceed to ordination.
Indeed St. John Chrysostom writes that a priest has to have more attentiveness and spiritual strength even than the hermits themselves. For if the hermits, who are freed from "the city, the market place and its people", are not secure in the spirit, how much more strength and vigour needs to be exercised by the priest in order to be able to "snatch his soul away from all infection and keep its spiritual beauty inviolate". That is why he affirms that the clergy who live in the world need even more purity than the monks."
--Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos
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Poustinia:
"Ultimately, however, the poustinik's call is to the desert of one's own heart wherein he dwells with God alone, whether in the workplace or in a solitary locale. In the words of Jesus Christ, "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. "
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"Live in the world as if only God and your soul were in it; then your heart will never be made captive by any earthly thing. "
--Saint John of the Cross
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/10/2010 11:39 AM (GMT -6) | | "The man who has submitted his will and purposes entirely to God, carries God with him in all his works and in all circumstances. Therein can no man hinder him, for he neither aims at nor enjoys anything else, save God. God is united with Him in all his purposes and designs. Even as no manifoldness can dissipate God, so nothing can dissipate such a man, or destroy his unity. Man, therefore, should take God with him in all things; God should be always present to his mind and will and affections. The same disposition that thou hast in church or in thy cell, thou shouldst keep and maintain in a crowd, and amid the unrest and manifoldness of the world.
Some people pride themselves on their detachment from mankind, and are glad to be alone or in church; and therein lies their peace. But he who is truly in the right state, is so in all circumstances, and among all persons; he who is not in a good state, it is not right with him in all places and among all persons. He who is as he should be has God with him in truth, in all places and among all persons, in the street as well as in the church; and then no man can hinder him."
--Meister Eckhart on "Detachment"
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/10/2010 12:03 PM (GMT -6) | | But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 1I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.
Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
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Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
Post Edited (One Love) : 3/10/2010 11:07:16 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/10/2010 12:10 PM (GMT -6) | | | Actually, the Jesus Prayer makes sense, as I see it, from a practical Christian life standpoint now. Jesus already indicated in Luke 18 that it was this type of prayer by which one would be "justified before God", due to it's sincere humility and repentence. Wouldn't we as Christians WANT continuous "justification" of this type before God...especially when we KNOW that we need it every minute of every hour of every day?
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To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed abouthimself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
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I'm betting this "justification" is inseperable from God's Grace, received as gift by the "broken, contrite heart"
It just plain makes SENSE to pray this all the time, yo. We need all the Grace we can get! 
Post Edited (One Love) : 3/10/2010 11:15:08 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/10/2010 1:20 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/11/2010 12:32 PM (GMT -6) | | More Basil. Good stuff...
17. "Become perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" [Mt 5.48]. Do you see how the Lord restores to us that which is according to the likeness? "For he makes his sun rise upon evil and good, and he sends rain upon just and unjust" [Mt 5.45]. If you become a hater of evil, free of rancor, not remembering yesterday's enmity; if you become brother-loving and compassionate, you are like God. If you forgive your enemy from your heart, you are like God. If as God is toward you, the sinner, you become the same toward the brother who has wronged you, by your good will from your heart toward your neighbor, you are like God. As you have that which is according to the image through you being rational, you come to be according to the likeness by undertaking kindness. Take on yourself "a heart of compassion, kindness," that you may put on Christ. For through those things by which you undertake sympathy you put on Christ, and drawing near to him is drawing near to God. Thus the creation story is an education in human life. "Let us make the human being in our image." Let him have by his creation that which is according to the image, let him also come to be according to the likeness. For this God gave the power. If he created you also according to the likeness, what would be yours to give? Through what would you be crowned? For if the Fashioner gave you the whole of it, how would the kingdom of heaven be opened to you? But now the one is given, the other is left incomplete; that you may complete yourself, become worthy of the recompense by God.
Then how do we come to be according to the likeness?
Through the Gospels.
What is Christianity?
[It is] Likeness to God as far as is possible for human nature. If you are shown to be a Christian, hasten to become like God, put on Christ. But how will you put him on if you have not been sealed? How will you put him on while not receiving baptism? While not receiving the garment of incorruption? If you reject the likeness to God? If I said to you, "Become like a king," would you not consider me a benefactor? When I wish to make you like God, do you flee the word which divinizes you, stopping your ears, that you may not hear the saving words?
As I understand Basil, we all have the "potentiality" of re-presenting Christ's Presence in our self-becoming world-composition...and it is our task to do what it takes to release that potentiality into actuality. God has given us the image (inseparable from the potentiality for likeness)...and it's up to us to work with God Himself working in us to bring the likeness forth. It is up to us to desire to NOT "resist" or "greive" the Holy Spirit.
What do I hear?
"I have said, you are gods...and you are all sons of the Most High. So, by My Spirit, live all that out."
Post Edited (One Love) : 3/11/2010 11:46:35 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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BBBCanada
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 4/2/2010 7:43 PM (GMT -6) | | Just wondering how this is a different form of devotion than what Fr Lazarus El-Antony is doing? I mean I see a world of difference between not having distractions, but on the other hand, when I see the meager existence and the dying to self in our very basic of needs, I wonder if this sort of devotion is not that far off.
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
To love without love is slavery--Mother Teresa
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