http://www.ocf.org/food/todaysfood.html (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)
Food for Thought
Food for Thought
What are "our traditions"? They are everything that the God-man Christ,
He Himself, and by the Holy Spirit, gave the commandment to hold and to
live according to Them; whatever He delivered to his Church, in which He
dwells continuously with His Holy 'Spirit (Cf. Mt. 28:19-29). "Our
traditions" are our whole life in grace in God, Christ, and the Holy
Spirit, the life of us Christians, which began in the Church of Christ,
through the Apostles, by the decent of the Holy Spirit. ... Thus, our
"traditions" are the new life of the grace in the Holy Spirit, which is
the soul of the Church, the life in the Eternal Truth of God, in the
Eternal Justice of God, in the Eternal Love of God, in the Eternal Life
of God. Here man is not creating anything, nor can he create the Eternal
Truth, the Eternal Justice, the Eternal Love, the Eternal Life, but they
are for him to accept, to change into his own.
St. (Fr.) Justin Popovich in Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ
(A true confessor for the Orthodox Faith in our days!)
The practice of the prayer of Jesus holy David, or more accurately the
Holy Spirit by the mouth of David, offers to all Christians without
exception: 'The kings of the earth and all people, princes and all judges
of the earth, young men and maidens - let elders with the young praise the
name of the Lord, for His name alone is exalted (PS. 148:11-13).' A
literal understanding of the states enumerated here would be perfectly
permissible, but their essential meaning is spiritual.
St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus
God seeks nothing else from us men except that we do not sin; this alone.
But this is not a work of law; it is rather a careful guarding of the
image and dignity from above. In these things, affirmed in our nature and
bearing the radiant garment of the Spirit, we shall abide in God and He
in us. We shall be called good, and sons of God by adoption, marked in
the light of our knowledge of God.
St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Practical and Theological Chapters
In the Lives of the Saints are shown numerous but always certain ways of
salvation, enlightenment, sanctification, transfiguration,
"christification," deification; all the ways are shown by which man
conquers sin, every sin; conquers passion, every passion; conquers death,
every death; conquers the devil, every devil. There is a remedy there for
every sin: from every passion-healing, from every death-resurrection,
from every devil-deliverance; for all evils-salvation. There is no
passion, no sin for which the Lives of the Saints do not show how the
passion or sin in question is conquered, mortified, and uprooted.
Fr. (St.) Justin Popovich, Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ
The Christian ought not to grudge another's reputation, nor rejoice over
any man's faults; he ought in Christ's love to grieve and be afflicted at
his brother's faults, and rejoice over his brother's good deeds. He ought
not to be indifferent or silent before sinners. He who shows another to
be wrong ought to do so with all tenderness, in the fear of God, and with
the object of converting the sinner. He who is proved wrong or rebuked ought
to take it willingly, recognizing his own gain in being set right.
St. Basil the Great, Letters
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