<body><script type="text/javascript"> function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener('load', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } } </script> <div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() { if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) { gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({ url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar/29316727?origin\x3dhttp://courtingthemystery.blogspot.com', where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"), id: "navbar-iframe" }); } }); </script>

A Living Tradition of Holiness

Sunday, January 04, 2009.

Fr. Stephen Freeman posted a link to an interesting video on ascetics living in Romania. It's about 10 minutes long but is worth watching. The last interview is the most important. At times he echoes Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and early eastern ascetics. Indeed, he appears to represent a living tradition of holiness. ‘Humility, humility, and again, humility!’



The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’

1 Cor 1:18-31

Labels: , ,



The struggle of prayer

Tuesday, November 20, 2007.

Origen believes that even the spiritual and perfect saint Paul struggled in prayer. Paul did not struggle at pray, that is, at praying, but in prayer. Paul asks his congregations to pray for him, and with him, because he knows that prayer can be a battle against "the rullers and authorities, against the leaders of this world of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenlies." I thought this quote was telling.
"You will rarely find that no unprofitable or inappropriate thought occurs to the one who is praying, and it turns aside and shatters the concentration by which the mind is directed to God, and it snatches it away through what is inappropriate. And therefore, the struggle of prayer is great, that, as enemies besiege and snatch into distractions the thoughts of the one praying, with steadfast concentration the fixed mind should always strive after God, that it deservedly be able itself likewise to say, "I have fought the good fight, I have completed the race.""
Or.Com.Rom.10.15.4 (Scheck)

Labels: , ,




Blogroll