How to Conduct Ourselves at Feasts
Let revelry keep away from our rational entertainments, and foolish vigils, too, that revel in intemperance. For revelry is an inebriating pipe, the chain. The passage is obscure. of an amatory bridge, that is, of sorrow. And let love, and intoxication, and senseless passions, be removed from our choir. Burlesque singing is the boon companion of drunkenness. A night spent over drink invites drunkenness, rouses lust, and is audacious in deeds of shame. For if – …
Let Us Obey the Trumpet of God
"It is well, my beloved, to proceed from feast to feast; again festal meetings, again holy vigils arouse our minds, and compel our intellect to keep vigil unto contemplation of good things. Let us not fulfill these days like those that mourn, but, by enjoying spiritual food, let us seek to silence our fleshly lusts." These were the words of our great father, St. Athanasius the Apostolic, in his fourth festal message to the Christian – …
The Nurse of Hope: Patience in Tribulations
The blessed prophet David shows that those who put their trust in God were most courageous when he says, “Act like men and let your hearts be strong, all you who hope in the Lord” (Ps. 31:24, LXX). For those plants which are in pleasure gardens both increase, bloom, and are raised to a great height by abundant streams of waters. And a man’s soul, by the comforts and encouragements of the Holy Spirit, becomes – …
The Role of Fasting in the Spiritual Life
All strife against sin and its desires is to be preceded by fasting, especially if one is combating inward sin…Fasting is the strengthening of all virtues, the beginning of the struggle, the beauty of virginity and sanctity, the preservation of chastity, the beginning of the way of Christianity, the father of prayer…, for as soon as man begins to fast his mind will be desirous of intercourse with God. Fasting is a storehouse of all – …
Treasures of the Fathers: Pascha Tuesday
If the kingdom of heaven is likened to a kingdom in this parable, then the King must be the Son of God, for He is the King of the heavens, the absolute Wisdom, the absolute Righteousness and absolute Truth. Thus, is He not so also absolute Kingdom? But it is not a kingdom of any of those below, nor of a part of those above, but of all the things above, which were called heavens. – …