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Philokalia Ministries
Hosted by Father David Abernethy · EN
Philokalia Ministries is the fruit of 30 years spent at the feet of the Fathers of the Church. Led by Father David Abernethy, Philokalia (Philo: Love of the Kalia: Beautiful) Ministries exists to re-form hearts and minds according to the mold of the Desert Fathers through the ascetic life, the example of the early Saints, the way of stillness, prayer, and purity of heart, the practice of the Jesus Prayer, and spiritual reading. Those who are involved in Philokalia Ministries - the podcasts, videos, social media posts, spiritual direction and online groups - are exposed to writings that make up the ancient, shared spiritual heritage of East and West: The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Saint Augustine, the Philokalia, the Conferences of Saint John Cassian, the Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, and the Evergetinos. In addition to these, more recent authors and writings, which draw deeply from the well of the desert, are read and discussed: Lorenzo Scupoli, Saint Theophan the Recluse, anonymous writings from Mount Athos, the Cloud of Unknowing, Saint John of the Cross, Thomas a Kempis, and many more.
Philokalia Ministries is offered to all, free of charge. However, there are real and immediate needs associated with it. You can support Philokalia Ministries with one-time, or recurring monthly donations, which are most appreciated. Your support truly makes this ministry possible. May Almighty God, who created you and fashioned you in His own Divine Image, restore you through His grace and make of you a true icon of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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Nazareth and The Hidden Life, Session Four
4w ago01:53:24Tap to summarizeNazareth and the Hidden Life Retreat Reflection IV The Hidden Life and the Healing of Desire Epigraph “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” — St. Matthew 5:8 “Paradise is the love of God.” — Saint Isaac the Syrian ⸻ At the center of every human life there is desire. Not simply desire for pleasure, though pleasure is part of it. Not simply desire for comfort, recognition, intimacy, or meaning. Deeper still there is a longing for communion. The human person was created not merely to exist, but to participate in divine life. We are beings fashioned for relationship, for love, for beauty, for self- offering, for union with God. The fathers understand this with tremendous seriousness. Human desire is not treated by them as something shameful in itself. Desire belongs to our creation in the image of God. The tragedy is not that we desire. The tragedy is that desire has become fragmented. This fragmentation lies beneath so much of modern suffering. People hunger endlessly yet do not know for what they hunger. They seek intimacy yet fear vulnerability. They seek pleasure yet remain restless afterward. They seek visibility yet feel unseen. They seek stimulation yet become emotionally numb. They seek escape yet remain inwardly trapped. 1 The modern world intensifies this confusion constantly because it trains desire outward continually. We are surrounded by invitations to consume: images, experiences, identities, bodies, possessions, attention, recognition. The soul gradually becomes dispersed among countless impulses and fantasies. Desire loses depth because it no longer knows how to remain still long enough to encounter its true object. And thus many people experience life as a continual cycle of longing and disappointment. The fathers would say that the heart has forgotten where it belongs. This is why purity of heart is so important in the Christian tradition. Purity does not mean emotional sterility or repression. It means the gradual healing and reunification of desire. The pure heart becomes capable once more of seeing rightly because it is no longer divided continually among competing passions. Christ reveals this purity perfectly. And astonishingly, He reveals it first not through miracles or preaching, but through the hidden life of Nazareth. This matters deeply. The hidden years reveal desire completely at rest within the will of the Father. Christ does not grasp at visibility. He does not seek identity through recognition. He does not consume experience in order to feel alive. He remains rooted entirely within communion. This is why the silence of Nazareth possesses such healing power. Modern humanity suffers from exhaustion partly because desire has become detached from communion. We seek endlessly yet remain inwardly unsatisfied because the heart cannot be nourished by consumption alone. Human beings were created not for endless stimulation but for participation in divine love. 2 And yet the modern person often no longer knows how to receive love except through fantasy, control, performance, or emotional intensity. This distortion affects every dimension of life: relationships, sexuality, prayer, work, friendship, even the way we imagine God. Many people secretly approach God Himself through the logic of performance. We imagine we must construct a spiritual identity worthy of love. We attempt to secure ourselves through achievement, moral success, productivity, usefulness, or emotional experiences. Even repentance can become subtly performative. But Nazareth dismantles these illusions slowly. The hidden Christ reveals a form of existence rooted not in self-construction but in communion. He does not need to prove Himself continually because His identity rests entirely in the Father. And this freedom allows Him to remain hidden peacefully. This exposes something painful within ourselves. Much of our restlessness comes from trying continually to establish ourselves apart from communion with God. The ego seeks to secure existence through: recognition, desire, admiration, sexual validation, success, spiritual intensity, or being needed by others. But none of these finally heal the heart because the deepest human longing is not for self-expansion but for union. This is why the saints become increasingly peaceful. Not because desire disappears. But because desire becomes purified. 3 The fragmented heart slowly becomes whole. This purification usually unfolds through hidden struggle rather than dramatic experiences. The fathers speak continually about watchfulness because they understand that the battle occurs largely within attention and desire itself. Thoughts arise. Fantasies emerge. Memories awaken passions. The imagination drifts continually toward self-protection, possession, resentment, vanity, lust, and fear. And the person slowly learns: not hatred of desire, but discernment. The ascetical life is therefore not rejection of humanity. It is the healing of humanity. Fasting teaches desire not to rule tyrannically. Silence teaches desire to listen. Prayer teaches desire to remain before God. Hiddenness weakens the craving for recognition. Repentance heals the fragmentation caused by shame. Love slowly restores communion. All of this unfolds gradually. Modern people often become discouraged because they expect immediate transformation. We want healing quickly. We want prayer to become easy. We want temptation to disappear. We want certainty. But the fathers describe purification as long, hidden, patient work. And much of this work occurs precisely within ordinary life. This is another revelation of Nazareth. Christ heals human existence not only through dramatic moments but through daily hidden fidelity. The years of ordinary labor are not spiritually empty. The hidden life itself becomes salvific because Christ fills ordinary existence with divine presence. And perhaps this is where many souls begin finally to breathe again. When they realize that holiness is not primarily the construction of an extraordinary spiritual identity. 4 It is communion. The mother caring for an aging parent. The monk remaining faithfully in dryness. The husband learning patience slowly. The woman enduring hidden loneliness without bitterness. The person returning quietly to prayer after failure. The exhausted soul continuing simply to offer small acts of love. All of this belongs to the hidden life of Christ. This does not romanticize suffering or ordinary life. Nazareth was not sentimental. Hiddenness can feel humiliating. Repetition can feel empty. Desire does not become purified without struggle. The false self resists relinquishment continually. And yet beneath this struggle something beautiful slowly emerges: the heart begins to simplify. One no longer needs constant stimulation. One no longer seeks identity through performance so desperately. One becomes more capable of silence, presence, attention, gratitude, and tenderness. The soul begins slowly to recover the capacity to behold. This is profoundly important because modern life trains us primarily to consume. We look quickly, use quickly, discard quickly. The gaze itself becomes restless and acquisitive. But the pure heart learns another way of seeing: reverently, patiently, eucharistically. Persons cease to become objects. Ordinary moments cease to feel disposable. Even suffering becomes capable of communion. And perhaps this is ultimately what Nazareth reveals: 5 that salvation is not escape from human life but the transfiguration of human life from within. Christ enters ordinary existence fully in order to heal desire at its roots. Not by destroying longing, but by leading longing home. For the deepest hunger of the human heart is not finally for pleasure, recognition, intensity, or even relief from suffering. It is for God. And every fragmented desire is ultimately healed only when the soul begins once more to rest in Him.
Transcribe →Nazareth and The Hidden Life, Session Three
4w ago01:41:39Tap to summarizeNazareth and the Hidden Life Retreat Reflection III The Silence of Nazareth and the False Self Epigraph “He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street.” — Isaiah 42:2 “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” — Abba Moses the Black ⸻ One of the most frightening things about silence is that eventually it begins to tell the truth. At first silence feels peaceful to us because we imagine it as relief from noise, pressure, and obligation. We dream of quiet places, slower days, hidden monasteries, cabins in the woods, empty churches, long evenings without interruption. We imagine silence as rest. And sometimes it is. But if a person remains within silence long enough, another dimension begins to emerge. The distractions weaken. The constant stimulation subsides. The usual methods of self-maintenance no longer function in the same way. And gradually hidden things begin to surface: anxiety, fantasy, anger, loneliness, grief, resentment, compulsions, memories, self-hatred, and the deep fear of being nobody. This is why so many people flee silence almost immediately. 1 Not because they hate peace. But because silence exposes the instability of the self we have constructed. The fathers understood this profoundly. When the Desert Fathers speak about entering the cell, they are not romanticizing solitude. The cell is not merely a room. It is the place where illusions begin to collapse. A man enters silence expecting holiness and instead encounters himself. The hidden passions rise into consciousness. The noise within becomes audible. One begins to discover how fragmented the heart truly is. And yet the fathers insist: remain there. Do not flee. Do not panic. Do not construct a new image of yourself. Do not despair. Remain. Modern humanity finds this extraordinarily difficult because we live in an age almost entirely organized around avoiding interior exposure. Noise surrounds us constantly. Even solitude has become saturated with stimulation. A person can sit alone for hours without ever truly entering silence because the mind remains flooded with images, conversations, music, scrolling, distraction, fantasy, and self-construction. The modern self is rarely still enough to encounter itself honestly. And this has profound spiritual consequences because much of what we call “identity” is actually performance. We learn gradually to create versions of ourselves for different audiences: competent selves, religious selves, intellectual selves, desirable selves, successful selves, helpful selves, wounded selves, 2 special selves. Some of these identities become so deeply ingrained that we no longer recognize them as constructions. We experience them instead as who we are. But silence threatens these structures. This is one reason hidden life feels so unsettling. The ego survives partly through reflection from others. We know ourselves through response, recognition, affirmation, usefulness, accomplishment, attention, and comparison. Hiddenness interrupts these reinforcements. The false self begins to weaken because fewer mirrors remain available to sustain it. And this weakening often feels initially like death. A person may enter a quieter life expecting peace and instead encounter profound restlessness: the urge continually to check, to speak, to explain oneself, to seek affirmation, to fantasize, to escape, to become visible again somehow. The fathers would not be surprised by this. They knew that much human activity functions defensively. We remain busy not only because life requires labor, but because movement protects us from encountering our deeper poverty. Constant activity allows the ego to preserve itself through usefulness and distraction. Nazareth dismantles this slowly. The hidden Christ remains almost entirely outside visibility. He does not announce Himself continually. He does not seek recognition. He does not construct identity through public affirmation. The silence of Nazareth becomes a revelation of divine humility itself. This is deeply threatening to the ego because the ego wants to secure existence through visibility. To be unseen feels almost like annihilation. 3 This is especially true in modern technological culture where visibility itself has become a form of psychological survival. Many people now experience themselves largely through presentation. Identity becomes increasingly externalized: how one appears, how one is perceived, how one performs, how one is received. And thus silence becomes terrifying because it removes the external reinforcement through which the self remains stabilized. The fathers call us into something radically different. Not the destruction of personality. Not emotional emptiness. Not passivity. But the gradual surrender of the false self built upon performance, fantasy, comparison, and self-construction. This surrender is painful because the false self often develops precisely to protect vulnerability. Human beings construct identities partly to avoid shame, helplessness, rejection, and dependency. The ego creates structures through which the person feels more secure, more admirable, more protected from exposure. But these structures also isolate us. One cannot truly love while continually performing. Nor can one encounter God deeply while remaining hidden behind spiritual self- constructions. This is why the saints become so simple. Not simplistic. Simple. The fragmentation gradually diminishes. The inner divisions weaken. One no longer needs continually to present oneself, justify oneself, or maintain identity 4 through performance. There emerges instead a quieter, poorer, more transparent way of existing before God. The path toward this simplicity is rarely dramatic. Usually it unfolds through hidden humiliations. The failure that exposes our weakness. The years that dismantle our fantasies. The obscurity that wounds vanity. The prayer that feels empty. The relationships that reveal our selfishness. The repetitive duties that strip away grandiosity. The hidden life that slowly confronts us with ourselves. This is why Nazareth matters so profoundly. Christ enters fully into hidden existence without resistance. He consents to ordinariness. He consents to gradualness. He consents to years that appear outwardly uneventful. The eternal Logos lives within silence, labor, family life, repetition, and obscurity. And in doing so, He sanctifies the very places where the ego most resists dying. Many people secretly believe holiness should feel emotionally elevated or spiritually impressive. But often the deeper work of God feels instead like simplification. One becomes less dramatic internally. Less fascinated with oneself. Less dependent upon emotional intensity. Less driven by comparison. Less hungry to secure identity through being exceptional. This can feel disappointing initially because the ego experiences simplification as diminishment. But in reality it is liberation. The soul slowly discovers the freedom of no longer needing to construct itself continually before others. This is why the fathers speak so highly of hiddenness. Not because hiddenness itself is magical, but because hiddenness deprives the ego of many of its usual methods of self-preservation. The soul gradually learns to exist more directly before God rather than through performance. 5 And perhaps this is one reason modern people find ordinary hidden life so difficult: it confronts us with the terrifying possibility that we are loved not because we are impressive, visible, productive, or extraordinary, but simply because God is merciful. That kind of love dismantles the false self completely. For if I do not need to earn existence through performance, if I do not need to secure myself continually through recognition, if I do not need to become extraordinary in order to matter, then I can begin at last simply to remain before God truthfully. This is the silence of Nazareth. Not emptiness. Not absence. Communion without spectacle. And perhaps the hidden years of Christ reveal that the deepest transformation often occurs not when we become extraordinary, but when we finally stop trying to save ourselves through the images we construct.
Transcribe →The Evergetinos: Book Three - Chapter III, Part II and Chapter IV, Part I
4w ago01:11:10Tap to summarizeThe Fathers understood something that we have almost entirely forgotten: very few souls fall suddenly. Almost every great collapse begins with something so small that it escapes notice—a hidden expectation, a wounded pride, an unspoken resentment, an interior complaint, a passing judgment, or a thought left unchallenged. What appears insignificant is often the first movement of the heart away from God. This is why the Evergetinos spends so much time speaking about ordinary conversations, simple requests, disappointments, misunderstandings, and the countless interactions that make up our days. We imagine that holiness is determined by extraordinary moments. The Fathers insist that it is determined by the invisible disposition we carry into ordinary ones. How revealing it is that they tell us to prepare ourselves before asking another person for something. Not merely to think about what we will say, but to prepare ourselves interiorly for the possibility of hearing “no.” They know that disappointment is often less dangerous than the thoughts that follow it. “He doesn’t care about me.” “I would have helped him.” “Why am I always treated this way?” Within moments the imagination begins weaving a story that has little to do with reality and everything to do with our passions. We assign motives. We judge hearts. We nurture resentment. We quietly withdraw from love. Yet the Elder teaches something almost scandalously simple: perhaps the person cannot help you. Perhaps he truly needs what you requested. Perhaps God did not permit it because it would not benefit you. How rarely we allow such thoughts to enter our minds. Instead, we become advocates for ourselves and prosecutors of everyone else. The Fathers would say that this is how hell begins—not with hatred, but with interpretation. The same honesty is demanded when we ourselves possess what another seeks. If we truly need it, we should simply say so. If we deny our need out of pride, wanting to appear detached, generous, or spiritually advanced, then we are to return and confess our deception immediately. How foreign this is to us. We carefully manage impressions. We curate virtue. We protect the image of ourselves we hope others will admire. The Elder is interested in none of this. Better an embarrassing confession than a hidden lie. Better humility than reputation. One heals the heart. The other slowly poisons it. Even more searching is the teaching on scandal. We often imagine scandal to consist only in dramatic moral failures. The Fathers understand something much subtler. We become occasions of stumbling every time our pride, impatience, sarcasm, coldness, gossip, or self-importance weakens another’s courage or burdens another’s heart. How many souls leave communities not because doctrine failed them, but because charity did. How many people stop praying because Christians made God appear severe rather than merciful. How many children quietly abandon faith after years of watching resentment flourish beneath religious language. We rarely recognize how much weight our ordinary demeanor carries. Then comes one of the most astonishing scenes in all of the Evergetinos. A courtesan passes before a gathering of bishops. Most lower their eyes in horror at her immodesty. Bishop Nonnos does not deny her sin, but he sees beyond it. Instead of condemning her, he condemns himself. He sees a woman who labors tirelessly to beautify what will perish. He sees himself neglecting what will live forever. The others saw an object of judgment. He saw a mirror. That is the difference between a proud heart and a purified one. The proud heart encounters every person asking, “What is wrong with them?” The humble heart asks, “Lord, what are You showing me about myself?” This single movement changes everything. The proud leave every conversation confirmed in their righteousness. The humble leave every encounter more repentant, more grateful, and more compassionate. Perhaps this is why the saints become incapable of condemning others. They are simply too occupied by the work God is accomplishing within their own hearts. The tragedy of our age is not merely that we sin openly. It is that we have become almost completely unaware of these hidden movements within us. We speak carelessly. We assume motives. We interpret silence. We cultivate grievances. We justify irritation. We rehearse conversations that never happened. We allow passing thoughts to become settled convictions. And then we wonder why peace disappears. The Fathers would tell us to return to the beginning—to the very first thought. Guard that. Question that. Humble that. For the first movement of the heart is often the only place where the battle can still be won. Once the thought is welcomed, entertained, defended, and repeated, it gradually becomes our character. The Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness both begin there—in the hidden places where no one but God can see. --- 00:05:30 Janine: Hello Father! 00:05:47 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/philokalia-ministries-summer-retreat 00:05:57 Janine: I’m fine! Isn’t your birthday soon! 00:06:43 Janine: Yes…the older the faster! Me too Mrs A! 00:07:28 Janine: Yes…the retreats are so essential now! 00:08:20 Janine: No….not at all! We all look forward to it and I’m sorry when it ends 00:08:35 Janine: So it was great you announced the next! 00:09:52 Janine: That is perfect for me…I started the Jesus prayer NOV 2022 00:10:00 Janine: I wrote it down 00:10:23 Janine: No….i wrote when I started it 00:10:57 Janine: It was after I reread The Way of the Pilgrim 00:11:25 Janine: It was the third time and it suddenly spoke it me 00:13:41 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/philokalia-ministries-summer-retreat 00:14:11 Janine: There is a young man in our church in Watervliet NY who has spent time at your monastery…apparently he is going to visit again soon… 00:15:24 Janine: basil Gutch 00:16:01 Janine: I just found this out…his dad is our Deacon…. 00:16:11 Janine: Ukrainian Catholic Church 00:16:44 James Hickman: This might be old news, but Audible now has several recordings of Fr. Zacharias Zacharou’s books available. 00:17:21 una: You can also listen on YouTube, "Athonite Audio" 00:18:08 una: It 00:18:11 Janine: Athonite has so so many good talks 00:18:12 una: It is great! 00:18:18 Janine: I listen all the time 00:18:27 una: Me too! 00:18:49 una: The latest for me is The Angelic Life by Fr. Ephraim of Arizona 00:20:44 Anna: Glory forever! 00:22:33 Joseph Muir: Is the volume level all over the place yet consistently low for anyone else, or just me?😫 00:23:47 Forrest: Replying to "Is the volume level all over the place yet consistently low for anyone else, or just me?😫" OK for me. 00:23:58 Janine: Replying to "Is the volume level all over the place yet consistently low for anyone else, or just me?😫" Ok here too 00:26:51 Julie: Can asking be feeding our ego 01:10:55 Julie: How do you make them captive 01:15:47 Anthony Rago: There has got to be a way to appreciate human and human-made beauty, while decoupling it from concupiscence. 01:21:34 James Hickman: Is there anythi...
Transcribe →The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian - Homily XVI
4w ago01:03:08Tap to summarizeOne of the most striking characteristics of St. Isaac’s writings is that he never asks us to renounce the world because the world is evil. Rather, he continually places before us something infinitely more beautiful. He speaks so often of the sweetness of communion with God, the boldness of prayer, the radiance of divine light, and the immeasurable mercy of Christ that worldly pleasures gradually lose their attraction by comparison. For Isaac, the spiritual life is not sustained by fear but by love. Yet because he knows the human heart so well, he also warns us with remarkable honesty. The heart is changeable. We imagine ourselves steadfast, yet we are easily drawn away. A single hour of distraction can cool the warmth of prayer. Idle conversation, endless amusement, frivolity, curiosity, and the restless pursuit of novelty slowly scatter the attention that had been gathered before God. This is why the anonymous elder can say that when he lives in stillness, his hunger diminishes, his prayer becomes bold, and his soul delights in the divine light. But after only a brief conversation, he immediately notices the change. His appetite increases, his rule weakens, and the clarity of prayer fades. Isaac is not describing a rule. He is describing a law of the heart. Whatever fills the mind eventually governs the heart. Our own age makes his words even more urgent. We no longer need companions to distract us. We carry distraction in our pockets. We wake to it and fall asleep with it. News, entertainment, endless commentary, social media, notifications, and perpetual noise have become so ordinary that many no longer recognize how profoundly they shape the soul. We often wonder why prayer feels difficult while rarely questioning the thousands of impressions that fill our imagination throughout the day. The demons need not persuade us to abandon Christ outright. They need only keep us endlessly occupied. This is why Isaac joins stillness to humility. The deepest obstacle to prayer is not simply noise but pride. Pride always seeks stimulation because it continually seeks itself. Humility, however, is content to disappear. It has no need to be seen, entertained, admired, or constantly occupied. The humble heart finds its rest in God alone. For this reason Isaac’s final exhortation is so beautiful. He does not tell us merely to become more disciplined. He tells us to imitate the humility of Christ. Christ Himself entered silence, accepted obscurity, embraced poverty, endured misunderstanding, and descended into the deepest humiliation out of love for the Father and for us. Only that same humility can preserve the fire of divine love within us. The Christian life is therefore not primarily about giving things up. It is about guarding a flame. Every choice either shelters that flame or exposes it to the winds of distraction. Every act of recollection gathers the heart toward God; every needless dissipation scatters it again. Isaac continually returns us to this single question: What helps the heart remain before God? Everything that deepens humility, stillness, repentance, and love should be embraced. Everything that leaves the heart agitated, distracted, self-absorbed, or spiritually numb should be gently but resolutely laid aside. In the end, the goal is wonderfully simple. To become so captivated by the beauty of Christ that nothing in this passing world seems worth exchanging for His presence. The one thing necessary is not found by striving after extraordinary experiences, but by quietly protecting the heart in which Christ has chosen to dwell. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:01:35 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 208 paragraph 18 00:56:00 Aaron: To be honest, this seems difficult for me to grasp, given how easily a person like myself may be carried away by the concerns and distractions of the world. When God is remembered, things appear clearer; when that remembrance fades, even passing matters can begin to seem important, and the One Thing necessary is easily forgotten. How might this be lived out by those in the laity while fulfilling their responsibilities in the world? 00:56:30 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "To be honest, this s..." with 👍 00:56:41 Erick Chastain: The humility of christ does he speak about ways one might best imitate this? 00:56:48 Julie: A stumbling block for other, can you give me an example Father.. 00:57:28 Ryan Ngeve: Father how does one force themselves to “imitate the humility of Christ “ 01:04:46 una: Can you talk about daydreams? 01:05:47 una: I'm a fiction writer. In a way, daydreams are part of this work. What's the difference? 01:06:23 Julie: Reacted to "A stumbling block for other, can you give me an example Father.." with 🙏 01:09:42 Larry Ruggiero: Sometimes when it’s not working like I thought it would I just go before God in silence and the prayer flows at times and at other times I only get credit for showing up. 01:11:08 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "Sometimes when it’s ..." with 🙏 01:12:52 Julie: That’s so beautiful ❤️ 01:13:12 Aaron: How might one find balance between the fear of God and seriousness of sin on one hand, and trust in His mercy and forgiveness on sincere repentance on the other, without falling into despair or presumption? It can feel like two ends of a scale that keep swinging back and forth, making it hard to understand how both belong together. 01:13:13 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: jn The Jesus Prayer helps with this 01:14:36 Julie: Reacted to "jn The Jesus Prayer helps with this" with 🙏 01:15:21 Maureen Cunningham: Help of Holy Spirit 01:18:32 James Hickman: His name really does heal 01:20:09 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: There is an article or booklet with the title "the Power of the Name" that is powerful 01:20:30 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: I think it's by the Monk of the Eastern church 01:20:34 Aaron: Reacted to "There is an article or booklet with the title "the Power of the Name" that is powerful" with 👍 01:20:51 James Hickman: Yes, please!! 01:22:08 Maureen Cunningham: Blessing thank you 01:22:10 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️ 01:22:12 Bob Čihák, AZ: Thank you, and bless you, Father! 01:22:21 Aaron: Thank you father! 01:22:56 David Swiderski: Thank you Father may God bless Ren and her husband, you , your mother and this group 01:23:16 James Hickman: Which Zachary Zacharou book on the Jesus Prayer were you referencing?
Transcribe →The Evergetinos: Book Three - Chapter II, Part VIII and III, Part I
4w ago01:04:16Tap to summarizeThe Fathers place before us a vision of the human person that is almost unbearable in its simplicity and demands. We do not live with others because we have learned techniques of communication or conflict resolution. We can live with others only to the degree that we fear God and have begun to see all men as one. This is why the Elder says that if we remembered how Lot was saved because he condemned no one, we could live even among wild beasts. The greatest beasts are often not around us but within us: our judgments, our suspicions, our secret comparisons, our readiness to define another by his weaknesses. We imagine that our difficulties with others arise from their faults. The Fathers suggest something far more painful—that we cannot live with others because we have not yet learned to love them. Judgment begins in the mind long before it reaches the lips. St. Ephraim is remarkably precise: “Do not disparage a layman in your mind.” We may preserve an outward courtesy while inwardly diminishing another. We may smile while secretly placing ourselves above them. Yet the Lord alone knows the secrets of the heart. Every judgment is, in some measure, an attempt to occupy God’s place. The Elder who struggled for twenty years to see all men as one reveals something essential about holiness. The spiritual life is not an effort to become extraordinary. It is the gradual dismantling of every illusion of separateness. The one before me is not an interruption of my life, nor an obstacle to my peace, nor an object for my evaluation. He is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. His wound is my wound. His weakness is my weakness. His salvation and mine are mysteriously intertwined. From such a vision arises great care regarding scandal. The Fathers are astonishingly sensitive about harming another’s heart. They ask not merely, “Is this permissible?” but, “Will this burden my brother? Will this put troubling thoughts in his mind? Will this diminish his peace?” Love willingly limits itself for the sake of another’s weakness. At the same time, the Fathers teach us not to become scandalized ourselves. The Egyptian monks judged the brethren of Sketis because they saw them eating hungrily. They knew nothing of their ascetic labors. How often we do the same. We glimpse one action and construct an entire narrative around it. We see a person’s fatigue and call it laziness. We witness their weakness and imagine mediocrity. We know almost nothing, yet judge as though we know everything. Discernment requires humility. We do not excuse sin, but neither do we presume to know the secrets of another’s struggle. Love leaves room for mystery. It says quietly, “Perhaps there is a story here that I do not know.” The Fathers also insist that when we have harmed another, even unintentionally, we should hasten to bring peace to their heart. If our words or actions have troubled our brother, our concern is not our reputation, nor our fear of humiliation, but the healing of communion. We make a prostration because the wound of another cannot be regarded as someone else’s problem. We are one body. To see all men as one is to become incapable of contempt. It is to walk through life gently. It is to guard the minds of others from unnecessary burdens and to guard our own minds from suspicion and judgment. It is to honor every person for the Lord’s sake and to remember that each human being stands before God bearing hidden wounds, secret battles, and unspoken grief. Perhaps the struggle of twenty years described by the Elder is the work of an entire lifetime. Yet this is the path of the Kingdom: to become so united to Christ that we begin to look upon every human face and say, “This one, too, is my own.” --- Text of chat during the group: 00:02:42 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 31 paragraph 37 End of Hypothesis II 00:44:23 James Hickman: “Wanted to put them at ease…” Nun Christina translates this line “Learning this, the presbyter sought to heal them.” The healing of discipline puts us at ease — the grace of humility will, it seems, remove us of the ailment of (or passion) of judgment, judging others. 00:47:32 James Hickman: The healing seems to have worked…”The Egyptians repented and left with joy, having been helped by the experience.” 00:53:56 Danny Moulton: I find it can also feel manipulative 00:54:44 Danny Moulton: right 01:05:31 James Hickman: The elder spoke boldly words of rebuke to the visiting monks from Scetis and those monks were healed by his stern correction. It was medicinal. 01:08:56 Forrest: Can I ask James Hickman how Nun Christina has translated these? The Greek word in the text is not παρρησία(FRANKNESS), but Ἐλευθερία (FREEDOM). And I think that shifts the meaning of this last one in particular. There was a previous hypothesis about Parrhesia. 01:09:33 James Hickman: Yes, boldness of speech has been translated by her as freedom the last few paragraphs 01:09:58 Forrest: Freedom seems more appropriate, to me. 01:12:49 John ‘Jack’: It would seem that if we TRULY spoke in love we should be free and bold in speech. 01:15:50 Julie: For me an example, I made scones at 9 pm for my husband, with cream and berry jam all layer out nicely, He ate said nothing walked away and I waited for his thanks 01:16:15 James Hickman: Reacted to "For me an example, I made scones at 9 pm for my husband, with cream and berry jam all layer out nicely, He ate said nothing walked away and I waited for his thanks" with ❤️ 01:16:19 John ‘Jack’: Reacted to "For me an example, I made scones at 9 pm for my husband, with cream and berry jam all layer out nicely, He ate said nothing walked away and I waited for his thanks" with 😒 01:16:27 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "For me an example, I..." with 😂 01:17:36 Bob Čihák, AZ: But can't women read minds, and men can't? 01:17:42 James Hickman: Reacted to "But can't women read minds, and men can't?" with 😂 01:18:04 John ‘Jack’: Reacted to "But can't women read minds, and men can't?" with 😂 01:18:05 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "But can't women read..." with 🤯 01:18:51 Bob Čihák, AZ: Reacted to "But can't women read minds, and men can't?" with 😂 01:18:59 Bob Čihák, AZ: Reacted to "But can't women read minds, and men can't?" with 🤯 01:19:03 Julie: Reacted to "But can't women read minds, and men can't?" with 🙏 01:19:42 Nypaver Clan: We just have eyes in the back of our heads. 👀 01:20:03 Bob Čihák, AZ: Reacted to "We just have eyes in the back of our heads. 👀" with 👍 01:20:11 James Hickman: I definitely needed the other translation to grasp that freedom was meant in this context to see that he’s talking about conversing 01:20:30 James Hickman: Reacted to "We just have eyes in the back of our heads. 👀" with 😂 01:21:05 Maureen Cunningham: Thank You 01:21:54 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️ 01:22:04 Joan Chakonas: Fastest hour of the day
Transcribe →Nazareth and The Hidden Life, Session Two
Jun 1901:38:03Tap to summarizeNazareth and the Hidden Life Retreat Reflection II Remaining in Nazareth Epigraph “And He was subject unto them.” — St. Luke 2:51 “Acquire the spirit of peace, and thousands around you will be saved.” — Saint Seraphim of Sarov ⸻ One of the most difficult words in the spiritual life is: remain. Modern people know how to begin things. We know how to pursue intensity. We know how to search, reinvent, escape, construct, perform, and anticipate. But very few of us know how to remain. This is partly because remaining exposes us. When we remain somewhere long enough—within marriage, monastic life, caregiving, prayer, ordinary labor, solitude, aging, or even our own interior life— the illusions begin to weaken. The fantasies that once sustained us no longer protect us in the same way. We begin to encounter not the imagined self, but the actual self. This is why so much of modern life is organized around movement. Not only physical movement, but psychological movement: constant distraction, 1 constant novelty, constant stimulation, constant self-reinvention. The ego survives partly through motion. But Nazareth is profoundly still. The hidden years of Christ reveal not simply obscurity, but stability. Christ remains in ordinary life for decades. He does not hurry toward visibility. He does not seek intensity. He does not construct significance through spectacle. He consents fully to the slow unfolding of hidden existence within the will of the Father. This is extraordinarily difficult for modern humanity to understand. Many people secretly endure ordinary life as though it were something standing between themselves and their “real” life. The present moment becomes merely transitional. We live psychologically elsewhere: in imagined futures, in fantasies of escape, in memories, in regret, in comparison, in endless internal narratives about what should have been. And thus we fail almost entirely to inhabit the life actually given to us. This interior refusal creates profound suffering. A person may outwardly remain faithful while inwardly resisting reality continually. One performs obligations externally while inwardly living in fantasy, resentment, disappointment, or hidden self-construction. The heart becomes divided between the actual and the imagined. The fathers understood this division deeply. They knew that the passions often sustain themselves through fantasy. A man imagines another life, another recognition, another identity, another emotional state, another spiritual condition. The mind drifts continually away from the concrete reality in which grace is actually being offered. This is one reason silence becomes painful. 2 When external stimulation diminishes, we begin to notice how rarely we are truly present. We discover how much of our inner life is spent elsewhere: rehearsing conversations, imagining futures, reliving injuries, constructing identities, seeking vindication, dreaming of escape. The modern technological world intensifies this instability constantly. The imagination becomes overstimulated through continual exposure to images of other lives, other possibilities, other identities, other pleasures. Comparison becomes ambient. Dissatisfaction deepens almost automatically. Nazareth stands against all of this. The hidden Christ remains fully within ordinary reality. This does not mean His life lacked inward depth. Quite the opposite. The silence of Nazareth is not emptiness but communion. Christ remains rooted entirely within the life of the Father. He does not need spectacle because His identity does not depend upon visibility. He does not need continual stimulation because He lives in unbroken communion. This reveals something crucial about the spiritual life: the capacity to remain peacefully within ordinary existence depends largely upon whether one’s identity rests in God or in self-construction. The ego constantly seeks reinforcement: through recognition, through achievement, through intensity, through emotional experiences, through being seen, through control. But the soul gradually healed by grace becomes quieter. Simpler. Less divided. Less hungry for continual confirmation. This healing usually occurs slowly and often painfully. 3 Many people initially approach prayer hoping for spiritual experiences. But over time prayer often becomes something much humbler and more difficult: remaining before God honestly. Not dramatically. Not emotionally. Not heroically. Simply remaining. Remaining distracted yet returning. Remaining dry yet faithful. Remaining wounded yet open. Remaining ordinary. Remaining poor in spirit. Remaining within the limitations of one’s actual life. This hidden fidelity gradually purifies the heart because it weakens the ego’s dependence upon fantasy and self-construction. The fathers frequently speak about patience not merely as endurance of external difficulties but as the willingness to bear oneself truthfully before God. This is profoundly important. Much human restlessness arises from the inability to tolerate our own incompleteness. We seek escape because remaining confronts us with weakness, loneliness, unresolved grief, and hidden desires we would rather avoid. And yet healing often begins precisely there. A person who continually flees inwardly cannot become integrated. The fragmented self remains fragmented because it never consents fully to reality. The soul remains divided between longing for God and preserving fantasies of selfhood. Nazareth slowly dismantles this division. The hidden life of Christ reveals that holiness unfolds not through dramatic self- creation but through consent: consent to time, consent to limitation, consent to hiddenness, consent to ordinary existence, 4 consent to the will of the Father. This is why the hidden years possess such immense spiritual significance. Christ saves not only through the Cross publicly but through hidden obedience privately. The years no one notices are not spiritually empty. They become filled with communion precisely through fidelity. Modern culture rarely believes this. We imagine transformation occurring through breakthrough moments, major decisions, visible accomplishments, or emotional intensity. But most sanctification occurs almost imperceptibly through repeated acts of quiet fidelity: daily prayer, forgiveness, caregiving, showing up, remaining truthful, enduring weakness without despair, returning again after failure. The ego often despises this hidden gradualness. We want clarity quickly. We want holiness to feel dramatic. We want meaning to become obvious. But God frequently works below visibility. This is why so many people become discouraged in the spiritual life. They measure themselves according to emotional states or visible progress rather than faithfulness. When consolation fades, they assume God has withdrawn. When ordinary life continues unchanged, they imagine nothing spiritual is occurring. Nazareth contradicts this entirely. The Son of God spent decades within hidden ordinary existence, and not one moment of it was wasted. This is important especially for those carrying hidden disappointment. 5 Many souls quietly mourn the lives they imagined they would have: the vocation that never unfolded, the marriage that became difficult, the ministry that diminished, the monastery left behind, the recognition never received, the family wounds never fully healed, the years now vanished. And often beneath this grief lies another fear: that ordinary hidden life has somehow less value before God. Nazareth reveals the opposite. Indeed, Christ entered hiddenness willingly. And perhaps one of the great spiritual tasks is learning to stop resisting the life actually given to us. Not passively. Not fatalistically. But prayerfully. To stop standing continually outside our lives judging them against fantasies. To stop imagining salvation elsewhere. To stop seeking ourselves through comparison and performance. And instead to begin discovering Christ precisely here: within ordinary labor, within hidden prayer, within caregiving, within weakness, within repetition, within the quiet daily offering of oneself to God. This is not resignation. It is communion. And perhaps the beginning of peace lies not in escaping the ordinary, but in consenting at last to encounter God within it. 6
Transcribe →Nazareth and The Hidden Life, Session One
Jun 1901:52:38Tap to summarizeNazareth and the Hidden Life Retreat Reflection I Nazareth and the Sanctification of the Ordinary Epigraph “And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.” — St. Luke 2:51 “The Lord loves the humble soul that has surrendered herself to the will of God.” — Saint Silouan the Athonite ⸻ There is something deeply unsettling about Nazareth. Not because it is dramatic, but because it is not. The Gospels pass over nearly thirty years of Christ’s earthly life in almost complete silence. We are told of His birth, the flight into Egypt, the finding in the Temple, and then suddenly He is standing in the Jordan before John. Between those moments lies an immense hiddenness. Decades vanish into silence. And yet the Church has always understood that nothing in the life of Christ is accidental. The hidden years are revelation. This is difficult for us because we are formed by a world that equates meaning with visibility. We instinctively imagine that what matters must be seen, accomplished, recognized, effective, influential, or extraordinary. Even our spiritual life often becomes infected with this mentality. We want transformation to be dramatic. We want clarity quickly. We want our lives to feel significant. But Christ spends the overwhelming majority of His earthly existence in obscurity. Not preaching. Not healing publicly. 1 Not raising the dead. Not confronting empires. Working. Praying. Eating meals. Walking dusty roads. Living within the repetition and hiddenness of ordinary life. The Son of God sanctified not only suffering and death. He sanctified ordinary existence itself. This is one of the great forgotten truths of Christianity. Many people secretly endure their lives as though the “real” spiritual life were elsewhere. They imagine holiness occurring in monasteries, missions, dramatic sacrifices, or extraordinary mystical experiences, while their own existence feels painfully repetitive: the dishes, the caregiving, the exhaustion, the office, the commute, the sleepless nights, the aging body, the hidden grief, the years that seem to pass without visible transformation. But Nazareth stands before the world as a contradiction to all such thinking. God chose hiddenness. Not as punishment. Not as delay. But as revelation. The hidden years reveal something about the very manner in which God acts. Divine life does not move according to the logic of spectacle. God works silently, patiently, gradually, often beneath visibility itself. Seeds germinate underground. The child grows in the womb unseen. Bread rises quietly. Prayer deepens imperceptibly. The kingdom of God arrives almost secretly. 2 And so much of the spiritual life unfolds precisely where the ego feels most deprived: in repetition, in obscurity, in waiting, in relinquishment, in the slow erosion of self-importance. This is why Nazareth becomes painful for us. Not because it lacks God. But because it threatens the fantasies through which we preserve ourselves psychologically. Most human beings carry within themselves an imagined life. We construct inward narratives about who we will become, what our lives will look like, how others will perceive us, what spiritual maturity will feel like, how our vocation will unfold. Often we do this unconsciously. The ego survives partly through anticipation and self-construction. But ordinary life slowly dismantles these fantasies. The years pass. Weaknesses remain. Relationships become difficult. Bodies age. Opportunities disappear. Recognition fades. The extraordinary fails to arrive. And many people quietly become resentful at precisely this point. Not necessarily resentful toward God explicitly. More often there emerges a subtle disappointment with reality itself. The ordinary begins to feel like failure. Hiddenness feels like abandonment. Repetition feels meaningless. The soul becomes restless, searching continually for intensity, novelty, affirmation, or escape. But the hidden years of Christ reveal something radically different: salvation unfolds within ordinary time. This is profoundly important because modern culture has become nearly incapable of remaining within ordinary life. We seek constant stimulation 3 because silence exposes our inner poverty. We seek visibility because hiddenness feels like nonexistence. We seek intensity because ordinary faithfulness feels insufficient to the ego. And yet the saints repeatedly tell us that God is found precisely in this hidden endurance. Saint Isaac the Syrian says that the man who has learned to endure himself has already approached the borders of humility. That phrase is extraordinarily deep because one of the great difficulties of ordinary life is that we cannot escape ourselves within it. The repetitions of daily existence expose our impatience, vanity, fantasies, irritability, loneliness, and hidden hunger for recognition. The monastery reveals this. Marriage reveals this. Caregiving reveals this. Aging reveals this. Silence reveals this. And modern people often flee immediately from such revelation. This is one reason our culture is saturated with distraction. Endless stimulation protects us temporarily from encountering the deeper movements of the heart. Noise allows us to avoid self-knowledge. Busyness protects us from stillness. Constant comparison protects us from accepting our actual lives. Nazareth dismantles all of this. The Son of God accepts limitation. He accepts hiddenness. He accepts gradualness. He accepts ordinary labor. He accepts being unknown. And perhaps most astonishingly, He remains. This may be one of the hardest spiritual acts for modern people. To remain. To remain in prayer when prayer feels dry. To remain in marriage when emotional intensity fades. To remain in caregiving when exhaustion deepens. 4 To remain faithful within obscurity. To remain present within ordinary life without fleeing continually toward fantasy or self-construction. The hidden years reveal that salvation often unfolds precisely through such remaining. Not glamorous remaining. Not emotionally triumphant remaining. Simply the quiet fidelity of continuing to offer oneself to God within the actual conditions of one’s life. This does not mean passivity or fatalism. Nazareth is not an excuse for fear or avoidance. Christ eventually leaves Nazareth and enters public ministry. But He does so only after decades hidden within ordinary existence. The hidden life was not wasted time before the “real mission.” It was itself part of the revelation. And perhaps this is what many souls most need to hear today: your hidden life is not invisible to God. The years that seem uneventful. The labor no one notices. The prayers said distractedly but faithfully. The meals prepared. The tears shed privately. The humiliations endured quietly. The long stretches where nothing seems to happen spiritually. None of this is outside salvation. Christ has entered all of it. Indeed, He chose to spend most of His earthly life there. The fathers understood this more deeply than we often realize. The desert was never merely geographical. It was existential. The monk enters hiddenness not to become extraordinary, but to become truthful. Gradually the false self built upon recognition, performance, fantasy, and comparison begins to weaken. A different kind of life slowly emerges: simpler, poorer, more real, 5 less dependent upon being seen. This is why hiddenness feels simultaneously painful and liberating. Painful because the ego experiences obscurity as diminishment. Liberating because the soul gradually discovers it no longer needs to construct itself continually before others. Nazareth teaches us this freedom. The hidden Christ reveals the holiness of ordinary existence lived in communion with the Father. And perhaps holiness itself is far quieter than we imagine. Perhaps sanctity often looks less like dramatic accomplishment and more like: patience, presence, forgiveness, hidden prayer, remaining, and consenting slowly to the life actually given to us. Nazareth teaches us that salvation enters the world silently. And it teaches us that the ordinary moments we are most tempted to overlook may become precisely the places where Christ is forming His life within us. 6
Transcribe →The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian - Homily XV, Part IV
Jun 1900:59:41Tap to summarizeThere are passages in St. Isaac that seem less like theology and more like glimpses through an opened door into the Kingdom. These words are among them. He speaks of a table around which those who fast, keep vigil, and labor in the Lord gather. Yet he is not describing merely an ascetical fellowship or a pious community of like-minded people. Something infinitely greater is taking place. The Beloved Himself reclines in their midst. The angels overshadow them. The bitterness of their struggles is transformed into ineffable sweetness. Earth and Heaven become one. How impoverished our understanding of communion often is. We think of fellowship as friendship, conversation, common interests, or shared projects. St. Isaac speaks of something far more profound. Communion arises when hearts are turned together toward God. It is born of a shared hunger. It comes into being when men and women desire the Lord above all things and seek Him with simplicity of heart. Such souls begin, as it were, to breathe the same air. The desert fathers understood this deeply. The bond between them was not built primarily upon personality or affinity. They recognized in one another a common thirst for God. Their love arose from seeing another soul struggling toward the same Kingdom, carrying the same burden, shedding the same tears, and longing for the same Face. This is why the company of the saints becomes so sweet. One can sit in silence with such souls and experience a communion deeper than many conversations. One can eat their frugal bread and feel nourished. One can hear a few simple words from their lips and depart inwardly changed. Their very presence becomes sacramental because their hearts have become places of divine habitation. Indeed, St. Isaac dares to say that their table is sweeter than musk and precious perfumes. Why? Because Christ Himself is there. Perhaps many of us have tasted something of this together as fellow pilgrims sitting at the feet of the fathers. Though separated by thousands of miles and unknown to one another in ordinary ways, there has emerged a real communion among us. We have breathed the same air. We have sat before the same elders. We have listened to the same words of Abba Isaac, Abba Arsenius, and the great company of witnesses. We have found ourselves drawn toward the same beauty and compelled toward the same repentance. This communion cannot be explained by sociology or common interests. It is born from a shared turning toward God. And this is why our reading of the fathers must never become merely informational. One can know every saying of the desert and remain untouched. One can quote Isaac and remain hard of heart. One can speak eloquently about prayer while never having prayed. The fathers are not information to be mastered. They are witnesses before whom we sit as children. We come to them as disciples. We come to them docile and teachable. We suspend judgment and lay aside the need to be experts. We allow ourselves to be questioned, exposed, and gradually transformed by what we hear. We sit quietly before these saints because they themselves are sitting quietly before Christ. This is where communion is born. As the heart is purified, our vision changes. We begin to perceive the image and likeness of Christ in one another with greater clarity. The other person ceases to be a rival, an annoyance, or merely a personality to be managed. He becomes mystery. She becomes icon. Every human being becomes one for whom Christ died and one in whom the hidden beauty of God waits to be revealed. This is the reality we must foster in our homes, our monasteries, our parishes, and our friendships. Not mere association. Not the exchange of religious information. Not even activity done in God’s name. Rather, we must cultivate together a common hunger for God. For where men and women gather with hearts turned toward Him, desiring Him above all things, the Beloved still reclines in their midst. The angels still draw near. The waters of life still well up from within. And those who have learned to breathe the same air already begin, even now, to partake of the life of the Kingdom. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:02:05 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/nazareth-and-the-hidden-life 00:02:27 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 207 paragraph 14 00:19:39 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 207, #14, third paragraph on page 00:32:29 John ‘Jack’: I have/had a dear freind who has a great love of cinema, action movies in particular, I had to tell him at one point that I found all the violence disheartening, he understood, we no longer share much time in common, as he is my former pastor 00:33:27 John ‘Jack’: It was the superhero movies 😆 00:35:35 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 207, #15, last paragraph on page 00:42:56 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 208, #16, first aragraph 00:44:30 John ‘Jack’: Ironically, my same group of freinds enjoy going to lunch together I often find I’m better off (even though I enjoy the company) that I will often say some things that if I hadn’t had the time with them I wouldn’t likely have done 00:45:33 John ‘Jack’: Replying to "Ironically, my same group of freinds enjoy going to lunch together I often find I’m better off (even though I enjoy the company) that I will often say some things that if I hadn’t had the time with them I wouldn’t likely have done" 00:52:27 James Hickman: Father, in the English of this paragraph, the Beloved bestows “sanctification”. Could you please elaborate. Can we say deification, divinization, theosis here or is that getting too specific? What is Isaac really saying that the Lord is doing “in their midst” here? 00:58:42 Kate: Father, these groups through Philokalia Ministries has formed something of what St. Isaac is talking about. We come from all different parts around the globe! 01:01:01 David Swiderski: Very true I have read them for more than a decade. I remember a preist/director from years ago when I was teaching. He always say God speaks through all of us not one of us. I found I learned more in teaching even small children English, natural science, history than any training. 01:01:46 John ‘Jack’: Reacted to "Very true I have read them for more than a decade. I remember a preist/director from years ago when I was teaching. He always say God speaks through all of us not one of us. I found I learned more in teaching even small children English, natural science, history than any training." with 👍 01:02:26 David Swiderski: Maybe because where their are two in my name.... 01:08:35 Maureen Cunningham: Herod he exploded 01:13:37 David Swiderski: I am fortunate in my parish they do Novos Ordo and the silience and long pauses are the biggest help. So many young people and the adoration chapel needs to be expanded 01:14:38 David Swiderski: We have the latin rite but the silences, pauses and exceptional choir and participation is incredible 01:15:46 Nypaver Clan: Replying to "I am fortunate in my..." Where is this? 01:16:10 David Swiderski: Elm Grove, WI, St. Mary's visitation 01:17:43 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️ 01:19:15 Maureen Cunningham: Amen 01:19:44 Bob Čihák, AZ: Bless you, Father.
Transcribe →The Evergetinos: Book Three - Chapter II, Part VIII
Jun 1901:13:09Tap to summarizeThe Fathers speak about judgment with a severity that can seem almost excessive to us. They speak of grace withdrawing, of years of tears and repentance, of visions of Christ refusing worship to one who condemned his brother. We recoil at this language because we do not see condemnation as they saw it. We think of it as a minor fault of speech, a passing irritation, a reasonable assessment of another’s behavior. The Fathers saw it as an assault upon love itself. A brother is eating early on a Friday. One sentence escapes the lips: “You are eating at such an hour, and on a Friday?” Nothing more. No insult. No anger. Merely an observation with an edge of disapproval. And the grace of God departs. Why? Because in that instant the monk ceased to stand beside his brother and placed himself above him. The movement happened with the speed of lightning. One moment he was in humility; the next he had assumed the place of judge. This is the terrifying thing. Pride does not always arrive with fanfare. It can appear in a sigh. An eye-roll. A sarcastic remark. A sentence that begins, “I just don’t understand how someone could…” A comment on social media. A conversation after church. A single word: “Ugh.” The Elder says, “Ugh,” upon hearing of another’s bad reputation. A single exclamation. Then Golgotha appears before him. Christ does not rebuke him for fornication, theft, or apostasy. He says something infinitely more frightening: “Before I could pass judgment, he himself has condemned his brother.” In other words: You rushed ahead of Me. You seized what belongs to Me alone. How quickly we do this. We hear of someone’s failure, and before our hearts have even softened, we have formed an opinion. We hear of a priest’s collapse, a marriage’s breakdown, a young person’s confusion, a friend’s inconsistency, and instantly the mind produces a verdict. We scarcely pause to remember our own darkness. The holy man says, with tears, “He sinned today, but I will surely sin tomorrow.” This is not pessimism. It is truth. The one who knows himself knows that every sin lies hidden within his own heart like sparks in dry grass. Circumstances differ. Opportunities differ. Temptations differ. But the same human nature exists in all. The same weakness. The same instability. If God withdrew His hand for an instant, who among us could stand? The Fathers do not tell us to deny evil. They do not call sin virtue. They simply insist that whenever we see another fall, our first thought should be: There, but for the mercy of God, am I. And then something remarkable happens. The sinner ceases to be an object of analysis and becomes a brother who is wounded. The question is no longer, “How could he do that?” It becomes, “Lord, have mercy upon him—and upon me.” This is why the Elder says that if you see someone sinning with your own eyes, you should first cry out, “Anathema to you, Satan!” The enemy is not your brother. The enemy is the one who delights in dividing us from one another, who tempts one man into sin and another into condemnation. He wins both ways. One falls into the pit. The other stands above the pit congratulating himself. Both are wounded. The Fathers say that nothing harms Christians and monastics more than mutual condemnation. Nothing. Not persecution. Not poverty. Not weakness. But condemnation. Because condemnation makes love impossible. One cannot bear another’s burdens while sitting upon the tribunal. One cannot weep for a brother while despising him. One cannot pray from the depths of the heart for someone whom one secretly regards as inferior. The judging heart is incapable of communion. And perhaps this is why the Fathers tremble so greatly before this passion. To condemn another is not merely to commit a fault of speech. It is to act contrary to the entire ethos of the Gospel. We ourselves live only by mercy. Every breath, every confession, every Eucharist, every hope of salvation rests entirely upon mercy. How strange, then, that beggars of mercy become so quickly its gatekeepers. How terrifying that those who stand daily in need of forgiveness can pronounce sentences against others with such speed. The Fathers ask something harder. When another sins, descend. Accuse yourself. Weep. Pray. Remember your own fragility. And if a harsh judgment escapes your lips—as it so often does—repent immediately. Do not excuse it as honesty, discernment, or concern for standards. Call it what it is: a moment in which pride outran love and sought to sit where only Christ may sit. Then return to your place. Not upon the judgment seat. But at the foot of Golgotha. Beside the thieves. Beside all sinners. Beside your brother. Beside yourself. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:15:39 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 29 paragraph 28 00:35:42 forrest: Do I understand the story correctly, there are 4 monks involved? The two sharing a cell, and two elders. 00:36:43 Fr Martin, Arizona: It seem to me that these stories of community members or (even spouses) that become discontented is part of the temptation of acedia, in that we are in the vocation we love and with the person we love but this distaste attacks one to the point that he or she just goes through the motions of vocation or community rather than with devotion or cheerfulness to the vocation or other. What do you think? 00:37:20 Kevin Burke: Reacted to "It seem to me that these stories of community members or (even spouses) that become discontented is part of the temptation of acedia, in that we are in the vocation we love and with the person we love but this distaste attacks one to the point that he or she just goes through the motions of vocation or community rather than with devotion or cheerfulness to the vocation or other. What do you think?" with 👌 00:42:15 Kate: Recalling our last reading of St. Isaac, he positively advises one to flee from another who has exhibited disordered desires. How does that fit with the elder in this story who will not give such explicit advice? 00:42:39 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "Recalling our last r..." with 👍 00:47:48 Maureen Cunningham: Jesus said he did not entrust himself to any man because he knew what was in heart man John 2:24 01:00:08 John ‘Jack’: Most recently that is why I’ve decided to ask the Holy Spirit (in me) to come to my aid against the most plaguing of my sins. 01:11:02 Holly Hecker: (from Mark) This vision of Golgotha brings me to the Good Thief and what he said to the other. Was that not judging? 01:11:57 Joan Chakonas: It seems like our reactions to others confers upon the other salvation or condemnation- which is why it is important- God puts people in our orbits to save eachother. 01:15:31 Jacqulyn Dudasko: Romans 2:1 - Therefore, you are without excuse, everyone of you who passes judgement. FOr by the standard by which you judge another, you condemn yourself... 01:17:40 Anna: My daughter's question: Does confession forgive sins for judging? The reason I ask is because why did he have to go into the desert to do penance before he gave back the stole, his protection? Why wouldn't the stole, his protection wouldn't come back after confession? 01:18:14 Fr Martin, Arizona: I hope I'm not falling into judging others by saying this. I find, though, that in our society, the media and movies and small talk conversations, gets me used to hearing judgment of others, and makes it even harder to be vigilant about keeping my tongue or thoughts captive, because I'm in the habit of hearing judgments ...
Transcribe →The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian - Homily XV, Part III
Jun 1101:06:25Tap to summarizeAt first reading, Isaac’s words can sound severe, even shocking. He speaks of idle speech as fornication, unhealthy attachments as adultery, and certain forms of companionship as idolatry. Yet behind these warnings lies something far deeper than moral anxiety. Isaac is not obsessed with sin. He is consumed with the preservation of desire for God. The entire homily is built upon a single conviction: the human heart was created for divine communion, and anything that captures its attention, dissipates its energy, or redirects its longing away from God becomes a threat to its deepest purpose. For Isaac, impurity begins long before outward acts. It begins when the heart loses its simplicity. When affection becomes possessive, when companionship becomes emotionally intoxicating, when curiosity about others replaces watchfulness over oneself, the soul gradually drifts from its center. The danger is not merely moral failure. The danger is fragmentation. This is why Isaac speaks so strongly about particular attachments and associations. He understands that the heart cannot be divided indefinitely. Every affection shapes desire. Every conversation leaves a trace. Every companionship either strengthens recollection of God or weakens it. His concern is especially acute regarding spiritual relationships because these can easily disguise passion beneath the appearance of virtue. A person may speak about holiness while secretly seeking emotional gratification, admiration, dependence, or control. One may appear spiritual while feeding hidden desires. This is why Isaac repeatedly returns to self-deception. The greatest danger is not obvious sin but the passions clothed in religious garments. Against this, Isaac presents another image: the elder who has guarded his heart through silence, purity of thought, humility, and disciplined speech. Such a person no longer seeks particular people to satisfy hidden needs. He loves everyone equally because his heart has become free. Compassion has replaced possession. Love has become universal because it no longer springs from lack. This is the perfection Isaac describes. The issue, then, is not whether one has relationships. It is whether one’s relationships nourish the fire of God or extinguish it. For Isaac, solitude is not an end in itself. Silence is not a technique. Withdrawal is not misanthropy. All of these exist to protect a flame. The Holy Spirit has kindled a fire within the heart, and that fire is delicate. Excessive familiarity, endless conversation, emotional entanglements, and worldly distractions scatter the mind and cool the soul. Yet Isaac is careful to make one exception. There are companions who do not extinguish the fire but increase it. There are friendships rooted in God. There are conversations that awaken the soul, expose the passions, deepen humility, and enlarge desire for divine things. Such communion is not a distraction from the spiritual life but one of its greatest supports. The test is simple: after leaving someone’s company, does the heart burn more brightly for God or less? Everything in this passage revolves around that question. Isaac’s warnings are not expressions of fear. They are acts of protection. He sees the heart as a sanctuary and desire for God as its most precious treasure. Therefore he urges vigilance, not because human relationships are evil, but because divine love is so extraordinarily precious. The entire passage can be reduced to a single plea: Guard the fire. Choose companions who increase it. Flee whatever diminishes it. And allow your love to become so purified that it belongs to everyone because it belongs first to God. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:09:26 James Hickman: Father, I was away for about a year…moved across the county and my faith formation role was on Wednesday evenings 00:09:50 James Hickman: I have loved The Watchful Mind…love your recommendation…summer break 00:11:05 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/nazareth-and-the-hidden-life 00:12:21 Anna: 91 in GA right now 00:13:28 Anna: My grandpa had his first class relic 00:16:38 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/nazareth-and-the-hidden-life 00:16:54 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 206, #11, last paragraph, Fr. A said we should get back to the 2nd sentence. 00:31:04 James Hickman: “…his heart is grievously injured.” Is Isaac speaking of the older monk, ie the one at fault? If so, I like Isaac’s compassion to warn against the danger the offended faces. We don’t want anyone’s heart injured, whether a potential offender or a potential victim. 00:37:51 Bob Čihák, AZ: The double negative in the last sentence of the paragraph tends to confuse my weakening mind. 00:42:37 David Swiderski, WI: It is interesting the human brain only matures after 25 years old. I think most parents can capture this as the entire idea of consequences does not develop till after that. That is why around the world to rent a car you need to be 25. I see people below this age as children still developing but I see others that year to live again in a world without consequences. 00:43:05 Anna: Too often we run to therapy versus running to Christ in prayer and confession 00:44:03 una: Can you speak to how to have a solid spiritual friendship between consecrated people or with priests/monks 00:46:14 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "It is interesting th..." with 👍 00:46:21 Anna: That's why my family went domestic monastic after my husband fell asleep in Christ. It was a way of healing 00:47:26 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "That's why my family..." with 🙁 00:48:04 James Hickman: Reacted to "That's why my family went domestic monastic after my husband fell asleep in Christ. It was a way of healing " with ❤️🩹 00:48:19 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "That's why my family..." with ❤️🩹 00:48:49 David Swiderski, WI: On the scandals the biggest problem is public teachers almost weekly here in the Midwest we hear of this and strangely most of the ones in my area have been women even married. In fact during my sons time in high school there were 3 abuse cases in the school system. A dear Jewish family we knew actually moved their sons to Catholic schools because at least there are safety measures in place. When I did catechism I had to take 6 months of courses and background checks which I think was great. 00:49:45 Anna: Protestors are hidden and manipulative because Satan helps keep things in the dark. 00:50:06 Lee Graham: Reacted to "It is interesting the human brain only matures after 25 years old. I think most parents can capture this as the entire idea of consequences does not develop till after that. That is why around the world to rent a car you need to be 25. I see people below this age as children still developing but I see others that year to live again in a world without consequences." with 👍 00:59:59 Rebecca Thérèse: The anti-psychiatry psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, wrote an article "Sins of the Fathers", about how the psychologising of criminal behaviour had led to the redeployment of abusive clergy leaving them free to re-abuse. This would not have happened without the psychologising of the Church and its attitude to doctrine and ethics :https://reason.com/2002/08/01/sins-of-the-fathers-2/ 01:07:46 Anna: Sorry I meant predictors in church are manipulative and hidden 01:08:27 David Swiderski, WI: The church is held to a divine standard while Chesterton was attracted to the one who stole his umbrella. If even the worse can be there that is the place for me a sinner. 01:09:30 Eleana Urrego: I usually said to my patients that the role of a therapist is a tool, like a compás, to help you find your “Path,” Or the “Truth,” or the “Life,” if they are atheists, because the reality is that Christ is the Divine Healer—after all, the evil plant his seed in pain where pride and fear grow. 01:09:30 Ben: You talked about all of us enduring these conditions like loneliness, etc. And I want to add, even I, in the midst of a large, loving, family, with a loving and attentive husband. experience loneliness, my message is that, that is because we were all created with a God sized hole in our hearts and only God will fill us. 01:10:04 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "You talked about all..." with ❤️ <p style="text-align: justify...
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