A book review with an apt conclusion . . .
How Polynesia came to be inhabited was, for many years, a mystery: “The centuries have thrown up a number of theories. Heyerdahl, for example, was convince...
Category: Reflection
My reflections on various topics
Some do not believe. Others do not want to believe. Still others do not care.
A hermit declared with evident satisfaction that “God will punish all atheists. They will burn in everlasting fire.” Obviously upset, the Staretz St Silou...
The Ladder of Divine Ascent – Step 26, The First Three Paragraphs
Step 26 On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues 1. Discernment in beginners is true knowledge of themselves; in intermediate souls it is a spiritual se...
Stress . . .
“Stress can be constructive or destructive. It can encourage or discourage, move us along or stop us dead in our tracks, and make life meaningful or seemingly m...
The Ladder of Divine Ascent – Step 25, The Last Five Paragraphs
65. The sinews of humility and its ways, but not its signs, are: poverty, hidden withdrawal from the world, concealment of wisdom, simplicity of speech, asking ...
The Ladder of Divine Ascent – Step 25, The First Paragraph
Step 25 On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual feeling. 1. He who thinks that it is possible to use the visible w...
First Sunday of Lent: John 1:43-51 – “On Nathan’a-el”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Christ is in our midst! [He is and ever shall be!] I would like to thank all parishione...
The Ladder of Divine Ascent – Step 23, A Focus
6. A haughty monk contradicts violently, but a humble one cannot even look one in the face. 7. The cypress does not bend to live on earth; nor does a lofty-hear...
The Ladder of Divine Ascent – Step 23, The Last Three Paragraphs
35. I do not know how it is, but the proud for the most part remain ignorant of their real selves, and they imagine that they are victorious over their passions...
Telling Quotes . . .
“One must know what one wants to be,” the eighteenth-century French mathematician Émilie du Châtelet wrote in weighing the nature of genius. “In the latter ende...