Undusted Texts

  "There is no other virtue that is either higher or more necessary than sacred Prayer, because all the other virtues--I mean fasting, vigils, sleeping on the ground, ascesis, chastity, almsgiving, and all the rest--even though they are ways of imitating God, even though they cannot be taken away from us and constitute the immortal ornaments of the soul--do not united man with God, but only render man fit to be united.  Sacred Prayer, and it alone, unites.  It alone joins man with God and God with man, and makes the two one spirit." Nikodemos (Nicodemus) the Hagiorite (of the Holy Mountain) (1749-1809), a Greek Orthodox saint, wrote the above passage on the necessity of Prayer.  This view of the necessity of Prayer led to what is probably Nikodemos' most famous work: the Philokalia .  The Philokalia is a collection of texts by saints and other holy writers from the origins of Christianity until around the 15th century, compiled by Nikodemos an...

  Icon of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Mother of Carmel) by the Sisters of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Terre Haute, IN One of the biggest difficulties Western Christians have in appreciating icons is a lack of understanding.  I have previously discussed some of the theology behind iconography, but in this post I will discuss another big difficulty: the symbolism of iconography.  Even if one can understand the theology of the icon and why one should venerate it, it is still difficult to venerate something that seems to be such a strange mess of non-understood symbols.  This post will hopefully clear up some of that difficulty so that others can better understand icons and venerate them more worthily. Monograms The language used in iconography is often difficult by itself, since it is usually written in either Greek or Russian, often with a strange script that combines letters on top of each other or uses less common forms of letters.  Even after getting past...

[Though the term "Holy and God-Bearing Fathers" is used for those great saints that went before us in the faith, it does not only apply to men, as this post will show.] St. Mary of Egypt (344-421 or d. 522) was a hermitess who lived in the desert near the River Jordan after repenting from a life of prostitution.  She is patron of penitent women and reformed prostitutes, and she is also a patron asked for intercession against sexual temptation.  In the Western Church, she is liturgically celebrated on April 3, while in the Eastern Church she is celebrated both on April 1 (the day of her death) and on the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent. At the age of twelve, St. Mary ran away from her parents in Alexandria in order to live a life of dissolution.  She became a prostitute merely for the sake of fulfilling her lustful desires, rejecting money for men, instead gaining her living by begging and spinning flax.  After seventeen years of this sinful life, she went to J...

 St. John of Damascus (676-749), also known as St. John Damascene or Chrysorrhoas ("streaming with gold"), served as Chief Councilor ( Protosymbullus ) of Damascus under Muslim rule before later retiring to live the monastic life in the Monastery of St. Sabbas near Jerusalem.  He was a prolific writer whose work was incredibly influential, even to this day.  A particularly important note about his work was his exposition of the theology underlying icons: his work was thus key to the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nicea II (787).  The Eastern Church often refers to him as "the last of the Fathers," and he is a Doctor of the Church often referred to as the Doctor of the Assumption.  His feast day in both the Western and Eastern Churches is December 4, though from 1890-1969 it was celebrated on March 27 in the Western Church. St. John was brought up under Muslim rule in Damascus, where his strong Christian family held high hereditary public office under the cali...

The Church has a devotion to those great men and women who went before them in the faith, teaching the Gospel fervently and helping others to deepen their living of the true Christian life.  In the Eastern Church, the title "our holy and God-bearing Fathers" is used for the great saints of the past.  In this series (which I will hopefully not give up on, as I have with some of my past series), I hope to introduce members of the Western Church to some of the great saints venerated in the Eastern Church and explain how powerful their memory is for the Eastern Church.  The first saint I will discuss is St. Makarios the Great. St. Makarios (Macarius) the Great (295-392), also known as St. Makarios the Egyptian, St. Macarius the Spirit-Bearer, and the Lamp of the Desert, was a disciple of St. Anthony the Great, the first monastic.  His name means "blessed" in Greek, and it was chosen because his birth was such a blessing to his infertile parents, fittingly named Ab...

In celebration of Trinity Sunday in the Western Church today, I decided to write a short post on the history of artistic representation of the Most Holy Trinity, especially in the East. Nowadays, there are many representations of the Trinity showing the Three Persons as an old man (the Father), Jesus Christ, and a dove (the Holy Spirit).  Before these were in vogue, the Trinity was often depicted symbolically (especially in the Western Church) in forms such as a triangle-encased All-Seeing Eye (a symbol adapted and Christianized from ancient Egyptian symbolism that is, sadly, now usually connected with Freemasonry).  In the earliest days of the Church, though, there were no representations of the Trinity apart from the Second Person Incarnate. Eye of God , Mission San Miguel, California (19th century) Why was this?  One main reason was the theological reasoning behind having any images of God in the first place.  The Pentateuch declares that we shall ha...

 Scripture is obviously the basis for many prayers: the Psalms themselves are prayers, the Our Father are the exact words of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the first half of the Hail Mary is directly from Scripture.  Many prayers in the liturgy are taken from Scripture as well: the Sanctus is from Isaiah, the Agnus Dei is based in the preaching of John the Forerunner and the Book of Revelation, and the prayer immediately before receiving the Eucharist are derived from the words of the faithful centurion.  Many other prayers, from all traditions, have their basis in Scripture, though the passages are not always as well known.  Below are just a few of these. Openings to the Liturgy of the Hours.   Two short prayers of opening,  used at different Hours, are taken directly from the Psalms: "Lord, open my lips / And my mouth will declare Your praise" (Ps 51:15) and "God, come to my assistance. / Lord, make haste to help me" (Ps 70:1). The Franciscan Blessing...