Undusted Texts

 Introduction In keeping with today's Roman Catholic reading regarding the various gifts given by the Spirit for varied tasks (1 Cor 12), I decided to post this little essay I wrote back in 2015, about the variety of vocations.  I may have gone a bit overboard in my quotations, and perhaps the style and precise formulations are not how I would word them now, but, overall, I think it's still a decent piece of writing. The Many-Lighted Stars of Vocation “One [is the] glory of [the] sun, and another [the] glory of [the] moon, and another [the] glory of [the] stars: therefore star differs from star in glory” (1 Cor 15:41).  Each of these has its own role, and usurping another’s role leads to chaos.  So if the sun were the moon, the earth would be consumed like a dry leaf in a bonfire; if the moon were the sun, the earth would be frozen.  Even having any other star replace the sun could have disastrous results: the star could be too large and engulf the solar system,...

  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths."--Prov 3:5-6 Sadly, men are not omniscient as God is.  He is the only One Who not only knows the past perfectly, the present in its fullness, and the future in all of its unexpected turns.  Our history is quite partial, our knowledge of now is incredibly limited, and our predictions from the future are sometimes little more than a shot in the dark.  We can never know what will happen even today, a lesson that I experienced firsthand with one of my family members this past fall.  On Monday she was fine, in Tuesday she was hospitalized, and by Friday she had fallen asleep.  I cannot know when I will cease drawing breath: these could be my final words.  Of course, we can make "educated guesses," using what knowledge we have to make reasonable predictions.  Thus, my health is good right now, so...

  St. Nil Sorsky and the Miracle-Workers of White Lake There are times that we set aside for prayer, when we follow a prayer rule, or set aside time to sit in the Lord's presence, or take part in the Church's Liturgy.  Yet we are called to pray unceasingly, and few of us can spend all of our time in prayer rules.  So we have other ways to pray: short prayers we can say when God spontaneously comes to mind, or when our hearts are filled to bursting to pray to Him.  These prayers are many and varied, and they stretch across many traditions.  The Roman Church used to call them "ejaculation" or "aspirations," while the Copts have a common one they call "the Arrow Prayer."  What matters is that they are short prayers we can offer to God at any time, when our souls are filled to bursting with love of Him or with a desire to plead to Him.  "It is possible to pray sitting, walking, sleeping, working, alone and in company. Everywhere, at all ...

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...

St. Makarios of Egypt (also known as St. Makarios the Great: not the same St. Makarios who helped compile the Philokalia ) was a Coptic monk from the 300s who has been well-revered in the East for his homilies. Though the homilies are now often called Pseudo-Makarian (they seem to have more of a Syrian background than an Egyptian one), they continue to be popular today. Some of them are even included in the Philokalia (though via an eleventh-century adaptation by St. Symeon Metaphrastis, "the Translator"). One section of these homilies (§88) cut me to the heart and prompted me to clarify something about this blog: the majority of the spiritual insights presented here are not my own. This may be obvious to some due to my extensive references, but I am confessing it for clarity's sake: in my work on this blog, I am more of a repeater and synthesizer than a spiritual forerunner. My goal is to channel the insights of past spiritual writers to my readers and only occasi...