Practice Resting

Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him 
Psalm 37:7

We don't get enough rest - spiritual rest, that is. The routine panic in which many of us live daily is indicative of the inner merry-go-round that spins even faster. Whenever pressure points come (like surgery, new career moves, test scores, emergencies, and tragedies) we churn away on the inside like an electric ice-cream maker.

It's hard work to learn how to rest properly. We believe we are remiss to just sit quietly at the feet of Jesus. Like Martha we think we should be busy, busy, busy.  And we can't relate to the Marys of the world who are able to sit still when there are so many things to be done (or worried about).

Resting spiritually is not laziness, it does not mean shirking responsibility.  It is calm assurance that God is working right on schedule.

Verses and Fathers Sayings

I will make darkness light before them,
and crooked places straight

Isaiah  42: 16



You have printed Your features on us! You created us
in your image and according to Your likeness! You made
us Your Coins; yet Your coins should not remain in darkness

 St. Augustine 

Fathers Sayings - St. Maximos the Confessor

"Let us be satisfied simply with what sustains our present life, not with what pampers it. Let us pray to God for this, as we have been taught, so that we may keep our souls un-enslaved and absolutely free from domination by any of the visible things loved for the sake of the body.

Let us show that we eat for the sake of living, and not be guilty of living for the sake of eating. The first is a sign of intelligence, the second proof of its absence."

~ St. Maximos the Confessor

Fear of God

 

By St. Symeon the New Theologian

"When a man walks in the fear of God he knows no fear, even if he were to be surrounded by wicked men. He has the fear of God within him and wears the invincible armor of faith. This makes him strong and able to take on anything, even things which seem difficult or impossible to most people.

Such a man is like a giant surrounded by monkeys, or a roaring lion among dogs and foxes. He goes forward trusting in the Lord and the constancy of his will to strike and paralyze his foes. He wields the blazing club of the Word in wisdom." 

Verses and Fathers Sayings

He will not allow your foot to be moved;
He Who keeps you will not slumber.

Psalm 121: 3

That there is no one stronger than him who
enjoys the heavenly help; and no one weaker
than him who is deprived of it.

 St. John Chrysostom
 

God - By Origen

GOD

One, Immaterial, Incomprehensible; Revealed in Creation - and especially in Mind

Therefore, having refuted, to the best of our ability, every interpretation of Scripture which suggests that anything material is to be understood in God, we say that the true nature of God cannot be comprehended by our thought. 

For if there is anything that we are able to conceive or understand about God, we are bound to believe him far superior to anything which we conceive.  If we saw a man scarcely able to look at a spark of light … and we wished to teach him about the brightness and the splendour of the sun; should we not have to tell him 'The sun's splendour is better and grander all this light which you see, to a degree which cannot be described or imagined'? 

So, while our mind is shut up within the confines of flesh and blood, and is rendered duller and blunter by its connexion with such material substances; though it be considered far superior to material nature, nevertheless, when it strives towards the immaterial, then it scarcely attains the standing of a spark …

Our eyes cannot behold the very nature of light, that is, the sun's own self: but beholding it's brightness, or its rays … we can consider how great is the source and origin of material light.  Now the works of the divine providence and the design of the whole universe are as it were rays of God's nature, in comparison with his very being. 

Our mind cannot behold God as he is in himself, therefore it forms its conception of the Creator of the universe from the beauty of his works and the loveliness of his creatures…. God is to be thought of as an uncompounded, intellectual being … a monad and, so to say, a unit, a mind, and the source from whom is the beginning of all intellectual being or mind … ..

…. There is a kinship between the human mind and God; for the mind is itself an image of God, and therefore can have some conception of the divine nature, especially the more it is purified and removed from matter.   

The Early Christian Fathers

Fathers Sayings

"It is our part to seek, 

His to grant what we ask; 

ours to make a beginning, 

His to bring it to completion; 

ours to offer what we can, 

His to finish what we cannot."

St. Jerome

With one voice

We read: 'Praise the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together.' To whom is the psalmist speaking? To every member of Christ's body.  And what kind of praise does he mean?  That which is not jealous of another's love.

The love of the flesh is pestilential. Let a man cast his eyes on a woman's beauty and he desires it for himself alone, and rages at the thought of sharing the sight with someone else.  Not so is the love of the wisdom of God. We shall look on him face to face, we shall all see him, and there will be no envying of one another.

 He will show himself to all and they shall all be changed but he will not change.  He is wisdom, he is God, by whom all things were made.  He has his lovers, but note what the lover says: 'Magnify the Lord with me.'  Not alone will I magnify him, love him, embrace him.  There is room for all men. 

In this world men love chariot racing, hunting and so on and want everyone to admire their favorites too.  They say, 'Share my love for this dancer, that actress, this obscenity' - that is what the mob clamours.

Does the Christian in the Church cry out that everyone should love the truth of God with him?

Be fervent, brethren; if you love God draw all who are near to you, all your household, to that love.

  DAILY READING WITH

St Augustine --- The Heart at Rest

Fathers Sayings

 Do not rush one prayer after another 

but say them with orderly deliberation, 

as one addressing a great person for a favor. 

Do not just pay attention to the words, 

but rather let the mind be in the heart, 

standing before the Lord in full awareness 

of His presence, in full consciousness 

of His greatness and grace and justice.

St. Theophan the Recluse