Gleanings from Orthodox Christian Authors and the Holy Fathers
christianity
2 Entries
Christanity is similar to tasting deeply of truth, eating and drinking of truth - to eat and drink on and on unto power and energy. It is like a certain spring when someone very thirsty begins to drink from it. But then, while he is drinking, someone rushes him off before he has drunk his fill. Afterward, he burns more ardently, because he has tasted the water and eagerly seeks it. So also in the spiritual life, a person tastes and partakes of the heavenly food, but while he is eating it is taken away and no one given him to eat his fill. St. Macarius the Great, Fifty Spiritual Homilies.
Christian religion is not a certain philosophic system, about which learned men, trained in metaphysical studies, argue and then either espouse or reject, according to the opinion each one has formed. It is faith, established in the souls of men, which ought to be spread to the many and be maintained in their consciousness.
There are truths in Christianity that are above out intellectual comprehension, incapable of being grasped by the finite mind of man. Our intellect takes cognizance of them, becomes convinced of their reality, and testifies about their supernatural existence.
Christianity is a religion of revelation. The Divine reveals its glory only to those who have been perfected through virtue. Christianity teaches perfection through virtue and demands that its followers become holy and perfect. It disapproves of and opposes those who are under the influence of the imagination. He who is truly perfect in virtue becomes through Divine help outside the flesh and the world, and truly enters another, spiritual world; not, however, through the imagination, but through the effulgence of Divine grace. Without grace, without revelation, no man, even the most virtuous, can transcend the flesh and the world. "Modern Orthodox Saints, St. Nectarios of Aegina", Dr. Constantine Cavarnos, Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Belmont, Massachusetts., 1981., pp. 154-187
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