Philokalia Ministries

“In the deserts of the heart  Let the healing fountain start.” W.H. Auden (1907-1973)  “The road of cleansing goes through that desert. It shall be named the way of holiness.” Isaiah 35.8 (LXX) It has been said that all true renewal within the life of the church comes through the desert fathers, or rather through the embrace of their wisdom. For it is not a worldly wisdom but the wisdom of the gospel, the wisdom of the kingdom that they set before us; not in an abstract fashion but through lived experience.  The desert fathers looked deep within; precisely where Christ directs us to search for the kingdom. It’s not an easy thing to do; to look deep within oneself. Often what begins to emerge can seem ugly and repulsive to us. Sin has not left us untouched. We know its darkness, its suffering, and how it shapes the way we view ourselves, the world, and others.  However, this inward gaze and the ascetic life aids us in seeing with a greater clarity not only our sin but the image of something beautiful beyond imagination; the soul made in the image and likeness of God, transformed and transfigured by his grace. Even in the midst of the struggle, the beauty of God‘s mercy and grace begins to manifest itself, and to reshape the human heart. We begin to understand that the perfection to which we are called is not moral perfection; nor is it the perfection of our natural virtues. It is to share in the very life of God. Christ strength is to become our strength. His virtue is to become our virtue.  It has been said the Christ is the most beautiful of all human beings. In him, we see what we shall be through the grace of God. All that is dark in us, all that becomes an impediment to our ability to love gradually begins to fade away. We no longer cling to the demands of our own will or the pettiness of our ego. We begin to see that in Christ we have all and lack nothing. It is in this realization that we become truly free and capable of love. How beautiful! --- Text of chat during the group: 00:05:20 FrDavid Abernethy: Starting Hypothesis 42 page 367   00:13:23 FrDavid Abernethy: Starting Hypothesis 42 page 367   00:20:45 John: Kind of reminds me of the Jews who went out to see John the Baptist to ask who he was - though I don't think they were being critical.   00:20:59 Ren Witter: For Father David’s favorite comic about Stylites: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=6720341144666823&set=pb.100000730124605.-2207520000.&type=3   00:21:39 John: Reacted to "For Father David’s f..." with 😂   00:51:35 iPhone (61): What page or book are we on Blessings   00:56:07 Rachel: 🤪   00:56:35 Rachel: I love that story.   00:56:37 Ren Witter: Can I say that to the next person who yells at me? “Imitate the Statue” :-D   00:58:46 Rachel: Fun. :/   00:59:06 Rachel: Reacted to "Can I say that to ..." with 👍   00:59:10 iPhone (61): I think we are suppose become like the statue.   01:02:39 Ashley Kaschl: This might be a leap in relation to this analogy with the stone statue but I have been having conversations about Filial Confidence in God. Isaiah 50:7 says, “The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced; Therefore I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.” If the monks in this passage agree to both enter into this life combatting their lower faculties which suggests doing battle against disordered sensibilities, then it also relates to the grace of an inflexible resolve that, no matter what happens to them, all is passing away compared to eternal glory in Christ; they have set their faces like flint against all struggles that may come. I think the goal, then, is to enter into ourselves and do battle so as to become docile and not react in the extremes, to repose ourselves like children in the arms of our Heavenly Father.   01:02:49 Rachel: You cant project it on to Christ. The all innocent and Perfect One.   01:05:16 Rachel: Reacted to "This might be a le..." with ❤️   01:05:33 Ashley Kaschl: Yes! That is what I meant by docile as well. Not a passivity but one who can be directed or taught as you said 😁🙏   01:07:44 Alexandra K: Reacted to "This might be a leap..." with 👍   01:08:56 John: A bit ironic that flint produces a spark when struck by steel or something similar. However, docility implies that this spark is not anger, but charity.   01:09:08 iPhone (61): Guilty of all these that you mentioned.  I am grateful   01:09:15 Ashley Kaschl: Reacted to "A bit ironic that fl…" with 🔥   01:11:16 Alexandra K: Reacted to "A bit ironic that fl..." with 👍   01:12:22 Sheila Applegate: Reacted to "A bit ironic that fl..." with 🔥   01:12:28 Ashley Kaschl: Reacted to "Guilty of all these …" with 💯   01:17:06 Susanna Joy: Thank you, Father. 🙏💖  

Darkness, whatever its source, cannot be driven out or overcome by mere force of will or through reason. The fathers reveal to us a darkness that exists within the human heart like no other - insensibility. It is a deadening of the soul and the death of the mind before the death of the body. We all have our vulnerabilities and have experienced wounds on both spiritual and emotional levels. To address this darkness requires an even greater trust in the grace of God to guide us through it and to provide us with what is necessary for healing. Each person is unique and with certain predispositions, including the predisposition to a more melancholic or morose state of mind. Furthermore, the human mind and heart are ever so changeable.  It is also how the evil one can use these things to distort our vision of reality. We can be engaged in the religious and spiritual life and speaking about it and yet this can mask not only a sham piety but something even darker. We can live in the dark so long that it becomes the place of comfort. To move toward the light can be painful, especially if one has experienced trauma.  More than any of the passions the remedy for this darkness consists of relying upon the grace of God and being drawn into the tenderness of Christ’s love. When our trust has been destroyed, we must allow Him to rebuild it. Where desire has been lost, we must wait for the Beloved to come to us to stir it into flame. Where wounds are so deep that they seem irreparable, it is only He who is the Lord of Life who can re-create us. --- Text of chat during the group:   00:13:51 Susan M: Thank you for introducing me to the Optina Monastery and Elders! Am buying the recommended book.   00:26:47 John: Are all these internal contradictions the same as hypocrisy, or is that a different malady?   00:39:22 sharonfisher: That’s so interesting. I find myself unwilling to be around these really negative people. I love them, but I have my own issues battling depression. It’s hard to do both at once.   00:50:23 Ren Witter: I wonder - would these people really appear very negative on the exterior? So much of the description involves teaching or speaking, and most often those who take up that role are very dynamic and charismatic personalities. It seems like the melancholy aspect might kind of hidden.   01:01:36 Kate: Fr. David, Is this also known as sloth?  Or is that a different vice?   01:01:41 Ren Witter: I’ve been told that this, or something very similar to it, can be caused by a traumatic event - particularly one involving the Church in some way. Are fasting and vigils still the only way to begin fighting it in that case?   01:06:20 Ren Witter: “He and I” is also a very good one.   01:06:43 carol nypaver: Can you please repeat the name of the French priest and his book?   01:07:21 Louise: Gaston Courtois is the name of the French priest.   01:07:31 carol nypaver: Thank you!   01:09:32 David Swiderski: My experience is this often is connected to resentment and lack of detachment. Anyone digging up wounds from the past or worrying about the future cannot help themselves from falling into despair.   01:13:25 Louise: In my clinical experience, it was my willingness as a psychotherapist to be there with the, to remain with them despite the intensity of their pain, which was healing - I did not abandon them as they were experiencing abandonment depression from early childhood.   01:17:10 Cindy Moran: Thank you Father!   01:17:10 Lorraine Green: Thank you Father   01:17:15 David Swiderski: Thanks father!   01:17:17 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you🙂  

The conclusion of hypothesis 41 was as beautiful as it was convicting. The fathers speak of a stability of mind and heart that deepens through the ascetic life and allows us to see the most subtle movements either toward or away from God. This subtlety of perception is unmatched in the spiritual tradition. The ascetic life revealed to the fathers not only sin and its manifestations, but the power of God’s grace to transform our lives in such a way that every impediment is removed that prevents us from loving unconditionally. The ascetical life is not an end in itself. It allows us to “ascend the cross”, the fathers tell us. The purity of heart that is achieved through it, the freedom from the passions, allows us to love in a self-emptying fashion, and to truly abandon ourselves to the will of God. Every illusion is set aside and one gradually comes to see with greater and greater clarity that “all is grace”. It is then that the desire for God compels us in our every word, thought, and action! --- Text of chat during the group: 00:25:38 Anthony: Perhaps something should be allowed for different characters or temperaments. Maybe this is a reason Westerners have different orders.   00:30:05 Louise: Was the Ethiopian a demon or a hallucination?   00:43:12 maureencunningham: Longest road is from the head to heart   00:50:34 Ernest: So doesn’t it help to have a spiritual director to regularly guide your path.   00:54:06 John: There's a book called "Talking Back" by Evagrius which has a variation of mocking evil thoughts: he supplies verses of Scripture against a whole variety of evil thoughts.   01:07:53 Ernest: But doesn’t one experience these higher gifts, greater than earthly bread, when one receives Holy Communion…the real presence of Jesus?   01:10:52 Louise: In the Sufi mystical tradition, the disciple-to-be had to wash the latrine for 5 years, and only that. Afterward, he could attend the meetings with the Sufi master, where he was mostly bashed, laughed at, lied to, publicly humiliated, etc. while love was produced in his heart. What a way to chose the heart!   01:12:44 Paul Grazal: +1   01:17:30 Paul Grazal: Amen.  Thank you Father   01:18:56 maureencunningham: Beautifully said Thank You.   01:19:25 David Fraley: Thank you, Father!   01:19:28 Lorraine Green: Thank you very much Father  

Freedom! We often associate this word with our own rights in this world or our capacity to do as we will and go where we want. A kind of promise is put out to us - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Yet the image of freedom that is put before us by the saints and by Saint John in particular is attached to our willingness to be “detached” from the things of the world. God created all things good but in our sin our tendency is to idolize them. We seek our identity and happiness in the things of this world and we work ourselves to the point of exhaustion to protect these things as well as ourselves from others. We do not want to lose what we have or what we have earned.  Yet we very quickly learn that this is no real happiness. In fact, it is the root of all evils. The deeper that root becomes, the greater our desire for the things of this world grows. It begins to produce the fruit of hatred, thefts, envy, separations, enmities, storms, remembrance of wrong, hardheartedness, and murderers. Therefore, what we hold up as having so much value for ourselves, and what seems to promise us freedom and safety eventually becomes our prison or the shackles that bind us. It is only in having tasted the things above that one begins to find joy, freedom from care, and the loss of anxiety. If we obtain this virtue, John tells us, we run the race with the swiftness of athletes of old - that is, stripped and unimpeded.  --- Text of chat during the group: 00:11:00 Rebecca Thérèse: Yes happy birthday!   00:11:34 Adam Paige: Reacted to "Yes happy birthday!" with 🎂   00:15:23 Lawrence Martone: Fr. Abernethy,   00:15:50 Lawrence Martone: What is your opinion of The Noon Day Devil book?   00:22:32 Connor: Re: point 1 - Prayer of the Last Optina Elders:   O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace, help me in all things to rely upon your holy will.  In every hour of the day reveal your will to me. Bless my dealings with all who surround me.  Teach me to treat all that comes to throughout the day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that your will governs all.  In all my deeds and words, guide my thoughts and feelings.  In unforeseen events, let me not forget that all are sent by you.  Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without embittering and embarrassing others.  Give me strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day with all that it shall bring.  Direct my will, teach me to pray.  And you, yourself, pray in me.  Amen.   00:26:01 Susan M: Father, who are the last Optina Elders?   00:28:04 Connor: Guess I’m the quote guy today:   “All our peace in this sad life lieth in humble suffering rather than in not feeling adversities. He who best knoweth how to suffer shall possess the most peace; that man is conqueror of himself and lord of the world, the friend of Christ, and the inheritor of heaven.” — a Kempis (Imitation of Christ)   00:31:14 Eric Ewanco: Do we know the Greek for "non-possessive" (my translation uses "poor"/"poverty" but I like your translation better)?   00:31:52 Connor: Replying to "Father, who are the …" “Over the course of one century—from Elder Leonid's arrival in 1829 until the Monastery's forced closure by the Communists in 1923—Optina, with its Skete of St. John the Forerunner, was at the center of a tremendous spiritual revival in Russia.”   https://orthochristian.com/65171.html   00:31:59 John: Replying to "Do we know the Greek..."   So does mine (archive.org).   00:32:39 Connor: I was responding to a question Father, no need to read it lol.   00:35:18 Susan M: Thank you.   00:37:14 Connor: Replying to "Do we know the Greek…" ἀκτημοσύνης in response to Greek for non-possessiveness. Literally “landless.”   00:45:31 Anthony: To forget the Beatific Vision is to merely fight the devil mostly conscious of your own efforts.  Been there.  Done that / Doing that. Not healthy.   00:52:44 Connor: St. Louis de Montfort famously got into bar fights over Our Lady’s honor… even after his ordination…   00:57:03 Anthony: Regarding "principles" in our Anglo-American world it seems to me some of our principles have been developed and used to harden us against conscience and towards vice.   00:57:16 Louise: I find that it is mostly the human gesture and the smile in return that is the gift, beyond the money given; the person feels treated as a human being at this moment.   00:57:41 Anthony: Reacted to "I find that it is mo..." with ❤️   00:57:49 Anthony: Replying to "I find that it is mo..."    I agree   01:18:40 Cindy Moran: Thank you   01:18:43 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you🙂  

The Mystery of the Human Person!  What comes forward in the ascetical writings of the fathers is not a moralistic or legalistic view of sin. Rather, we see within them a deep understanding of the complex beauty and dignity of the human person despite often being marred by sin. Perhaps too often we emphasize the negative; rather than fostering a desire both for God and for virtue and for the freedom and joy that it brings to the human heart.  Like so many of the fathers, Saint John describes certain passions as a disease in need of remedy. While we must be disciplined in so many ways and vigilant in our thoughts, we never want to lose sight of how God has created us; that it is through our very being that we love and give ourselves in love. We are not meant to hate ourselves but rather sin. Self-contempt can often be our demise in the spiritual life. True love of the self begins with the desire for God; not with self-indulgence or laziness that reduces and diminishes the image we have of creation and our own goodness. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:12:42 Ashley Kaschl: I was trying to say we have a diocesan hermit so if you DO want to stay, he’s got room haha   00:34:50 Louise: An amazing movie just came out, called 'Sound of Freedom, about combatting child sex trafficking. Being a trauma therapist myself, I can only fathom that pedophilia is due to demonic influence. These people are untreatable. What are your thoughts?   00:35:22 carol nypaver: It was a very informative and well-done film!   00:36:43 David Swiderski: Doesn't abuse of food or lust devalue these things. I know when I break a long fast water taste sweeter, food is savored and so when we truly develop love rather than just physical attraction or objectification. The diamond is often hidden by the dirt on the outside.   00:39:33 Louise: By the way, 2.5% of priests abuse children sexually, 5% of physicians, and 10% of school teachers, according to three studies.   00:44:21 Art: What do you mean Father?   00:55:03 Charbel & Justin: “Prefer nothing to the love of God.”   01:10:59 Louise: Thanks, Fr. Abernethy! I must go.   01:12:17 Ashley Kaschl: I am friends with many people who are constantly worried about money, about their paychecks, jobs, etc. and it prevents them from choosing to move forward in their potential vocations, so they put it off and put it off and put it off. I think some of the downsides of our culture, and even the mindset of many who come out of universities today, is this absolute concern about climbing the ladder in their jobs or this habit formed to always look for “greener grass”/better opportunities. And this demand of function over substance makes me think of a quote by CS Lewis:    “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”   01:16:42 John: There's an old Rod Serling movie about the corporate mindset (ladder-climbing) called "Patterns."   01:17:16 Monk Maximos: Good night   01:17:51 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you ☺️   01:17:53 Cindy Moran: Thank you Father   01:17:56 Jeff O.: Thank you!   01:18:04 Art: Thank you!   01:18:17 Jeff O.: 🎉🎉🎉   01:18:22 Monk Maximos: Flying to the Holy Land on Saturday. Will be praying for you.   01:18:30 David Swiderski: Have a wonderful Birthday Father!   01:18:34 Eric Ewanco: happy birthday!  

Avoidance: often this can be the fundamental reason that an individual gravitates towards solitude, religious, or otherwise. We do not want to be in the presence of others, because it is there that we stand revealed - not only in their eyes, but in our own. In our interactions with others, we begin to see our dominant passions and the poverty of our sin. Our weak spots, blind spots and hard spots become perfectly evident to us. It is for this reason that the desert fathers counsel spending many years in the common life because it is there that true purification takes place. It is in our day-to-day struggle with the movement of our own thoughts and emotions and interactions with others, that sin is overcome and virtue begins to grow. To flee into solitude, prematurely, and even with the highest spiritual aspirations, promises only danger. It is perilous to enter into deep silence alone. If one falls, there is no one to pick them up. If one is swallowed up by delusion, there is no one to set them aright. How can we repent without having the other as one to whom we can direct our compassion or who reveals our darker side?  Silence can never be an escape. In fact, silence can only be loved by one who has been freed from every impediment in order to encounter He who is Love and find true respite and peace in Him.  --- Text of chat during the group: 00:04:13 FrDavid Abernethy: page 359 Letter C From Abba Mark   00:04:17 FrDavid Abernethy: Welcome Sandy   00:11:11 FrDavid Abernethy: page 359 Letter C   00:15:40 Cindy Moran: Is this like a consecrated virgin?   00:26:06 LauraLeigh: Replying to "Is this like a conse..."   Cindy, I think it is probably different, in that you can continue to live in the world in any way you feel called as a consecrated virgin, but I believe that being a hermit involves deliberately leaving the world to live apart, yet following the monastic rule. Maybe Father can add or correct this.   00:27:38 Cindy Moran: Thank you!   00:27:39 LauraLeigh: Replying to "Is this like a conse..."   Your diocesan office will probably have someone who can answer questions about both.   00:27:50 LauraLeigh: Reacted to "Thank you!" with 👍   00:31:41 Rachel: This reminds me of Saint Paul stating that he doesn't even judge himself. Years ago this statement left me wondering at what he meant and have now come to believe that what Cassian is saying is the same thing that Saint Paul was saying. He had a thorn in the flesh, knew a man taken up to the third Heaven yet does not even judge himself. Not even stopping to examen himself except to boast in his weakness in order to glorify God's great mercy.   00:32:15 LauraLeigh: Seems like, whether in community or as a hermit, one needs to be prepared to be a "plucky fighter"!   00:32:22 Eric Ewanco: Can you relate these eremitic hazards to ordinary laymen who live involuntarily alone but in the world? Obviously some hazards apply, but some may not. Can you comment?   00:32:39 LauraLeigh: Reacted to "Can you relate these..." with 👍   00:32:55 LauraLeigh: Replying to "Can you relate these..."   This is my question too.   00:38:05 LauraLeigh: The thing is, though, about living alone in the world, you know very well that there is no one there to catch you when you fall. Everything   00:45:47 Anthony: I suggest that maybe women have more living examples of a secular spiritual life since widows with their maturity and their link to other widows are more common than widowers   00:45:51 Anthony: Grand torino   00:46:25 Eric Ewanco: Oh that's where that came from! I've used that. :-)   00:52:47 LauraLeigh: Thank you for not running off to a cabin in the woods, Father.   00:53:26 melissa kummerow: Reacted to "Thank you for not ru..." with 👆   00:54:12 Anthony: Sometimes I think we try too hard to be good Catholics, so hard that we dispel that peace we might otherwise have if we didn't try so hard , since trying too hard can focus us on our turbulent selves. Perhaps it's to have a hobby and cigar and an occasional prayer than making and measuring ourselves against a lot of self imposed religious obligations.   00:56:55 Eric Ewanco: With all due respect to Tolkien, I'd rather live under corrupt government than anarchy.   00:57:21 sue and mark: Reacted to "Sometimes I think we..." with ❤️   00:58:09 Patrick: Reacted to "Sometimes I think ..." with ❤️   01:09:39 Anthony: Or by taking obligation to pray and fast because you're going to fight evil......that _can_ lead to obsessive type of behavior for an ostensibly good reason. It's perhaps like a modern day "Children's Crusade."   01:12:34 John: Yesterday's Gueranger article talks about exterior-only asceticism: "The Jewish casuists were not slow in drawing up their famous formula, that all moral goodness was guaranteed to him that had received circumcision! St. Paul, later on, told them how such a principle was a stumbling-block to the Gentiles, leading them to blaspheme the name of God. According to the moral theology of these Hebrew doctors, conscience meant only what the tribunal of public justice issued as its decisions: the obligations of the interior tribunal of a man’s conscience were to be restricted to the rules followed by the assize-courts. The result of such teaching soon showed itself: the only thing people need care for was what was seen by men; if the fault were not one that human eyes could judge of, you were not to trouble about it."   01:17:24 Louise: Thanks, Fr. Abernethy!   01:18:22 sue and mark: Thank you   01:18:32 Rachel: Thank you  

The fathers have often been accused of having a negative anthropology; that is, a negative view of the human person and human nature. However, as we read through St. John’s teachings on chastity and purity, we begin to see that their understanding arises from a very high and exalted anthropology. Their understanding of how God has made us, the beauty that is expressed in our very nature is so high that we must respect its preciousness as a gift from God. Furthermore we must also respect the power that lies within us and that it is through this nature that we are able to love and give ourselves in love to others and serve God.    Indeed, it is true that sin has darkened our vision of this truth and our will has often become weak so that we misuse our nature and the appetites associated with it. Yet, God looks upon us with mercy and compassion and gives us every aid for healing. It is the Evil One that becomes our accuser who tries through shame to draw us into despair.    Part of the relentless nature of our struggle with these sins is that we are forever bound by nature to this body of ours. Yet we must remember in the struggle that the body is destined to put on immortality and incorruptibility by God’s grace. We are called all even now to make use of our body through the ascetic life to share in this incorruptibility through purity of heart. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:03:31 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: What step?   00:03:59 FrDavid Abernethy: Page 151 paragraph 76   00:20:36 Anthony: I wonder if "worm" means not the helpful compost bug, but is really the Anglo Saxon "wyrm" or dragon.   00:26:32 melissa kummerow: Reacted to "I wonder if "worm" m..." with 💡   00:27:51 Louise: Disgust and shame are useful emotions when we apply them onto our faults. Otherwise, we justify our faults. Would you say?   00:30:36 LauraLeigh: It seems to me that St Climacas, like other Desert Fathers, ask for a very difficult mental balance between being uber-humble while maintaining a healthy psychology. If you don't have a strong grip on your mental health, this ascetical lifestyle could trip you up or even take you down. Other than recommending a guide, like an elder, any thoughts about how we can cautiously yet profitably practice asceticism?   00:31:20 Anthony: I learned something,  I think from a talk by a Maronite. It can be helpful to pray Jesus Prayer in another language.  Sometimes that prevents thoughts in one's native tongue from arising in the mind.   00:34:39 LauraLeigh: I need to remember that the Fathers are talking to others already in the ascetical life. And then to remember to order everything toward God.   00:35:46 sue and mark: could it be said that simply looking for opportunities to practice self -restraint for the love of God is a good place to start.  especially in the areas of our passions.   00:36:06 angelo: Reacted to "could it be said tha..." with 👍   00:42:13 LauraLeigh: Reacted to "could it be said tha..." with ❤️   00:43:01 LauraLeigh: "The Way of the Ascetics"   00:46:46 carol nypaver: The Little Flower   00:52:15 Anthony: Remember: the demons don't play fair.   00:53:24 Cindy Moran: In the Classics of western spirituality version of the Ladder this verse translation is unclear to me   00:54:11 Cindy Moran: Yes.   00:54:40 Cindy Moran: I'm slow   00:56:14 Cindy Moran: Because the soul tormented by earlier sin is a burden to me I will save it from its enemies Lk 18:5   00:59:15 Cindy Moran: Much clearer to me now   01:05:31 LauraLeigh: Being proud of your sins is a sign of a darkened conscience, I think. And a sensitive and refined conscience is a great help in getting a handle on troubling or persistent sins. This is what I'm particularly working on.   01:06:36 angelo: Reacted to "Being proud of your ..." with 👍   01:08:26 Anthony: I think it also means that you've entrusted yourself to God,  He won't play legal games with that trust and so the evil thoughts are not as awful upon us as the devil wants us to think. Sure the devil is a deceiver and wants us to take full mortal sin culpability for what the demons sows.  But the struggle is evidence God loves you and takes your whole self and situation into account.   01:09:25 LauraLeigh: Reacted to "I think it also mean..." with ❤️   01:10:30 angelo: Reacted to "I think it also mean..." with 👍   01:10:37 Eric Ewanco: I've found it immensely consoling that empirical evidence from exorcisms establish that demons are extremely legalistic. The converse of this is that God is not. This is a great relief to me, as we often tend to see God as legalistic and looking for "gotchas"   01:12:08 John: After you've read Fr. Mateo's "Night Adoration in the Home," it's impossible to think of God as legalistic. He is the complete opposite!   01:12:21 sue and mark: Reacted to "After you've read Fr..." with ❤️   01:12:34 LauraLeigh: Reacted to "After you've read Fr..." with ❤️   01:12:50 LauraLeigh: Replying to "After you've read Fr..."   I have that! Thanks for the reminder!   01:13:05 Susan McShane: Reacted to "I've found it immens..." with ❤️   01:13:05 John: Replying to "After you've read Fr..."   👍   01:13:23 sue and mark: I have that too...   01:14:53 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you🙂   01:14:54 Louise: Thanks, Fr!   01:14:58 Cindy Moran: Thank you Father...excellent session   01:15:02 Jeff O.: Thank you! Blessings  

In the advertisement for and description of this evening’s group, I wrote: “How does one deal with feelings of desolation in regards to one’s vocation, resentment towards others, being treated with envy or finding one’s circumstances to be a source of temptation? In the face of the many trials brought upon us by the evil one, great perseverance is needed and freedom from self will.”  This description, however, does not capture the depth of the wisdom that we were exposed to this evening. All of our asceticism, all the ways that we seek to remove the impediment of our passions, all the ways that we seek to remain focused upon the spiritual battle that lies within the heart has one end: to bring us to the place where we can enter into the Paschal Mystery in union with Christ. Not one of us should seek to leave the training, ground of the spiritual life prematurely or to choose to rest before God grants it. For it is precisely in this battle that all that remains an impediment to our ascending the cross with Christ is removed. Abba Isaiah, in the richest and most beautiful interpretation of the Passion, unpacks for us the meaning of every experience of our Lord; not that we might reflect upon it in an abstract fashion, but that we would take hold of His experiences as our own. We engage in the ascetical life not to reach the kind of moral perfection or emotional Nirvana but rather that we might reach the place where we can ascend the Cross with Christ. Once we are delivered from all of these things, we pass through our own Passion Week and enter into another, new age, thinking new and incorrupt thoughts. We are reminded of St. Paul’s words, “set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For you’re dead.“ We leave our sins behind and find mercy together with those who are worthy of Him! --- Text of chat during the group: 00:10:59 FrDavid Abernethy: page 353 paragraph 4   00:11:16 FrDavid Abernethy: And Elder said: “Just as a tree . . . .   00:32:56 Anthony: I suggest that the various revolutions, including the American,  were designed to uproot a stable society.  The mass migrations of the late 1800s to 1900s were caused by Socialist governments displacing their peasants. This uprooted stability and is a root of our mental and moral afflictions today.   00:36:36 Anthony: The honest peasant is an essential character for Solzhenitsyn.   00:37:05 Louise: Focus   00:37:07 Anthony: Vanishing point   00:37:40 Zoom user: True North   00:37:54 Carol: touchstone   00:40:59 Anthony: The reformation was a symptom of society failing in its "monastic " vocation.   00:48:48 Louise: Sartre   00:50:38 Louise: Ste-Thérèse-de-Lisieux forced herself to hang out with the most annoying nun in the convent in order to confront her impatience and find her deeper loving kindness.   01:19:37 Louise: Thank you, Fr. Abernethy!   01:19:43 sheri: Thank you.  

Gustave Flaubert once wrote, “God is in the details.“ The truth of this statement is born out in this evening‘s writing from Saint John Climacus on the fathers’ understanding and description of the development of a passion within the soul. With great clarity, St. John takes us step-by-step through the inner movements of the mind and the heart. The battle begins with an assault. An image or an idea is encountered for the first time and enters into the heart. There’s no sin in this, but our response is important nonetheless. If we begin to converse with the image or idea its presence will take us a step further. We cannot allow ourselves to linger with such images even if we do not seem to be moved by them. Eventually, Saint John tells us, if we do linger we can fall into consent; the soul bends down, as it were, and begins to take delight in the temptation. Such temptations can also come upon us with force; seeking all at once to destroy any semblance of order or peace within the heart. What is important is that we struggle; that we engage in the spiritual battle and fight with equal or greater force against what seeks to afflict us. A passion develops whenever a sin nestles with persistence in the soul and forms a habit. It is then that the sins has put down deep roots and begins to guide and direct our decisions and actions. The passion is unequivocally condemned in every case.  St. John tells us, therefore, that we must seek to cut off the first assault with a single blow in order to prevent everything that might follow. Finally, Saint John reveals to us just how humble we must be in the spiritual warfare. There are temptations that can come to us that he describes as a “flick of the mind”. They are instantaneous and inapprehensible.  There can be something in our life that triggers a memory or movement from the depths of our unconscious.  It gives rise to or stirs a passion that has not been healed, but merely buried. All of this teaches us that our desire must be directed toward God and God alone. The human heart can be a treacherous thing, and as the prophet asks, “who can trust it?“ It is God alone who we must trust. We must hope in his promises and the grace that he offers us from moment to moment. This is our path to healing. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:14:15 FrDavid Abernethy: page 150 para 72   00:15:34 angelo: Reacted to "page 150 para 72" with 👍   00:19:25 Daniel Allen: Joined a little late, where are we at?   00:19:40 Bonnie Lewis: 72   00:19:55 Daniel Allen: Thank you   00:20:05 Bonnie Lewis: Reacted to "Thank you" with 👍🏻   00:20:37 Anthony: Read Agatha Christie, and this doesn't seem to strange.   00:40:17 Lawrence Martone: Pope Shenouda says “Be aware then, of the first step toward sin and run for your life.  You are not stronger than Adam…”   00:40:49 carol nypaver: 😲   00:43:16 Louise: Would you say that repentance involves feeling pain from having hurt another? This pain thus becomes a stimulus to possibly prevent the future repetition of this sin.   00:52:31 Anthony: A person can be so focused on avoiding temptation that the person's psychology or demons or something else can constantly bring to mind the thing to be avoided - kind of making the temptation always present.  Maybe it's an after-effect of eating from the tree we were not to eat.   01:06:49 Cindy Moran: Going postal   01:07:34 LauraLeigh: Blindsided.   01:10:31 Rory: May I speak   01:10:55 Patrick: Fr. David, can you please clarify the meaning of 'dispassion' in the last sentence of 15.74? Is it synonymous with asceticism in this context?   01:11:18 Anthony: But is he saying the flick of the mind actual moral guilt?  How much of this fault, how much is over-focus on the self?  Be focused too much on this, be too sensitive, and you can go nutty, not be a "man fully alive."  That's surely not good.  Our Lord was supremely sensitive to good and evil, but He was also self-possessed.  It's possible even these saints went a little self-obsessed and accidentally project that forward to us.  It interferes with life to always be aware of every possibly evil and continually feel guilty.   01:16:31 Daniel Allen: How does this relate to Christ saying, “Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe in Me also.”   01:17:54 Daniel Allen: To expand on that question, if a flick of the mind can cast us into sin without any noticeable stimulus how does one not become troubled?   01:18:39 Ren Witter: Replying to "How does this relate..."   Maybe the context of that is pretty important in this case. At that moment he is speaking about his crucifixion. At the same time, he also says of the peace he wants his disciples to have: “not as the world gives it do I give it to you."   01:20:40 David Swiderski: One must quiet the mind to hear the voice of God who is like a whisper on the wind while the devil is a constant irritating  and rattling of the passions.   01:21:07 Bonnie Lewis: Reacted to "One must quiet the m..." with 👍🏻   01:21:35 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you 🙂   01:22:14 Cindy Moran: Replying to "How does this relate..."     Thank you Father!   01:22:23 David Swiderski: Thank you Father!   01:22:25 Bonnie Lewis: So beautiful.  Thank you Father David.   01:22:28 kevin: thanks Ren and Fr  

The beauty of virtue! So often we discuss the spiritual life as if the main goal or the end of it is simply the avoidance of sin. While avoiding sin certainly is essential, we are called to something far greater. What we received through the Paschal mystery and through our baptism is adoption as sons and daughters of God; the capacity by grace to share in the life of the Trinity. The fathers speak of deification.    As we read through Saint John’s description of purity and chastity, these truths begin to manifest themselves. We engage in this constant struggle with our own appetites and with the temptations from the demons not simply to avoid sin, but to give and receive love in the way God intended; for that love to be rightly ordered and also, by grace, to become something that is supernatural.    We are to love one another as Christ has loved us. It is often very difficult for us to understand this because more often than not we have never tasted the fruit of this virtue. We are surrounded by its opposite; and often have been immersed in that which is impure for most of our lives. Yet, even as we struggle for this virtue, we must not fall into a purely moralistic or legalistic view of life. It is through entering into the love of Christ and receiving that love through the holy Eucharist, that we are given the capacity to love in a selfless fashion. Furthermore, it is also through this Grace that we become capable of receiving such love without any impediment. May God open our eyes to the beauty of the life that He is made possible for us and the beauty of virtue! --- Text of chat during the group: 00:08:51 FrDavid Abernethy: page 149 para 63   00:10:20 FrDavid Abernethy: page 149 para 63 “When we are in the world for some necessity”   00:35:38 Louise: If King David repented, why did his kingdom went down so badly via his descendance (Solomon)?   00:45:49 Eric Ewanco: He's referring to Peter who Scripture said had a mother-in-law   00:48:07 Lawrence Martone: Regarding the question on David, I would highly recommend:   00:48:51 angelo: Reacted to "452E4EA7-2A85-4B45-9031-4D3B09714915_1_102_a.jpeg" with 👍   00:49:43 Louise: Thanks to both!   00:52:06 Cindy Moran: Reacted to "452E4EA7-2A85-4B45-9031-4D3B09714915_1_102_a.jpeg" with 👍   00:52:18 TFredman: Reacted to "452E4EA7-2A85-4B45-9031-4D3B09714915_1_102_a.jpeg" with 👍   00:53:45 angelo: Replying to "452E4EA7-2A85-4B45-9031-4D3B09714915_1_102_a.jpeg"   it is free on pdf file in St. Philopateer Coptic Orthodox website.   01:02:32 Anthony: Long ingrained habits can be at play.  In NY, I remember Talk Radio or Frank Sinatra etc often being in the background.  It can be uncomfortable not to have something in the background.   01:08:16 Cindy Moran: Th orthodox seem to have more involved night prayer in their books.   01:13:13 Cindy Moran: I've done that at times...LOL   01:15:19 Rebecca Thérèse: Until very recently it was common for everyone to have two sleeps broken by some kind of activity in the middle of the night even including going out and visiting others   01:18:12 Cindy Moran: Thank you Father...Happy Father's Day, too!   01:18:17 angelo: thank you   01:18:19 TFredman: Thank you Fr. Abernethy and everyone!   01:18:19 Jeff O.: thank you!   01:18:19 David Swiderski: Thank you   01:18:22 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you🙂   01:18:28 kevin: Thank you