Showing posts with label World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World. Show all posts

15 October 2012

Selected Quotes from Fr. Schmemann's Journals

"The temptation of piety is to reduce Christianity to piety; the temptation of theology--to reduce it totally to history."

"'A quiet and silent existence' is the summit of intelligence, of wisdom, of joy, and--I don't know how to say it better--of 'interestedness.' Humility is not to be crest fallen, dejected, nor to be a bigot. It is a royal and kingly virtue because humility stems from wisdom, from knowledge, from contact with life overabundant. The contemporary man is a man who constantly jumps to action. Our whole civilization is an energetic 'jump to action'--and man finds himself exactly where he was before he jumped."

"Amazing--in nature, in the world, everything moves. But in this movement (falling snow, branches lit by the sun, fields) each moment reveals a divine immobility, a fullness, in an icon of eternity as life.

Another strange thought: the  whole world lives at the same time, the whole world lives this very minute, owns this minute; the rest is abstract numbers on a calendar."

16 July 2012

Monasticism Question & Answer

All quotes from Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol, under the pseudonym "Father Maximos", are from the third chapter of The Mountain of Silence by Kyriacos Markides.

1) Is it egotistical to lock oneself up in a monastery to save one's own soul in favor of fighting for God in the world?

"The Gospel is very clear about this issue.  Let me give you an example.  Do you recall the incident when that young man went to Christ and asked Him, 'Lord, what must I do to save my soul?' And Jesus replied, 'Sell everything you have and join me.' In another part we hear Christ say, 'Nobody can be my disciple if he loves his mother or his father, or his daughter or his fields more than me.' And He gave the first injunction, 'Love the Lord Thy God with all they soul and with all thy heart.' That is, love God with your entire being. Just think of the Twelve Apostles. They were ordinary people that He picked from ordinary life, but they gave up everything in order to follow and live with Him."

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