The Random Spiritual Thought Thread

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

“Do not say that you are the temple of the Lord, writes Jeremiah (cf. Jer. 7:4); nor should you say that faith alone in our Lord Jesus Christ can save you, for this is impossible unless you also acquire love for Him through your works.

As for faith by itself, ‘the devils also believe, and tremble’ (Jas. 2:19).”

+ St. Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love

 

[Lord Lavender]

I was wondering does it make more sense to have all the pantheons in the world exist?

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

This one I needed today:

"Do all in your power not to fall, for the strong athlete should not fall. But if you do fall, get up again at once and continue the contest. Even if you fall a thousand times because of the withdrawal of God's grace, rise up again each time, and keep on doing so until the day of your death. For it is written, 'If a righteous man fall s seven times' - that is, repeatedly throughout his life - seven times 'shall he rise again' (Prov 24:16 LXX)."

- St John of Karpathos, Texts for the Monks of India

Very similar to the Japanese classic: "Fall down seven times, get up eight."

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

“The truly intelligent man pursues one sole objective: to obey and to conform to the God of all. With this single aim in view, he disciplines his soul, and whatever he may encounter in the course of his life, he gives thanks to God for the compass and depth of His providential ordering of all things. For it is absurd to be grateful to doctors who give us bitter and unpleasant medicines to cure our bodies, and yet to be ungrateful to God for what appears to us to be harsh, not grasping that all we encounter is for our benefit and in accordance with His providence. For knowledge of God and faith in Him is the salvation and perfection of the soul.”

+ St. Anthony the Great, “On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life: One Hundred and Seventy Texts,” Text 2

 

[Coriolis]

I was wondering does it make more sense to have all the pantheons in the world exist?

Yes. The Christians have the trinity. Muslims speak of the "99 most wondrous names of God". Who are we humans to place limits on the divine? I have long seen all those pantheons as various aspects of a single divine entity, various ways in which humans have come to see and tried to approach God. Each of us will relate to God - to the extent that we do - differently, and that will change with time, over the course of our lives.

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

Yes. The Christians have the trinity. Muslims speak of the "99 most wondrous names of God". Who are we humans to place limits on the divine? I have long seen all those pantheons as various aspects of a single divine entity, various ways in which humans have come to see and tried to approach God. Each of us will relate to God - to the extent that we do - differently, and that will change with time, over the course of our lives.

Interesting. Could you explain your views more? Sounds similar to the Baha'i faith.

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

"...if love and self-control are present in the soul, the demons have no power to arouse any passion at all in any of the ways described, whether the body is awake or asleep."

- St Maximus the Confessor, 400 Chapters on Love

 

[Coriolis]

Interesting. Could you explain your views more? Sounds similar to the Baha'i faith.

Bahai's have a doctrine called "progressive revelation" which maintains that God keeps reaching out to humanity through the ages, through those we recognize as the founders of world religions (Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, etc.). The basic message is always the same: love God and your neighbor (on the simplest level), but it is presented differently based on the time and context.

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

"God always was, and always is, and always will be. Or rather, God always Is. For Was and Will be are fragments of our time, and of changeable nature, but He is Eternal Being. And this is the Name that He gives to Himself when giving the Oracle to Moses in the Mount. For in Himself He sums up and contains all Being, having neither beginning in the past nor end in the future; like some great Sea of Being, limitless and unbounded, transcending all conception of time and nature, only adumbrated [intimated] by the mind, and that very dimly and scantily."

+ St. Gregory the Theologian

“Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’ even if you only mean ‘In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.’ For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else; just as many of them live under a sort of illusion that they have read the Origin of Species.”

+ G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

"You will not be able to perceive the face of virtue so long as you still look on vice with a feeling of pleasure. But vice will appear hateful to you when you hunger for the taste of virtue and avert your gaze from every form of evil."

- St Elijah the Priest, Gnomic Anthology

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

"Now there's no one who approaches God with a true and upright heart who isn't tested by hardships and temptations. So in all these temptations see to it that even if you feel them, you don't consent to them. Instead, bear them patiently and calmly with humility and longsuffering."

+ St. Albert the Great

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

"The Cross, is wood which lifts us up and makes us great ... The Cross uprooted us from the depths of evil and elevated us to the summit of virtue"

+Saint John Chrysostomos

"The important thing is that we keep climbing."

 

[Lord Lavender]

Yes. The Christians have the trinity. Muslims speak of the "99 most wondrous names of God". Who are we humans to place limits on the divine? I have long seen all those pantheons as various aspects of a single divine entity, various ways in which humans have come to see and tried to approach God. Each of us will relate to God - to the extent that we do - differently, and that will change with time, over the course of our lives.

Exactly I dont see any logical reason to limit your outlook to one aspect of the divine unless that is your preference. Its a very subjective area in general the divine unless we could create entities that can be observed in the concrete and then we would have to face objective evidence of that beings existence and even then we would still be able to believe in other entities.

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

"He who thinks that he has achieved perfection in virtue will never go on to seek the original source of blessing, for he has limited the scope of his aspiration to himself and so of his own accord he deprived himself of the condition of salvation, namely God. The person aware of his natural poverty where goodness is concerned never relaxes his impetus towards Him who can fully supply what he lacks."

- St Maximus the Confessor, 500 Various Texts

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

"It is known that the body has three kinds of carnal movements.

The first is a natural movement, inherent in it, which does not produce anything (sinful, burdening the conscience) without the consent of the soul and merely lets it be known that it exists in the body.

The second kind of movement in the body is produced by too abundant food and drink, when the resulting heat in the blood stimulates the body to fight against the soul and urges it towards impure lusts. Wherefore the Apostle says: "be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess" (Ephesians 5:18). In the same way the Lord commands His disciples in the Gospels: "take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness" (Luke 21:34). And those who are monks, and are zealous to achieve the full measure of sanctity and purity, should take particular care always to keep themselves such that they can say with the Apostle, "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection" (1 Corinthians 9:27).

The third movement comes from the evil spirits, who thus tempt us out of envy and try to weaken those who have found purity (who are already monks), or to lead astray from the path those who wish to enter into the door of purity (that is, those who are as yet on the threshold of monkhood).

However, if a man arms himself with patience and an unswerving faithfulness to the commandments of God, the Holy Spirit will teach his mind how to purify his soul and body from such movements. But if at any time he weakens in his feeling and permits himself to neglect the commandments and ordinances he has heard, the evil spirits will begin to overpower him, will press upon all parts of the body and will befoul it by this movement, until the tormented soul will not know where to turn, in its despair seeing nowhere whence help could come. Only when sobered, it returns again to the commandments and, shouldering their yoke (or realizing the strength of its obligations), commits itself to the Holy Spirit, it regains a salutary disposition. Then it understands that it should seek peace solely in God, and that only thus is peace possible."

+ St Anthony the Great

"It is not darkness and desolateness of place that give the demons power against us, but barrenness of soul. And through God’s providence, this sometimes happens in order that we may learn by it."

+ St. John Climacus, "The Ladder of Divine Ascent"

Stage 2 Posse represent...:

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

"We are not willing to abandon our own will, and so none of us make any progress."

"Wretched as I am, would that I had been true to my nature, as animals are; for the dog is better than I."

- St Peter of Damascus, A Treasury of Divine Knowledge

I think St Peter is saying that our true nature is to be sinless as the animals, and in that regard, even a doge is better than us.

"The benefit of fasting is not limited to one temperance in eating, because true fasting is the elimination of the evil deeds ... Forgive your neighbor's affront to forgive the debt. You do not eat meat, but offend a brother ... The true fast is the removal of evil, language abstinence, suppressing a rage, weaning lust, slander, lies and perjury. Refraining from this is the true position. ☦️"

+ St Basil the Great

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

The Savior of the world was beaten with whips of hooks and glass, so that every blow would rip his flesh and inflict maximum pain. As he held on to the beating post, he didn’t stay down; he pulled himself back up to receive the full measure of the brutal blows. Jesus took the blows that were meant for us, knowing that it’s by his stripes that we’re healed.

Did Jesus endure it for nothing?

For if righteousness comes by the letter of the law [ten commandments], then Christ died in vain. (Galatians 2:21)

Righteousness is the gift.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the living God is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17)

2 Corinthians 3:

1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter, inscribed on our hearts, known and read by everyone. 3 It is clear that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
4 Such confidence before God is ours through Christ. 5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim that anything comes from us, but our competence comes from God. 6 And He has qualified us as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Don't let the usage of the word "commandments" trigger you. The Apostles, Church Fathers, and Saints know that The Way says the Law can be distilled into the following: Love God with all your heart and all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

In other news, Paul the Apostle of Christ opens today.

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

"A traveler setting out on a long, difficult and arduous journey and foreseeing that he may lose his way when he comes back, will put up signs and guideposts along his path in order to make his return simpler. That watchful man, foreseeing this same thing, will use sacred texts to guide him."

- St Hesychios of Sinai, On Watchfulness and Holiness

 

[Justin of Flavia Neapolis]

"This harsh hour-by-hour struggle in which so many athletes of Christ are engaged has as its aim precisely this purging of the heart."

- St Philotheos of Sinai, 40 Texts on Watchfulness

#FinishTheRace