Symeon the Metaphrast: Devoted to Remembrance of God, Engrossed in His Love and in Unutterable and Boundless Longing for Him Monday, Jul 9 2012

As has been said, love for God can be attained through the intellect’s great struggles and labors in holy meditation and in unremitting attention to all that is good.

The devil, on the contrary, impedes our intellect, not letting it devote itself to divine love through the remembrance of what is good, but enticing the senses with earthly desires.

For the intellect that dwells undistractedly in the love and remembrance of God is the devil’s death and, so to say, his noose.

Hence it is only through the first commandment, love for God, that genuine love for one’s brother can be established, and that true simplicity, gentleness, humility, integrity, goodness, prayer and the whole beautiful crown of the virtues can be perfected.

Much struggle is needed, therefore, and much inward and unseen travail, much scrutiny of our thoughts and training of our soul’s enfeebled organs of perception, before we can discriminate between good and evil, and strengthen and give fresh life to the afflicted powers of our soul through the diligent striving of our intellect towards God.

For by always cleaving to God in this way our intellect will become one spirit with the Lord, as St Paul puts it (cf 1 Cor. 6:17).

Those aspiring to the state of virtue must strive to fulfill the commandments by sustaining this inward struggle, travail and meditation unceasingly night and day, whether praying or serving, eating or drinking, or doing anything else.

In this way, if any good comes about it will be to God’s glory and not to their own.

The fulfillment of the commandments presents no difficulty or trouble to us when it is facilitated by the love of God and when this love relieves it of all that is burdensome.

As has been said, the whole effort of the enemy is directed towards distracting the intellect from the remembrance, fear and love of God, and to turning it by means of earthly forms and seductions away from what is truly good towards what appears to be good.

[...] The first and highest elements of our constitution – the intellect, the conscience, the loving power of the soul – must initially be offered to God as a holy sacrifice.

The firstfruits and the highest of our true thoughts must be continually devoted to remembrance of Him, engrossed in His love and in unutterable and boundless longing for Him.

In this way we can grow and move forward day by day, assisted by divine grace.

Then the burden of fulfilling the commandments will appear light to us, and we will carry them out faultlessly and irreproachably, helped by the Lord Himself on account of our faith in Him.

Symeon the Metaphrast (10^th century?): Paraphrase of the Homilies St Makarios of Egypt, 1,13-15. Text from G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (trans. and eds.) The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 3 (Faber & Faber, London & Boston: 1979). 

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John of Karpathos: It is Christ Himself that We Breathe Monday, Jan 23 2012

What is it that so distresses you? No stain is intrinsic.

If a man has tar on his hands, he removes it with a little cleansing oil; how much more, then, can you be made clean with the oil of God’s mercy.

You find no difficulty in washing your clothes; how much easier is it for the Lord to cleanse you from every stain, although you are bound to be tempted every day.

When you say to the Lord, ‘I have sinned’, He answers: ‘Your sins are forgiven you; I am He who wipes them out and I will remember them no more’(Matt. 9:2; Isa.43:25);

‘as far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed your sins from you; and as a father shows compassion to his sons, so will I show compassion to you’ (Ps.103:12-13).

Only do not rebel against Him who has called you to pray and recite psalms, but cleave to Him throughout your life in pure and intimate communion, reverent yet unashamed in His presence, and always full of thanksgiving.

It is God who, by a simple act of His will, cleanses you. For what God chooses to make clean not even the great Apostle Peter can condemn or call unclean.

For he is told: ‘What God has cleansed, do not call unclean’ (Acts 10:15). For has not God in His love acquitted us? ‘Who then will condemn us?’ (Rom. 8:33-34).

When we call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is not hard for our conscience to be made pure, and then we are no different from the prophets and the rest of the saints.

For God’s purpose is not that we should suffer from His anger, but that we should gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us.

So then, whether we are watchful in virtue or sometimes fall asleep, as is likely to happen because of our failings, yet shall we live with Christ.

As we look up to Him with cries of distress and continual lamentation, it is Christ Himself that we breathe.

[...] The great Physician of the sick is here beside us, He that bore our infirmities, that healed and still heals us by His wounds (Isa.53:5); He is here beside us and even now administers the medicine of salvation.

‘For’, He says’, I have afflicted you by My absence, but I will also heal you. So do not fear: for when My fierce anger has passed, I will heal you again.

[...] ‘For if a bird devotes itself with tender love to its nestlings, visiting them every hour, calling to them and feeding them, how much greater is My compassion towards My creatures!

John of Karpathos (7th century): For the Encouragement of the Monks in India, trans. G.E.H. Palmer, P. Sherrard, and K. Ware, The Philokalia, vol. 1 (Faber and Faber, London & Boston: 1979).

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John Paul II: Thanks to the Spirit’s Gifts, Every Kind of Human Sin Can be Reached by God’s Saving Power Monday, Jun 6 2011

At the climax of Jesus’ messianic mission, the Holy Spirit becomes present in the Paschal Mystery in all his divine subjectivity: as the one who is now to continue the salvific work rooted in the sacrifice of the Cross.

[...] The words of the Risen Christ on the “first day of the week” give particular emphasis to the presence of the Paraclete-Counselor as the one who “convinces the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgment.”

For it is only in this relationship that it is possible to explain the words which Jesus directly relates to the “gift” of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles.

He says: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Jesus confers on the Apostles the power to forgive sins, so that they may pass it on to their successors in the Church, but this power granted to men presupposes and includes the saving action of the Holy Spirit.

By becoming “the light of hearts,” that is to say the light of consciences, the Holy Spirit “convinces concerning sin,” which is to say, he makes man realize his own evil and at the same time directs him toward what is good.

Thanks to the multiplicity of the Spirit’s gifts, by reason of which he is invoked as the “sevenfold one,” every kind of human sin can be reached by God’s saving power.

In reality – as St. Bonaventure says – by virtue of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit all evils are destroyed and all good things are produced.

Thus the conversion of the human heart, which is an indispensable condition for the forgiveness of sins, is brought about by the influence of the Counselor.

Without a true conversion, which implies inner contrition, and without a sincere and firm purpose of amendment, sins remain “unforgiven,” in the words of Jesus, and with him in the Tradition of the Old and New Covenants.

For the first words uttered by Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, according to the Gospel of Mark, are these: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”

A confirmation of this exhortation is the “convincing concerning sin” that the Holy Spirit undertakes in a new way by virtue of the Redemption accomplished by the Blood of the Son of Man.

Hence the Letter to the Hebrews says that this “blood purifies the conscience.”

It therefore, so to speak, opens to the Holy Spirit the door into man’s inmost being, namely into the sanctuary of human consciences.

John Paul II (1920-2005): Dominum et Vivificantem, 2,5,42.

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