Month: August 2017

An Audience With The King

Incense coils upward

in long argentine strands

Angelic voices sing a joyous refrain:

“Receive the body of Christ

Taste the fountain of immortality.”

 

The hands of Christ serve

the body of Christ

from a golden chalice.

Each member called by name,

singular and unique.

 

Forming a line in quiet expectation

of the gift of eternal blessings;

a body numerous are

the servants of The King,

multiform, and manifesting His

infinite creativity.

 

Let us each put on

the eyes of thanksgiving

and the ears of obedience

and praise.

 

Laying aside all earthly cares,

let us settle into that peace

which reveals things

as they truly are;

without judgement

or condemnation,

but in the simplicity

of Godly revelation.

 

The Body and the Blood–

we receive,

and Christ receives us.

We are glorified by His glory

and deified by His divinity.

 

We come to the King empty-handed

and He gives us everything.

 

~FS

A Time Apart

Fly away dear one.

Shed this world

and enter dreams

of tomorrow.

 

Lift your thoughts

upon the wind,

and let the sun’s rays

carry them, and you

to unknown places.

 

There is a home

made especially for you

in that celestial land.

 

We will gather

and wonder.

Our thoughts also drifting,

here among the silent spaces

within ourselves.

 

As the clock’s rhythmic

ticking calls us back

to remembrance

of our own beating hearts.

 

We look gratefully

into each other’s eyes

while remembering,

and appreciating all

that you are to us.

 

~FS

August 12

The self-love and cleverness of men, alienating them from each other and perverting the law, have cut our single human nature into many fragments. They have so extended the insensibility which they introduced into our nature and which now dominates it, that our nature, divided in will and purpose, fights against itself. Thus anyone who has succeeded by sound judgment and nobility of intelligence in resolving this anomalous state of our nature has shown mercy to himself prior to showing it to others; for he has molded his will and purpose in conformity to nature, and through them he has advanced towards God by means of nature; he has revealed in himself what it means to be ‘in the image’ and shown how excellently in the beginning God created our nature in His likeness and as a pure copy of His own goodness, and how He made our nature one with itself in every way–peaceable, free from strife and faction, bound to God and to itself by love, making us cleave to God with desire and to each other with mutual affection.

~St Maximos the Confessor

August 11

Rebelling as we do against God through the passions and agreeing to pay tribute in the form of evil to that cunning tyrant and murderer of souls, the devil, we cannot be reconciled with God until we have first begun to fight against the devil with all our strength. for even though we assume the name of faithful Christians, until we have made ourselves the devil’s enemies and fight against him, we continue by deliberate choice to serve the shameful passions. And nothing of profit will come to us from our peace in the world , for our soul is in an evil state, rebelling against its own Maker and unwilling to be subject to His kingdom. It is still sold into bondage to hordes of savage masters, who urge it towards evil and treacherously contrive to make it choose the way which leads to destruction instead of that which brings salvation.

~St Maximos the Confessor

Poppies

Poppies

 

See the poppies grow

by the wayside.

Announcing summer’s joy

against a passing snow.

 

Their glistening ruby

red infusing blooms,

do tame the stark and bitter

winds, each flower to obey.

 

As love’s messengers

they dance before our eyes,

with warm vitality

and hope which long endures.

 

Hear them sing

of coming days so bright,

an end to frigid winter’s night,

a balm to sooth the dreary.

 

See the poppies grow,

within their petals healing,

and marvel at their beauty

against the snow.

 

~FS

August 10

The greatest authors and instigators of evil are ignorance, self-love and tyranny. Each depends on the other two and is supported by them: from ignorance of God comes self-love, and from self-love comes tyranny over one’s own kind. The devil establishes these in us when we misuse our own powers, namely our intelligence, our desire and our incensive power.

Since self-love is, as I have said, the origin and mother of evil, when this is eradicated all the things which derive from it are eradicated as well. For when self-love is absent, not the slightest trace or form of evil can exist in any way at all.

~St Maximos the Confessor

 

 

August 9

The kingdom of God the Father is present in all believers in potentiality; it is present in actuality in those who, after totally expelling all natural life of soul and body from their inner state, have attained the life of the Spirit alone and are able to say, ‘I no longer live, but Christ lives in me’ (Galatians 2:20).

He who has not severed his attachment to material things will always experience affliction, since his state of mind depends on things that are naturally changeable, and so it alters when they do. But he who has come to be in Christ will be totally impervious to such material change. That is why the Lord says, ‘I have said these things to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will experience affliction; but have courage, for I have overcome the world’ (John 16:33). In other words, ‘In Me, the Logos of virtue, you have peace, for you have been released from the swirl and turmoil of material passions and objects…

~St Maximos the Confessor

 

 

August 8

The devil has deceived us by guile in a malicious and cunning way, provoking us through self-love to sensual pleasure (Genesis 3:1-5). He has separated us in our wills from God and from each other; he has perverted straightforward truth and in this manner has divided humanity, cutting it up into many opinions and fantasies.

The suffering of the saints lies in the struggle between malice and virtue, the former fighting to win control, the latter enduring all things to avoid defeat. The first struggles to nurture sin by chastising the righteous; the second to hold good men firm although they experience more than their share of misfortunes.

~St Maximos the Confessor

 

 

August 7

As man I deliberately transgressed the divine commandment, when the devil, enticing me with the hope of divinity (Genesis 3:5), dragged me down from my natural stability into the realm of sensual pleasure; and he was proud to have thus brought death into existence, for he delights in the corruption of human nature. Because of this, God became perfect man, taking on everything that belongs to human nature except sin (Hebrews4:15); and indeed sin is not part of human nature. In this way, by enticing the insatiable serpent with the bait of the flesh, He provoked him to open his mouth and swallow it. This flesh proved poison to him, destroying him utterly by the power of the Divinity within it; but to human nature it proved a remedy restoring it to its original grace by that same power of the Divinity within it. For just as the devil poured out his venom of sin on the tree of knowledge and corrupted human nature once it had tasted it, so when he wished to devour the flesh of the Master he was himself destroyed by the power of the Divinity within it.

~St Maximos the Confessor