LENTEN MEDITATION - Day XXXIV — Dangerous Prayer

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

If the Lord comes to us, we should receive him with great joy and humility. But let us be careful not to seek mystical experience when we should be seeking repentance and conversion. That is the beginning of our cry to God. “Lord, make me what I should be, change me whatever the cost.” And when we have said these dangerous words, we should be prepared for God to hear them. And these words of God are dangerous because God’s love is remorseless. God wants our salvation with the determination due its importance. And God, as the Shepherd of Hermas says, “does not leave us till he has broken our heart and bones.”

—Metropolitan Anthony Bloom & George LeFebvre, Courage to Pray

 

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day XXV — 'Cross-bearers' or 'Cross-wearers'?

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

But in order to be Christian, to be able to pronounce the words of the Creed, to say the Lord’s Prayer, to participate in the Liturgy, we must at least determine—not only to have a velleity, but a determination firm and clear—to live the words that we pronounce, to live our whole life on Christ’s own terms. Otherwise we are only spectators of the life, of the crucifixion, of the death of Christ. We are onlookers, interested listeners who may well be moved by one thing or another, but like the barren earth or the roadside of the parable we may well receive the seed for a moment or not receive it at all—and then, however much we proclaim our faith as an objective, intellectual truth, it does not reach us.

And this is a very important thing for us to realize and to remember, because that is how we all live, more or less, except the saints...

—Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Churchianity vs Christianity

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"Cross-bearers"  or  "Cross-wearers?"