Orthodox Portal

You must never regard any spiritual work as firmly established, and this is especially true of prayer; but always pray as if beginning for the first time. When we do a thing for the first time, we come to it fresh and with a new born enthusiasm. If, when starting to pray, you always approach it as though you had never yet prayed properly, and only now for the first time wished to do so, you will always pray with a fresh and lively zeal. And all will go well. ( The Art of Prayer, pg. 74.)
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Complete trust in God – that’s what holy humility is. Complete obedience to God, without protest, without reaction, even when something seems difficult and unreasonable. Abandonment into the hands of God. The words that we repeat during the Divine Liturgy say it all: ‘Let us commend our whole life to Christ our God.’… To You, O Lord, we leave everything. That is what trust in God is. This is holy humility. This is what transfigures a person and makes him a ‘God-man.’…
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Humility is the door of the Kingdom [of heaven] that introduces those who draw near to it… We who wish to understand this must not cease to examine ourselves; if in the perception of our heart we consider that our neighbor excels us in all things, then Divine mercy is near us.
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“It is possible for one who fasts not to be rewarded for his fasting. How? When, indeed, we abstain from foods, but do not abstain from iniquities: when we do not eat meat, but gnaw to pieces the homes of the poor; when we do not become drunkards with wine, but become drunkards with evil pleasures: when we abstain all the day, but all the night we spend in profane entertainment. Then what is the benefit of abstention from foods, when on the one hand you deprive your body of a selected food, but on the other; offer yourself unlawful pleasure?”
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The assertion of the spirit-bearing potentialities of the material creation is a constant theme during the season of Lent. On the first Sunday of the Great Fast, we are reminded of the physical nature of Christ’s Incarnation, of the material reality of the holy icons, and of the visible, aesthetic beauty of the Church. On the second Sunday we keep the memory of St. Gregory Palamas (1296 – 1359,) who taught that all creation is permeated by the energies of God, and that even in the present life this divine glory can be perceived through man’s physical eyes, provided that his body has been rendered spiritual by God’s grace. On the third Sunday we venerate the material wood of the Cross; on the sixth Sunday we bless material branches of palms; on Wednesday in Holy Week we are signed with material oil in the sacrament of Anointing; on Holy Thursday we recall how at the Last Supper Christ blessed material bread and wine, transforming them into His Body and Blood.
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