The Loving Father

Just as a father who loves his children makes his sons dine with him but when he sees they are conducting themselves carelessly with regard to their lessons and distracting themselves with unprofitable matters, expels them from his table and orders his servants not to give them any food, in order to teach them not to be scornful and careless. So does our good Master and God dispose Himself for the sake of those who are His servant and by virtue of His grace and love for mankind, His sons. 

He gives them Himself, "the bread which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world" (John 6:33), and they are nourished continually to satiety from Him and with Him, and through participation are transformed into life everlasting and are sanctified in body and soul. But when they neglect the commandments and by free exercise of their will, conduct themselves scornfully or slothful, and busy themselves with some worldly affair, inclining thus toward what is unsuitable and not proper to piety, then the Nourisher of all deprives them of Himself. 

When they have come to an awareness of that good of which they have been deprived, have turned around immediately, sought it out continually, and not having found it, beat their breasts, weep and mourn for themselves, lay on themselves every kind of suffering, long for every sort of distress, trial and dishonor, in order that their loving Father might see their sorrows, their voluntary woe, and taking pity on them, turn about and give Himself to them once again. Which indeed He does. 

So they are restored to their former condition and glory, with yet greater assurance and the same delight in the good things "which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived." (1Cor 2:9) They revere their Father more than before, and tremble before Him as Master, lest through inattentiveness they be implicated in the same evils as before and so be cast away from Him. 

St. Symeon The New Theologian 

Christ is Head to One Body


Since St Paul feels that he is obligated to fulfil the "Mystery of Christ" through the grace, enduring all difficulties for them, it is befitting that they realize the divine call by which they were called.

The servant should not be the only one who works, but every member has to play his role, or in other words, has to keep his church membership through hard work. The focus of that work is to abide in fervent love, which grants the unity of the spirit through the harmony of all the members as one body to the One Head.

Fr Tadros Yacoub Malaty
 

Church Attendance

Don’t be tempted to indulge yourself in not coming to church at the beginning of the service or leaving before it is over. Remember, each service is a complete unit and it can provide its full benefit only in its entirety. Just as food is tasty only when it is fully seasoned, so the service can completely satisfy the spiritual taste only when it is heard in full. Thus, he who misses the beginning or does not remain until the end is laboring, but he deprives himself of the fruit of his labor; he creates with one hand and destroys with the others.

Further, one must go to church not inattentively. For, it is always possible that one may go to church not in a way worthy of praise but rather of condemnation, i.e., by going and not receiving any spiritual benefit. Approaching the church, you must leave every care and worry about your affairs at the threshold in order to enter with a serene mind. Entering the church, you must put on reverence like a garment, remembering to Whom we are coming and to Whom we intend to address our prayers.

Having taken your place in the church (best of all, the same place each time), you should gather your thoughts and mentally stand before the face of the omnipresent God, offering Him reverent worship in body and spirit, with a contrite heart and in humble reverence. After this, you must follow, without wandering thoughts, everything that is going on — what is being sung and read in the church — all the way to the end of the service.

That is all! In this way, we won’t be bored in church, looking here and there and starting conversations, and we won’t be wishing that the service be over soon. Instead, passing from one prayerful feeling to another and from one reverent thought to the next, we will be like those in a fragrant garden, moving from one group of flowers to another.

St. Theophanes The Recluse


 

Above Essence

But if some say that the body is immaterial, in the same way as the fifth body of which the Greek philosophers speak (which body is an impossibility), it will be wholly subject to motion like the heaven.

For that is what they mean by the fifth body. Who then is it that moves it? For everything that is moved is moved by another thing. And who again is it that moves that? And so on to infinity till we at length arrive at something motionless.

For the first mover is motionless, and that is the Deity.

And must not that which is moved be circumscribed in space? The Deity, then, alone is motionless, moving the universe by immobility. So then it must be assumed that the Deity is incorporeal.

But even this gives no true idea of His essence, to say that He is unbegotten, and without beginning, changeless and imperishable, and possessed of such other qualities, as we are wont to ascribe to God, and His environment. For these do not indicate what He is, but what He is not.

But when we would explain what the essence of anything is, we must not speak only negatively.

In the case of God, however, it is impossible to explain what He is in His essence, and it befits us rather to hold discourse about His absolute separation from all things. For He does not belong to the class of existing things; not that He has no existence, but that He is above all existing things, nay even above existence itself.

For if all forms of knowledge have to do with what exists, assuredly that which is above knowledge must certainly be also above essence; and conversely, that which is above essence will also be above knowledge.

St Gregory of Nyssa