2020-08-17 11:58:17.370048 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780884654155
Publisher: Holy Trinity Publications
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A priest must strive, using any means necessary, to be courageous, bold, daring in the face of the bodiless enemy who continually sows his delusive fear, his foolish dread. Otherwise, he will never be a reprover of human vice, nor a true celebrant of the sacraments. Boldness is a great gift of God and a great treasure of the soul! Courage plays an important part in earthly warfare, for it simply works wonders. In the spiritual warfare it does far more.

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The pure source of every true joy, all true tranquility and inner peace, cleansing, spiritual and bodily healing, spiritual power and boldness flows in the Church. Theaters and various worldly distractions and allurements, however, can never replace that which a true Christian receives in the temple, where God Himself comforts the souls of believers as a mother comforts her child. It is in the church, also, that our departed ones receive consolation and solace, cleansing from their sins and forgiveness. How ardently we should love the temple, how we should adorn it! All who recognize its value love the Church, and the Church prays for them, saying: “Let us pray for them who, with faith, piety, and fear of God, enter herein.” “Let us pray for them that bring forth fruit and do good deeds in this holy and all-venerable temple.Sanctify them that love the beauty of Thy house. Glorify them by Thy Divine power.”18

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The world is immeasurably great; incalculably many beings living in it, but what order there is in the life of the world of nature! Immeasurably great is the world of celestial spirits, of angels, but what order there is in the angelic world, what strict fulfillment of the will of God! Great is the human world as well, but how much disorder, self-will, how many deformities and misfortunes there are in it, misfortunes, disease, many forms of death—in war, famine, floods, fires, natural disasters, drunkenness, gluttony, covetousness, falsehood, perjury, suicide, murder! They are countless! Woe unto us! But how will it be there, beyond the grave, in eternity?

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Man is a wonderful, grand, wise, artistic creation of the most-perfect artist, God. Man was not originally defiled, but incorruptible and pure; only sin, that monstrous spawn of the spirit of darkness, that foul, foolish, and evil power, made him defiled, sickly, impure, and corruptible in body and spirit, since he has a dual nature. However, the most-wise, almighty, all-merciful Artist did not allow His and our enemy to entirely destroy His beautiful and grand creation, and He made Himself a body like ours and took to Himself a soul in the womb of His most-pure Virgin Mother. By His Incarnation, teaching, miracles, suffering, death, and resurrection, His wonderful and most-wise economy, He again restores to the work of His hands its former, and even greater, beauty and glory. He again bestows on it incorruptibility, holiness, and wonderful Divine beauty and raises it to the highest blessedness, deifying human nature and setting it with Himself on the throne of the Godhead.

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