Philokalia Ministries

As we pour through the sayings of Saint John Climacus about pride and overcoming pride, what we see in the Evergetinos and its teaching on humility we see now in the Ladder’s teaching on pride. We are circling around something greater than just an idea. We circle around pride and look at its many facets in order to see how subtle the temptations often are to embrace the illusion that this vice put...

We were turn once again to the most important of virtues - humility. Despite the repeated sayings about humility and the many illustrative stories, one does not have a sense of the “same thing” being said over and over again. Rather, humility is like a precious gem. Through the writings and the sayings of the Fathers we revolve around it, allowing the light of Christ to illuminate every facet of t...

“An arrogant man yearns for authority; he cannot, or rather, does not wish to perish utterly.“ In many ways, this one saying sums up our reflection this evening. When pride takes hold of an individual soul, one begins to move further and further away from God. Rather than “perish utterly” - that is, die to self and sin - one drives God from the mind and heart. The capacity to love diminishes, the...

How beautiful is the path that the Lord sets before us to draw us to Himself. Its beauty is rooted in the fact that it is the path that He took toward us. God reveals himself, He draws back to the veil, and shows us the depth of his humility, love and compassion. What we find in the desert fathers and in their sayings is a portrait of the gospels; more specifically a portrait of Christ himself - t...

Rarely do we acknowledge the extraordinary gift that God gave to his Church in the Desert fathers. It is precisely through their “living martyrdom” - their dying to self, to sin, and to the world, that they are able to guide us through the trials and tribulations of spiritual warfare. Their perception of our vulnerabilities as human beings was very acute. Humbled over and over again and acknowledg...

Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Evergetinos: We often hear the question: “How would you describe the taste of honey to another who has never had it or the taste of a pear or its texture?” We might ask the very same questions about the virtues and in particular that of humility. How do we describe something that another has never tasted or that we have barely tasted ourselves? More importantly,...

One of the prophets writes: “the human heart is a treacherous thing, who can endure it!“ We begin to see the truth of this statement or more accurately the truth that is behind it. The spiritual battle that we engage in with our passions and our thoughts is often dogged by a kind of diabolical intrigue. The devil is relentless and unresting. He can manipulate us in such a way that he makes us desi...

Humility is above all the other virtues.” Living in the truth allows for the most important thing to emerge in a person’s life – repentance. When we see and acknowledge the nature of our actions and our thoughts and we bring them before God, it is then that He can heal us and make us whole.  The struggle to do this, however, can be great. There’s always part of us that wants to hold on to the illu...

Humility often eludes us not only in practice but in our ability to understand it. As always, we have to look to Christ as the standard. What we see revealed in him through the incarnation and in the Paschal mystery opens the door for us to begin to walk this same path.  Understanding comes through experience. We must be shown what humility is and be made humble through experience. So often the se...

With stunning clarity, St. John Climacus begins to show us the subtlety of vainglory; how easily it draws us to focus upon the self in one fashion or another. It suggests thoughts that elevate us in our own eyes and diminishes others in our judgment.  Through vainglory we begin the movement of placing ourselves in the position of God; placing the self at the center of the spiritual life. The battl...

Every generation, every person, must be made humble!  Whatever way that takes place - whatever means we are shown this, it must happen if we are to follow Christ, and if we are to live in Him. He is Humility because he is Truth. In fact, the simplest definition of humility for us is truthful living. We must live in the Truth that has been revealed to us - we must live in Christ.  That sounds a lot...

Self-esteem . . . how the meaning of that has changed over the generations. And when it becomes abstracted from our relationship with God, when our self-identity, purpose, and meaning becomes unmoored from He who created us, self-esteem can become the most grotesque of the vices. It will not only diminish our virtues, but destroy them completely.  When the sweat and the toil of the spiritual life...

I can say this without any caveat - reading the Evergetinos is one of the most important things that we could do for ourselves in the spiritual life. I know that might sound extreme; especially given all of the writings of the Fathers that we have read over the course of the years, including the writings of the Philokalia.  Yet, there’s something exceptional about the Evergetinos. We are not only...

Anxiety, it has been said, is ubiquitous. We all experience it and in its many manifestations. On a purely psychological level, one can never get to the heart or source of this feeling and its accompanying isolation. Often we find ourselves desperate to free ourselves from its grip. Therefore, we either immerse ourselves in the things of this world and maintain the illusion of security or we becom...

One of the most difficult things about the faith is not simply desiring God with all of our heart, but allowing God and His desire for us to transform us and shape us. It means allowing Him to draw us into His own life and virtue. We are to become in the world what He is to us.  Therefore, we are immediately confronted with the fact that we have to let go of the limited powers of our own reason an...

All that was to be redeemed had also then to be assumed in the Incarnation. All that is human and all that is part of the human experience must be embraced by Christ in order that it might be healed by his grace.  We are shown this in a very simple way in regards to one of our basic appetites as human beings - sleep. Like any other appetite, it must be ordered rightly; otherwise, it can end up ste...

Being thrown off balance! The experience of vertigo! This is what comes to mind when considering the writings from the Evergetinos this evening. Once again, the gospel is put before us in an unvarnished fashion. It is as if through the unclouded vision of the fathers suddenly the truth of the gospel appears before us and all of its starkness. We are to love and to become love. It is this reality t...

The healing of the soul! So often we lose sight of the meaning of the spiritual life and the disciplines that we embrace. We often look at them as being punitive or requiring us to give up something that we enjoy or take pleasure in. We can lose sight very quickly of the presence of God even in the practice of prayer.  This came forward when we discussed this evening something such as vigils. Rare...

If I were to give a title to this evening’s session, it would be “What is the place of the Christian in a post-Christian culture? Even better, “What is the place of the Christian in an age of nihilism? When we begin to consider our conduct in relationship to others, how we are to conform ourselves not simply to a law or teaching but to Christ himself, we are confronted with something quite radical...

When we think of appetites or bodily desires, we rarely consider something such as sleep. Yet this evening St. John shows us that sleep is something that can disrupt that which is most important for the spiritual life; our prayer. Sleep is certainly an essential need that we have as human beings. However, there are many reasons that we can be drawn into it excessively. One of these is human nature...

“In the deserts of the heart  Let the healing fountain start.” W.H. Auden (1907-1973)  “The road of cleansing goes through that desert. It shall be named the way of holiness.” Isaiah 35.8 (LXX) It has been said that all true renewal within the life of the church comes through the desert fathers, or rather through the embrace of their wisdom. For it is not a worldly wisdom but the wisdom of the gos...

Darkness, whatever its source, cannot be driven out or overcome by mere force of will or through reason. The fathers reveal to us a darkness that exists within the human heart like no other - insensibility. It is a deadening of the soul and the death of the mind before the death of the body. We all have our vulnerabilities and have experienced wounds on both spiritual and emotional levels. To addr...

The conclusion of hypothesis 41 was as beautiful as it was convicting. The fathers speak of a stability of mind and heart that deepens through the ascetic life and allows us to see the most subtle movements either toward or away from God. This subtlety of perception is unmatched in the spiritual tradition. The ascetic life revealed to the fathers not only sin and its manifestations, but the power...

Freedom! We often associate this word with our own rights in this world or our capacity to do as we will and go where we want. A kind of promise is put out to us - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Yet the image of freedom that is put before us by the saints and by Saint John in particular is attached to our willingness to be “detached” from the things of the world. God created all thi...

The Mystery of the Human Person!  What comes forward in the ascetical writings of the fathers is not a moralistic or legalistic view of sin. Rather, we see within them a deep understanding of the complex beauty and dignity of the human person despite often being marred by sin. Perhaps too often we emphasize the negative; rather than fostering a desire both for God and for virtue and for the freedo...