PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

When Desire Is Purified into Love A Reflection on the First Evening of Our Retreat “If you will, you can become all flame.” — Abba Joseph We began our retreat with one of the most familiar sayings of the Desert Fathers, and yet perhaps one of the most inexhaustible. Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and described what had become the pattern of his spiritual life. He kept his little rule. He fasted according to his strength. He prayed and meditated. He tried to maintain interior pe

When the Heart Ceases to Live as Though Anything Existed Apart from God “Let all men know from the rising to the setting of the sun that, apart from me, all is nothing. I am the Lord: there is no other.” — Isaiah 45:6 There are words in Scripture that console us, words that instruct us, and words that seem to leave nothing standing. This is one of them. “I am the Lord: there is no other.” We can hear such words as a declaration about the uniqueness of God. And certainly they

A meditation on living and praying in the Breath of God “If you will, you can become all flame.” Abba Joseph of Panephysis The Christian life is not sustained by effort alone. It is sustained by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Without Him the Gospel becomes a moral code, the Church a human institution, and prayer a hollow discipline. With Him even weakness becomes a place of divine action, and even silence becomes full of God. From the beginning, Scripture presents the Spi