PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

When listening to God may cost us the life by which we have known ourselves “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” — 1 Samuel 3:9 There are moments when I look back upon the last several years and wonder whether I should simply have stopped. Not searched. Not planned. Not tried so quickly to find another place to stand. Perhaps I should have waited longer. Waited upon the Lord. Waited until the noise within me had quieted enough that I could distinguish His voice from my fea

The terrible possibility of standing before God and still asking Him to prove Himself “Behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” There comes a point when asking for another sign is no longer prudence. It is refusal. We tell ourselves that we are waiting for clarity. We want God to make the path unmistakable. We want some interior certainty that cannot be questioned, some providential arrangement that removes the possibility of error, some word so direct that obedience wi

Wisdom begins where the heart ceases to possess “In every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets.” — Wisdom 7:27 “May God grant that I speak with judgment and have thoughts worthy of what I have received.” This is where wisdom begins. Not with knowing. With receiving. Before the wise man speaks, he confesses that even his words are not his own. “We and our words are in his hand.” The desert understood this. A man came seeking wisdom

The poverty of prayer and the gift of the Holy Spirit “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” — Luke 11:9 Ask. Seek. Knock. The Lord gives us three words. They are enough for a lifetime. He does not say: understand. He does not say: arrange your life so that nothing remains uncertain. He does not say: discover what God intends to do with you. Ask. Seek. Knock. These are the words of a poor man. The one who asks does not p

When Even the Desire to Do Something for God Must Become Still “And this is the definition of stillness, silence to all things.” — St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 21 There are desires that arise from restlessness, and there are desires that arise only after restlessness has begun to die. For many years I thought of the spiritual life largely in terms of movement: what must be done, what must be offered, where one must go, what form one’s fidelity must take. Even the deepest desi

A Prayer for the Freedom to Say Yes “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” — Luke 1:38 Lord Jesus Christ, You know what lies before me. I do not. And perhaps I do not need to know. My heart desires You. It desires Your will. Let that be enough. Do not let fear speak more loudly than Your voice. Do not let anxiety make me cautious where You ask for trust. Do not let the memory of wounds make me protect myself from what You may now be giving.

The Christian life is not merely learning what is true, but becoming transparent to the Light who is Christ “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” — Psalm 118:105 LXX Saint Maximus tells us something far greater than that Christ gives us light. Christ is the Light. He is the lamp set upon the lampstand, the eternal Word of the Father who has entered our darkness by assuming our humanity. He does not merely explain the path. He becomes the path beneath our fe

The freedom of God and the surrender of the heart “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.” — John 3:8 We would like God to be predictable. We would like the spiritual life to unfold according to recognizable lines: obedience followed by clarity, fidelity followed by stability, sacrifice followed by some visible confirmation that we have understood c

John Henry Newman and the moment when searching becomes recognition “It was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption.” — St. John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua There is something almost startling about the serenity with which Newman describes his conversion. Anyone who knows the years preceding it knows that serenity was not their dominant character. There had been searching, controversy, misunderst

The terrible mercy of discovering what our lives are actually built upon “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” — Luke 6:46 There are words of Christ that console us. There are others that strip us. This is one of them. “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” There is almost something frightening in the simplicity of the question. Christ does not ask whether we believe the correct things about Him. He does not ask whether we admi

On the Holy Poverty of a Life That Has Not Taken Shape “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go.” — Hebrews 11:8 There is a peculiar temptation that comes when a life begins to fall apart. We immediately begin trying to understand what God is building from the ruins. Something has ended, and almost before we have allowed ourselves to grieve it, we ask what is beg

The good way may not be another path forward, but the ancient poverty of standing before God without needing to become anything “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” — Jeremiah 6:16 There is something easily overlooked in Jeremiah’s words. Before the walking comes the standing. Stand by the roads, and look. We are often too frightened to do this. When one road ends, we immediately se

The surrender beneath every true turning toward God “Shew me, O Lord, thy ways, and teach me thy paths.” — Psalm 24:4 There are moments in the spiritual life when even the desire to know God’s will must be purified. We ask Him to lead us. But often what we mean is: Show me where this is going. Tell me what my life will become. Give me a form I can recognize. Let me know what I will be called. Show me enough of the road that I can consent without fear. We call this discernment

There comes a time when asking again is no longer humility “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.” — 1 Samuel 3:9 The desert fathers feared self-will. They knew how easily a man could call his desire the will of God. So they taught him to wait. To pray. To seek counsel. To accept contradiction. To distrust the thought that arrived with urgency and demanded immediate obedience. They taught him not to believe himself too quickly. But they also knew another danger. A man can refu

The desert begins when even the voices that once sustained us fall silent “O God, do not abandon me. I have done nothing good in Your sight, but according to Your goodness, let me now make a beginning.” — Abba Arsenius There comes a loneliness that is not cured by company. It comes when the voices that once steadied us grow quiet. A spiritual father does not answer. A friend does not understand. A community no longer knows what to do with us. Those who once seemed able to rec

The obedience of casting the net when we no longer understand what God intends to gather “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” — Luke 5:5 There is something almost painfully human in Peter’s words. We toiled all night and took nothing. He is not refusing Christ. He is tired. He has already done what he knows how to do. He has worked through the darkness. He has cast the nets where fishermen cast them, at the hour fishermen

The soul does not need to understand the whole road. It needs only to seek the Lord faithfully upon the ground given to it. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways not your ways - it is the Lord who speaks.” — Isaiah 55:8 There are paths we would never have chosen because we could never have imagined them. We look back over the years and want to make them intelligible. We search for a straight line. We want to know why God permitted this, why one door closed, why anot