PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

The cold of the morning still clung to the stones of the church and to the breath of those who entered. Winter has a way of telling the truth. It exposes the fragility of the body and the ache of the heart. And yet within the walls of this holy temple there was a warmth that did not come from heat or shelter but from love made visible. The love of God that does not retreat from the coldness of the world but enters it and transforms it from within. Among all that was beautiful

I stood today in the quiet movement of a tradition older than memory, where nothing was hurried and nothing was forced. The Liturgy did not seem performed, it breathed. It unfolded like something that had always been, as though the air itself were familiar with the prayers and the walls had already heard them a thousand years over. There was a seamlessness in how the priest lifted his hands, not dramatic, not austere, but with the ease of one who knows that God has always bee

In the East, the doors of the heart are taught to open slowly. Not with the haste of acquisition Or the clamor of a world that confuses motion with meaning, But with the patience of God Who waits behind the lattice of silence. There is a liturgy older than speech, Born before tongues were loosed in Eden. It is the turning of the soul toward its Source, The bowing of dust before Fire, The trembling of clay at the touch of the Potter Who shapes it again for glory. Here incense