PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

Remaining in the World After the Ascension “Keep thy mind in hell and despair not.” — Saint Silouan the Athonite There is something painful about this Sunday between the Ascension and Pentecost. Christ has ascended. The disciples are left standing beneath an empty sky. Pentecost has not yet come. The Church stands in an in-between place. And if we are honest, most of our spiritual life is lived precisely there. Not in the moment of illumination. Not in the moment of resurrect

The spiritual revolution that tears the old man from the heart “Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth.” — Ephesians 4:23–24 The feast of the Ascension is not sentimental. Christ does not simply “go back to heaven” while we stand below looking upward with religious feelings. The Ascension is the violent unveiling of humanity’s true destiny. Human natu