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When God Rejoices Over Man
The Incarnation and the Terrible Beauty of the Human Person “Man, completed and perfected, is wondrous, even as God is wondrous.” — St. Sophrony of Essex, His Life Is Mine “A man is born into the world.” We hear these words and think of something ordinary. Another child. Another life beginning among billions of lives. Another small creature entering a world already immense before him and destined to continue long after he is gone. But St. Sophrony hears something altogether d
Father Charbel Abernethy
1 day ago6 min read
The Grammar of the Heart — Reflection IV
When Repentance Ceases to Be Fear “Repentance is the trembling of the soul before the gate of Paradise.” — St. Isaac the Syrian There is a kind of repentance that leaves us staring at ourselves. We examine our failures. We measure our guilt. We rehearse what we have done. We wonder whether God has forgiven us, whether we have repented sufficiently, whether some hidden severity remains behind the mercy we have been promised. God may be present in such repentance, but often at
Father Charbel Abernethy
6 days ago6 min read
The Grammar of the Heart — Reflection III
Sitting at the Feet of the Ascetics The heart does not learn the language of God by mastering ideas, but by dwelling among those who have learned to speak it with their lives. There comes a point when reading the Fathers changes. At first we read them because we want to know what they thought. We underline sentences. We compare translations. We follow arguments. We collect sayings from the desert and passages from the Philokalia. We learn the vocabulary of nous, nepsis, apath
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 156 min read
The Grammar of the Heart - Reflection II
Before Theology Becomes Words How the Christian Life Teaches Us to See “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” — Psalm 33:9 LXX There is a knowledge of God that comes before explanation. Not before revelation. Not before truth. Not before the Church gives us the words by which we confess what has been revealed. But before those words become our own—before theology passes from the lips into the heart—there is often something quieter taking place. We are learning God by living b
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 158 min read
The Grammar of the Heart - Reflection I
When Mercy Becomes the Way We See The heart is changed when mercy ceases to be something we believe about God and becomes the light by which we see everything. “As a grain of sand cannot counterbalance a great quantity of gold, so in comparison God’s use of justice cannot counterbalance His mercy.” — St. Isaac the Syrian ______ The Grammar of the Heart is a nine-part series exploring how prayer, repentance, suffering, and the ascetical tradition gradually form not only what w
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 157 min read
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