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When the Heart No Longer Needs to Translate
Phronema and the Mystery of Belonging Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra (1934-2019) “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” — Matthew 6:21 There comes a time when a language is no longer learned. It is simply spoken. At first we approach the spiritual life as strangers. We learn its words. We read the Fathers. We try to understand repentance, watchfulness, stillness, compunction, purity of heart. We take up the Jesus Prayer awkwardly, consciously. We enter sile
Father Charbel Abernethy
1 day ago4 min read
Phronema Is a Way of Seeing Born from a Way of Dying
The Fathers do not give us a religious identity. They lead us to the place where only Christ remains. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” — Galatians 2:20 Phronema is not first a collection of ideas. It is a way of seeing born from a way of dying. We often approach the spiritual life believing that we are going to acquire something. Knowledge. Wisdom. Peace. A deeper understanding of prayer. Perhaps even holiness. We imagine that the person who begins th
Father Charbel Abernethy
2 days ago6 min read
The Life We Cannot Save
The Cross, the loss of the false self, and the Kingdom already breaking into the world “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” — Mark 8:35 There comes a moment in the spiritual life when Christ no longer permits us merely to admire Him. He says: Follow Me. And the road upon which He walks is unmistakable. It is the road of relinquishment. “Let him deny himself and take up his cross.” These words can sound severe until we begin to understand what Ch
Father Charbel Abernethy
2 days ago4 min read
The Grammar of the Heart
How God Teaches the Soul the Language of Prayer “We have the mind of Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 2:16 There is a language that cannot be learned from books. Books may awaken us to it. The Scriptures give us its words. The Fathers teach us its grammar. The liturgy allows us to hear its cadences. The lives of the saints show us what it sounds like when spoken fluently. But eventually God Himself must teach it to the heart. This is perhaps one way of understanding phronema. We ofte
Father Charbel Abernethy
5 days ago6 min read
The Mercy That Passes Through Us
God consoles the wounded heart so that it may become a place of consolation for others “Who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction.” — 2 Corinthians 1:4 There are wounds we would never have chosen. There are sorrows we would gladly have been spared, losses whose meaning we cannot discover, seasons when prayer itself seems reduced to remaining before God because nothing else is possible. And yet Saint Paul speaks of
Father Charbel Abernethy
7 days ago5 min read
The Shore Where It All Began
Sometimes the Risen Christ leads us back to the beginning, not to recover the life we had, but to discover the life that has been quietly forming within us. “It is the Lord.” — John 21:7 There is something mysterious about the return to Galilee. After everything that has happened—the calling, the years of following, the miracles and arguments, the supper, Gethsemane, the Cross, the bewildering news of the empty tomb—the disciples find themselves again beside the sea. Galilee.
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 136 min read
When the Heart Has Learned Another Language
Phronema, Purity of Heart, and the Cost of an Undivided Life “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” — Matthew 5:8 There comes a time when the question is no longer what one believes about the spiritual life, but what one has become through living it. For many years I thought of the Eastern Fathers as teachers whom Providence had placed along my path. They gave words to things I had somehow already begun to recognize: compunction, watchfulness, stillness, pur
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 88 min read
When the Outer Self Belongs to the Inner
The hidden work by which God gathers a divided life into the simplicity of Christ “Then the outer self will belong to the inner self at last, a peaceful and secure possession.” — St. Leo the Great There are sorrows that scatter the heart, and there are sorrows that gather it. We ordinarily know the first kind best. Something is taken from us. A door closes. Another person wounds us. The future becomes uncertain. What we had imagined our life would become begins to disappear.
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 57 min read
The Mercy of an Unfinished Life
When God does not give us a path forward, but only enough light to remain faithful where we are “Stay in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” — Abba Moses There are seasons in life when God seems to make His will known by opening a door. There are others when He seems to make it known by closing every door through which we imagined ourselves passing. We prefer the first. A path appears. A decision becomes clear. Something that had been uncertain suddenly acqui
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 46 min read
Where There Is No Way Out
The terrible freedom of remaining with Christ when nothing changes “Keep thy mind in hell and despair not.” — St. Silouan the Athonite There are moments when the spiritual life ceases to offer consolation. Not because God has withdrawn His mercy, but because He permits every lesser thing upon which we have secretly depended to be taken from our hands. The Fathers knew this place. It is the place where prayer does not change circumstances. Where obedience does not immediately
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 25 min read
The Love That Was There Before Us
Learning to see providence when love seems absent “We love because He first loved us.” — 1 John 4:19 There are moments when the heart aches not primarily because it has been wounded by others, but because it begins to see. It sees how little love there is in the world. And worse, it sees how little love there is within itself. We imagine ourselves generous until generosity costs us something. We imagine ourselves merciful until someone wounds us deeply. We imagine ourselves p
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 26 min read
A Heart That Can Be Wounded
The Desert and the Mercy of Becoming Flesh Again “I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” — Ezekiel 36:26 There is something almost frightening in the promise God makes through Ezekiel. He does not promise merely to forgive us. He does not promise to make our circumstances easier, to resolve the uncertainties of our lives, or even to make us more religious. He promises something far more radical: I will give you another heart. The Fath
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 306 min read
The Broken Cisterns
How We Lose God While Still Believing We Are Seeking Him “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” — Jeremiah 2:13 There is something terrifying about the second chapter of Jeremiah because it is addressed not to those who never knew God, but to those who did. “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 267 min read
When the Horizon Narrows
Stillness, Holy Renunciation, and the Recovery of the One Thing Necessary “But one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.” — Luke 10:42 There are seasons in the spiritual life when God seems to enlarge the horizon. Doors open. Relationships multiply. Work becomes fruitful. One discovers gifts that must be exercised for others, and the heart seems drawn outward in service. There are other seasons when God appears to do pre
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 267 min read
When Nothing of Us Remains
Death, the Vanity of Great Works, and the One Thing That Endures “For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 3:11 There is something almost merciless about death. Not because death tells us that life has no meaning, but because it reveals how much of what we believed gave our life meaning cannot endure. A person may labor for decades. He may build institutions, establish ministries, raise money, construct churches,
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 267 min read
Keep Only What Can Become Prayer
Surrendering the Histories We Can No Longer Carry “The fire itself will test what sort of work each one has done.” — 1 Corinthians 3:13 There are moments when the whole history of a life seems to gather itself into a single grief. The death of my friend Fr. Drew Morgan opened such a moment for me. I found myself grieving not only the man, but nearly forty years of shared history: the things we loved, the work we undertook, the hopes we carried, the wounds we inflicted and rec
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 239 min read
When the Heart Sees Who Has Come Near
Strength, Wonder, and the Desire Born of Divine Love “He is my love, my fortress; he is my stronghold, my saviour.” — Psalm 143 (144):2 There is a way of hearing this psalm that can leave us almost entirely with the language of warfare. The Lord trains the hands for battle. He is fortress, stronghold, shield and refuge. Enemies surround us; mighty waters threaten to overwhelm us; falsehood rises against us. We cry out for God to descend, to scatter what assails us and to draw
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 186 min read
Where Does the Soul Live?
The Desire That Already Belongs to Eternity “The soul from love of the Lord has lost her wits, as it were.” — St. Silouan the Athonite Where do we live our lives? The question seems simple until we allow it to expose us. We can live in the world without the world being the place where our heart dwells. We can inhabit a house, fulfill our responsibilities, care for those entrusted to us, endure uncertainty, carry grief, answer the demands of each day, and yet inwardly live som
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 167 min read
When Eternity Breaks into the Present
The Second Coming, the Desert, and the Healing of a Fragmented Heart “The Lord is He Who has come, Who will come again, and Who is continually coming.” — Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou, The Dawn of the Eternal There is a subtle tragedy that can enter even deeply religious lives: we can believe everything the Church teaches about God and yet live as though He were somewhere else. We believe that Christ came two thousand years ago. We believe that He will come again at the en
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 108 min read
The Wound Love Refuses to Close
Christ’s Omni-Vulnerability and the Terrible Beauty of Loving as He Loves “He voluntarily surrendered Himself to His Passion because He was already possessed by the passion of His great love, which is stronger than death.” — Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou, The Dawn of the Eternal There are truths about Christ that console us, and there are truths about Christ that undo us. We are consoled to hear that God loves us. We are consoled to hear that He seeks the lost, forgives th
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 910 min read
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