PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

Job, Weariness, and the Prayer That Rises From the Edge of Despair “No wonder then if I cannot keep silence; in the anguish of my spirit I must speak, lament in the bitterness of my soul.” — Job 7:11 There are moments in the spiritual life when the soul becomes too exhausted to continue speaking piously. The prayers become stripped. The religious phrases collapse. The explanations no longer work. One no longer says, “I am blessed,” or “God is good,” with easy certainty becaus

St. Philip Neri: A Desert Father in the City (Feast - May 26th) “Let us concentrate ourselves so completely in the divine love, and enter so far into the living fountain of wisdom, through the wounded Side of our Incarnate God, that we may deny ourselves and our self-love, and so be unable to find our way out of that Wound again.” — St. Philip Neri There are saints who seem, at first glance, to belong to worlds very different from the Desert Fathers. Philip Neri appears to be