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A Prayer for Western Orthodoxy

Several years ago, while visiting with the late Dom James Deschene of thrice-blessed memory, sometime Abbot of the Monastery of Christ the Savior (ROCOR), I was introduced to a prayer that caught my attention and which I copied down and brought back here to Ladyminster. I edited the original somewhat and added it to the intercessions that we pray after the Office of Sext on Thursdays. Recently, I edited it again to shorten and “tighten it up,” and we continue to pray it every Thursday.

Grant we beseech thee, O Lord Jesus Christ: that the witness and intercession of thy Saints Tikhon, Gorazd, and John, may inspire in thy people a renewed love for the beauty of holiness as thou hast revealed it through the ancient Latin Fathers and Saints. This we ask, O Lord, of thy generous mercy: who with the Father and the Holy Ghost, livest and reignest, one God, ever world without end. Amen.

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The Sacred Triduum of Passiontide

And when [Jesus] was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing. (Matt. 27)

St. Matthew portrays the Word as silent in the face of the religious authorities of Israel. He does not defend himself, but rather stands, with quiet dignity, before those who have hardened their hearts against him and would condemn him, no matter what he might say. Behold, then, the humility of God! A humility that allows the Truth to be silent because it is not welcome. Shortly after this, Jesus does speak a single sentence to Pilate, in answer to the question, “Art thou the King of the Jews?” Truth will not lie or dissemble, and in other Gospels, the Lord does speak when asked questions. But St. Matthew is likely trying to make a point about the close relationship between truth and humility. St. Gregory the Great wrote that, “Truth flies from the mind which it does not find humble.” He who is Truth itself cannot be other than humble, even in the face of one friend’s betrayal; of cowardice on the part of his closest disciple; of envy and calumny from those who were entrusted with guardianship of truth; and blatant injustice on the part of civil authorities who recognized the ill-will behind trumped-up charges but who gave in to “keep the peace.” Continue reading “The Sacred Triduum of Passiontide”

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“My Heart is Fixed” – What is a Benedictine Oblate?

My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed!
 Ps. 57:7 (Coverdale Psalter)

By the Rt. Rev. Abbot Theodore (Phillips)

The Benedictine monastic tradition is synthesized from the combined wisdom of both the great Eastern Fathers, through the mediation of Ss. Basil the Great and John Cassian, together with that of Ss. Ambrose, Augustine, Cæsarius, and other monastic founders or legislators in the West. In the spirit of all these worthy Fathers, however, its firm foundation is in the Holy Scriptures. St. Benedict himself points out, near the end of his famous Rule, “For what page or what utterance of the divinely-inspired books of the Old and the New Testament is not a most unerring rule of human life? Or what book of the holy Catholic Fathers is not manifestly devoted to teaching us the straight road to our Creator? Then the Conferences of Cassian and his Institutes, and the Lives of the Fathers, as also the Rule of our holy father Basil: what else are they but tools of virtue for good-living and obedient monks?”1 Continue reading ““My Heart is Fixed” – What is a Benedictine Oblate?”

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The Tools of the Spiritual Craft

From Chapter 4 of the Rule of Saint Benedict:

First of all, love the Lord God with your whole heart, your whole soul and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Then the following: you are not to kill, not to commit adultery; you are not to steal nor to covet; you are not to bear false witness. You must honor everyone, and never do to another what you would not want done to yourself.

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