Saint Porfyrios Kavsolkalyvitis

 

We should feel that Christ’s our friend, because He is. He says so Himself when He says: ‘You are my friends…’. We should look upon Him and approach Him as a friend. Do we fall? Do we sin? With familiarity, love and trust we should run to Him. Not fearing that He’s going to punish us, but with boldness that will make us feel we’re his friends. We should say: ‘Lord I’ve done this or that, I’ve fallen. Forgive me’. And at the same time, we should feel that He loves us, that He’ll receive us tenderly and will forgive us. Sin shouldn’t separate us from Christ. When we believe that He loves us and we love Him, we don’t feel strangers to Him or separated from Him, even when we sin. We’ve got His love guaranteed, and, no matter how we behave, we know He loves us.

Source: pemptousia.com


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Pemptousia Partnership

Pemptousia and OCN have entered a strategic partnership to bring Orthodoxy Worldwide. Greek philosophers from Ionia considered held that there were four elements or essences (ousies) in nature: earth, water, fire and air. Aristotle added ether to this foursome, which would make it the fifth (pempto) essence, pemptousia, or quintessence. The incarnation of God the Word found fertile ground in man’s proclivity to beauty, to goodness, to truth and to the eternal. Orthodoxy has not functioned as some religion or sect. It was not the movement of the human spirit towards God but the revelation of the true God, Jesus Christ, to man. A basic precept of Orthodoxy is that of the person ­– the personhood of God and of man. Orthodoxy is not a religious philosophy or way of thinking but revelation and life standing on the foundations of divine experience; it is the transcendence of the created and the intimacy of the Uncreated. Orthodox theology is drawn to genuine beauty; it is the theology of the One “fairer than the sons of men”. So in "Pemptousia", we just want to declare this "fifth essence", the divine beaut in our life. Please note, not all Pemptousia articles have bylines. If the author is known, he or she is listed in the article above.

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