St. Vladimir's Lenten Reflections

[Light of the East]

St. Vladimir's is sending out daily Lenten reflections for our edification during the Lenten season.

Here is the one I received in today's mailbox. I am posting it because it spoke to my own heart.

. . . If our hearts are set upon Christ and following him into the glory prepared for us from before the foundation of the world, if this is so, then everything that has happened, and happens still, becomes the means by which God is forming us, breaking our stony hearts, so that we might be conformed to the Firstborn of many brethren (Rom 8.29), so that we can indeed rejoice in all things, not only those things for which it is easy to be thankful—the good things that have come our way and the joy that others bring—but also the trials and tribulations by which we now suffer, pummeling us and softening us, to share in the Pascha of Christ, the Pascha which . . . . allows us to forgive all in the Resurrection of Christ.

It is to this end, and this end alone, that all the extra prayers and ascetic efforts of the coming days are directed—certainly not that we should feel ever more proud of our achievements in them.

—Archpriest John Behr, excerpt from sermon for Forgiveness Vespers in The Cross Stands While the World Turns

 

[ArmyMatt]

thanks!

 

[The Liturgist]

Oh how lovely. Archpriest John Behr recently gave a talk which I haven’t listened to yet. If I recall he’s still at Oxford where he recently took over the professorship once held by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware.