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Word of Life – John 14:21 (30/5/2021 – 13/6/2021)
Post date: 2021-05-30Autor: BCP
„He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.“
Reflection on Jn 14:21
Post date: 2021-05-30Autor: BCP
The condition for an interior knowledge of Jesus is to receive His commandments. But this is not enough. We also need to keep them. The keeping of Jesus’ commandments is a sign of our love for Him. Why should we love Jesus? Because He first loved us, took our sins upon Himself, and paid for them by shedding His blood and dying on the cross. He thus obtained for us eternal happiness in heaven. The first stage of love is gratitude at the least. Even a dog can be grateful to someone who has done him good. Or even a predatory animal, as we see in the example of the lion in the life of St Gerasimos. After the saint removed a thorn from the lion’s paw and cleansed the wound, the lion helped him faithfully in return. Finally, full of gratitude to his benefactor, the lion died of grief at the saint’s grave.
Word of Life – Ps 143:10 (16/5/2021 – 30/5/2021)
Post date: 2021-05-16Autor: BCP
„Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me in the land of uprightness.“
Word of Life – Ps 139:16 (2/5/2021 – 16/5/2021)
Post date: 2021-05-01Autor: BCP
„You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.“
Word of Life – Ps 127:1 (18/4/2021 – 2/5/2021)
Post date: 2021-04-19Autor: BCP
„Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.“
Word of Life – Ps 119:164 (4/4/2021 – 18/4/2021)
Post date: 2021-04-04Autor: BCP
“Seven times a day I praise You, because of Your righteous judgments.”
From Gethsemane to Golgotha (Way of the Cross) (+video)
Post date: 2021-03-29Autor: Synod UO GCC
From Gethsemane to Golgotha (Way of the Cross). Patriarch Elijah Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate
Last Supper and Gethsemane (reflection) (video)
Post date: 2021-03-28Autor: BCP
Last Supper and Gethsemane (reflection). Patriarch Elijah Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate
Word of Life – Ps 119:9 (21/3/2021 – 4/4/2021)
Post date: 2021-03-20Autor: BCP
„How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.“
Word of Life – Ps 116:16 (7/3/2021 – 21/3/2021)
Post date: 2021-03-07Autor: BCP
„O Lord, truly I am Your servant; I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant; You have loosed my bond.“
Word of Life – Ps 112:1 (21/2/2021 – 7/3/2021)
Post date: 2021-02-22Autor: BCP
„Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who delights greatly in His commandments.“
Reflection on Ps 112:1
Post date: 2021-02-22Autor: BCP
This psalm shows that blessed is the man who loves God’s commandments. The first of Christ’s Beatitudes reads: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And the last one says: “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Mt 5:11-12) Psalm 1, likewise, begins with the words, “Blessed is the man” and continues, “who does not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path of sinners; but delights in the law of the Lord and reflects on His law day and night” (see Ps 1:1f).
Word of Life – Ps 105:4 (7/2/2021 – 21/2/2021)
Post date: 2021-02-06Autor: BCP
“Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face evermore!”
Reflection on Ps 105:4
Post date: 2021-02-06Autor: BCP
The psalms often encourage us to seek the Lord. We should seek His face and His strength, that is, His almighty power. The process of seeking is painful. When you lose something, you feel worried and distressed, especially if it was an important or valuable thing. The most valuable thing for us is eternal life. And this life is given us by God in His Son Jesus Christ. To seek the Lord’s face means to enter into God’s presence, to realize that God sees me, and I open my heart fully to Him, knowing that there is no point in hiding anything from Him because He knows everything. In prayer, I also seek the face of His Son Jesus Christ, my Redeemer. I can imagine it vividly and specifically. The more intimate my relationship to Jesus, the more authentic this inner image. That was also why the saints emphasized interior prayer based on the contemplation of Christ’s suffering, particularly in His final hours on the cross. They focused on three short guiding principles: see, hear, and experience. With their spiritual eyes, they saw Jesus’ pierced hands bleeding, they heard the painful moaning, and they suffered with Him.
Word of Life – Ps 77:2 (24/1/2021 – 7/2/2021)
Post date: 2021-01-25Autor: BCP
“In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord; my hand was stretched out in the night without ceasing; my soul refused to be comforted.”
Reflection on Ps 77:2
Post date: 2021-01-25Autor: BCP
Each of us faces days of trouble in our life. The solution is not to fall into depression but to look for a way out. We have to seek it mainly from God. If we seek it from people rather than from God, it may be useful sometimes, but we can often get into more trouble. If we seek help from God in the first place, God will enlighten us or put people in our path to give us advice or to help us solve our seemingly unsolvable problem.
Word of Life – Ps 69:14 (10/1/2020 – 24/1/2021)
Post date: 2021-01-09Autor: BCP
„Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink; let me be delivered from those who hate me, and out of the deep waters.“
Reflection on Ps 69:14
Post date: 2021-01-09Autor: BCP
Regardless of the human author of the psalm, who applied these words to himself, it is God’s word that applies to each of us to some degree. Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink! We are confronted with the image of a man sinking in the mire. We know that the more he moves and tries to get out of it, the deeper he sinks. The only solution for him is to be saved by someone else. In a figurative sense, for each of us, the mire is our sin or addiction that enslaves us so much that we cannot get out of it by our own efforts. What is the solution? Call on the One who can save me. The soul cries to God, it cries for deliverance. “Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink!” It is already on the verge of death, on the verge of spiritual death. “Let me be delivered from those who hate me!” Human malice, behind which is often a demonic spirit, seeks to destroy an innocent soul. Lies and evil, when part of a system, receive a certain power for physical destruction, and even seek to destroy eternal life. How does God save?
Word of Life – Ps 59:2 (27/12/2020 – 10/1/2021)
Post date: 2020-12-27Autor: BCP
“Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloodthirsty men.”
Reflection on Psalm 59:2
Post date: 2020-12-27Autor: BCP
David wrote this psalm when Saul guarded the house to kill him. “Saul sent messengers to David’s house to watch him and to kill him in the morning. And Michal, David’s wife, told him, saying, ‘If you do not save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.’ So Michal let David down through a window. And he went and fled and escaped. And Michal took an idol and laid it in the bed, put a cover of goats’ hair for his head, and covered it with clothes. So when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, ‘He is sick.’ Then Saul sent the messengers back to see David, saying, ‘Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him.’ And when the messengers had come in, there was the idol in the bed, with a cover of goats’ hair for his head… So David fled and escaped, and went to Samuel at Ramah, and told him all that Saul had done to him. And he and Samuel went and stayed in Naioth. Now it was told Saul, saying, ‘Take note, David is at Naioth in Ramah!’ Then Saul sent messengers to take David. And when they saw the group of prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as leader over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied.”