"Because of the workings of the memory whatever has preoccupied our mind before the time for prayer must of necessity intrude on our actual prayers. Therefore in advance of prayer we must strive to dispose ourselves as we would wish to be during prayer. The praying spirit is shaped by its earlier condition. As we prostrate ourselves for prayer our deeds, words, fastings rise up in our imagination. They are as they were before our prayer, and they move us to anger or gloom. We turn back toward desire or worldly affairs. Stupidly - and I am ashamed to say it - we laugh as we recall some clownish act or word, and the mind flits back to the earlier concerns of our talk. So therefore before we pray we must hasten to drive from our heart’s sanctuary anything we would not wish to intrude on our prayers, and all this so that we might do as the apostle bids us: ‘Pray ceaselessly’ (I Thes. 5:17). ‘In every place lift up pure hands, with no anger and no rivalry’ (I Tim. 2:8). But we will not be able to fulfill this injunction unless the mind within us is cleansed of the contagion of sin, is devoted to virtue as its natural good, and feeds continuously on the contemplation of the all-powerful God."
— St. John Cassian
January 29, 2012
The house was blessed. This involved Father Mark and several people from the church coming over. We started in my room as this is where I have a few icons. Father Mark prayed. Then we began singing a song about when Jesus was baptized in the Jordan. Father Mark had a bowl of water and used a branch, that I had taken from outside, to toss water on each side of every room that we entered.
-I mention this summarized account to provide context for the following-
The branch for the past two weeks has been sitting in the blessed water in my room by the icons. Father Mark suggested that I use the water for a plant…I figured what the heck lets see how this shrub branch does.
Slowly but surely the water has been decreasing and about 2-3 days ago it was all gone. The branch sat there.
This branch got me thinking of my own life. There’s these moments of being saturated by drawing close to God but then sin becomes a close companion and I’m left sitting in an empty bowl, drying out.
Today I went to Home Depot, bought some soil and a pot. I also purchased a small indoor rose bush to place by the icons.
The shrub branch appears to still be kicking…we’ll see in a week or so how it turns out.
The YouTuber GoGreen18 posted up a recent vid which was not entirely reasonable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6OD7XRu8LU
Sexual/physical abuse towards a child is horrible!!
But this doesn’t excuse the sweeping generalizations or unrelated claims that she made.
A person visits your church. You chat with them and 45mins into the conversation a member of the church comes over, who’s friends with the visitor, and informs you the visitor is an atheist. Do you feel as though you were somehow misled?
