Monday, November 26, 2007

Apropos to the feast of St. Justinian

We believe that the true and immaculate Christian faith is the first and greatest benefit that men enjoy, that it should be strengthened in every respect, and that all the holy priests throughout all the earth should be strengthened in every respect, and that all the holy priests throughout the earth should unite to preach it and should extripate every kind of false doctrine, as ins prescribed by Our laws and Our edicts.
St. Emperor Justinian

Sunday, November 25, 2007

The carnal heart

Our children have so-called "baby-teeth" which fall out by themselves, and in their place other teeth grow — real ones. In the same way we have a heart. But this is a coarse, carnal heart — a selfish one. With such a heart you cannot enter Eternal Life. And it will not fall out by itself. We have to cast it out and replace it with a new heart — not ours, but Christ’s. And any time we help our neighbor and make an effort, we are as if tearing off a piece of our heart and giving it away to our neighbor. And in place of this piece of carnal, sinful heart, the Lord puts in us a similar piece of His heart — Christ’s heart.
Archbishop Andrei (Rymarenko)

Monday, November 05, 2007

The dead weight of technology

Ethics are likened to a lady, and technology like her handmaiden. That is why ethics have to control technology. Eternal values are the territory of ethics and not technology. It is devastating for an entire people to put the purpose of their lives in technology, and all of their labor and sweat they sacrifice to the advancement of technology, dragging behind them ethics, like Achilles dragged the dead Hector tied to a chariot. A people like that can succeed to build all of their cities from ivory and gold, but if people like Ahab and Jezebel live in them, dogs will have the last word and not people.
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)