When is the last time you have been to confession – the sacrament of Reconciliation with God? How often do you go? If infrequently or not at all, why is that? What slowly led to that? Do you think you can truly live life to the full without the sanctifying grace of God? What do you think happens to you, in your daily life, when you lose sanctifying grace and remain unwilling to regain it?
Category: The Reign of God the Father
Knowing God as My Father by Fr Abraam Sleman
What the world needs – Holy Octave of Purification and Consecration to God our Father
Below is what the world really needs in our times, but Whom it keeps rejecting out of false wisdom. The Heavenly Father has promised to come and live with us and in us, restoring order in the world and granting it a period of true peace – His peace – when the world is re-consecrated to Him, to His Divine Heart. The infinitely beautiful, loving Father has been pleading for this, for years, now. And yet, so far His pleas, His cries of a Father, have fallen on deaf ears.
Will you please not be so hard-hearted and oblige your Father by returning to Him Who loves you? Sparing the world on your part from even more pain and suffering? What have you to lose by trying to find out Who your Eternal Father really Is? Click on the picture above or the link provided herewith to download the Holy Octave of Purification and Consecration to God our Father.
On deification – 3
Deification versus Salvation
He was made man that we might become god (Athanasius of Alexandria, De Inc, 54.3).
Through Christ, the Word made flesh, man has access to the Father in the Holy Spirit and comes to share in the divine nature (Paul VI, 1965).
Many, especially in Western Christianity, tend to commingle the terms deification and salvation as though they have the same meaning, but this manifests poor understanding of the two terms as originally meant by the Fathers of the Church. In fact, when the language and context of deification and theosis are replaced with the language and context of salvation, Patristic theology becomes, in effect, displaced by Reformation language (Kharlamov, 2010), with the consequent loss of the original meanings. Salvation is part of deification, but
On deification – 2
Is it not written in your Law: I said, you are gods? (Jn 10:34).
He has given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature (2 P 1:4).
Two kinds of deification exist. The first kind refers to the
elevation of man to the highest level of his natural powers, or to the full realization of man…[when] the divine power of grace is active in him…[The second kind refers to the] progress which man makes beyond the limits of his natural powers, beyond the boundaries of his nature, to the divine and supernatural level (D. Staniloae, 2002, p. 363).
For man to pass from the first kind of deification which is well-known, to the second Continue reading “On deification – 2”
On deification – 1
What is deification?
Deification is the attaining of likeness to God and union with Him so far as is possible (Dionysus the Aeropagite, EH 1.3, PG 3.376a).
God, you see, wants to make you a god; not by nature, of course, like the One whom He begot but by His gift and by adoption (Augustine of Hippo, Serm. 166.4).
Deification can be defined as “God’s perfect and full penetration of man” (Staniloae, 2002, p. 362). The deification or divinization of man is not “an identification with God; it is only an assimilation, a very eminent restoration of the original divine likeness…[whereby one] participates by grace in the perfections that God possesses by nature . . . Continue reading “On deification – 1”
On the Divine Heart of God our Father – 12
“Our Father’s Paternal Heart is a refuge, a fortress, and a sanctuary for us. It is an ocean of love and mercy, a sea of bliss, and a paradise for each and every child to return to, when he or she is left alone in a world of emptiness and false illusion. Our Father’s Heart is, as Christ showed us in Gethsemane, where we are to go when there is nowhere left to go and no one left to turn to. His Heart is, quite simply, our true Home, where we all are invited to return. This is the deeper mystery of the Father’s Heart, a mystery we are all called to seek and to find. Continue reading “On the Divine Heart of God our Father – 12”
For the Church – 2 – The rebuilding
“No more, for the House of Israel, shall any of the hostile nations surrounding her be a thorn that wounds or a briar that tears; and so men will learn that I am the Lord Yahweh.
“The Lord Yahweh says this: ‘When I gather the House of Israel from the peoples among whom it is dispersed, this is how I am going to display My holiness in the sight of the nations. They shall live on the soil that I gave to my servant Jacob. They shall live there in confidence, build houses, plant vineyards; they shall live in confidence. When I inflict punishments on all the hostile surrounding nations, then men will learn that I am Yahweh their God'” (Ez 28:24-26).
The Divine Heart of God the Father Encompassing All Hearts 