Category: Stations of Divine Love
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Introduction
Tomorrow, Sunday, we enter the threshold leading to the great Pascha, to which we ascend through three phases that churn our journey toward Jesus and form our relationship with Him: 1. The first phase is the Paschal threshold, the period of preparation by repentance for going out into the fast, and it contains four stations…
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The Second Phase: A Period Not for Repentance
In the second phase we come out of our chamber in which we spent the period of preparation in order to meet Jesus. We meet Jesus where He is staying “« RABBI, WHERE ARE YOU STAYING?»” (John 1:38), in order to go with Him. In this period we are not occupied with ourselves, but rather…
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The Sunday of Forgiveness: The Station of Reconciliation with the Self and the Other:
On the previous Sunday, man took a stance in existence before God, by bearing responsibility, that is, by becoming a mature man — for children bear no one’s responsibility. This stance today requires that man transform it into action in the society in which he lives: he first forgives himself and is reconciled with it,…
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The Third Station: The Station of Judgment, the Station of Stance:
This Sunday is an invocation of the dread Second Coming. Here we are not speaking of the last coming παρουσία (Parousia), but rather the second, personal one ἔρχομαι (Erchomai) — the personal coming in which Christ comes to each one of us, and we do not know when the appointed time is, nor the place,…
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The Second Station: The Station of the Prodigal Son
Its keys: decision, dignity, remembrance. In the second station man remembers his personal dignity and the worth of himself; man among us does not remember God’s tenderness and love, since we have not yet entered into an experience with God and have not yet known God, but rather we know what He placed in us,…
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The First Station: The Station of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
The Station of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector: “Know yourself.” This station revolves around a person’s knowledge of himself. Saint Isaac the Syrian says: “He who knows himself is greater than he who raises the dead,” and humility is precisely this knowledge. The Pharisee did not err when he said: “I fast twice a…