❓ Is Belief in the Divinity of Jesus a Belief in a Metaphysical Issue? ❓ Certainly not, although we see in life people who studied the New Testament and believed in Christ. But within the human entity itself, we find the transformation that may begin with a change in behaviour but moves to what is more sublime than moral behaviour: union with Jesus. This is what we see in the books of leaders of the mystical life, East and West—from Anthony the Great in the East to Eckhart in the West. They are a group of those who journeyed from the world of vast knowledge to the reality of personal experience of Him who is closer to us than the heartbeat—the Lord Himself, who shares our existence and came so that we may share in His being and His embodied divine life. #DivinityOfChrist #MysticalTheology #PersonalExperience #UnionWithGod #ChristianMysticism

❤️ The Cross: Proof of the Greatest Love ✝️ Does not St. Paul on every occasion show us that the death [of Christ] is the greatest proof of his love for us? He thus says: “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). Also, for this reason, does not he take pride and yearn all the more, nay, even leap for joy and flutter his wings, as it were, when he writes to the Galatians: “far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14)? Even Christ himself, who endured these sufferings calls them his Glory (John 17:1)! And when he wished to show us his love, what did he mention? His signs or miracles or wonders? Never! He but laid his cross in the middle saying: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). And so did St Paul say: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also gave us all things with him?” (Rom 8:32). And when he exhorts to love, he raises this same type in the middle saying: “Love one another, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (cf. Eph 5:2). _St. John Chrysostom, Homily on Divine Providence 17:1-7. #TheCross #DivineLove #Sacrifice #Salvation #GodsLove

🤝 Jesus and Women Jesus' attitude towards women went beyond His teaching to encompass His entire behavior, a behavior in which the characteristics of the new man are strikingly evident. Jesus was distinguished from His time—and perhaps from our time—by His unique attitude towards women, an attitude that was both free and liberating at the same time. He had no "complex" regarding women: no complex of caution towards them, no complex of fear of society concerning His relationship with them, no complex of superiority towards her for being a man, no complex of mockery, as if she were a negligible quantity that could be taken lightly, nor a complex of use and exploitation for His own ends or sexual desire. Thus, all of Jesus' behavior was a restoration of status for the deprived woman, the one with violated dignity, and a return to the original divine design of harmony, where there is no fear, aggression, or domination, between man and woman. And Jesus did not hesitate, for this purpose, to violate prevailing social customs, and even to violate the letter of the Law itself. #JesusAndWomen #WomensDignity #Liberation #Gospel #NewMan #ChristianEthics

✝️ Under the Tree of the Cross 🌟 Under the tree of the Cross we sat Eating from its fruits, life Jesus breathed and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit" The breath of Jesus did not disappear With every breath given to us The Incarnation resolved all issues of separation And buried them in the garbage dump of history The Cross resolved all debate about love The fire of self-sacrifice eradicated all argument The Resurrection decided the defeat of life by death The Resurrection defeated death and life flowed forth The Trinity ended all talk about God. For true Oneness is in a Trinity of love. Glory to You, O crucified Jesus. #Cross #Incarnation #Resurrection #Trinity #DivineLove #Salvation #Redemption

🚪 The Closed Doors 🔒 The closed doors are not the doors of our churches, but they may be our hearts, because the real door of every person is his "heart". For the Lord said to the bishop of Laodicea: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me." And the Lord added: "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne." (Rev 3:20-21) Jesus is knocking on our hearts, let us open the door for Him. We, my brethren, are the body of Christ, whose doors cannot be closed by an external force, like the authority and power of the present age, because we are in the Holy Spirit where there is no obstacle before the Spirit of the Holy God. So let us open our hearts forever and ever. #jesus #FaithInChrist #TrustInTheLord #ChristianLiving #WalkByFaith #FaithOverFear #FaithInAction #OpenHearts #Revelation3 #JesusKnocks #Communion #HolySpirit

⚖️ When the Lord said with His divine mouth: "Do not judge," 👑 He revealed to us the reason for our non-participation in judgment, and uncovered for us the corruption lurking in the soul; for He said: "For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you." (Matt 7:2) So how are we judged, or why are we judged according to the measure of judgment specific to us? First: Because it is a measure without goodness and mercy. Second: Because it is born from self-defense, which is the "wound" of that "hidden disease," i.e., death. Third: Because by that same measure we have placed God in the scale of our own judgment, which places us completely outside of communion with Him and His divine love. How great is the ruin we fall into when our souls lack the correct spiritual sense of God's goodness and mercy, and what inheritance do we think we will receive! #Judgment #DoNotJudge #Mercy #SelfReflection #CommunionWithGod

💧 He entered Samaria, the Lover of Mankind 🌊 The Lover of Mankind entered Samaria because He saw the heart thirsty for love, which was the heart of the Samaritan woman. He sat by the well waiting for that heart, that empty vessel which had been filled with the filth of the flesh and thought it contained the grand prize. Jesus longed to give the woman the water that does not cause thirst, but gives satisfaction. And when one is satisfied, the longing for greater satisfaction becomes that spring which wells up to eternal life (cf. John 4:14). Thirst is the price of what we do not have; it is seeing the water and striving for it. But satisfaction is the request to taste, which pushes one to seek to remain in grace and strive for more, not out of lust, but out of the conviction to renounce all that hinders. It is a set of spiritual forces working together: 1- The desire to cling to the Lord. 2- The free renunciation of all that hinders this clinging. 3- The denial of all that hinders clinging. 4- Praise and remaining in communion. This is not the satisfaction itself, rather satisfaction is firstly the vision of the glory of eternal life. It is not merely a desire, feeling, or emotion, but the launching of the spirit with its rational powers towards what is greater, which is the Lord Jesus Christ reclining in the bosom of the Father, and the striving to remain in the bosom of the Father. At that point, seeking spiritual gifts becomes like talking about dust, whereas seeking to remain in the fire of love is the pure gold that the soul desires with the insistence of love. #LivingWater #ThirstForGod #Satisfaction #DivineLove #Communion

🎯 The Faith of Christianity and the Faith of the Nations There is an essential difference between the faith of Christianity and the faith of the nations, which is that according to the Gospel's proclamation, we receive nothing and inherit no heavenly or earthly gift except God Himself. And when the Scriptures use multiple words like "eternal life," "the kingdom of heaven," and "the kingdom of God," they present the same one divine gift with multiple words for the sake of the diversity and multiplicity of understanding of the listeners and readers alike; because eternal life is in the eternal God, and our communion with Him through Christ is a communion of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of God where God reigns, and where we will be kings. Therefore, let us not ask for anything or a gift or a grant other than God Himself; lest the gift becomes a cause of downfall; because he who reigns without God perishes, but he who reigns with God and through God inherits eternal life. #Faith #KingdomOfGod #EternalLife #GodAlone #Christianity

📖 Living the Whole Gospel The Gospel is not just a message. Yes, it contains a Christian message, but the Gospel, before being a message, is a person, the person of Jesus Christ. The word Gospel means "the Good News." And this Good News is not primarily what Christ says to us, but what He is. It is the good news of the Incarnation: God loved man so much that He became man. Love is the desire of the lover to become the one he loves and to be one with him. The deepest motive for faith is the inability to surpass the Incarnation. For a God cannot love man more than by becoming a man like him. At present, many people accept the message, but they reject or hesitate about its essence, which is the divinity of Jesus Christ in the precise sense. Thereby, the message is distorted, and we see some making selections from the Gospel, neglecting what they do not want. But the Gospel is not a gospel unless it is taken in its entirety. #Gospel #Incarnation #JesusChrist #GoodNews #Christianity #WholeGospel

⚔️ The Victory of the Cross 🌍 The Lord came, and by His death He abolished death. Sin lost its throne, which no human arm or power could shatter. "He descended into hell by means of the Cross," and there "He scattered the powers of hell." Christ conquered the power of death by the Cross; because He accepted it, took it, and transformed it from a punishment into a great mystery—the mystery of baptism. Only through the Cross were we able to be united with the Lord "in the likeness of His death" (Rom 6:5). This truth must never be absent from our minds; for the death of the first Adam is not like the death of the last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ. Rather, it is "the life-giving death." Death was transformed into a power of salvation because the Lord accepted it on the Cross to destroy sin by it: "He who has died has been freed from sin" (Rom 6:7). How? The apostle answers: "our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin" (Rom 6:6). The Cross became the sign that separates death from life. Our life became the life coming through the resurrection, which appeared in Jesus Christ. He came and gathered in His divine-human essence power, limitations, and the new grace that renews creation. Therefore, Christ proclaimed reconciliation on five important levels: 1. Reconciliation of male and female. 2. Reconciliation of Paradise with the world. 3. Reconciliation of heaven with earth. 4. Reconciliation of God with all creation. 5. Reconciliation of matter with spirit. Thus, the Head "in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Col 2:9) is the one who makes us "complete in Him," that is, filled with power, grace, and the manifestation of the new creation, its transformation in Christ from death to life. #Cross #Victory #Reconciliation #Atonement #NewCreation

❤️ A Prayer to Jesus 🙇 O my Lord Jesus, Your love rebukes me and Your tenderness disciplines my heart. Your humility judges me with mercy, because I am weak in love. Your condescension heals my fear of judgment, because You judged judgment itself, when You condemned death and abolished corruption. Your mercy gladdens my soul, because You saved me from death, abolished the power of sin, and lifted the sentence of death forever. In the garden You wept and sought life for us, in my distance from You, my tears console my soul, because the seed of love You planted did not die. O Lord, my prayer is Your delight, and You, according to Your dispensation, save me, and care for me with Your mercies until the days of my exile end in peace, because You alone are the Savior. O Lord, I am Yours, so save me. Hallelujah. #PrayerToJesus #DivineMercy #Salvation #LoveOfChrist #Repentance

👑 We are Sons of God by Grace 👑 We are sons of God by grace; because the Lord Jesus brought this grace from the Father, and through the unity of the undivided divine essence which is opposed to division. He is one with the Father in essence, and He is distinct from the Father because He is the eternal Son of the Father, and for that very reason, i.e., the distinction of the hypostasis of the Father from the hypostasis of the Son, without us asking and without us saying first and second; because numbers do not at all express the essence of God, and even when we say "God is one," we do not mean the number one, but we mean "unity." Thus, the distinction of the Son from the Father became the basis for the distinction of believers: each distinct from the other according to the words of piety of the apostle when he taught us the distinction of the members of the one body according to the mystery of Christ (1 Cor 12:11-12). And if we are distinct as members of the one body, we are also distinct from the Son, and this is a distinction of grace; because we are not sons of the Father by a perfect equality with the Son according to the divine essence, but we are sons of the Father by a perfect equality according to the richness of God's love who loved us with the same love with which He loves His only Son, without any of us being the only begotten Son, but rather sons by grace. Here we perceive the surpassing goodness of God who loves the creatures from nothingness with the very love with which He loves His Son, and does not make the difference and distinction between the only begotten Son and the believers a reason for lesser love; because love is not calculated by quantity nor estimated by quality according to its work, gifts, and outpouring from God, but it is calculated by quantity and quality among sinful humans. For that reason the Lord Jesus Christ said: "that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:26) and also: "You have loved them as You have loved Me" (John 17:23). Thus, we are in Him because of the union of the humanity which distinguishes us from the divinity of the Son, and He is in us because of the Father's love for us, i.e., the very love of the Father for the Son. Here all the heavenly powers cry out with indescribable amazement because those who are from the dust of the earth have become beloved with a supreme, eternal love that does not divide, and the creature has become like his Creator according to love, and not according to essence, and has become beloved with the very one love of the Trinity. #SonshipByGrace #Trinity #DivineLove #Adoption #Theology

💖 The Essence of Prayer 🤲 Prayer, according to the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself—who taught prayer and practiced it—is a constant transformation of human nature and a constant assimilation to the Heavenly Father, revealed by His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who said, "Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt 5:48). The goal of prayer is to be united with the Heavenly Father, to be one with Him, as our Lord Jesus Christ says: "that they may be one in Us." The goal of prayer is accomplished by the Holy Spirit; for we cannot become like God by our own abilities, but by the power and gift of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, to transform us into the image of God. To receive the gift of the new life that our Lord Jesus Christ portrayed in His incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, our Lord recreated humanity anew through His incarnation from the holy Mary, when He transferred humanity from the nothingness from which it was created to the gift of life by the Holy Spirit, the Lord of life and the giver of all gifts. Whoever prays is transferred from the old, fallen Adamic nature, which was created from nothing, to the new human nature that our Lord Jesus Christ constituted through His incarnation. #Prayer #EssenceOfPrayer #Transformation #UnionWithGod #HolySpirit

✝️ Jesus Christ: Son of God and God 👑 Is Christ Jesus the Son of God, or is He God? What is specific to Christianity, and not shared by any other religion, is that when we hear the word "God," we immediately understand that Christianity specifically does not present "God," but "God the Father." Because in correct Christian doctrine, we do not have any discourse about "God," but rather we have a specific discourse about the "Fatherhood of God," "God the Father." And the rest of the doctrine is: "God the Father is the Father of our Lord and our God and our Savior and our King, Jesus Christ." Therefore, "God" is "the Father," and any talk about God without defining God as Father is quasi-Christian, but not necessarily Christian. Thus, the answer to the question of whether the Son can be both "Son" and "God" is not complicated. As long as the word "God" is the name of the Father, then the question in its correct form becomes: Is the Son of the Father like the Father? If the Father is God, is the Son also God? The answer: Yes, absolutely. But why insist on this faith? First: Because humanity is called to a greater grace, which is adoption — the greatest thing the Father offers. Second: Because this grace is from God, and not from the cosmic order, nor from biological procreation, but it is the participation of humanity in the special relationship between the Father and the Son. Third: Because this grace is the eternal destiny of every human, which is the greatest that can be said about the eternal destiny of humanity: that he is a son of the Father. Accordingly, the answer to the question becomes easy, as long as the name "God" means the Father, and "God" does not mean without Fatherhood. #JesusChrist #SonOfGod #GodTheFather #ChristianDoctrine #Theology #HolyTrinity

🔥 Being Filled with the Holy Spirit Let us ask for the fiery Spirit that the Lord Jesus commanded us to ask for, and to ask God day and night so that we may receive this living water "which whoever drinks will never thirst, but will become in him a spring of living water welling up to eternal life." And when we are filled with the Spirit, three important things happen to us: Firstly, we no longer search for God outside the temple of God, which is the heart, but we find Him with great joy within us. Secondly, our desire to seek external consolation or joy away from God gradually decreases and ceases. A sign of this is also the joy of unceasing prayer, or rather, as we progress, we find joy in every opportunity for prayer. Thirdly, the firm belief increases in us that perishable things have no place in our lives. And so, let us watch our hearts to realize that visits of divine joy are a true pledge of the life to come. #HolySpirit #LivingWater #Prayer #InnerJoy #SpiritualLife #ChristianMysticism

⚔️ The Victory of the Cross 🌍 The Lord came, and by His death He abolished death. Sin lost its throne, which no human arm or power could shatter. "He descended into hell by means of the Cross," and there "He scattered the powers of hell." Christ conquered the power of death by the Cross; because He accepted it, took it, and transformed it from a punishment into a great mystery—the mystery of baptism. Only through the Cross were we able to be united with the Lord "in the likeness of His death" (Rom 6:5). This truth must never be absent from our minds; for the death of the first Adam is not like the death of the last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ. Rather, it is "the life-giving death." Death was transformed into a power of salvation because the Lord accepted it on the Cross to destroy sin by it: "He who has died has been freed from sin" (Rom 6:7). How? The apostle answers: "our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin" (Rom 6:6). The Cross became the sign that separates death from life. Our life became the life coming through the resurrection, which appeared in Jesus Christ. He came and gathered in His divine-human essence power, limitations, and the new grace that renews creation. Therefore, Christ proclaimed reconciliation on five important levels: 1. Reconciliation of male and female. 2. Reconciliation of Paradise with the world. 3. Reconciliation of heaven with earth. 4. Reconciliation of God with all creation. 5. Reconciliation of matter with spirit. Thus, the Head "in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Col 2:9) is the one who makes us "complete in Him," that is, filled with power, grace, and the manifestation of the new creation, its transformation in Christ from death to life. #Cross #Victory #Reconciliation #Atonement #NewCreation

💎 The Dignity of the Christian Woman The Christian woman must fully realize, not only with her mind but with her entire being: Firstly, that she is a being created in the image of God, exactly like man, and called to share God's life from now on, and that she has consequently been granted a supreme dignity, and that she is an end in herself—because she is loved by God and called to a unique relationship with Him—and therefore she must not be made a tool or a means for any ambition, purpose, or lust, and under no circumstances should she be emptied of her human value to become an object to be possessed or enjoyed. Secondly, that she, like man, is a child of God, and therefore free like him in this universe which is none other than her Father's house, and that Christ cemented this freedom and released it from its shackles through His death and resurrection, and that every attempt to enslave women, no matter what pretexts are adopted for it, is ultimately directed against God Himself who willed this freedom for her and paid the blood of His only Son as its price: "You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men" (1 Corinthians 7:23). Thirdly, that her unique person and freedom will only be realized if she accepts to transcend all self-centeredness and caprices, so she does not remain a prisoner of greed, possessiveness, or vanity, but transcends herself towards others, accepting them and giving to them, thereby achieving in herself, as in man, the image of the Trinitarian God who is by nature love and sharing, and thus she finds her true self. #WomensDignity #ImageOfGod #ChristianFreedom #IdentityInChrist #TheologyOfTheBody

⚔️ Is there a way to escape the devil's snares spread all over the world? 🤔🕊️ #Humility #SpiritualWarfare #FaithOverFear #SnaresOfTheDevil

✨ No one is too far from God that He cannot change him. 🕊️ Holiness is not the story of those who never fell, but the story of those who knew how to get back up every time and return to God. God does not make saints out of those who think they are angels; He makes saints out of repentant sinners. Repentance holds a wondrous power—it turns a sinner into a saint, and a fornicator into a virgin. That is why St. Moses the Strong remains a living witness that God's grace is stronger than the past, and that sincere repentance can transform a man whom everyone feared into a saint honored by both heaven and earth. #Repentance #Grace #Holiness #HopeInGod #Transformation #FaithJourney #GodsMercy #DivineLove

❤️ A Prayer to Jesus 🙇 O my Lord Jesus, Your love rebukes me and Your tenderness disciplines my heart. Your humility judges me with mercy, because I am weak in love. Your condescension heals my fear of judgment, because You judged judgment itself, when You condemned death and abolished corruption. Your mercy gladdens my soul, because You saved me from death, abolished the power of sin, and lifted the sentence of death forever. In the garden You wept and sought life for us, in my distance from You, my tears console my soul, because the seed of love You planted did not die. O Lord, my prayer is Your delight, and You, according to Your dispensation, save me, and care for me with Your mercies until the days of my exile end in peace, because You alone are the Savior. O Lord, I am Yours, so save me. Hallelujah. #PrayerToJesus #DivineMercy #Salvation #LoveOfChrist #Repentance

✝️ The Death and Life of the Lord 🌅 The expressions of apostolic teaching must remain a beacon for us, where the Apostle declares: "For the death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God" (cf. Romans 6:10). Thus He lives in us, conquering sin, leading us towards repentance, sanctifying us by the Holy Spirit and by the blood of the New Covenant, which is better and greater than all the blood of the sacrifices of the Old Covenant. The precious Cross has become a fountain of salvation and life for us all. It is not a death substituted for a death, i.e., the death of the Lord as Adam died; for the Lord is the second Adam, "the Lord from heaven" (1 Corinthians 15:47). Rather, it is a death in which the Lord gathered three things: First: The true human nature capable of death, which He took from the Mother of God; for He is truly perfect man. Second: The death that reigned over all mankind. Third: The sentence of judgment: "You shall surely die." The Lord permitted death to approach Him by His embodied divine will, and therefore He said concerning His death: "I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again." And when death passed through His being, the sentence of judgment was executed, and He truly died. He accepted death in His humanity and tasted it in the flesh. But we must not forget that He who tasted death in the flesh is the very One who pronounced the sentence: "You shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17). He was exercising His divine authority as a just Judge, and therefore the Apostle said: "He condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3). #Cross #Salvation #DeathOfChrist #NewCovenant #Atonement #Judgment #Redemption

🛡️ Sin is Powerless to Separate Us from Christ ✨ Beloved, you are the glory of Christ as Paul said, and the boast of the heavens themselves, because you have put on Christ and are now at the right hand of the Father with the Victor. There is one sin unto death, which is the sin of apostasy from the faith and denial of the blood of Christ that saved us by His death. This sin transfers the living believer from life to death. As for the rest of sins, they are powerless to separate us from the love of God; rather, through repentance, confession, prayer, and mental and bodily fasting, we return to the glory of Christ. Indeed, even those who have apostatized from the faith, if they seek repentance and return, the Church accepts them, imitating Christ Jesus our Lord who accepted Peter, who cursed and denied the Lord before the servant girl. But he who falls into the pit of despair, like Judas who sold his Master and fell into the same sin as Peter, perishes due to his lack of love, because lack of love led him to destruction. #Grace #Repentance #Forgiveness #LoveOfGod #Mercy #Hope #Salvation

🎶 The Reality of Praise 🕊️ The Lord God gave us the gift of perception and speech so that we, creatures brought from nothingness, might add praise that surpasses the praise of the heavenly hosts; because we praise and glorify the Father in His Son and through the Holy Spirit. And praise - beloved ones - is not merely uttering words, but the heart being filled with the warmth of love, so that this love transforms into intellectual praise that surpasses words. And when this warmth, the warmth of the Spirit, subsides, we speak with words of perception and understanding. We first taste with the heart, then we speak with the mind and the power of speech. We first see, then we speak. Speech without vision is lifeless speech. This is the testimony of the Psalm: "Taste and see" (Psalm 34:8); because he who first tastes can, through intellectual vision, perceive the measure of divine grace poured out by the Heavenly Father according to the Apostle's testimony: "God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Romans 5:5). And thus, we receive this warm love to praise Him who, since before the creation of the world, waited to open the springs of His goodness and the flood of the waters of His love to give life to creation, put sin to death, and transfer the agonies of evil to the well of non-existence. Thus, we receive this surpassing gift to transfer from the rank of visible, irrational creation like rocks and stones to the rank of invisible creation like the heavenly hosts, and become the mediator through which the visible world is united with the invisible world. #DivinePraise #HeartfeltWorship #LoveOfGod #HolySpirit #VisibleAndInvisible #Creation #Grace