Wednesday 10th, Part 2. 

Even though it is is 31C, it is raining. One of our friends said, “you have brought the rain with you from Manchester.” Indeed, but I drank from the fountain of Christ’s Mercy.

St Efraim the Syrian writes: 

“Thanksgiving be to Him who caused a stream to flow forth 

in the mouths that had been closed,

so that they might give praise without end, through the Son, 

to the worshipful Father.”

Nisiben hymns 69

The evening was spent in conversation with Sister A and S at C’s house. The conversation was pastoral in nature, and the conversation revolved around the vicissitudes of life that we all suffer. Set within that larger framework of God’s divine plan.

It is a blessing to share one another’s burdens and to focus on our faith, our common heritage, within a world which often has taken the wrong direction and that is searching for answers. St Paul, in his letter to the Galatians in chapter 6 v. 2, writes, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” So, in acceptance of these words, we were indeed bearing one another’s burdens, and in so doing, fulfilling that law of Christ, to love God and to love one’s neighbour.

St Porphyrios says, “Christ is everything.” So, we should not add or subtract anything to our Christian faith, since, by adding, we compromise, and by subtracting, we fall short of that perfection which God calls us to. C.S. Lewis calls this “Mere Christianity.” To Wormwood, his nephew, in the Screwtape Letters, he says, what we must do is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity and …’, you know, ‘Christianity and Crisis’, ‘Christianity and the New Psychology’, ‘Christianity and the New Order.’” To add to that, perhaps ‘Christianity and Politics.’

The horror of the same old thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart. It creates an endless source of heresies. Pure Christianity, with nothing added and nothing taken away, we find in the monasteries.

C.S. Lewis writes again: “just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out the natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty.” 

Original, authentic and unadulterated Christianity does not need nor seek approval of the world, or indeed embrace its passing fads and fashions and fantasies. It remains steadfast to apostolic order, to true doctrine and to the living tradition.

Any movement that is required is impelled by the action of the All-Holy Spirit. Amen.