Download or read book Poet of the Word Re reading Scripture with Ephraem the Syrian written by Aelred Partridge and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2020-11-01 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Christians read the Bible somewhat differently from their modern counterparts. For example, St Ephraem’s layered approach to interpreting Sacred Scripture, especially the Old Testament, led him to delve below the literal words of the texts to uncover the rich vein of symbolic allusions that lay within them. Woven together, they formed a tapestry of spiritual wisdom. Ephraem transformed this tapestry into vibrant poetry in hymns, homilies and biblical commentaries that gesture towards the unfathomable mystery of God revealed in Christ. This brief essay examines the principles that guided Ephraem’s manner of biblical interpretation (his hermeneutics) and reveals why he is a Poet of the Word.
Download or read book Growing Old With God written by Tom Rudd and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairacres Publications 104 This heartening and perceptive study outlines common problems and sorrows in the ageing process. But there can be growth and fulfilment, too, and benefit to others. Tom Rudd affirms God’s loving purposes, encouraging us to see that the retirement years can give us an opportunity to rediscover our spiritual needs and the work of prayer.
Download or read book Prayer of the Heart written by Alexander Ryrie and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairacres Publications 124 Using the words of the Russian Orthodox spiritual teacher, St Theophan, that in prayer we should ‘stand with the mind in the heart’, Sandy Ryrie explains how to use short phrases to still the mind and enable us to rest with our attention set on God. In standing before God, we open ourselves to God’s work in us. The author then explores the particular situation of night prayer. In hours of darkness and sleeplessness, we are vulnerable to the anxieties and fears which daytime activity sometimes holds at bay, but at night the spirit may also become more aware of the reality of God and more ready to pray.
Download or read book River of the Spirit The Spirituality of Simon Barrington Ward written by Andy Lord and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2021-05-26 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairacres Publications 189 In this study of the spirituality of one of the Anglican Church’s great spiritual leaders the author considers the ways in which spirituality can represent our patterns of life with God that merge experience, prayer, community, theology and mission. Each chapter focuses on aspects of the great Easter and liturgical themes of life, death, resurrection and outpoured Holy Spirit. The image of the river of the Spirit provides a practical way into living with Christ, shaped by His passion, for the transformation of the world. It is a way that draws together different traditions in a world embracing spirituality embodied in, and beyond, the Jesus Prayer.
Download or read book Identity and Ritual written by Alan Griffiths and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2021-04-18 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In two thought-provoking essays Canon Griffiths reminds us that our identity as Christians is expressed through our language and focussed by the patterns of liturgical ritual that are in turn reflected in the architecture of the Christian church. Christian identity is particularly evident in the Eucharist and in our historical urge to keep watch in prayer, the practice of ‘vigil’, which plays such a prominent role in contemporary culture. By understanding our identity and our use of rituals we are able to step outside the constraints of time and proclaim that we are ready to respond to God when He reaches out to us.In two thought-provoking essays Canon Griffiths reminds us that our identity as Christians is expressed through our language and focussed by the patterns of liturgical ritual that are in turn reflected in the architecture of the Christian church. Christian identity is particularly evident in the Eucharist and in our historical urge to keep watch in prayer, the practice of ‘vigil’, which plays such a prominent role in contemporary culture. By understanding our identity and our use of rituals we are able to step outside the constraints of time and proclaim that we are ready to respond to God when He reaches out to us.
Download or read book Jesus the Undistorted Image of God written by John Townroe and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2022-01-10 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairacres Publication 192 The Eastern Orthodox description of Jesus as ‘the undistorted image of God’ is based on texts such as ‘the Gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God’ (2 Corinthians 4:4). This is the author’s favourite statement of belief about Jesus in relation to God and of the mysterious attractiveness of Jesus who draws everyone without distinction to God. Christ’s image is inescapable, even when rejected. There seems to be no way of avoiding this person who puzzles, yet attracts, the world. Based on a series of retreat talks, this book may be used for personal private reflection, as material for a group or as a foundation for leading a retreat for others. Each chapter discusses a particular aspect of the personhood of Jesus: His attractiveness, energy, gentleness, fierceness, confidence and steadfastness, and concludes with suggestions for applying the theme to our daily lives.
Download or read book The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian written by Sebastian Brock and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2018-07-01 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairacres Publications 128 In recent decades there has been a notable renewal of interest in St Isaac the Syrian, a seventh-century master of the ascetic life. This selection of short sayings is part of Dr Brock’s work on a fuller, long-neglected manuscript which he is making available to English readers. Each sentence holds the mind steadily in the light of a truth about the spiritual life. St Isaac’s vivid images drawn directly from nature, husbandry and general human experience speak for themselves and draw us to penitence and prayer.
Download or read book Anselm of Canterbury written by Sister Benedicta Ward SLG and published by SLG Press. This book was released on with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For those who study St Anselm, his prayers provide an intimate personal introduction to his thinking and his spirituality. For Anselm, who never considered himself a teacher of prayer, his prayers were simply personal devotions that he occasionally shared with others to encourage them to develop their own devotional style. Anselm would probably have been surprised to discover not only how widely his words were disseminated, but also the ways in which their translation and interpretation changed over the centuries. This brief study, by one of the leading scholars of early monastic life and thought, examines Anselm’s prayers as models and inspiration for mystics, saints and writers up to the present day.
Download or read book The Letters of Ammonas written by Derwas Chitty and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 1979-04-13 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the fourteen surviving letters of St Ammonas, one of the disciples of St Antony the Great. The main topics of these letters are the gifts of the Spirit, spiritual direction and discernment of the will of God. Derwas Chitty made a draft translation of these letters from the Greek and early Syriac versions; after his death, Dr Sebastian Brock carried out a thorough revision and added an introduction and a bibliography.
Download or read book Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia written by Jeffrey Wickes and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ephrem the Syrian was one of the founding voices in Syriac literature. While he wrote in a variety of genres, the bulk of his work took the form of madrashe, a Syriac genre of musical poetry or hymns. In Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia, Jeffrey Wickes offers a thoroughly contextualized study of Ephrem’s magnum opus, the Hymns on Faith, delivered in response to the theological controversies that followed the First Council of Nicaea. The ensuing doctrinal divisions had tremendous impact on the course of Christianity and led in part to the development of a uniquely Syriac Church, in which Ephrem would become a central figure. Drawing on literary, ritual, and performance theories, Bible and Poetry shows how Ephrem used the Syriac Bible to construct and conceive of himself and his audience. In so doing, Wickes resituates Ephrem in a broader early Christian context and contributes to discussions of literature and religion in late antiquity.
Download or read book Prayer Holiness written by Dumitru Staniloae and published by SLG Press. This book was released on with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In five essays originally given as addresses to the Benedictine monks at the Monastery of Chevetogne in Belgium, the author gives us the essentials of his teaching on prayer. They are the fruit not only of personal experience and long familiarity with the hesychast writings of Orthodox monasticism, but also of the spiritual tradition of his native Romania. We are given the outline of an icon of restored humanity through texts which we can appropriate for ourselves to allow the love of God to live and work in us.
Download or read book Gregory of Nyssa and the Sins of Asia Minor written by Jonathan Farrugia and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2023-07-09 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: St Gregory of Nyssa is known to theologians as one of the three great Cappadocian Fathers who are credited with the final clarification of the doctrine of the Trinity in the late fourth century. Few have ventured to study his role as a bishop who took pains to teach his flock the mysteries of the faith and how to lead a good Christian life. This short study delves into the moral teaching that St Gregory delivered to his audience by analyzing the specific sins about which he is teaching. Given that he preached all over Roman Anatolia, the details found in his homilies give us some insight into which sins were most notorious in the lands of Asia Minor and which, therefore, needed to be addressed.
Download or read book Faith Adoring the Mystery written by Sidney Harrison Griffith and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lent With George Herbert written by Tony Dickinson and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairacres Publication 194 The poems of George Herbert (1593–1633) have nurtured the faith of countless Anglican Christians, and others, since their posthumous publication in 1633. Described by the poet as ‘a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master’, Herbert’s poetry weaves together recognition of the glory and diversity of God’s creation and of the ingenuity of human beings in their attempts to map and control that creation, awareness of human frailty and sinfulness, and awed realisation of the infinite love of God. The themes of frailty and forgiveness underlying Herbert’s poetry also mark the season of Lent. In recognition of this, Tony Dickinson takes eight of the poems that tackle these great themes (relevant as much to the twenty-first century as to the seventeenth) and week by week through Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day, unpacks the language in which George Herbert explores them; language that often appears direct and simple, but whose simplicity frequently conceals a depth and density of meaning that few other writers can match.
Download or read book Doors written by Sister Raphael SLG and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2023-01-25 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through writing gathered over a lifetime of meditation on doors as ways into the understanding and fulfilment of a Christian life, Sr Raphael slg guides us gently to an understanding that every aspect of life can be a door into the Love of God, and an opportunity for prayer, reflection and spiritual growth. This is a collection of thoughts and quotations for every situation, for everyone who is looking for a sympathetic and thoughtful support for their daily spiritual life, or for a series of meditations to use on retreat.
Download or read book Time written by Dumitru Staniloae and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together essays by two outstanding Orthodox theologians to examine the paradox of time in relation to the eternity of God: Dumitru Stăniloae’s, ‘Eternity and Time’, a talk given to the Sisters of the Love of God in 1971, was expanded in the first volume of his Teologia dogmatica ortodoxa (3 vols., Bucharest, 1978). The preface to the 1994 English translation of that work, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, written by Kallistos Ware, was based on his essay, ‘Time: Prison or Path to Freedom?’, which was first published in 1989 by SLG Press. These reflections, brought together for the first time here, remain at the forefront of modern theology. Stăniloae illuminates time as a journey on which we may grow in response to the love that God offers us, a journey towards sharing in the eternity of the perfect, interpersonal communion of the Trinity. God, in His Incarnation, shares the journey with us in Christ, so that time enters into eternity, and eternity is brought into time. At every moment we are free to choose between responding to His love or rejecting it. Ware’s essay explains that it is the vocation of time to be open to eternity; time is fulfilled when God’s eternity breaks into the temporal sequence, as happened supremely at Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, as happens also at every Eucharist. Our faith is the true rationale of time: mutual love after the image of the Trinity.
Download or read book In the image of the Image Gregory of Nyssa s Opposition to Slavery written by Adam Couchman and published by SLG Press. This book was released on 2023-07-09 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: St Gregory of Nyssa is the most important author of the fourth century in relation to theological anthropology, and was one of the most outspoken of the early Church Fathers on the subject of slavery. Gregory’s theology is built upon his perception that Jesus Christ was truly human; therefore, to be human is to be made in the image of Christ. We cannot justify slavery if we accept that humans are made in God’s image, because slaves are no less made in the image of God than those who are free. This book examines Gregory’s theology, how he understood and taught about the relationship of human beings to God, and how he applied this theology to the practical issue of slavery.
