Reflections

  • Second Sunday After the Resurrection – Come and Have Breakfast

    ByJobin

    Second Sunday After the Resurrection: The Shore, the Net, and the Charcoal Fire: John 21:1-14.

    All night: nothing. Professional fishermen on their home water. Every cast. Every adjustment. Zero fish.

    One instruction from a stranger on the shore: “Cast on the right side.” And the net was too full to pull in. 153 large fish. The net did not break.

    St. Ephrem: the night of human effort without divine direction is always empty. The morning of divine direction changes everything. Same lake. Same boat. Same net. Different result. Because the voice spoke.

    The fast is over. The ordinary is back. And sometimes the night produces nothing. But the voice from the shore is still speaking. Cast on the right side.

    For our journey today:
    – Cast on the right side
    – Come to the fire
    – find Him in the ordinary

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Sunday After the Resurrection – New Sunday

    ByJobin

    New Sunday – The Locked Room, the Wounds & the Greater Blessing: John 20:19-29

    Thomas saw and believed. That was the faith of the first generation. The faith that had the luxury of touching the wounds.

    Christ said: there is a greater blessing. For those who believe without seeing. Without touching. Without being in the locked room.

    You.

    You have received the testimony through Scripture. Through the Qurbana. Through the community. Through the Spirit who prays in you. Through forty-nine days of fasting and the Hevoro Days that followed.

    And you have believed. Without seeing. Without touching.

    St. Macarius: the not-seeing faith is the higher faith. Because it trusts the Person rather than the evidence.

    Blessed are you.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Hevoro Friday – Fifth Day of Brightness

    ByJobin

    Hevoro Friday – Fifth Day of Brightness – The Harrowing of Hades – 1 Peter 3:17-22

    The Oriental Orthodox icon of the Resurrection shows Christ standing on the broken gates of Hades. His hands grasp the wrists of Adam and Eve. He is lifting them out of their tombs. The personification of Death is beneath His feet. Defeated.

    Behind Adam and Eve, the patriarchs and prophets are visible. David. Solomon. John the
    Baptist. The righteous of every generation since Adam. They had been waiting. Centuries upon centuries. And now they are coming out.

    The Second Adam grasping the first Adam. Reversing the Fall by undoing it from the inside. Death has been entered and emptied.

    This is what Christ was doing on Holy Saturday.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Hevoro Thursday – Fourth Day of Brightness

    ByJobin

    *Hevoro Thursday – Fourth Day of Brightness* – 1 John 4:19-5:15 – _He First Loved Us_

    The entire Lenten series in one sentence. Every reflection. Every passage. Every healing. Every Cross. Every empty tomb. All of it was love. And all of it was first.

    Day 28: Christ found the bent woman without being asked. Day 36: Christ invited Himself to Zacchaeus’s table. Day 41: Christ came to Lazarus’s tomb on His own initiative. Day 50: Christ stood behind Mary in the garden before she turned around. Hevoro Monday: Christ joined the Emmaus disciples before they knew who He was.

    The love went first. Always first. And because it went first, we can love. The brother. The community. The world.

    John does not soften this. If you say you love God and hate your brother, you are a liar.

    The brother you can see is the examination. Not the feeling in your heart during prayer. Not the tears during the Qurbana. Not the discipline of the fast. The brother.

    St. John Chrysostom: the love that goes up to God must also go out to the brother. Otherwise it is not love. It is religious performance.

    The Lenten fast was vertical. Between you and God. The Hevoro Days are revealing the horizontal. Between you and the brother. The love of God needs both dimensions. Like the Cross.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Hevoro Wednesday – The Third Day of Brightness

    ByJobin

    Hevoro Wednesday – Third Day of Brightness: Do Not Harden Your Hearts: Hebrews 3:1-13

    The Israelites saw God’s works for forty years. Plagues. Sea parting. Manna. Water from the rock. They saw it all.

    And their hearts went hard.

    The seeing did not prevent the hardening. The miracles did not inoculate against the rebellion.

    St. John Chrysostom: the Hevoro Days are the Church’s wilderness. Not deprivation. Testing. The deliverance has happened. The tomb is empty. The question is whether the heart will stay soft.

    Today the Spirit says: do not harden. The fast softened you. Stay that way.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Hevoro Tuesday – The Second Day of Brightness

    ByJobin

    Hevoro Tuesday -Matthew 28:11–20: The Lie and the Commission

    Two responses to the empty tomb, side by side in the same passage.

    The institution’s response: pay money. Buy silence. Spread a lie. “His disciples stole the body while we slept.”

    Christ’s response: go. Make disciples. Baptise. Teach. “I am with you always.”

    St. John Chrysostom: the suppression is the evidence. You do not pay people to be quiet about nothing. The money proves the guards saw something the chief priests could not afford to have reported.

    The lie is still being told. The truth is still being preached. And the truth has authority.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Hevoro Monday – The First Day of Brightness

    ByJobin

    Hevoro Monday. The First Day of Brightness. Luke 24:13-35

    Two disciples walked seven miles away from Jerusalem. Away from the resurrection. They had the facts. They did not have the faith.

    A Stranger joined them. Opened the Scriptures. Set their hearts on fire.

    At a table in Emmaus, He took bread. Blessed it. Broke it. Gave it. And their eyes opened. And they knew Him. And He vanished.

    “Did not our heart burn within us?”

    St. Ephrem: the Emmaus road is the road every Christian walks. Hearts burning from Scripture. Eyes opening at the bread. And between the two: a walk with the risen Christ. Unrecognised. But present.

    For our journey today:
    – Stay on the road
    – Invite Him in
    – Look for the breaking

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Lenten Reflection – The Feast of Resurrection

    ByJobin

    The Feast of the Resurrection. John 20:1-18

    Mary Magdalene stood weeping at the empty tomb. She thought the body had been stolen. She turned and saw a man she assumed was the gardener.

    He said one word. “Mary.”

    And she knew. Not by sight. By voice. The shepherd’s sheep know the shepherd’s voice.

    “Rabboni!” My Teacher. My Lord. You are alive. You said my name.

    St. Cyril: the resurrection is not a doctrine believed from a distance. It is a Person standing behind you while you weep, about to say your name.

    Fifty days. The fast is finished. The tomb is empty. Christ is risen.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Remember Me: The Good Thief and the Last Word on Repentance

    ByJobin

    *Remember Me: The Good Thief and the Last Word on Repentance*
    _Movement V, Post 2 | Seeking Theosis_

    🕯️ The Faces of the Fast series began on the first day of Great Lent with Adam sitting outside the gate of Paradise.

    The gate had just closed behind him. He sat in the dust. He wept. And God had compassion on him.

    Today, Holy Saturday, the Lenten portion of the series ends.

    It ends with a man dying on a cross asking to be remembered. And being told by the man dying beside him that today he will be in Paradise.

    The gate that closed on Adam is opened again. Not for a patriarch or a prophet or a person of demonstrated virtue. For a dying thief. With hours left. Asking for the most human thing in the world.

    Remember me.

    We began with the gate closing. We end with it opening.

    That is the whole of the Gospel in the arc of a Lenten series.

    The last Lenten reflection is on the blog today. Short because Holy Saturday is a day of silence. But the silence is not empty.

    Tomorrow the stone moves.

    Χριστὸς Ἀνέστη. Christ is RIsen. That is where all of this has been going. 🕯️

  • Lenten Reflection – Day 48 of the Great Lent

    ByJobin

    The stone was sealed. The soldiers were posted. The women went home to rest.
    And inside the tomb, the Lord of life was making the most powerful journey in history – to the place where the dead had waited since Adam.
    Holy Saturday is not the absence of God. It is God hidden. And hiddenness is not the same as absence.
    Day 48 of the Great Lent