“There is a cruelty that lurks in the human heart: to speak ill of the dead. They lie silent, their mouths shut by the grave, unable to repent, unable to defend themselves. And yet our tongue, restless and unbridled, digs into the soil to unearth their sins. Scripture cuts us off: ‘Do not speak ill of one who has died, for we are all to be numbered among the dead’ (Sirach 8:7). To spit on a corpse is to spit on your own grave.”
-Father Charbel Abernethy, “Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead.”
And this is the verdict:
The Light has come into the world,
but men loved the darkness rather than the Light,
because their deeds were evil.
John 3:19
“The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist’s world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.”
-G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy
We are celebrating the Feast of the Elevation (or Exaltation) of the Holy Cross. This is a commemoration of historic events in the Orthodox Church, and an opportunity to ask ourselves what these outward expressions of faith have to do with our lives in the current age. The original events are more than a thousand years distant from us, but the human condition is unchanged.
“The Exaltation of the Lord’s Cross has arrived. Then, the Cross was erected on a high place, so that the people could see it and render honor to it. Now, the cross is raised in the churches and monasteries. But this is all external. There is a spiritual exaltation of the cross in the heart. It happens when one firmly resolves to crucify himself, or to mortify his passions—something so essential in Christians that, according to the Apostle, they only are Christ’s who have crucified their flesh with its passions and lusts (cf. Gal. 5:24). Having raised this cross in themselves, Christians hold it exalted all their lives. Let every Christian soul ask himself if this is how it is, and let him hearken to the answer that his conscience gives him in his heart.”
-St. Theophan the Recluse, Letters on the Spiritual Life
Gladsome Lights 