st basil

St Basil on Social Justice: Assisting the Poor During a Famine in a Roman Province
Cappodocian Church Fathers

St Basil on Social Justice: Assisting the Poor During a Famine in a Roman Province

10/04/2024 Bruce Strom 0

St Basil teaches us: “If you also give from your lack, you will have the vessel of oil ever flowing by the gift of mercy and the inexhaustible jar of flour. For the faithful, the grace of God zealously imitates these vessels, ever poured out yet never exhausted, returning double for what is given. Lend, you who lack, to the rich God. Have faith in the one who always personally undertakes the cause of the oppressed and makes recompense from his own resources.” […]

Was St Basil WOKE? St Basil the Great On Social Justice, Parable of the Rich Fool
Cappodocian Church Fathers

Was St Basil WOKE? St Basil the Great On Social Justice, Parable of the Rich Fool

10/03/2024 Bruce Strom 0

St Basil teaches us that whether we receive sufferings or blessings, both these should increase our two-fold Love of God and love of neighbor. St Basil teaches us:
“Temptations come in two forms. Sometimes affliction proves the heart like gold in a furnace, testing its purity by means of suffering. But for many, it is prosperity of life that is the greatest trial. For it is equally difficult to preserve one’s soul from despair in hard times, and to prevent it from becoming arrogant in prosperous circumstances.”
Who benefits more, those who contribute, or those who receive? St Basil teaches us, Through the fruits of your good works, “you produce for yourself, since the grace of good works redounds to those who perform them. You gave to the poor, and in so doing not only did you make what you gave truly your own, but you received back even more. For just as grain, when it falls upon the ground, brings forth an increase for the one who scatters it, thus also bread cast to the hungry yields considerable profit at a later time.” […]

St Basil On Social Justice To the Rich SMALL
Cappodocian Church Fathers

St Basil the Great, On Social Justice, His Homily to the Rich

09/29/2024 Bruce Strom 2

St Basil speaks to the Rich Young Man: “It is thus evident that you are far from fulfilling the commandment, and that you bear false witness within your own soul that you have loved your neighbor as yourself. Look, the Lord’s offer shows just how distant you are from true love! For it what you say is true, that you have kept from your youth the commandment of love and have given to everyone the same as to yourself, then how did you come by this abundance of wealth?”
“The more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love. If you had truly loved your neighbor, it would have occurred to you long ago to divest yourself of this wealth. But now your possessions are more a part of you than the members of your own body, and separation from them is as painful as the amputation of one of your limbs.”
St Basis warns the wealthy: If you have “sound judgment, you should should recognize that you have received wealth as a stewardship, and not for your own enjoyment; thus, when you are parted from it, you rejoice as those who relinquish what is not really theirs, instead of becoming downcast like those who are stripped of their own.” […]

Erasmus In Praise of Folly
Catholic Middle Ages and Beyond

Erasmus, Luther’s Predecessor, The Praise of Folly

02/17/2023 Bruce Strom 0

Folly reminds us of the tension between the vulgar and the devout. “The pious, since they aim primarily at what is almost alien to the crass senses, are numbed and stunned by the sensual. In contrast, the ordinary person gravitates towards them.” Thus, many negligent people value bodily sensations such as “sex, love of food, sleep, anger, pride, and envy. The pious wage a constant war against these urges, whereas the vulgar crowd considers that without them life has no real existence.” […]

Cappodocian Church Fathers

St Basil the Great On Envy

06/20/2021 Bruce Strom 1

What is envy? St Basil teaches us that “envy is distress caused by your neighbor’s prosperity. The jealous person is never free from anguish, never free from despair.” Is your neighbor successful? Does he drive a nice car, live in a nice house, have an attractive wife and precious children? Is he happy? Is he healthy? Is he wealthy? “All these things feed the illness and increase the pain of the jealous person.” […]

Evagrios the Solitary

Evagrios the Solitary, 153 Texts On Prayer

04/21/2018 Bruce Strom 0

Evagrios compares the persistence of prayer to the seven years of labor by Jacob to gain the hand of Rachel, his gazelle, for Jacob so loved Rachel that the seven years he labored for her hand seemed to him to be but a day. On his wedding night Leah, her sister, was substituted for Rachel, and Jacob labored yet another seven years for the hand of Rachel. […]

Evagrios the Solitary

Evagrios the Solitary, Blog 2, Text on Discrimination of Passions and Thoughts

04/13/2018 Bruce Strom 1

The demons tempt us through our passions, they tempt us through our perceptions, they tempt us through our memories of past pleasures that tempt us, through painful memories of those who have harmed us, and if this was true in the days of Evagrios, how much more true it is today when the media bombards us with images of pleasure and pain and cruelty.  Evagrios warns us, “all thoughts producing anger or desire in a way that is contrary to nature are caused by demons.”  If Evagrios could visit us today, what would he say about the wisdom of Christians attending church on Sundays and watching horror movies or violent movies on Friday nights?  Are we inviting demons into our souls to tempt us, to crowd us the compassionate thoughts in our soul?  We should guard ourselves against the demons of anger and rancor who seek for us to replay over and over in our mind the wrongs that others have done to us in the past. […]

Evagrios the Solitary

St Evagrios, On Asceticism and Stillness in the Solitary Life

04/09/2018 Bruce Strom 5

Evagrios begins by quoting Jeremiah, “You shall not take a wife in this place.”  The primary meaning of this verse is advice not to bear sons and daughters in time of war and troubles, but Evagrios interprets this allegorically, that we should not bear worldly thoughts and desires in our heart.  These worldly thoughts and desires are weak and sickly and lead to death, and “have no place in heavenly life.” […]