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Great Lent: The Season of Fasting

...from the devil during His long fast (Matthew 4:1-11)! Learn to pray contemplative prayer. Ps 46:10 – “Be still, and know that I am God!” This is an ancient type of Christian meditation which is the complete opposite to secular and Eastern religious meditation which aims to empty your mind. Christian meditation is about filling your mind with thoughts and reflections on and about God and Scripture – to really focus on a verse or passage of Scripture and to pray and wait on God in silence until you become aware of His presence and His voice (in whatever form that takes, i.e. visions, pictures, words etc.), and are filled with the Spirit who can reveal...

Lent Day 32: Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures: Lecture XXI

...es of the devil” (Eph 6:11). Then after this was done, and having been “counted worthy” to receive this anointing, they are then “called Christians” living up to the name through their new birth. Cyril goes on to explain how this type of anointing was prefigured in the Old Testament through Moses “bathing [Aaron] in water, he anointed him … and made him High-priest”. To them however these things happened in a figure, but to you not in a figure, but in truth; because you were truly anointed by the Holy Ghost. Christ is the beginning of your salvation Cyril closes this lecture by encouraging his students to remain “unblemished” in th...

Lent Day 35: Ambrose of Milan: Concerning the Mysteries: 1-4

...unced the devil by facing West, and then turning East towards Christ, as though face to face, they declared their acceptance of Him. The bishop gives a message or blessing to the convert, who is instructed to acknowledge him as though he were an angel of the Lord, and to not pay attention to his outward appearance as a man, but to respect the Office he holds as an authority. God’s presence in baptism “What did you see?”, Ambrose rhetorically asks about the baptism. Water, of course, but not only that: apart from the bishop and deacons ministering during this time, God is also present in the waters. Quoting Paul from 2 Corinthians 4:18, he makes the point...

Lent Day 38: Leo the Great: Sermon XXI (On the Nativity Feast I)

...ating the devil and death (Gal 4:4). And so it was, “the Word of God, Himself God, the Son of God”, the one who was in the beginning with God; the one by which all things came into being (Jn 1:1-3), came with the purpose of saving us from “eternal death” by “bending Himself to take on Him our humility”. By doing this, the Word did not “decrease in His own majesty”, but he remained “what He was and [assumed] what He was not”. This was so that he “might unite the true form of a slave to that form in which He is equal to God the Father”; this then joined “both natures together by such a compact that the lower should not be swallowed up...

Lent: Day 14 - Justin Martyr: First Apology, Chaps. 24-35

..., and the devil” bolstering his previous arguments that the “gods” are in fact demons. Proofs of Christ’s power and status from prophecy This chapter, and the ones that follow, aim to defend the true power and status of Christ, and dismiss the claim that Jesus performed his “mighty works by magical art, and by this appeared to be the Son of God”, and was thus only a mere man empowered by demons. To do this, Justin gives a very brief look at the prophets of old who foretold of this coming, healing power and that he would die and rise again, saying that He was foretold by all the major prophets down through the generations, and specifically prophesi...