An introduction to the Great Canon of St. Andrew.An NRO Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez
Frederica Mathewes-Green, frequent National Review Online movie reviewer, is author of many books, on a variety of topics. Also a columnist for Beliefnet.com, her latest book comes just in time for the Christian holy season of Lent. It's called First Fruits of Prayer: A Forty-Day Journey Through the Canon of St. Andrew. Frederica had a pre-Ash Wednesday conversation about the book with NRO editor Kathryn Lopez.
Excerpt:
Lopez: For folks who aren't into Lent, they might know it as the time when some of their friends don't drink — something along those lines. Do you "give up" stuff during Lent? How do you look at the 40 days? How do you tend to describe it to the uninitiated?
Mathewes-Green: For Eastern Orthodox, all spiritual exercises are designed to heighten our perception of basic reality: Sin is much more serious than we think, and God's forgiveness is much more vast than we think. Left to ourselves, we go around with Playskool impressions of what's at stake. So the goal of all spiritual disciplines are to cultivate charmolypi — to use a Greek term coined by the 6th-century abbot of the monastery on Mt Sinai, St. John of the Ladder. Charmolypi means the kind of penitence that flips into joyous gratitude, "joy-making sorrow," repentance shot through with gold.
Worth a read! |
Link [
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