Life in Christ frees us to build intimacy with integrity
In Orthodoxy, we often hear talk about the mortification of the passions. What do we mean by this? Perhaps the Paschal season helps us to understand.
Christ destroyed death not by killing, but by voluntarily accepting his own death. Through his voluntary death, he destroyed death, and that destruction of death by death gave abundant life — life to those in the tombs!
So we don’t fight against the passions directly, we mortify them by our death… [ read more ]
by St Thalassios the Libyan
Christ, Master of all, free us from all these destructive passions and the thoughts born of them.
For Thy sake we came into being, so that we might delight in the paradise which Thou hast planted and in which Thou hast placed us.
We brought our present disgrace upon ourselves, preferring destruction to the delights of blessedness.
We have paid for this, for we have exchanged eternal life for death.
… [ read more ]
Based on St Maximos the Confessor’s Four Hundred Texts on Love, and the parallel passage in St Thalassios the Libyan, the diagram (click the image for a larger version) shows the concupiscent, intellectual, and irascible passions in terms of self-love – the luxuriating, self-obsessive, and acquisitive.
Also found in the Philokalia are writings on the passions by St John of Damascusm who likewise categorized the passions as intellectual (intelligent), irascible (incensive) and concupiscent (desiring), providing lists and… [ read more ]
