(spotted on facebook)

Saint Olga is close to the abused and broken. Glory to God for all things.

“Prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.”

~St. Teresa of Ávila

Quinten Metsys, Virgin in Prayer (1466 -1530). Oil on oak panel, 43 x 31 cm. Private collection.

Italian Easter Sunday morning tradition: the morning starts with Mass and ends with the mourning mother Mary joyfully “running” to her Risen Son ☺️

I feel like this reminder is necessary: you are first a Christian. You are a Christian before you are a Republican or a democrat or a libertarian. You are a Christian before you are an American. You are a Christian before you are any other title you may bear in this life. And if any of your secondary titles are causing you to act in a way that isn’t Christlike or it is distorting your worldview, then you need to reassess. You have a heart issue and a priority issue, my friend. You have a heart issue BECAUSE of a priority issue.

Christ first. Always.

"Mary now speaks to Christ: 'Are you my son? - or God? You are nailed to the cross. Where lies my homeward road?

How can I close my eyes, uncertain and afraid? Are you dead? - or alive? Are you my son? - or God?'

Christ speaks to her in turn: 'Whether dead or alive, woman, it's all the same - son or God, I am thine'."

~Nature Morte, Joseph Brodsky

“Do not expect to be honoured in a world where your Lord was crucified.”

~Charles Spurgeon

Attributed to Pietro Perugino, Christ Crowned with Thorns, c. 1500-5

Humility is not about talking about your shortcomings, but about enduring others talking about them.

+ St. Alexandra Feodorovna the Passionbearer

Divine Mercy Prayer

"In her obedience to God she shows us that perfect freedom and attaining our 'full potential' is found in submitting our fallen and corrupted will to the all-good Father, thus molding our will into His will and therefore being able to (eventually) not only 'know the good,' but will it and do it.

By keeping our souls and bodies pure, by not even accepting corrupted thoughts, we maintain the ability to hear and communicate with God, and thus know how to live in conformity with His will.

And so, no matter how ill we are, no matter our upbringing, no matter the genetic weaknesses we have inherited (of body and soul), no matter the state of the world around us, we have the opportunity by God’s grace, through the prayers of the Theotokos, to become healthy, to become holy. We too can, in our own dormition, pass from life to life through a mere 'falling asleep,' if only we would imitate her virtue."

~Icon and text via The Virtue of the Theotokos, Orthodoxpath.org

My beloved is mine, and I am his.

- Song of Songs 2:16