Daily Audio Messages

Among the greatest struggles in the Christian life are the ‘little things’: the day-to-day ‘bad habits’ by which we continually fall, and which seem to trap us in our sin. Is there a way out? In this week’s episode, we examine the Fathers on sin as habits, how these habits enslave us—and most importantly, how we can overcome our shackles and progress toward the Kingdom.

Source: monachos.net

Can one call oneself a Christian without love? And what is the nature of the love we are called to show our neighbours? In this week’s episode, we examine four patristic passages on love, and ask the question: What is it about Christian love that makes it unique in the world?

Source: monachos.net

The Genesis account of Eve being created from the rib of Adam has, throughout history, often been interpreted in negative ways. In this week’s broadcast, through a brief text by St Irenaeus of Lyons, we examine a patristic vision of this creation grounding the true intimacy and mutual responsibility of the human community, male and female as ‘helpers’ of one another in the work of salvation.

Source: monachos.net

In this broadcast we return to the Life of Moses by St Gregory of Nyssa, and examine a key passage in which the saint compares the ascent of spiritual life to Moses’ ascent of Mt Sinai. What does it mean to ascend into ‘darkness’, to converse with God ‘where the understanding does not reach’? And how does Moses’ example reveal the way in which all the Fathers and Saints draw the whole Christian family into deeper communion with God?

Source: monachos.net

In this week’s broadcast, we examine three sayings by Abba Poemen (‘The Shepherd’) of Egypt, on the means by which the hardest heart can be softened by the Lord.

Source: monachos.net

In every age there is the temptation to doubt the Mysteries of the Church—to question how it is that the faithful should remain secure in believing that Christ makes Himself truly present in Body and Blood at the Holy Table. In this week’s episode, we examine an extended text by Nicholas Cabasilas, on the substance of our faith in the Mystical Supper.

Source: monachos.net

St John of the Ladder, whom we normally read during Great Lent, is a Father who offers practical guidance to Christian life of every moment. In this week’s broadcast, we explore a series of passages from Step 1 of St John’s Ladder to Paradise, on the specific issue of the universal calling of the Christian life, coupled with the need for each person to seek out a suitable way of life for the spiritual struggle to be exercised.

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We examine a sermon by St Leo of Rome, normally read in the season of Pascha, yet which sheds great light on the coming of the Lord and the pastoral message to be gleaned from the intense theological disputes about Christ’s natures that raged in the early Church.

Source: monachos.net

We look again at the theme of forgiveness in the writings of the Fathers—with an eye particularly toward practical injunctions on forgiveness, and the relationship of repentance, forgiveness and redemption in quotations from a variety of patristic sources. This episode also announces the Patristic Quotations Topical Index.

Source: monachos.net