Praying with the Fathers: A Year of Neo-Patristic Meditations

By Philip Krill

PRAYING WITH THE FATHERS:
A Year of Neo-patristic Mediations is a day-by-day prayer book based on selections from the Early Church Fathers. In these meditations, Philip Krill, whose mission is ‘promoting a Trinitarian vision of deification and contemplative prayer,’’ seeks to introduce the reader to the Fathers’ vision of our divinization in Christ and the universally salvific impact of His Incarnation. It is also his hope that those who read these meditations will be drawn more deeply into contemplative prayer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665521598

Philip Krill

PHILIP KRILL is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, MO

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© 2021 Philip Krill. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  04/06/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2160-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2159-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021906819

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Revised Standard Version

Scripture taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition,

1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches

of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Contents

Introduction

January

The Mystery of God

January 1

January 2

January 3

January 4

January 5

January 6

January 7

January 8

January 9

January 10

January 11

January 12

January 13

January 14

January 15

January 16

January 17

January 18

January 19

January 20

January 21

January 22

January 23

January 24

January 25

January 26

January 27

January 28

January 29

January 30

January 31

February

Incarnation

February 1

February 2

February 3

February 4

February 5

February 6

February 7

February 8

February 9

February 10

February 11

February 12

February 13

February 14

February 15

February 16

February 17

February 18

February 19

February 20

February 21

February 22

February 23

February 24

February 25

February 26

February 27

February 28

February 29

March

Ecclesia de Eucharistia

March 1

March 2

March 3

March 4

March 5

March 6

March 7

March 8

March 9

March 10

March 11

March 12

March 13

March 14

March 15

March 16

March 17

March 18

March 19

March 20

March 21

March 22

March 23

March 24

March 25

March 26

March 27

March 28

March 29

March 30

March 31

April

Lectio Divina

April 1

April 2

April 3

April 4

April 5

April 6

April 7

April 8

April 9

April 10

April 11

April 12

April 13

April 14

April 15

April 16

April 17

April 18

April 19

April 20

April 21

April 22

April 23

April 24

April 25

April 26

April 27

April 28

April 29

April 30

May

Theotokos

May 1

May 2

May 3

May 4

May 5

May 6

May 7

May 8

May 9

May 10

May 11

May 12

May 13

May 14

May 15

May 16

May 17

May 18

May 19

May 20

May 21

May 22

May 23

May 24

May 25

May 26

May 27

May 28

May 29

May 30

May 31

June

Ascesis

June 1

June 2

June 3

June 4

June 5

June 6

June 7

June 8

June 9

June 10

June 11

June 12

June 13

June 14

June 15

June 16

June 17

June 18

June 19

June 20

June 21

June 22

June 23

June 24

June 25

June 26

June 27

June 28

June 29

June 30

July

Parrhesia

July 1

July 2

July 3

July 4

July 5

July 6

July 7

July 8

July 9

July 10

July 11

July 12

July 13

July 14

July 15

July 16

July 17

July 18

July 19

July 20

July 21

July 22

July 23

July 24

July 25

July 26

July 27

July 28

July 29

July 30

July 31

August

Prayer

August 1

August 2

August 3

August 4

August 5

August 6

August 7

August 8

August 9

August 10

August 11

August 12

August 13

August 14

August 16

August 17

August 18

August 19

August 20

August 21

August 22

August 23

August 24

August 25

August 26

August 27

August 28

August 29

August 30

August 31

September

Entasis & Extasis

September 1

September 2

September 3

September 4

September 5

September 6

September 7

September 8

September 9

September 10

September 11

September 12

September 13

September 14

September 15

September 16

September 17

September 18

September 19

September 20

September 21

September 22

September 23

September 24

September 25

September 26

September 27

September 28

September 29

September 30

October

Agape

October 1

October 2

October 3

October 4

October 5

October 6

October 7

October 8

October 9

October 10

October 11

October 12

October 13

October 14

October 15

October 16

October 17

October 18

October 19

October 20

October 21

October 22

October 23

October 24

October 25

October 26

October 27

October 28

October 29

October 30

October 31

November

Theosis

November 1

November 2

November 3

November 4

November 5

November 6

November 7

November 8

November 9

November 10

November 11

November 12

November 13

November 14

November 15

November 16

November 17

November 18

November 19

November 20

November 21

November 22

November 23

November 24

November 25

November 26

November 27

November 28

November 29

November 30

December

Apokatastisis

December 1

December 2

December 3

December 4

December 5

December 6

December 7

December 8

December 9

December 10

December 11

December 12

December 13

December 14

December 15

December 16

December 17

December 18

December 19

December 20

December 21

December 22

December 23

December 24

December 25

December 26

December 27

December 28

December 29

December 30

December 31

Sources

To

Gary Utoff

‘You shall not live by bread alone,

but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’

(Deuteronomy 8:3)

‘God became man so that man could become God’

St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54

Introduction

Praying with the Fathers: A Year of Neo-patristic Meditations is a simplified version of my earlier book, Listening to the Fathers: A Year of Neo-patristic Reflections. I have retained the same quotations from the early church fathers, but reduced my reflections to brief meditations and prayers. It is my hope that this simplified format will help make the wisdom of the fathers more accessible to more readers.

This book, like my previous one, is inspired by the patristic doctrine of deification (theosis). ‘God became man so we could become God,’ said St. Athanasius,¹ summarizing the dominant vision of the early church fathers. Impacted by these words of St. Athanasius, I have spent the last 30 years contemplating a Trinitarian vision of our divinization in Christ. I have never ceased to be arrested by such words as those of St. Irenaeus, ‘The Son of God became what we are in order to make us what he is in himself’ ² or those of St. Maximus the Confessor, ‘God makes man divine in the same measure as that in which God was made human.’ ³ Here is a vision of the deification of all of humanity, indeed of the cosmos itself, that offers the church a vibrant spiritual alternative to the shopworn, threadbare moralisms of so much of traditional religion.

I pray this vision of divinization will have a transformative effect upon all who use this book to meditate upon the Mystery of Christ. As another of the early church fathers famously said: ‘If you are a theologian you truly pray. If you truly pray you are a theologian.’ ⁴

Easter, 2021

January

The Mystery of God

January 1

[In the Hebrew Scriptures] I discovered that God bears witness to himself in these terms: ‘I am who am,’ and ‘Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you’’ (Ex. 3:14). I was filled with wonder at this perfect definition which translates into words the incomprehensible knowledge of God. Nothing better suggests God than Being. ‘He who is’ can have neither end nor beginning … There is no place without God; place does not exist except in God.

St. Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity

MEDITATION

God is the supra-essential Source of all that is. God has no ‘being’ as we understand ‘being.’ God is the Uncaused Origin of all that exists.

PRAYER

Take us to that ‘Space’ beyond all that exists so we may abide with You in Uncreated Light, O God. Show us that all things exist in You, and that there is no where we can go without remaining with You and in You.

January 2

When God, who is absolute fullness, brought creatures into existence, it was not done to fulfill any need, but so that his creatures should be happy to share his likeness, and so that he himself might rejoice in the joy of his creatures as they draw inexhaustibly upon the Inexhaustible.

St. Maximus the Confessor, Centuries on Charity

MEDITATION

God has no other ‘need’ than to share His inexhaustible Fullness with us (cf. Jn. 10:10). We are created to be recipients of God’s incomprehensible Life.

PRAYER

You have made us to be ‘partakers of Your divine nature,’ O God (2 Pt. 1:4). Your Joy is that our joy ‘may be made complete’ (cf. Jn. 15:11).

January 3

Every concept formed by the intellect in an attempt to comprehend and circumscribe the divine nature can succeed only in fashioning an idol, not in making God known.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses

MEDITATION

No words can objectify God. God is not another Object in a world of objects. God is the unseen Origin of all that exists.

PRAYER

Elevate our understanding, O God, that we may experience You, not as an object of experience, but as the Inspiration and Source of experience itself.

January 4

God is known both in all objects and outside all objects. God is known both through knowing and through unknowing … He is nothing of what is, and therefore cannot be known through anything that is; and yet he is all in all. He is nothing in anything; and yet he is known by all in all, and at the same time as he is not known by anything in anything.

Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names

MEDITATION

God is always greater than, yet never less than, all the good things that can be said about Him. Our adulation of God is good as far as it goes, provided we always remember it never goes far enough.

PRAYER

Who can express both the immanent and transcendent ways in which You are present to us, O God? We marvel at how the Immediacy of Your Presence is infinitely beyond our grasp.

January 5

Just as at the center of a circle there is a single point at which all the radii meet, so one who has been judged worthy to reach God recognizes in him, by direct awareness and without forming thoughts, all essences of created objects.

St. Maximus the Confessor, Gnostic Centuries

MEDITATION

God is the indefinable Center Point of No-thing-ness from which all created being appears. As an inconceivable Fulness of Being, God creates everything from No-thing.

PRAYER

Make us aware of You as a Mystery beyond our comprehension, O God. Communicate Your Presence to us in an Immediacy prior to our thoughts.

January 6

O thou who art beyond all, how canst thou be called by another name? What hymn can sing of thee?

No name can describe thee. What mind can grasp thee? No intellect conceives thee. Thou only are the inexpressible; all that is spoken comes forth from thee. Thou only art unknowable; all that is thought comes forth from thee … In thee all things dwell … O thou, Beyond All; How canst thou be called by any other name?

St. Gregory Nazianzus, Dogmatic Poems

MEDITATION

God is beyond all, yet all is in God. God is the Mystery whose inestimable Fulness makes all things possible.

PRAYER

Worship alone is worthy of You, O God. Nothing other than inarticulate babbling is appropriate to the ‘Beyond All’ that You are (cf. Acts 2:4; Rom. 8:26).

January 7

If it happens that in seeing God one understands what is seen, that means it is not God himself who is seen but one of those knowable things that owe their being to him. For in himself God transcends all intelligence and all essence. He exists in a super-essential mode and is known beyond all understanding only in so far as he is utterly unknown and does not exist at all. And it is that perfect unknowing, taken in the best sense of the word, that constitutes the true knowing of him who transcends all knowing.

Dionysius the Areopagite, Letter to Gaius

MEDITATION

God is known in the relinquishment of all concepts of God. Every act of Surrender opens a Space within us where God’s Presence is revealed.

PRAYER

Grant us the Joy of surrendering our attempts to grasp You with our thoughts, O God. Show us that in our Openness to You, a sense of Your abiding Presence arises.

January 8

It has been said, ‘The Lord protects little children’… When God sees that in all purity of heart you are trusting in him more than in yourself … then a strength unknown to you will come to make its dwelling in you. And you will feel in all your senses the power of him who is with you.

St. Isaac of Nineveh, Ascetic Treatises

MEDITATION

The Presence of God can be physically felt when we stop trying to control the flow of life. Kenosis (self-dis-possession) is the way to theosis (divinization).

PRAYER

Purify our hearts by granting us the faith of little children (cf. Mt. 18:3), O God. Help us experience the Power of Your Presence in every act of Letting Go.

January 9

The words of the prayer [Our Father] really point to the Father, the Father’s name, and the Kingdom, to teach us … to honor, to call upon and to adore the One Trinity. For the name of God the Father … is the only-begotten Son. And the Kingdom of God the Father … is the Holy Spirit. For what Matthew calls ‘Kingdom’ another evangelist calls Holy Spirit: ‘Thy Spirit come …’

St. Maximus the Confessor, Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer

MEDITATION

The uncontainable love of God (Father) overflows itself in two, cascading personal movements (Son, Holy Spirit). We are created to be deified partakers in this perichoretic Mystery of Divine Love.

PRAYER

Catch us up into Your own Trinitarian Love, O God. Help us to become, by participation, what You are by nature: God.

January 10

God, the divine Origin, is praised in holiness: whether as Unity, on account of the character of [His] simplicity and unity … or as Trinity, because of the thrice personal manifestation of this super-essential fruitfulness … or as Love for man, because … the godhead has been fully imparted to our nature by one of its Persons calling humanity and raising it to himself …

Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names

MEDITATION

God’s ways of calling us to Himself are as varied and mysterious as the Three Persons of the Trinity itself. No one escapes the divinizing touch of God’s triune Love.

PRAYER

Inspire us to relax in our search for intimacy with You, O God. Show us that it is Your Love for us that inspires our desire for closer union with You (cf. 1 Jn. 4:10).

January 11

The Father makes all things by the Word in the Spirit. So it is that the Unity of the Trinity is safeguarded. So it is that in the church is proclaimed the one God who is ‘above all and through all and in all’ (Eph. 4.6). He is ‘above all’ as Father, as author and source; ‘through all’ by the Word; ‘in all’ in the Holy Spirit.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria, Letters to Serapion

MEDITATION

All things find their Unity in the Mystery of the Father. All things find their distinctiveness in the Son. And all things find their inter-connectedness in the Spirit.

PRAYER

Open our eyes to the Mystic Harmony of the universe, O God. Show us that all things finds their symphonic Resonance in You.

January 12

I have hardly begun to think of the Unity before the Trinity bathes me in its splendor: I have hardly begun to think of the Trinity before the Unity seizes hold of me again. When one of the Three presents himself to me, I think it is the whole, so full to overflowing is my vision, so far beyond me does he reach. There is no room left in my mind, it is too limited to understand even one. When I combine the Three in one single thought, I see only one great flame without being able to subdivide or analyze the single light.

St. Gregory Nazianzus, On Baptism

MEDITATION

It is the Spirit Himself who toggles our attention between Father and Son so we might delight in their reciprocal Love.

PRAYER

Draw us into Your divine Exchange of Love, O God. Make us partakers of what You share within Your triune Life.

January 13

When I speak of God, you should feel yourselves bathed in a single light and in three lights … There is undivided division, differentiated unity.

St. Gregory Nazianzus, Orations

MEDITATION

Who can fathom the ‘differentiated unity’ of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Yet union differentiates, and perfect unity differentiates perfectly.

PRAYER

We are one with You, O triune God, while retaining our ‘otherness’ from You. Blessed are You for sanctifying distinctiveness within the Mystery of Your unifying Love.

January 14

Even if the godhead, which is beyond all, is worshipped by us as Trinity and as Unity, we know neither the three nor the one as numbers.

St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Divine Names

MEDITATION

‘One’ and ‘three’ denote complementary relationships among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is adoration, not arithmetic, that understands God.

PRAYER

We bow speechless before Your triune Mystery, O God. Call us to seek You in contemplation, not through calculation.

January 15

As if God has no hands of his own! From all eternity he has with him the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit. It is by them and in them that he does all things.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies

MEDITATION

The Son and the Holy Spirit are the ‘two hands’ of God. With them God creates, and re-creates, the entire world.

PRAYER

Take us by the hands, O God, and lift us up to eternal life (cf. Jn. 12:32). Draw us into Your triune Mystery as ‘partakers of Your own divine nature’ (2 Pt. 1:4).

January 16

The Father represents in the bosom of the deity the element of generation, Jesus and the Spirit are after a fashion the divine shoots of God’s engendering deity, and as it were its super-essential flowers and radiance.

Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names

MEDITATION

The Trinity is a Mystery of ever-exceeding Love. All is outpoured in the Trinity, and all is continually filled up. The Father empties Himself into the Son and the Holy