#mull monastery

“St Ita’s name means ‘thirst for holiness’. I think of that often - how we start our lives in Christ with such thirst, such hunger, such openness to God’s grace, only to slowly become tired and open ourselves once again to the barren voices of this world. Those voices that carry no seed of Life in them, those voices that drain us of the God-given energy that feeds our thirst for holiness.

It is St Ita’s Feast today [January 15]. May she intercede on our behalf before Christ, may she welcome us and guide us into holiness the way she guided her orphans. She is known as ‘the foster mother of God’s saints’ because she took care of over one thousand children in her monastery, many of whom have also been canonized as saints. St Brendan the Navigator himself is one of her orphans.

May our thirst for holiness return to our hearts and take complete control over our being.”

~Fr. Seraphim Aldea

“When you look at an icon, if you just stop at what you visually see, you only see wood and pigment. But if you train your mind and if you train your heart to see more,...you see a saint.  You look beyond the material of the icon and you see what is divine in what is painted on the icon.  And that is important beyond iconography.  Because that can, by the grace of God, teach us how to look at those around us.  It teaches us that when we see another human being, not to stop at the wood and the pigment that we see before us; not to only see the body and what the body does, or the brain, and what the brain makes that person say.  Yes, that exists in a human being, just as wood exists in an icon.  But in that human being, like in an icon, there is so much more.  There is something so much deeper. 

We look at wood and color and we try to see what's beyond it, hidden all the way from the Kingdom.  And we learn to look at humans that we meet in the world and to see the flesh and to see the skin and to see the bones and the deeds and the actions and the words of those flesh and bones, but we must also learn, we must train ourselves to see what lies behind those flesh and bones.  Because in every single person around us there is a divine sparkle.  Every single human being that you meet was created in the image of God.  And if you lose sight of that, if you interact with the world only seeing bodies and actions and losing sight of the image of God, you are like someone who comes in a church, looks at icons, and all they see are boards of wood.  That is not an Orthodox mindset.  That is not an Orthodox understanding of an icon or of the world. 

“Christmas is coming, and it brings us once again face to face with Christ. May this be the Christmas when we hear His call and we open the doors of our hearts to Him. May this be the Christmas when we let Him enter our being, so that all that He is becomes ours, and we may find our true selves and our salvation in Him.”

~Fr. Seraphim (Leo Aldea)

“Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ to my right, Christ to my left. CHRIST WITHIN ME.” ~St. Patrick

“This icon is precisely about that last line: the fulfillment of it all, the calling of all creation, the true self of each of us: my Creator within my being.

Press your hands against your heart and feel Christ. He is already there, His Kingdom has always been there. Not as a metaphor, not as a symbol, but Christ-God Himself, as real as His Body and Blood.”

“If one takes the time to listen with patience to all those whom God brings in our lives; if one is not obsessive with promoting one’s own opinions about things, but rather listens and discerns; if one is not overcome with the need to control others and impose one’s own righteousness upon them – if one simply allows others to exist freely around himself and opens oneself to them in love, then no physical distance can come between us.

Only lack of love can separate and break us.”

~Fr. Seraphim (Leo) Aldea, Mull Monastery of All Celtic Saints

“At times, Christ finds a soul who so loves Him and so gives herself to Him that He fully unites Himself with her, and the human soul becomes Christ-like even in this life...Whoever gives himself fully to Christ knows deep down from the very beginning that love will make him One with Christ. And, because they are One, they will share both Life Eternal and death on the Cross.”

~Fr. Leo Aldea, Mull Monastery