41 ratings (4.27 avg)
11 reviews

Lance

Add friend

https://www.goodreads.com/lance_levens

Lance’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (34)
currently-reading‎ (0)

read‎ (43)
did-not-finish‎ (0)

the-terrible-speed-of-mercy‎ (0)

Stats | More…

“For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man...Some day a man will walk into my office as a ghost or beast or ghost-beast and walk out as a man, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher.”
― Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins

20 likes

“The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world.”
― Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy

tags: faith

14 likes

“The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom. We use the word 'dimension' because it seems the best way to indicate the manner of our sacramental entrance into the risen life of Christ. Color transparencies 'come alive' when viewed in three dimensions instead of two. The presence of the added dimension allows us to see much better the actual reality of what has been photographed. In very much the same way, though of course any analogy is condemned to fail, our entrance into the presence of Christ is an entrance into a fourth dimension which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life. It is not an escape from the world, rather it is the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of the world.”
― Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy

tags: communion, eucharist, kingdom-of-god, reality, sacrament, truth

31 likes

“Centuries of secularism have failed to transform eating into something strictly utilitarian. Food is still treated with reverence...To eat is still something more than to maintain bodily functions. People may not understand what that 'something more' is, but they nonetheless desire to celebrate it. They are still hungry and thirsty for sacramental life.”
― Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy

tags: eating, food, sacrament

25 likes

“This world rejected Christ, refused to see in Him its own life and fulfillment. And since it has no other life but Christ, by rejecting and killing Christ the world condemned itself to death. Its only ultimate reality is death, and none of the secular eschatologies in which men still put their hope can have any force against the simple statement of Tolstoy: 'And after a stupid life there shall come a stupid death.' In its self-sufficiency the world and all that exists in it has no meaning. And as long as we live after the fashion of this world, as long, in other words, as we make our life an end in itself, no meaning and no goal can stand, for they are dissolved in death. It is only when we give up freely, totally, unconditionally, the self-sufficiency of our life, when we put all its meaning in Christ, that the ‘newness of life’ – which means a new possession of the world – is given to us. The world then truly becomes the sacrament of Christ’s presence, the growth of the Kingdom and of life eternal.”
― Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy

4 likes

More of Lance’s quotes…