What is the condition of my heart?

As we begin our Pre-Lent Adult Education this Sunday , I thought it might be useful to raise questions which may be very relevant to our preparation process for Lent. This week’s upcoming Sunday of the Publican & Pharisee can stimulate lots of these opportunities for self reflection about where we stand in relation to pride and humility.

Here are two quotes … the first from a 4th century saint, St. Macarius of Eqypt and the second from a well known Nobel Prize winning Orthodox author of the 20th century, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Both are useful reminders that our spiritual battlefield today and every day lies within our own hearts:

And the heart itself is but a small vessel, yet there also are dragons and there are lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. And there are rough and uneven roads; there are precipices. But there is also God, also the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the Apostles, the treasures of grace—there are all things

St Macarius ‘50 Spiritual Homilies and Great Letter’ (Homily 43)

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn ‘The Gulag Archipelago’