Step 24: Developing Humility

Humility is a grace in the soul. “I am gentle and meek of heart” (Matt. 11:29)

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Steps 22 and 23: Humbling Ourselves: Vainglory & Pride

Vainglory seeks recognition and adulation from other human beings; Pride refuses to acknowledge the truth of one's relationship with God. Pride twists our world view to a point where both other people and God come to be seen as unimportant and, irrelevant.

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Steps 19 & 20: Prayer

Saint John points out that; that which can awake us to prayer can also signal the demons to act upon us. This can be the little voice which keeps us in bed rather than leaping to attend prayer service.

Step 21: Facing Our Fears: Cowardice

In spite of what they say 90% of the chronic patients who see today’s physicians have one common symptom. It’s not the heart, the cough or hyperacidity. The first symptom is fear.

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Step 18: Getting Serious

Insensitivity is a deadened feeling in body and spirit… Lack of awareness is negligence that has become habit.

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Steps 16 and 17: Ascending the Heights

1) Do not lay up for yourself, treasures on earth…But lay up for yourself treasures in Heaven…For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt 6:19-21)

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Step 15: Keeping Ourselves Pure

Join Natalie and Shawn as they learn how to keep themselves pure.

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Step 14: On the Clamoring Mistress, the Stomach

The Theologian Charles Buck wrote. “Their kitchen is their shrine, the cook their priest, the table their altar, and their belly their god.”

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Step 13: Escaping from Boredom.

Beware the Tedium of the Spirit:

Tedium is a paralysis of soul, a slackness of the mind, a neglect of religious exercises, a hostility to vows taken. It is an approval of worldly things.

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Step 11: On Talkativeness And Silence

We talk too much. Talkativeness is spiritually dangerous.

St. John says:
Talkativeness is the throne of vainglory on which it loves to preen itself and show off.

Step 12: Speaking the Truth

We have become desensitized to lying. Every time we lie, shading or stretching the truth, our hearts become spiritually confused.

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Step 10: Keeping Our Mouths Shut

What is Slander?
a.    Slander is an offspring of hatred, a subtle yet coarse disease , a leech lurking unfelt, wasting and draining the blood of love. It is simulation of love, the patron of a heavy and unclean heart, the ruin of chastity.
b.    Slander is the child of hatred and remembrance of wrong
sometimes covered by ‘pious intentions’

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Two steps are covered in this class.

Step 8: Bending without Breaking

Meekness: “As the gradual pouring of water on a fire puts out the flame completely, so the tears of genuine mourning can extinguish every flame of anger and irascibility.” Saint John Climacus

Step 9: Letting the Past be Past

Remembrance of wrongs comes as the final point of anger.
Remembrance of wrongs is refusal to forgive; it is planning revenge; it is nourishing hurt feelings.

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Two steps are covered in this class.

Step 6: Remembering Our Mortality

Just as bread is the most necessary of all foods, so the thought of death is the most essential of all works.

Step 7: Being Realistic About Life

To mourn is to embrace a sober view of life

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In the 7th Sunday Morning Resurrection Gospel (John 20:1-20) we hear how the Apostle Paul hearing of the empty tomb outruns Peter. Once John outran Peter, and now obedience is placed before repentance. For the one who arrived first represents obedience, the other repentance.

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To admire the labors of the saints is good; to emulate them wins salvation; but to wish suddenly to imitate their life in every point is unreasonable and impossible.

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“Exile is a separation from everything, in order that one may hold on totally to God… An exile is a fugitive, running from all relationships with his own relatives and with strangers.”

The definition that involves the term voluntary is key. Adam and Eve were in exile but this was not their choice.

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Let us not be confused to think that there is a magic button to push to inherit eternal life. It is not attained by a single action but by dedicating one’s whole person to God.

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Of all created and rational beings, endowed with the dignity of free will, some are friends of God, some are His servants, some are useless servants, some are entirely estranged, and there are some who for all their weakness, take their stand against Him.

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