From our Book club text, Everywhere Present, Chapter two, Fr. Stephen Freeman writes about his experience at the monastery of Mar Saba that when a monk dies the other monks never say that such a one died, but “we always say, in the words of Scripture, they have ‘fallen asleep’. But mostly we say this because we see them so often.” The monks note that they literally see the saints all the time! Incredible as it sounds, the saints are not far from us. Scripture tells us they surround us like a great cloud of witnesses. This is possible because heaven is not far away. It is near us, and the veil between them and us is not as thick as we often expect.
Fr. Nathan Symeon
Saturday, August 14 –
