How to Have Eternal Life 

Devotion to the Sacred Heart is ancient. I don't know how anyone could criticize it. It's a visual representation of the idea of theosis. I can't get enough of it... Of course I'm Catholic, though. Hahahaha

@@FrJohnBrownSJ No way you replied, so based so cool

@@FrJohnBrownSJ it isn’t lol

@@joshf2218 William Albrecht (Patristic Pillars) and I just had a conversation about it. Hope you have a look. Christ's peace.

​@@FrJohnBrownSJ dear Sir are you being serious? If you are Catholic you know well that it was Sister Margaret Mary Alacoque who claimed the bizarre apparitions that are the origins of Sacred Heart devotions and iconography. Yes, I admit I have found myself rather liking the image at times but it's very strange and was not ever even accepted by most Papists for centuries. The story of Sister Margaret Mary also is telling that this was not of Christ. One of the strangest claims was that she needed to be bled regularly because Christ gave her his own heart and put it in her chest causing her to believe she was producing too much blood. For all the reasons and more I don't think it can ever be approved as being in accord with Orthodox piety, obviously, because it is so tied to bizarre Papist devotions from a likely mentally ill Nun. And Christ in Orthodox tradition did not wear the crown of thorns on the Cross. That is a Papist post-schism creation by the King Louis IX of France after his claimed finding of the Crown of Thorns and processing it to the Cathedral in Paris. Suddenly after that all the Crucifixion depictions start showing Christ still wearing the crown of thorns on the Cross and the crown of thorns and the suffering wounded still bleeding Lord imagery began that plays on sentiment and imagination far too much and totally to the detriment of the spiritual.

@@JustaprixChrist is the God of the living, not the dead. To deny this is reject to entire point of Christianity.

Matthew 7:7-11 seems insightful in this regard. _“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son _*_asks him_*_ for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to _*_give good gifts_*_ to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to _*_those who ask_*_ him!"_ In this analogy, the biological children who ask their earthly fathers for good things do so *because they want* them. Same with eternal life - it's something desirable of itself, and God wants to give it to us, because He loves us. So it's perfectly okay to desire to have good things (including eternal life) because it's okay to love oneself, and God Himself is our helper in this sense by giving us the greatest gift of eternal life as well!

@@theoneprimate8982 i never said i thought it wasn't ok i said i don't focus on it since i dont care much for how long i live as long as its a life for God

@@Poultry_Plays Aha that makes more sense then!

@@telosbound Well it's an interesting distinction, but if the activities are rooted in the nature, then created things can't directly possess those activities as if they were the ones doing them directly, because God is the one doing those activities, not us. So I'm interested in knowing how we can participate in those activities without our nature being the divine nature that underlies those activities.

Christ restored humanities' nature, defeating death and is our salvation - no one comes to the Father execpt by Him. We join ouselves to His body through the Church he established, God is with us and in us through the sacraments. We commune with God, and those in his body; alive and reposed. With true faith in him comes works to be in his image - we can't reach perfection but pray we will ever progress towards it.

Watch the video by orthodox wisdom: “How Saint Joseph the Hesycast overcame the demon of fornication” it covers multiple strategies the Saint used in his own battle with lust I watch it weekly

@@telosbound I see I see

What's wrong with the Sacred Heart of Jesus?

@@LNR65 arguably Nestorian from what I’ve seen

@@Nonprophetelias Nestorian? What?

@@FlexCathedrafromIG David Erhan forgery lol

​@@telosboundnow I know your trick, so I can look away 😂😂

Only for Curiosity, is your concern with that image thematical or theological?

Former Lutheran, current Orthodox, so I'll give it my best shot. It's about Monergism vs Synergism. The Lutheran Confessions teach monergistic salvation and synergistic damnation, meaning salvation is entirely a work of God but damnation is the work of man and the Evil One. Orthodox believe in synergia, or synergism. Per St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, we believe we are co-workers of God, and while the righteousness we receive through faith belongs solely to Christ and God, that acts of our will cooperating with God's are essential for salvation. Now the differences between these views can break down at the barriers. If you follow Luther in On the Bondage of the Will, these distinctions are pretty firm and Lutherans are kind of deterministic in this regard. If you follow Melancthon, there is a bit more wiggle room and a notion that man can allow God to do the work that is His within him. However, traditional Confessional Lutheranism tends to fall on the former side of that emphases. Another aspect of this difference is the Lutheran understanding of justification and sanctification as distinct moments of salvation, whereas for Orthodox salvation is a process that cannot be easily broken down into stages like that. There is no singular, absolute judgment of salvation apart from the process whereby we leave behind the things of this world and start to follow the things of God. Hope this helps!

@@tateoien871 How does the righteousness we receive belong solely to God though, if we're also literally made righteous by God? Since righteousness is attributes to us and truly belongs to us, it seems there's a further distinction to be made, between righteousness as an attribute belonging to a thing, and the cause of that righteousness. Christ's righteousness in defeating sin is at least one of the things that causes us to become righteous, so in that sense it belongs solely to God because God makes us righteous. But in another sense it belongs to us because our individual rigtheoussness that we have when we are made objectively intrinsically righteous is DISTINCT from Christ's righteousness, because we are distinct individuals from Him. Kinda like my body and Christ's human body are numerically distinct bodies.

@@tateoien871 Also, don't the Eastern Orthodox teach that during baptism one is truly saved, and would go to Heaven after one died shortly after baptism?

@@theoneprimate8982 I'm not necessarily opposed to the kind of explanation you're proposing, but I don't think it does justice to the language St. Paul uses in the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and Ephesians. He's very clear that our salvation is not our own, and that the righteousness infused in us is of Christ. It wouldn't make sense for St. Paul to say "and this is not your doing, so that no one may boast" if the righteousness infused into us is not also the work and property of Christ. This lines up with what John the Evangelist is espousing when he says: "He must increase, but I must decrease." There is a clear understanding that the righteousness infused to us is not ours, but that of Christ who we cooperate with. I know people always focus on "works of the law" as though it refers to only the Old Covenant, but the Apostolic Fathers are very clear that it refers to Works of the Natural Law as well (basically, the law of conscience). St. Paul is very clear that neither of these works, those of the Mosaic Law and those of the natural law, effectuate salvation. Rather, it is the result of allowing Christ to work through us and remake us from glory to glory.

@@theoneprimate8982 baptism has a salvific character in that it washes away the sins of fallenness which have thus far been committed, as well as grafting us into Christ's covenant, but does not in-itself assure salvation. Christ alone judges, and none can say how he will render judgment with absolute certainty. It is itself an act of repentance, however, and any grace we receive from it is infused into the believer from Christ.

⁠@@telosboundeven if there wasn’t a necessity for it like for example not enough space for immersion or someone close to dying?😰

@@telosbound Still pray for them though.

@@telosbound I've read in the council of Jerusalem of 1672 that babies who die before being baptized are under eternal punishment. Does it mean that we can't pray for them because God has already sent them to eternal punishment?

What of the aborted babies whom no one prays for?

@rrr777www Pray for all the victims of abortion and all those murdered little ones. Now they have someone praying for them. Now that I think of it I’ll add it to my own morning prayers immediately after I commemorate my own family.

@@telosbound please respond to this part of the Council of Carthage Canon 110 I found on Google:" The foregoing, says Surius, is found in this place in a very ancient codex. It does not occur in the Greek, nor in Dionysius. Bruns relegates it to a foot-note." Also it seemed good, that if anyone should say that the saying of the Lord, "In my Father's house are many mansions" is to be understood as meaning that in the kingdom of heaven there will be a certain middle place, or some place somewhere, in which infants live in happiness who have gone forth from this life without baptism, without which they cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, which is eternal life, let him be anathema. For after our Lord has said: "Except a man be born again of water and of the Holy Spirit he shall not enter the kingdom of heaven," what Catholic can doubt that he who has not merited to be coheir with Christ shall become a sharer with the devil: for he who fails of the right hand without doubt shall receive the left hand portion.]

@@telosbound In what sense are we separated from the God in whom we live and move and have our being before the incarnation, before baptism, or ever for that matter? If we are to become uncreated as Maximus says, then aren’t we in a very real sense, uncreated (or divine) always already (at least in potential)?

@@Aaron-xb4rqbefore the fall we are like theophonies of God, we are not God because we are not the Logos(Christ)

The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as "a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life."332 ...Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.337

@illbeback3150 All salvation is through Jesus Christ. Before the resurrection Christ raided hades and rescued a multitude of souls in prison. That should give us some hope that Christ will save at least some of those not saved by the ordinary means he has established. His judgements are perfect and beyond our own comprehension. Let us focus on our own selves and on our own sin and pray to God for mercy on our own heterodox family. Look up the story of Saint Varus and Cleopatra too.

We can't be perfect, but we hope in the pursuit of perfection and placing all our faith in the saving grace of Jesus we might be granted passage into the kingdom of God. When we are purified completely of our sins in purgatory, we'll be sinless like the angels in heaven.

@totallynotbill1834 all the best with that mate, you might wanna change the portrait or something, you know Bill has been on epsteins Island and I don't think you'd want to associate yourself with that as a professing christian. Talking about being perfect and all.

​@@projectadrift7711 you're probably right

This is a joke right?

@@leviparris No. Sacred Heart is Nestorian.

thank you for your illuminating rebuke, American Psycho Guy

@@yecksd Nice genetic fallacy. Care to actually read what Fr. Dcn. Dr. Ananias wrote about it?

@@ElonMuskrat-my8jy hell no. i agree that its not Orthodox but you look like a dork complaining about it being used in a RU-vid video

I can’t find peace in Christ. I’m seeing all these Christian’s on social media all happy and at peace. I’m too bad for this brother I can’t, I’ve tried but I can’t. I’m wicked

We all are wicked my friend, it is not an easy path for anyone to follow christ. It doesn't mean we have to become monks, a married person can lead a very holy life, but visiting a monastery and talking to monks can be very beneficial to us too. You seem to be in the bigging of your journey to christ, I am not much further either, but I think you could find the peace you are looking for much easier if you talked to a priest about your struggles. And remember to take it easy, no one becomes a saint in a day :)

no, we all live our baptism in different ways, some as laymen, others as preists, and yes, some of us are to become monks. Look into you heart and ask God to show you what your vocation is. Through the prayer of the theotokos i pray that your faith may increase Peace be upon you : )

@@user-xp5du8pl1r man i wrote a reply already but just know, social media is not an accirate protrale of the christian life, it is a struggle that lasts until death

Hey there, you might have misunderstood what he has said, the first thing you gotta do is calm yourself, it might requires some philosophical and theological background to understand for someone who has no basic knowledge of the doctrine of Christianity. It doesn't mean you have to force yourself to follow what the church member says blindly and become a monk by losing your free will. So what exactly does it mean? I think you don't have to go into the detail first, all you gotta do is start by having faith in God, it's a sort of basic belief just like how you believe there's another mind who has written these texts for you and he deeply cares about you(ehem), and have the intention to join into his communion and think of him as the source of goodness. It doesn't mean you gotta throw your job away but it somehow strengthen your position to bring glory to God. This isn't about what precise action you have to do it's about the willingness to join into the communion, so what you do doesn't really matter, though, what you do sometimes reflects what you're pursuing, like saying you love your gf but having sex with another girl. So becareful. It's that simple I guess, just be faithful, keep seeking God's intention, don't avoid him or pretend to be good even you've done something wrong(pride), just don't self-enclosed and let God in by building a relationship with him. Think of your action will bring glory to him so it doesn't matter what your job is seriously. Just don't think of yourself having the authority to be above him or become self-enclosed. If You have question seek for the answer! Don't follow blindly, so I would say telling us how you think is the right thing to do as you haven't set a boundary and prevent yourself from interacting with God. It's good to have doubt and ask it as it shows how serious you are. :) that's all i could say :> just don't be extreme even if you don't understand, you have to search answer for yourself, enjoy doing your research :)

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