Monday, November 14, 2011

Mother Maria Skobtsova on Christ's love and the Eucharist


On January 18, 2004, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul recognized Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891 - 1945) as a saint along with her son Yuri, the priest who worked closely with her, Fr. Dimitri Klépinin, and her close friend and collaborator Ilya Fondaminsky. All four died in German concentration camps.

For a short but excellent biography of Mother Maria, go HERE.


“In the sacrament of the Eucharist,
Christ gave Himself, His God-man’s Body, to the world,
or rather, He united the world with Himself
in the communion with his God-man’s Body.
He made it into Godmanhood.

"And it would sound almost blasphemous
if He had wanted to isolate some inner, deep Christ
who remained alien to this God-man’s sacrifice.
Christ’s love does not know how to measure and divide,
does not know how to spare itself.

"Neither did Christ teach the apostles
to be sparing and cautious in love –
and He could not have taught them that,
because He included them into the Body of Christ –
and thereby gave them up to be immolated for the world.

"Here we need only learn and draw conclusions.
It might be said paradoxically
that in the sense of giving Himself to the world,
Christ was the most worldly of all the sons of Adam.
But we already know that what is of the world
does not give itself to the world.”

(From Mother Maria Skobtsova, Essential Writings, pp 78-79)



0 comments:

Post a Comment