Daily Devotional: December 15th

Daily Prayer XVIII

Hail, radiant Apollo, sovereign of all essences,

Director of unifying forces, in whom all converges,

Apollo, artisan of harmony, transforms discord's disarray,

With celestial artistry, he weaves unity from chaos' fray.

From your governance flows prudence, a beacon for our souls,

Justice, a virtue adorned with grace, unfolds,

Beauty and health entwine in our mortal frames,

Grant us an eternal thirst for the divine and sublime.

Paian, we hail you, O Lord of heavenly resonance,

In your harmonious embrace, our spirits dance.

Guide us through wisdom's path, illuminate our way,

In your sacred light, we find serenity each day.

Daily Meditation

"And this is a law of Destiny, that the soul which follows after God and obtains a view of any of the truths is free from harm until the next period, and if it can always attain this, is always unharmed; but when, through inability to follow, it fails to see, and through some mischance is filled with forgetfulness and evil and grows heavy, and when it has grown heavy, loses its wings and falls to the earth…”

—Plato

Phaedrus 248C

Every human has the ability to reunite with the divine. Yet it is the law of destiny that when we stumble from our pure and constant remembrance of the divine, we slip into the confusion of mortal existence. Through ignorance and evil, we drift further and further from God. Even within our very lives, we have a choice to move closer to the gods or drift further away with each evil act and ignorant thought.

Monthly Ascesis: Repentance

"Repentance is the beginning of philosophy"

—Hierocles

“Repentance is often seen as a particularly Christian idea, but philosophers were quite fond of reminding people to repent. Pythagoras, in particular, suggests two ways that we can begin to repent and take a better inventory of who we are. The word ‘repent’ is related to the Latin word for regret. The idea is that we should look over our actions and judge them if they are unworthy. However, the Greek word for repentance is metanoia, which means the transformation of the mind. Platonic repentance is about creating an inner change that leads us back to a life of holiness in harmony with the divine.

Pythagoras says we should “do nothing shameful, neither in the presence of others nor privately; Thus, above all things, sit as a judge over [ourself].” This suggests we should watch our actions, and when we do something wrong or shameful, we should repent, that is, regret that action. If we never do this or shun it as a practice, we effectively say we have no reason to regret our actions. However, regretting an action is recognizing an area where we fell short of our ideals. If we never regret or repent, we make any spiritual or ethical growth impossible. This is why Hierocles, commenting on Pythagoras, says, “repentance is the beginning of philosophy.””

Excerpt from Ascesis: The Handbook of Platonic Practice

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