Category: Church
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Prayers and the One God of All
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us! So runs a common exclamation in Orthodox services of prayer. And so begins another offense for those who wonder why the Orthodox “don’t pray directly to God”…or “why do you pray to the saints”…or, worst…
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The One You Don’t See
My recent post on the One God has shown me that there is much more to say on the subject. “We believe in One God…” but do we? In a recent conversation, someone said to me that they had difficulty believing in “one supreme being who created everything…etc.” Christians don’t actually believe in one supreme…
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Scattered Thoughts and the One God
“My thoughts are scattered…” It’s an observation I make frequently to myself, and one that I hear constantly from others. It is not that we think about many things (though we do), but we think many things about everything often with contradictions, questions, competing allegiances and inner struggles. The inner world of modern man is…
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The God Cocktail
In ’03 there was a small Indy film, Dopamine. The story involves a young computer programmer who is part of a small tech start up in the Bay Area developing an artificially-lived computer character. The cartoon-like bird, can “hear,” “see,” and “interact,” with the user. The tech company manages to place its prototype in a…
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Christ is Risen! Χριστός Ανέστη! Христос Воскресе! Hristos a înviat!
Pascha has begun (though still a few hours away here in the Eastern United States). But if you listen carefully, you can begin to hear the bells sounding from the East. Christ is risen! This delightful Youtube video is a favorite of mine. One of our readers and occasional commenter, Dejan, (without a doubt my…
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Today Is Suspended – The 15th Antiphon
At the Matins service of Holy Friday the following hymn is sung: Today is suspended on a tree He who suspended the earth upon the waters. The King of the angels is decked with a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery. He who freed…
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The Mystery of Holy Week
For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the…
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Therapeutic Substitutionary Atonement
For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures… (1 Cor. 15:3-4) No statement is more central to the Christian faith than St. Paul’s…
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Reading in Communion
“Seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear…” (Matt. 13:13) This is Jesus’ description of those who encountered Him but did not understand. Just because we see something doesn’t mean we see it. Just because we hear something doesn’t mean we’ve heard it. This is particularly true of Holy Scripture. Just because…
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Unmediated Grace
This Sunday the Orthodox Calendar commemorates St. Gregory Palamas – perhaps the most significant theologian and teacher of the late Byzantine period. He particularly is important when considering the nature of the Christian experience of God. Orthodoxy believes that it is truly possible to know God though He remains unknowable. The mystery of this true…
As a history buff, I find it interesting that Christianity in the old countries went from Orthodox to RC to…