Category: Church
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Me, You and the Other Guy
It has been said that a recession is when someone else loses his job; a depression is when you lose your job. I am too young to remember the Great Depression, though all the adults I knew as a child had come through that period. In 1928, my paternal great-grandfather lost everything (farm, machinery, house,…
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The Great Crisis
I wanted to write a bit more on “crisis” following up on my previous article on Dostoevsky, et al. The “Great Crisis,” if I can coin a term, is the threat of non-existence, or relative non-existence. Classical Orthodoxy, following St. Athanasius does not threaten humanity with pure non-existence, but with a dynamic movement towards a…
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Risky Business – Revisited
I offer this reprint from last year – my pilgrimage time in Jerusalem is not leaving much time for writing. It is obvious in this city of Holy Places that how we keep such places – including those within the heart is deeply important. This reprint seemed to fit those thoughts. May God bless. Amoun…
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In the Great Sweep of History
“The Great Sweep of History” is an event that occurs in the rear-view mirror, easily characterized in various fashions as we choose to label certain events as important and certain event as without significance. I believe that for the Christian there is no great sweep of history and that the temptation to view history in…
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How Simple Should Christianity Be?
There is a tendency in our modern world to make things as simple as possible. We hide the complexities behind a keyboard (I don’t know how my computer works – or not very well) or we treat things that seem complex as unnecessary obfuscations. This same drive to simplify was very much alive in the…
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Facing the Consequences
Some thoughts on a comment by Archbishop DMITRI of Dallas: Commenting on the stories of the Transfiguration in Matthew, Mark and Luke, Archbishop DMITRI of Dallas observed that each of the stories contains the phrase “coming down” in reference to the disciples’ descent from the mount of glory into the world of daily ministry. In…
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In the Cleft of the Rock
God placed Moses in the “cleft of a rock” and His “glory passed by” and Moses was granted a vision of God. The great protestant hymn, “Rock of Ages, Cleft for me,” makes reference to this story, understanding in proper patristic fashion that the story points to Christ, who is our Rock, standing within Whom…
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Humility – The Only Path Forward in Orthodoxy
Humility certainly figures prominently in anybody’s list of virtues, and most people are more than a little aware of pride playing some role in their spirtual failures. However, knowing that pride is a problem and that humility is a virtue is not saying that we know anything about humility. First, humility is not precisely the…
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Reading Scripture in an Orthodox Manner
Recently my site has been visited with questions about Scripture, in particular (to start with) the Orthodox use of the title “Father” when Christ said, “Call no man on earth your father.” Actually I thought the response posted by William amply demonstrated how this verse should be understood. But there is a larger question –…
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Solzhenitsyn Has Died – Memory Eternal!
One of the most spiritually significant events in my life was first reading Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. It was not his fiction that first fell into my hands, but a collection of essays, From Under the Rubble. He was, at the time, in the international spotlight as he struggled to maintain his witness to the Truth while…
This is so good Fr. Stephen. Thanks!