Glory to God For All Things

Category: Doctrine

  • St. Melito and Pascha – Hell Is Not the Last Word

    Among the most powerful meditations on Pascha are the writings of Melito of Sardis (ca. 190 AD). His homily, On Pascha, is both a work of genius as poetry and a powerful work of theology. Its subject is the Lord’s Pascha – particularly as an interpretation of the Old Testament. It is a common example…

  • Good Friday and the Irony of Believing

    Irony is probably too much to ask of youth. If I can remember myself in my college years, the most I could muster was sarcasm. Irony required more insight. There is a deep need for the appreciation of irony to sustain a Christian life. Our world is filled with contradiction. Hypocrisy is ever present even…

  • The Frightful Path of Judas

    I recall the first time the phrase, “On the night in which He was betrayed,” struck my heart. I was attending the evening service of Maundy Thursday at an Episcopal parish when I was a student in college. There was communion, followed by the “stripping of the altar” that symbolized the arrest and scourging of…

  • Prayer to the Cross

    Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered; and let those who hate Him flee from His face. As smoke vanishes, let them vanish; and as wax melts from the presence of fire, so let the demons perish from the presence of those who love God and who sign themselves with the Sign of…

  • Following a Conversation with a Tree

    “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which…

  • Things I Learned in a Mirror

    In my morning mirror, my father’s face stares back at me. As a child, people would say, “You look like your father.” I couldn’t see it, except that my ears were shaped like his. I had no idea that the ears whispered my destiny. The notion that there is something within us that sets the…

  • Where Are All the Statues?

    “Where are all the statues?” This simple question surprised me recently, coming as it did from a television character on a murder mystery in Scotland. The minister (a very non-descript Presbyterian-ish Scot), says, “What statues?” The character explains, “You know, Jesus. The Virgin Mary. St. Peter. You know, statues you can pray to.” The minister…

  • The Apocalypse of Christmas

    Few people think of Christmas as the End of the World. We have one set of feelings and thoughts for the former and another set for the latter. Christmas, taken by itself, seems quite harmless and able to be adopted or adapted (in one way or another) by cultures at large. Indeed, some cultures adopt…

  • Looking Like Christmas

    One of the most striking features of the Gospels is the frequent response of the Disciples after the resurrection of Christ: doubt. I have always been sympathetic to the doubts and hesitations that accompanied the Disciples experience during the ministry of Christ. They are almost endearing in their inability to grasp what Christ is all…

  • Building God’s Temple

    I stumbled into a conversation recently in which I heard, “Well, they say that the people are the Church, while the building is just a building.” I hesitated and mumbled something that indicated some level of disagreement. I could have said (should have said), “The building is a sacrament – it matters.” In a neighboring…

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