Category: Orthodox Christianity
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The God Who Is Beautiful
I suggested this as reading in a comment yesterday and decided to re-post it so that it would be more readily available. It belongs with the question of God and beauty that I started in yesterday’s post. Everything is beautiful in a person when he turns toward God, and everything is ugly when it is…
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Beauty – The Great Mystery
Having spoken about the world as perhaps not best understood (theologically) in terms of cause and effect – I turn my attention for a short time to the mystery of Beauty. God created the world and said it is good, but both the Hebrew and the Greek translation of that statement in Genesis carry the…
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The Paradox of Prayer
Writing about his experiences in praying for the sick, the Elder Sophrony writes: It is still not clear to me why less intense prayer on my part might occasionally cause the illness to take a favorable turn, whereas at other times more profound supplication brought no visible improvement. From On Prayer He says later that…
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Don’t Be Angry
Abba Agathon said, “If someone who is angry were to raise the dead, God would remain displeased with the anger.” Sayings of the Desert Fathers The most difficult part of our Christian life is found within us – our inner life. It is certainly the case that many of the outward things we do –…
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What Kind of People Are We?
From Fr. Sophrony’s book On Prayer: [The author recounts his arrival in France from the Holy Mountain.] In france, having arrive from Greece, I met with the sort of people I had become unfamiliar with during my twenty-two years on the Holy Mountain-especially during the latter period when I was spiritual confessor to several hundred…
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The Feast of the Dormition of St. Anne
Today is the patronal festival of my parish, the feast of the Dormition of Righteous Anna, mother of the Theotokos. The details we know about her life, and that of her priest-husband, Righteous Joachim, are from sources within the Tradition (though not within the Scriptures). They are often pointed to as one of the great…
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Who’s in Charge of Our Life?
[Youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/v/kU9YeOQm3Y0&hl=en&fs=1″>]
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The Essence of the Passions – Staniloae
Dimitru Staniloae, the great Romanian Theologian, offers an excellent introduction to the passions as understood in Orthodox Christianity. The following excerpt is from his Orthodox Spirituality, which I highly recommend. The passions represent the lowest level to which human nature can fall. Both their Greek name, pathi, as well as the Latin, passiones, show that…
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Sanctify Those Who Love The Beauty of Thy House
After communion in an Orthodox Liturgy, the priest prays the “Prayer Behind the Ambo,” a prayer offered from the midst of the Church (more or less). It gives thanks for all that God has done for us, and asks blessings on His people. I particularly love the phrase that asks, “Sanctify those that love…
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The Passion to Consume – Revisited
This article first appeared last March. It seems to bear reprinting at least for a fuller discussion of the passions. I have mentioned the role that the passions play in our consumer culture. I would like to write in greater depth about that phenomenon. It permeates our culture – and yet, strangely, I do not…
Couldn’t You save us without being crucified ? I could, but I would show my power. I want to show…