Category: Orthodox Christianity
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What Is the Truth?
In the Gospel record of Christ’s trial before Pontius Pilate, we are told that Christ said He had come to bear witness to the Truth. Pilate, in what he must have thought was a clever response, says, “And what is Truth?” We know from elsewhere in the Gospel that Christ explained, “I am the Way,…
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Axios! Axios! Axios!
As a personal rule of thumb, I do not write on the inner news of the Church – or at least not often. I have been in attendance this week at the All American Council, the national assembly of the Orthodox Church in America. One of the central tasks before us was the election of a…
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The Creation and the Christian
This week I am in Pittsburgh for the All American Council of the Orthodox Church in America. We have many difficult things to deal with and I ask your prayers. I will try to work with the blog as I have time. Today I offer some thoughts of Met. Kallistos Ware, who led the pilgrimage…
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Faces in the Dark
One of the finest short contemporary classics of Orthodox spiritual writing is Tito Colliander’s Way of the Ascetics. The following excerpt is from his “Chapter Thirteen: On Progress in Depth.” THE external rudiments lead us now to the welfare that goes on in the depths. As when one peels an onion, one layer after…
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The Death of Religion
In August of 2007 I wrote an article on Christian Atheism. At the time I was seeking to describe the strange phenomenon of modern Christianity – one in which life as we live it and life as we say we believe it are two separate things. This is not a problem of hypocrisy but of…
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A Single Moment and Paradise – Revisited
I am leading a retreat this coming weekend at another parish in Tennessee. I have interiorly entitled the retreat, “Are We Not in Paradise?” The thoughts are on the immediacy of Christ and heaven – so wonderfully described in the passage quoted here from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It is a passage that is never…
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In the Normal Course of Things
There is an expectation that most of us share – at least in its general shape – and that is that the normal course of things will largely remain the normal course of things. Each day much like another and though changes occur they are often of an occasional or casual nature. There are certain…
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That Which Completes What Is Lacking
St. Paul in speaking of the full responsibility that weighed on his ministry stated plainly, “Who is sufficient for these things?” This same thought has crossed the mind of the ordained ministry ever since, except for those who have not yet learned that they cannot do what has been given them to do. Yet again, yesterday,…
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Prayer and Worship
In answer to a question on the difference between prayer and worship, Archimandrite Zacharias, one of the Elders at the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex, England, had this to say: Worship is a more general term and an all-embracing life, while prayer is an activity of worship. Worship is more like the…
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When All Else Fails
I fail. We fail. It’s just how things are. It is not a conspiracy or the judgment of God or a universe arrayed against us – we simply fall short. At times falling short is nothing less than embarrassing. This is especially so if we have raised our own expectations as well as the expectations…
Father, Dana and Matthew, I live and work in a spiritual desert. Your kindness and kind responses are a cool…