Category: Reflections
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The Tears of Our Fathers
The first time I saw my father cry was a day of deep tragedy. An aunt, my mother’s oldest sister, had been brutally murdered by a stranger who came into her office off the street. It made no sense. I was nine years old. I opened the door to my father’s bedroom and saw him…
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The End of the Modern World
“Welcome to the 21st Century!” Pick your issue, and if its outcome conforms to a popular, desired norm you are likely to hear such a greeting. The greeting also implies that a less than desirable outcome is wrong because it doesn’t belong to our time. It might be characterized as “medieval,” “outmoded,” “out-of-date,” “primitive,” “Neanderthal,”…
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Beyond Death’s Door
“Grandpa, will you die?” The quiet spoken question from the backseat of my car came from my then four-year-old grandson. I knew it was an important moment. “Yes, I will. Everyone grows old and dies.” I added, “But then I will be with Jesus in heaven and I will pray for you all the time.”…
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Begotten of the Father
No revelation is more central to the Christian faith than God as Father. Some might immediately respond that the Trinity should be seen as the central revelation. But, in Orthodox understanding, the Trinity has its source (πηγή) in the Father. We should understand this not only as a matter of Trinitarian thought, but as the…
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Like A Refugee
It was June 13, 1940. A young Vladimir Lossky (later to be author of The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church) was making his way on foot with the crowds from Paris who were fleeing from a victorious, invading German army. The invasion was sudden, surprising, and completely overwhelming in its success. The entire operation took no…
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The Way of Shame and the Way of Thanksgiving
The language of “self-emptying” can have a sort of Buddhist ring. It sounds as we are referencing a move towards becoming a vessel without content – the non-self. Given our multicultural world, such a reference is understandable. It is, however, unfortunate and requires that we visit the true nature of Christian self-emptying. Our self-emptying is…
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Life as a Fractal
I have found the term “fractal” to be increasingly useful. Rather than thinking of one thing as a “copy” of another, I see the similarities that are, nevertheless, unique. I have three adult daughters, all of whom resemble their mother (and each other) with each them still being quite unique. Interestingly, I did not recognize…
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The Sacrament of Humility – Part One
Some things are so obvious that you cannot see them. Their powers of invisibility do not lie so much within themselves as within those who cannot see them. We are hard-wired for danger, our eyes attuned to threats. We overlook the power of weakness and the vulnerability of humility – the queen and fount of…
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The Sword that Pierces the Soul
Mary, the Theotokos, was described by St. Irenaeus in the 2nd century, as the “New Eve.” Like Eve, she is the “mother of us all,” if we have the eyes to see her properly. She is a quiet figure in the New Testament – not a preacher or worker of miracles. We see the…
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Mother of Us All
A young friend recently lost his mother. It has been an occasion of reflection for me, thinking about the emptiness created by such a loss. Despite all of the confusion and conundrums in our contemporary culture surrounding gender issues – they only serve to underscore the fact that male-and-female, on the most fundamental level of…
The Grace that comes from truthful participation in the Sacraments of the Church even as one reposes is beyond most…