Category: Saints and Tradition

Icons in a One-Storey Universe

I’ll ask my readers to forgive me as I look at yet another aspect of the Christian life when the idea of a two-storey universe is jettisoned and we come to realize that we are living in a one-storey world: that God is with us. Readership has remained very high over the past week or so,…

August 21, 2007
The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air We Breathe – Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a Jesuit priest (a convert from Anglicanism) and perhaps the greatest modern (?) poet of the English Language (ok, he’s my favorite). My second daughter, Khouria Kathryn, made me aware of this poem. Hopkins is wonderfully sacramental in his poetry – God permeates his words and the world his words come…

August 17, 2007
The Dormition of the Mother of God

In giving birth you preserved your virginity, In falling asleep you did not forsake the world, O Theotokos. You were translated to life, O Mother of Life, And by your prayers, you deliver our souls from death. Troparion of the Feast – Tone 1 It is easy to be put off by Orthodox devotion to…

August 14, 2007
Death in a Two-Storey Universe

I have written before about the two-storey universe that is part of our cultural inheritance in the modern world. I have noted that the default position of our culture is secular protestantism. I have explained that I mean not that we do not believe in God, but that in our dominant cultural metaphor the God…

August 11, 2007
Christ Crucified

Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul makes one his most famous statements: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1Cor. 2:2). It is among the clearest definitions of the apostolic preaching to be found anywhere in the New Testament, or perhaps I should say, “everywhere in the New…

August 3, 2007
God is Wonderful in His Saints

The painting of St. Sergius as a youth by Mikhail Nesterov is one of my favorites. Just a bit more beauty to share.

August 1, 2007
What An Icon Says

According to the Seventh Ecumenical Council, “An icon does with color what the Scriptures do with words.” It is a very simple, straightforward explanation of icons – but it holds within it a world of theological understanding. This morning I had opportunity with a visitor of the Church to fall into conversation about the Scriptures.…

July 25, 2007
The Intercession of the Saints

Doubtless one of the less understood aspects of the Orthodox faith, particularly by Protestants, is the importance of the intercession of the saints. Orthodox doctrine and teaching is quite clear that we do not treat saints as objects of worship, nor as worthy of worship. This would be blasphemous to us. Nevertheless, it is a…

July 19, 2007
The Spirit, the Modern World, Pentecostalism and Orthodoxy

Part of the larger Christian context in which Orthodoxy lives today includes not only Catholics (of various sorts), Protestants (of even more sorts), but Pentecostals as well (of which there are quite a few sorts). Indeed, having come splashing onto the modern religious scene around 1900, Pentecostals have been by far the fastest growing of…

July 8, 2007
Where the Heart Resides

One of the questions that surrounds the knowledge of God, as spoken of by the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Eastern Church, is that of where the heart resides. By this, I do not mean where the heart is located (in the chest or wherever), but where the heart itself lives. Though the heart…

June 27, 2007

So you are O.K., Fr. Stephen, with three kings who were eventually named and then baptized by St. Thomas into…

Matthew, “…something that isn’t in the written record…” Forgive me, but this is something of a protestant conundrum – the…

Thanks so much Nathan. It doesn´t really present such a big problem for me. I think the problem comes about…

I am a secularized person. I live, breathe and move in a secular world. Even though I have a running…

John, Thank you for the reference. I am in a process of packing up my books (we’re moving to South…