Category: Saints and Tradition

  • The Act of Veneration

    No spiritual activity permeates Orthodoxy as much as veneration. For the non-Orthodox, veneration is often mistaken for worship. We kiss icons; sing hymns to saints; cry out “Most Holy Theotokos, save us!” And all of this scandalizes the non-Orthodox who think we have fallen into some backwater of paganized Christianity. It is not unusual to…

  • God By The Numbers

    Math is very strange stuff. A serious question within the community of science and math is whether math is an invention or a discovery. Is it something that we have just made up out of our head, or is it something we observed and discovered (because it is already there)? This might sound like a…

  • Making It Up in America

    As I noted in my previous article, stories are essential in the formation of character. We do not simply exist, we think about our existence and are driven to make sense of it. The sense we make takes the form of a story. For people in the contemporary world, this is simply problematic. Stanley Hauerwas…

  • Human Tradition in a Modern World

    Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.  – Monty Python and the Holy Grail The comic genius of Monty Python often shows it face when interjecting the present into the past. The charming…

  • A Gifted Existence

    You cannot give thanks for what has not been given to you. This simple maxim goes to the heart of the Christian life. If I steal your money and burn down your house, I cannot offer thanks for what I have done. It was not given to me from God. Anything that is not a…

  • The Priest’s Wife

    It is hard to explain to the non-Orthodox the position and role of a priest’s wife. As a priest with an Anglican background, my family life extends to both Protestant and Orthodox experience.  I have been married for 40 years and ordained for 35 of those years. I cannot imagine my life or my ministry…

  • The Truth of Mary

    It is a commonplace among Christians to say that “truth is a person.” Of course, this is rightly drawn from Christ’s statement, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). However, most Christians fail to comprehend what it is that they have just said. That truth is a person is more than…

  • The Mystery of the Forerunner

    There is a unanimous witness in the Christian gospels concerning the place of St. John the Baptist. In the Orthodox world he is generally referred to as the Forerunner. All of the gospels agree that he plays a key role in the coming of the Messiah. It is a role that is largely ignored by…

  • A Practicing Christian

    My father was an auto mechanic. He learned the trade by working on cars (airplanes before that in the war). He liked his work and would come home in the evenings with stories of things he had diagnosed and fixed. I thought he was amazing. Stanley Hauerwas tells similar stories about his own father who…

  • The Need to Know

    There is a deep nagging sense in our culture of the “need to know.” We want to know government secrets, intimate details of private lives, pretty much everything. I think this felt need is often present because we lack trust in those who are keeping secrets. We want to know what they’re up to. The…


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Latest Comments

  1. These are tremendous insights to read during this forefeast. I’m reminded of Saint Paul: “From now on, we regard no…

  2. Dear Father, Thank you for these beautiful words. I dare say someone can’t write beauty unless they have seen it,…

  3. I agree with your words here in comments about the Silver Chair Fr Stephen!

  4. ”More than that, every heart should beg to see the Beauty, to read the Icon of the Gospel of the…


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