Category: Conversion
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Orthodoxy and the Christ-Haunted Culture of the South
One of my favorite priests in the Diocese of the South is Fr. Paul Yerger who serves Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Clinton, Mississippi. His gentle demeanor and kind words are what I have always associated with the South, though it is rarely witnessed today. I had a chance to visit with him this week…
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The Unity of the Faith
It is said proverbially in Orthodoxy that “one who prays is a theologian and a theologian is one who prays.” This intends fully to say that an unlettered peasant may be a greater theologian than someone who holds many degrees and can offer page after page of published articles. There is only one reason this…
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The Fire of Pentecost in Orthodoxy
No one, of course, can describe the fire that fell on the Apostles at Holy Pentecost. At most we are told that the Spirit appeared “like tongues of flame lighting upon the heads of the Apostles.” Not much a description. Other times in Scripture we are told of a Pillar of Fire and of the…
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Charismatic Episcopal Church Congregation and Clergy to be Received into Holy Orthodoxy
The following newsstory gives details of a congregation being received into the Antiochian Archdiocese from the Charismatic Episcopal Church, a Pentecostal denomination with many former Episcopalians, clergy and lay among their membership.
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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…
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Losing My Religion
I could not resist using the title from the R.E.M. hit of a few years ago for this post, though it’s really not about losing one’s religion: it’s more about losing your soul. In one of my favorite C.S. Lewis novels, That Hideous Strength, Lewis tries his hand at the description of a soul in…
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The God Who Is Beautiful
Everything is beautiful in a person when he turns toward God, and everything is ugly when is is turned away from God. Fr. Pavel Florensky I come to the end of a day that has been filled with other activity and little time for writing. But in my reading at bedtime I came across the…
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The Church of the Unanxious God
The story of the conversion of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware to Orthodoxy has more or less passed over into modern Orthodox legend. He accidentally stumbles into a Vigil service in order to get out of a rain storm. Discovering Orthodoxy and its beauty he begins to inquire into conversion only to be told to go back…
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Moses and the Unknowable God
Last week, while conducting a retreat for youth at Sts. Mary and Martha monastery, we concentrated on the topic of “Who Am I?” It seemed to me an appropriate topic for an age where youth are frequently struggling with issues of identity. They live in a socially dangerous world – the cruelty of young teenagers…
It was a wonderful day. Although I was not able to attend the evening-into-the-early-morning Pascha service at our Greek Orthodox…