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Prayers By the Lake XXV – Prayers for the Departed
Read more: Prayers By the Lake XXV – Prayers for the DepartedThis poem is from the collection of poems by St. Nikolai Velimirovich, the great 20th century Serbian saint. The Church continues its journey through the 50 days of Pascha and will conclude the feast with the celebration of the Feast of Pentecost (Troitsa) at the end of which the Kneeling Prayers are offered where (among […]
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Negative Thoughts and the Communion of Prayer
Read more: Negative Thoughts and the Communion of PrayerTo pray for someone else means that, because of the good disposition of our heart towards him, we help him to resist the negative thoughts that he may have, and not without cause, about us. On the contrary, not to pray for someone else means that we justify by our lack of love the negative […]
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The Kindness of Strangers
Read more: The Kindness of StrangersI am sitting in the Dallas airport, waiting for my departure time, tired and ready to return to Tennessee. As always, my time in Dallas has been largely spent in Church and has been more than I could have imagined. This year (or at least this visit) I have been increasingly aware of the “community” […]
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The Price of the Liturgy
Read more: The Price of the LiturgyWe celebrate the Liturgy together. But we must pay what this costs: each one must be concerned for the salvation of all. Our life is an endless martyrdom. The Elder Sophrony +++ The Divine Liturgy (the Holy Eucharist) is not a ritual action of the Church which we attend, as though it were some sort […]
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The Communion of Saints
Read more: The Communion of SaintsWe are told in the book of Hebrews that our struggle here is “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” the saints who have gone before us. This Divine reality is probably not what many modern Christians would expect. I recall the question being put to me some years ago, by a young […]
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What Is My Life?
Read more: What Is My Life?I have written often on the subject of “personhood,” drawing to a large extent on the writings of the Elder Sophrony, and to a lesser extent on the theology of Met. John Zizioulas. The heart of their thought is to direct us to the reality that to exist as “persons” is precisely the same thing […]
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Going Home – A Personal Journey
Read more: Going Home – A Personal JourneyI do not know enough languages to gauge how universal is the concept of “home.” It has very strong connotations in English – and is particularly strong in its usage within the Southern United States. I suspect much of this is rooted in family and place – and requires a fairly stable culture. The culture in […]
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On Behalf of All and For All – A Family Reunion
Read more: On Behalf of All and For All – A Family ReunionAs a child one of my more common experiences was the gathering of my extended family. My mother was one of twelve children, my father one of five. Their siblings largely settled in the same South Carolina county that was home. There they settled into their careers and set about having their own families during […]
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The Bells
Read more: The BellsI can never begin describing the layers upon layers of Orthodox Tradition when I am writing or speaking with others. This is true, at the very least, because the Tradition is itself also the “life” of the Church (in Orthodox understanding). A life – particularly a life that is Divine, cannot be described. It can […]
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Conversion to the True and Living God
Read more: Conversion to the True and Living GodI grew up in a culture where religious conversion was frequent as well as often short-lived. Religiously, the only remedy to many of the ills of life was conversion. On the face of things I could hardly argue with that now. However, the deeper problem within that particular religious culture was a very truncated view of conversion. […]
Modern man is a psychological man. He is not a spiritual man. I must have read that 25 years ago.…