Glory to God For All Things

June 6, 2023

To Serve God

In a therapeutic culture in which our goal is to be our very best, it is almost impossible to serve God. The reason is quite simple: when my goal is to be my very best, the goal is my God. “Serving God” thus becomes a euphemism for a Christianity that we take to be therapeutic […]
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Knowledge of God, Liturgy
May 26, 2023

Falling Between the Cracks

… human nature is created and so, is unavoidably mortal; with death man’s entire psychosomatic being comes to an end. All of his psychological and mental functions cease to function: his self-conscience, reasoning, judgment, memory, imagination, and desire. Man is no longer able to function through the parts of the body in order to speak, […]
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Existence, Personhood
May 24, 2023

The Debt of Sin and the Sin of Debt

There are a number of ideas and phrases that most Biblically literate Christians would swear were in the Bible, but are not. Among those is the phrase (or concept) of the “debt of sin.” It is simply not there. Nor is there a phrase that describes sin as something that we “owe.” Again, it’s simply […]
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Forgiveness, Pascha, Scripture
May 22, 2023

Beneath the Letter of the World

For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it oxen God is concerned about? Or does He say it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written, that he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should be […]
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Icons, Modernity, Reflections
May 17, 2023

Truth, Lies, and Icons

As verbal beings, we live in a world of icons. We experience the world in an iconic fashion. A major difficulty for us is that we have lost the vocabulary of iconic reality. We have substituted the language of photography. The dissonance between reality and our photographic assumptions has led us to doubt […]
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Reflections
May 10, 2023

When Miracles Ceased

One of the stranger ideas that accompanied the Reformation, was the notion that miracles had ended at the time of the New Testament’s completion. Never stated as a doctrinal fact in the mainstream of Protestantism, it remained a quiet assumption, particularly when joined with an anti-Roman Catholicism in which the various visions, weeping statues, and […]
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Communion, Knowledge of God, Modernity, Secularism, The Sacraments
May 3, 2023

In the Form of a Slave

I love taking “deep dives” into history – going beyond survey material and making my way through pages and pages of boring detail. I can’t do it every day, nor even often. But it helps fill in detail that is often glossed over in broad treatments. My most recent foray has been into a book […]
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Incarnation, Reflections
April 29, 2023

Remembering the End

Orthodox Christianity often seems inherently conservative. The unyielding place that tradition holds within its life seems ready-made for a conservative bulwark against a world all-too-ready to forget everything that is good or beautiful. There are subtle but important distinctions that make this treatment of Orthodoxy misleading and can lead to the distortion of the faith […]
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Knowledge of God, Last Things, Reflections
April 25, 2023

Working With What We Know

I recently had a question put to me that made me think about “where we start” when we think about the things of God. The question was this: “A friend of mine who is familiar with Jewish beliefs told me that the Jewish Sheol was self-emptying. It was a purgatory-like place where people lamented and […]
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Knowledge of God, Reflections
April 20, 2023

Identity and the Resurrection of Christ

There is a strange moment described in the gospels regarding the resurrection of Christ (in fact, there are several such moments). When Mary Magdalen first encounters the risen Lord, we are told that she “took Him for the gardener.” But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into […]
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Knowledge of God, Personhood, Reflections

Mary, May God give grace to us all!

Bless Father… Thank-U from my heart ❤️ 💙 💜 really helping us on our daily journey… Glory to God for…

I agree wholeheartedly. During my first ten years in the Orthodox Church, I did not join the parish community and…

Thank you Father Stephen. Thank you Matthew.

Esmée, It’s not always within our power to stay put. But, on the whole, it’s a good thing. Stability is…