Glory to God For All Things

March 16, 2019

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 both. Man […]
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Existence, Icons, Knowledge of God, Reflections
March 11, 2019

Facing Up to God

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. 2 Cor. 3:18 Among the most striking of all images in St. Paul’s writing is his description of beholding the glory of God with an unveiled face. It’s […]
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Knowledge of God, Reflections, Salvation
March 9, 2019

Forgiveness and the Whole Adam

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; (John17:20-21) The Elder Sophrony, together with St. Silouan, wrote about the “whole Adam.” By this, they meant all the human beings who have ever existed and those yet to come. For Silouan and Sophrony, this was […]
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Dostoevsky, Forgiveness
March 5, 2019

Judgment with a Mixed Bag

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy […]
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Last Things, Repentance, Salvation, Solzhenitsyn
February 28, 2019

A Progressive Marriage

How is your marriage progressing? This simple question is a way of focusing our attention on right-thinking about progress and the Christian life. I posed the question to myself – I have been married now for 43 years. My first thought was, “What would ‘progress’ in a marriage mean?” Do I love my wife more, […]
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Family, Modernity, Reflections, The Journey of Faith
February 23, 2019

“Knowing With My Knower” – The Nous

Years ago, I had a parishioner whose spiritual life was quite rich and occasionally astounding. She cared for a handicapped husband for years with a gentleness and love that radiated joy to people around them. One of her phrases that has stuck with me was, “I know it with my knower.” It was what she […]
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Communion, Knowledge of God, Reflections
February 18, 2019

What Is Beneath the Universe?

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. John 1:1-3 +++ Throw a blanket over a chair. In all likelihood, you would recognize […]
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Knowledge of God, Reflections
February 14, 2019

The Mythic Character of Reality

The friendship between CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien is well-known, as is Tolkien’s role in bringing Lewis to Christ. Less well-known (unless you dig a bit further) is Tolkien’s role in bringing Lewis out of a rigid and flat understanding of the world and into the rich possibilities afforded by “myth.” Without this conversion, Lewis […]
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Beauty, C.S. Lewis, Reflections, Scripture, Tolkien
February 11, 2019

Crushed Into Recognition

This is a reprint from 2019. I was looking for something where I quoted George Herbert’s “The Agony,” my favorite poem. So, here’s one of several such posts. This morning I was crushed beneath a flood of memories – not the memories of good things, but of sad and shameful things, petty things, wasted lives […]
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Hell, Incarnation, Reflections
February 8, 2019

To Know What We Don’t Know

Two corollaries: We will not know God until we know ourselves; we will not know ourselves until we know God. I believe that both of these are true, even though, taken together, they seem to preclude knowledge altogether. In truth, what they preclude is doing one without the other. We can only do both, and […]
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Knowledge of God, Modernity, Personhood, Reflections

Matthew, re past experiences as a Christian, I’ve been listening to some of the group of podcasts on Ancient Faith…

Janine, The image of Christ the Bridegroom is quite powerful in the services of Holy Week (the Bridegroom Matins, of…

Father Stephen writes, “But, inasmuch as my knowledge of God is through the lens of Christ Crucified, I would note…

Nathan, It’s a very good example, it seems to me. Solzhenitsyn said that the line dividing good and evil runs…

Simon, I’m always loathe to say “unable” with regard to God. But, inasmuch as my knowledge of God is through…