I have given this posting a very prosaic title in order to help readers focus on precisely what I am saying. In my previous post on icons – I noted that even the world functions as an icon – but, undoubtedly, having put that in a very theological context, most readers think simply about the […]

I am leading a retreat this coming weekend at another parish in Tennessee. I have interiorly entitled the retreat, “Are We Not in Paradise?” The thoughts are on the immediacy of Christ and heaven – so wonderfully described in the passage quoted here from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It is a passage that is never […]

In answer to a question on the difference between prayer and worship, Archimandrite Zacharias, one of the Elders at the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex, England, had this to say: Worship is a more general term and an all-embracing life, while prayer is an activity of worship. Worship is more like the […]

Today, walking and weaving our way through the streets of Old Jerusalem, shops on each side of the alley, the smells of a rich mixture of spices and a thousand other things, shop-keepers calling with eagerness to the “foreigners” passing by – we were on a free morning, and there were gifts to be found. […]

I’ve been in London the past two days, as we are making our way to the Holy Land. London is a marvelous city, one of my favorites. It is quite English, very international and increasingly Euro. Like many places in Europe, secularism is far more advanced than in America (or America expresses its secularism in […]