Tag: Orthodox Christianity
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The Church and the Cross
The following article is a series I wrote during the early months of the blog. I think it worth reprinting (surely people aren’t going back to read everything I’ve written). It is also available in the “Pages” section of the blog. If you’ve read it before I hope you enjoy rereading it – if not,…
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Worship at His Footstool
Sunday, the third in Lent, is set aside to honor the Venerable and Life-Giving Cross. I offer these thoughts: In a short work, The Beginning of the Day, (I believe it was a special printing and not generally available), Met. Kallistos Ware notes this about the Cross and its connection with the whole of creation: …[The] created…
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Knowing the Truth
This Sunday in the Orthodox Church commemorates St. Gregory Palamas. His work represents the triumph of reality over theory – of true knowledge of God versus scholasticism. This is an article written in 2008, following my pilgrimage to the Holy Land. +++ From the book, The Enlargement of the Heart, by Archimandrite Zacharias: For Elder Sophrony…
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The Christian Crisis
Any student of Church history should be well aware that there has been no century in which the Christian faith was safe, untroubled and not in crisis. To a certain extent, the Cross will always bring Christians into crisis. However, these are some thoughts on the present and some aspects of the crisis in which…
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Do Something
My recent post, The God Who Is No God, spoke of Christianity as a set of practices. This is a crucial understanding – a requirement for a living faith. It requires that we ask the question of the rich young ruler, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Oddly, he did not ask, “What…
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The God Who Is No God
A God who remains generalized and reduced to ideology is no God at all. Only the daily encounter with the living God, with all the messiness it entails, can rise to the name Christian. Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe _____________ Belief in a true and living God is a very difficult thing, fraught…
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The Sacrament of Mercy
There are many things that Christians think about that have been spiritualized out of existence. Our secular culture tends to grant two kinds of realities: the first is the reality of solid objects – or things we treat as solid objects. The second is the reality of thought and imagination. Of course, we do not…
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The Audacity of Mercy – St. Isaac the Syrian
St. Isaac stretches love and mercy to it’s farthest limits, occasionally beyond the bounds of canonical understanding. He remains a saint of the Church and his words are very important to hear. +++ Let yourself be persecuted, but do not persecute others. Be crucified, but do not crucify others. Be slandered, but do not slander…
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Where the Gospel Begins
Where does the Gospel begin – how do we tell the story of Christ? This question may seem too obvious to require an answer. However, it is increasingly relevant in what some describe as a “post-Christian” era. This reality came home to me years ago, during the first year of my ordained ministry. A woman…
Fr. Stephen, Many thanks for your earlier reply. If I have understood correctly, “judgment” seems to be synonymous with “justice.”…