Just before the Divine Liturgy begins, the celebrant invokes the Holy Spirit by reciting the hymn above. Nothing can happen without inspiration. What the word means is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. What happens is that...
Most students of the Bible today would consider “allegory” to be less than useful. In fact they would judge it to be a fanciful, even dangerous way to interpret passages of Scripture. By “allegory,” they understand basically...
The Lord God Almighty is the Giver of life. This is the greatest of His blessings, and the life we now live is a prelude and preparation for everlasting life in His kingdom. This is why the gravest of all sins is suicide....
The Ecumenical Movement seems blocked in an impasse. From the movement’s beginnings early in the last century, Protestant and Orthodox Christians have made up the membership of the World Council of Churches, and to the...
Suppose the heretics were right. Imagine if you will that all you and I believe about Jesus Christ were false—that the Church made up the story that our Lord were the Son of God, and that He were just another human being,...
It happens more than you may think. I find persons in the church sitting or kneeling in the empty seats. Not those looking at the icons on the walls, but the ones alone or just lonely, staring ahead or with bowed head. Do I...
The more I write about Orthodox Christianity, the more I find myself returning to the fundamentals. For instance, among the first words from the lips of Jesus Christ is the phrase, “One does not live by bread alone.” He...
The voice of the Father, the Lord Jesus and the Spirit like a dove—Three Persons acting in unison for our salvation. Here is the meaning of Theophany, or God’s manifestation par excellence. The Church spells it out in the...
The frescoed head is all that remains of an anonymous “Ascetic,” whose image was reproduced on a card a Catholic friend once gave me, to help guide me on my way toward Orthodoxy.
The reproduction includes a portion of the...
For some time now I have been appealing to various people to reopen the question of “the beginning of human life,” in order to base an Orthodox view of the status of the embryo on biological fact, that is, on the truth about...