The phone rang right at suppertime. An hysterical voice on the other end started berating me for not listening to her, for abandoning her in her most dire need, for not really hearing her confession, for being self-centered...
Once I was asked: “Why should I say that I’m the ‘first of sinners’ in the prayer before Communion? I’m not the first. I know many people who are worse than I.”
I told the communicant that it’s a direct quote from St. Paul...
There seems to be an unbridgeable gap between the richness of Orthodox tradition regarding “prayer of the heart” and the poor prayer that is part of our personal experience. Prayer of the heart requires “hesychia,” a deep...
What we know of Titus comes mostly from his worth to St. Paul. He called Titus my trusted son. He meant by that Titus was initiated into the faith and maybe even baptized by the great apostle. When he was going up to...
While the choir is singing and the Royal Doors are shut, and as I stand before the holy altar cutting the sacred Host into pieces to place them in the chalice, I worry that they will be sufficient for the multitude of...
It’s time to rise, Mom, and leave the earth behind you
Rise up from the casket and pass on through
Your legs now work again; you may run if you choose
Like the little girl you once were—but there’s precious time to lose
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Christian churches had distributed bracelets to their children with the letters on them: WWJD. In each situation they found themselves they were encouraged to ponder the acronym: What...
A young Orthodox priest had just arrived in the hospital waiting room to minister to a grieving family. He talked for a while with the oldest member, a man in his late sixties who was struggling to come to terms with his...
With the U.S. Senate voting overwhelmingly to ban the late-term procedure known as “partial birth abortion,” we are led, as Christians in a highly secular and pluralistic society, to look once again at the implications of...
If I could speak just a single sentence to comfort the hearts of my spiritual children, it would be: “You are never alone, because your guardian angel is always close by.” Each of us at our birth has an angel assigned to our...