Reflections in Christ

Consistent with our faith in the Lord to care for all those whom we cannot see, including those throughout the world whom we know or do not know, for the infants developing in the wombs of their mothers, for the apostles,...

Initially this was an order to the doorkeepers to be certain that all who were not baptized had gone from the church, and only the faithful were welcome to remain for the Holy Communion. Doors closed and doors open provide...

At the end of each January we commemorate “Sanctity of Life” Sunday and focus our attention on the tragic number of abortions in the United States and elsewhere throughout the world. It’s a time when we again recoil from the...

A defining characteristic of Orthodox Christianity is the intimate and inseparable relationship it preserves between Bible and Liturgy, between divine revelation as the canonical or normative source of our faith, and...

It’s not exactly like that—not anymore. It’s not the synagogues that present us problems, but the mosques. Jesus is offering consolation in the above prediction to His immediate disciples. And indeed it had happened as He...

In the beginning of the New Testament we find an angel appearing to Joseph and explaining part of the mystery of this unique birth, which the heavenly Father is bringing about by the Holy Spirit. The angels, or at least this...

Men especially often justify fits of anger by referring to this passage. They like to say that even Christ lost His temper—and “I’m like Him that way.” But He didn’t have a fit of rage that day. Those who observed the...

It’s never easy to reprimand somebody and to do so graciously. Everyone wants to be praised, and if not praised, then understood. Old people, specifically older men, expect to be justified. We know all too well the type:...

The mystery of Christ’s Nativity is above all a paschal mystery. Pascha, in our Orthodox tradition, refers first of all to Easter, the feast of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Yet it refers as well to every image of...

What is he saying? He is dead? How can that be? St. Paul is expressing something that shatters all logic, unless it is mere hyperbole—but he is dead serious. Rather, he is alive and quite serious. The crucified Christ is...