“Thoughts in Christ”

Orthodox Christianity claims to be the Church of the Holy Spirit – and we are. Unlike other Christian communions, we baptize soon after birth; following at the same service, we bestow the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the...

Again I was asked, “Why is there so much repetition in our prayers?” And again I responded the way I always had before - our worship includes certain themes and terms that bear repeating, because they remind us to pay...

The first comment to the above reflection from the Orthodox Christian point of view is that praise the Lord we and the Church are not limited to the written word of sacred scripture.  Our constant response to Protestantism...

Among the multitude of monasteries in pre-Revolutionary Russia, Optino, in the south central region, was noted for having produced a series of elders [startsi in Russian, geronda in Greek] who had gone through decades of...

The glory of the baptismal and Chrismation sacraments glows from the illumination of the faces of all who are witness to the blessed event. Nobody there is blasé, bored or unaffected by the celebration of one of those...

If you want to be like Christ and model your life after His, then you can begin by forgiving others the way He did and is still doing. Read again His words from the cross – what a liberating phrase. Forgive. He did not...

The evangelist St. Matthew remembered that strange exchange and pondered over Christ’s response to the polite young man who call our Lord “good.” At first it appears to be a put-down, a call for honesty beyond empty...

All Orthodox Christians are historians – that is, we take seriously events of the past and apply them to contemporary situations. When that does not happen, we are bereft of the lessons that took place at various times and...

Most teenagers have read The Catcher in the Rye, that ritual of passage by J.D. Salinger, about a dropout from several high schools who lives in a society he feels full of shallow hypocrites, the sole sincere person being...

Because the Lord God is one, you can only love Him unconditionally. Jesus is simply quoting Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Every Jew would know this passage by heart. This is a great insight requiring much reason. Because He is one, He...