“Life in Christ”

by Fr. John Breck

“Reign” or “Realm”?

For a very long time interpreters of the New Testament have puzzled over the Greek expression basileia tou theou, which can be translated in various ways. The most common, and most literal, are “the Kingdom of God” and “the Reign of God.” As Jesus used the phrase (in his native Aramaic, subsequently translated into Greek), the basic idea is…

Why, O Lord, Why?

Another catastrophe, with the unimaginable suffering of countless people buried alive, living their last days in desperation and agony. Now, a week after the 7.0 earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, multitudes of victims remain under the ruins, still dying, their bodies broken and their limbs shattered. We can’t imagine what their personal hell is…

Baptism in Christ

Theophany is the baptismal feast of feasts. It announces and celebrates as much about our own baptism as it does that of Christ. Both Scripture and the Church Fathers bear witness to the fact that our “illumination” becomes a reality only insofar as it enables us to participate in Christ’s own baptism and in the life and works that flowed forth from…

Incarnation to Parousia

Celebration of Christmas, the Nativity of our Lord, invites us to look in a fresh way at the intimate relation that exists between the Incarnation of Christ and his “Second Coming” in glory. Too often Nativity is taken as a feast in and of itself, a family festival so deformed by the season’s commercial pressures that two of its major emphases,…

Morality or Moralism?

Today a great many people are entering the Orthodox Church from other, generally Western confessions. Their tendency, quite understandably, is to bring with them notions of sin and guilt, obedience and virtue (merits) that figure strongly in the way those confessions construe the means by which we attain salvation. Whether they remain in a lay state…

God or Virtue?

A leaf from an old calendar I just came across includes a quote from a Saint Theodoros. The well-intentioned sentiment his thoughts express pose something of a question, if not a problem. He says:

“Faith is a quality inherent in our nature. It begets in us the fear of God, and fear of God instills that keeping of the commandments which constitutes…

The Power of Words

A few weeks ago my wife and I pulled into a gas station, and I got out of the car and began filling up. A pickup truck stopped about twenty yards in front of us, and the driver started waving and shouting. He was miffed because he couldn’t pull up to the air pump; somebody had parked another pickup too close to it. The driver of the first truck kept…

Disease and Holy Communion

A huge amount of controversy has arisen recently over the way Christians receive Holy Communion, particularly in the wake of what some are calling the “H1N1 pandemic.”

The issue involves not only Christians. In July of this year, ministers of health from Muslim countries met with specialists of the World Health Organization and issued a statement…

May We Pray for the Departed?

Back in the early 1960s I attended a Protestant theological seminary that at the time was relatively mainstream. One day, in a seminar on Paul’s letter to the Romans, we got on the subject of death. The teacher was a young visiting professor of a conservative bent, who didn’t hesitate to affirm his belief in the virgin birth of Christ. At some point…

Ever New Martyrs

Christians are being persecuted and killed in countries across the globe right now, simply because of their faith. This, of course, is nothing new. The blood of martyrs has been the “seed of the Church” since the time the deacon Stephen was stoned to death, a mob-style execution vividly recounted in chapter 7 of the Book of Acts. As the letters of…

Transfigured Life

The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ Transfiguration differ in some small but significant details. With typically colorful language, St Mark emphasizes Jesus’ garments, describing them as “glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them.” St Luke adds that “the appearance of his countenance was altered”; and St Matthew declares, “his…

When Words Don’t Come

An elderly woman recently broke down during Confession and began sobbing. She had attempted to offer to God what she felt was her sinful neglect in raising her son. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, she had taken him to church services on Sundays and feast days, and each day she had prayed with him and for him. Apparently, she had done all…

Cracked Ribs

There’s nothing particularly serious about cracked ribs, as long as fragments of bone don’t attack your lungs or some other vital organ. But they leave you feeling like the apostle Paul: shipwrecked, beaten and lapidated.

I came about mine in a superlatively stupid way. The ceiling-high curtains were open at the top, letting more light than we…

If I Haven’t Experienced It, It Doesn’t Exist!

Atheists, it seems, are finally coming out of the closet. Books, open letters, magazine articles and talk shows are providing a public forum for what is still the least respected “religious” movement or coalition in the country. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the Secular Student Alliance now has some 146 chapters in colleges…

Let Us Rejoice and Be Glad!

Symbols of the resurrection [of Christ] are clear and intelligible: guile and jealousy have been banished, quarrels have been suppressed, peace is honored, and war is finished. No longer do we torment ourselves over Adam, the first-formed man, but we glorify the second Adam. No longer do we blame disobedient Eve, but we declare as blessed Mary, the…

A Paschal Triumph

The very heart of Orthodox life is the Church’s celebration of Holy Pascha or Easter: commemoration and reliving of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. The evening matins service of that feast includes a beautiful and poignant homily by St John Chrysostom on the mercy of God—displayed in Jesus’ parable of the workers of the eleventh hour—who…

From the Depths of Hell

The final Old Testament reading for Holy Saturday vespers—Daniel 3:1-57, the story of the three young men in the fiery furnace in Babylon—is composite, drawing upon both Aramaic and Greek (Septuagint) traditions. The latter modifies and amplifies a detail the Church’s patristic witnesses consider essential. That small detail is a typological…

Divine Beauty (2)

The preceding column in this space spoke of finding beauty in the little things of our daily life, including in their imperfections. In some cultures, children are imbued from birth with sensitivity toward the visually unusual and appreciation for its deeper meaning. From a jagged crack in an ancient vase to the radiant smile of a Down’s syndrome…

Divine Beauty (1)

“Ever since the creation of the world,” the apostle Paul declared, “[God’s] invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom 1:20). To those qualities of Power and Deity, we can add divine Beauty.[1]

Beauty is an all-encompassing term that is nearly synonymous with “truth” and…

Little Things Mean a Lot

A good many years ago Conciliar Press published a brochure, written by Frederica Matthewes-Green, entitled 12 Things I Wish I Had Known, meaning before her first visit to an Orthodox church. It’s very much worth reading by all of us, long-time Orthodox parishioners as well as first-time visitors.

Something similar needs to be written for persons…