We live in a Facebook world—that is, in a world characterized by the presence of what has come to be called “social media.” Much ink has been spilled describing this revolutionary new phenomenon, some people lauding...
At the end of October in 1840, the celebrated author Hans Christian Andersen (famous for his fairy tales) left his native Denmark for an extended trip in the east. He wrote about his travels in his book A Poet’s Bazaar: a...
“A tough week.” This is how President Obama described the week of April 14, 2013—a week that saw acts of terrorism in Boston and a tragic fire and explosion in Texas compounding the other challenges with which life is often...
The Boston Marathon, first held in 1897, is a time of joy. People from all over the world gather in Boston every year on Patriots’ Day, the third Monday in April, to test their endurance and celebrate the nobility of the...
In a well-known passage from Saint Matthew’s Gospel about one of Christ’s resurrection appearances, the passage read at the baptismal service, we find the following words: “The eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee,...
In the rough and tumble of world of online polemics against Christians, it is common for our detractors to object that our Faith is fatally simplistic and essentially violent. Many say that religion is the cause of all the...
In most Orthodox churches, the image of the Mother of God towers over us—sometimes literally, as her icon fills the upper apse of the church temple, proclaiming there how she united heaven and earth by her willing assent...
Just the other day I opened a Bible and was saddened by what I read. For there, on the initial fly-leaf, were written in beautiful calligraphic script the words, “Presented to Cathy Ruth by Mom and Dad, April 18, 1993.”...
It is difficult these days not to find the Roman Catholic Church when one tunes in to almost any news programme. In response to the historic resignation of Pope Benedict, Roman Catholic cardinals, charged with the task of...
The Pharisees get a lot of ink in the New Testament, perhaps surprisingly for a sect that hasn’t existed in its original form since the first century (though much of their approach has survived in classical Rabbinic...