“Thoughts in Christ”

by Fr. Vladimir Berzonsky

You Are Not Alone

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 spiritual care by our heavenly Father. It is also our misfortune that from that time the devil is out to separate us from God…

The Name on the Shroud

Orthodox Christians not only listen to the reading of the death and crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Good Friday. They feel the emotion of his funeral. They share the mystery of burying the Source of life by reenacting the Lord’s entombment. The bishop or priest in full vestments paces beneath the Holy Shroud held above him. He then leads the…

Why Must We Die?

It’s early morning, hours before dawn. Again I cannot sleep. It was exactly fifty years ago less a few months when Mom and I would bundle young John in a blanket and toss him in the back seat of our Chrysler, then drive around anywhere and nowhere until the blessed sunrise would allow us to face the day without Dad. Now it’s the same feeling, only I…

Forgive Them Their Sins

Sin is not everyone’s problem—only for those who love and fear God. Sin is separation from the Lord. Those without the awareness of God elect themselves perfect as they are. The people of God pray for their enlightenment and release from the darkness of ignorance.

We learn in the Bible that the priests’ duty is to offer sacrifices for God’s…

Speaking for the Dead

The poet Dylan Thomas, pondering the way one faces death, counseled: “Do not go gentle into that good night.” Orthodox Christians would disagree with that emotion. For us, death is a celebration of a life lived as well as the deceased was capable in following the will and the steps of the Lord. In another sense it’s a birthday party, since the date…

The Way Back to Christ

The letter to the Hebrews was written by a Jewish Christian who wanted his fellow Jews to return to Jesus as the Christ and to keep them from falling away. It was written sometime before the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. and after 64 A.D., the persecution of the Christians under Nero. One might imagine given the close-knit family ties of the…

The Eternal Gospel Message

Today is the time when many have forsaken “sound doctrine” and find new teachers who will “suit their own desires.” It’s always been like that. In these days, however, religion faces new challenges. The prestige of the altar and its servants is long lost, and the authority that goes with it has disappeared. Here’s what a contemporary writer has to…

The Secret to Avoiding Sin

Imagine the man standing in the garden. The woman approaches, puts her arm on his shoulder and whispers something in his ear. He hesitates. He lowers his head. She says, “It’s alright. The serpent told me it will be a good thing for us, and he’s been here long before us.” The man looks long at the tree, and then he sees something between himself…

The Ultimate Nightmare

Who of us has not been awakened from sleep by a horrible fantasy? That which we fear the most comes to provoke and intimidate us: Serpents or monsters, grotesque beasts or crawly, slimy things…thoughts of death, precarious situations, men come to kill us, or just ourselves, helpless to respond to the situation. But the ultimate nightmare is given to…

The Lesson of Obedience

The opening motif of the Prodigal Son tale reveals the problem God has in dealing with any of us. The parent in the story symbolizes the heavenly Father, and the Prodigal in the same way stands for each of us who has been entrusted with a precious heritage of blessings which we had done nothing to deserve, along with the dignity of freedom to do…

Thinking About Heaven

Unfortunately, many translations of Christ’s words lose the idiosyncratic way He had of beginning the most portentous sayings with “Amen, amen,” the word used to conclude prayer and sacred comments. More, He would repeat it for emphasis. What usually follows is a reference to the Kingdom of God. In the gospel of St. John alone, this formula is…

The Ultimate Test of Faith

Funerals for the beloved departed begin with the words of this psalm of confidence and trust. Nothing is to trouble us, not even death itself. Why should we be afraid if we have trust in the One who promised to send angels to catch us as we drift through the unknown regions beyond this life, taking us in hand and transporting us to Him who created…

A Prayer For Lighting a Candle

Here is a prayer to fix in your memory and reflect upon each time you light a candle and say a prayer to our Lord Jesus Christ. You are setting a flame before Him which represents the warmth of affection for God. Is it really burning love, or just some gesture your parents taught you to perform upon entering the church? Or may it be that some…

Stages of Prayer

How delightful to hear people ask each other for prayers, or say they are praying for someone. It’s assumed we all know what a prayer means. Here, however, St. Paul uses four different terms to express the various forms of prayer.

The first word is basically a request. It expresses a need. It can be addressed to the Lord God, but it can also be a…

Varities of Liberation

We live in a free nation. Liberty is a cherished element in our Constitution. But the freedom we uphold is often misused and abused. It’s made into a partial truth. Yet the true Christian Church insists that partial truths won’t do. They are branded heresies. A heresy is a teaching based on a portion of the whole truth; i.e., a basic idea or…

At Rest With the Saints

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, prophets, martyrs and saints of the past, we include quite naturally and logically our own loved ones departed this life before…

Wisdom and Attention

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 powerful symbols to ponder.

“Let us attend,” means, “Pay attention.” What follows is profoundly serious. It is now time to stop…

Those Who Would Kill Us

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 said. But in today’s world we are hunted not specifically as Christians, but as Americans.

Let’s begin with the politically…

Angels and Human Beings

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 angel and Gabriel who visited Mary, knew about the incarnation of the Son of God before any human beings, since they were…

Christ’s Love For The Temple

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 scene asked Him, “What sign do You show since You do such things?” They understood that like the ancient prophets, Jesus was making…