Food and drink were intended for nourishment and enjoyment. Passion transforms the natural acts of eating and drinking into gluttony and dissipation.
The theme of repentance is heard so often during Great Lent because it expresses the essential conviction of our Christian faith that the human person is called by God to change. This involves above…
At a recent, post-liturgical coffee hour, a catechumen raised a question that has troubled many people who were brought up in a Protestant environment and at some point found themselves drawn to Orthodoxy. “If we are saved by grace, and not by works,” he asked, “why does the Orthodox Church put so much stress on ascetic practice? Why should it be…
The church of Saint Sulpice, located in the 6th arrondissement near the Jardin de Luxembourg in Paris, is a 17th century edifice, built on the site of a 13th century Romanesque chapel. Several years ago it became a major tourist attraction due to a number of intriguing but false historical notes about it published in Dan Brown’s highly imaginary…
Sports fans in Western Europe are used to chaos. Riots following soccer (“football”) matches often resemble the recent uproar in Greece after the government voted in severe austerity measures. It’s well known that British thugs follow their home teams to other European Union countries, and delight in using a loss, and occasionally a win, as an…
The account of Jesus and the Samaritan woman, which we read on the fifth Sunday after Pascha, brought to mind something I often forget, and maybe others do as well.
It’s the fact that authentic prayer is not really a human endeavor. We can probably say it is not even a human possibility. In Romans 8, the apostle Paul declares, “we do not know how…
The expressions “Prayer of the Heart” and “Prayer of Jesus” or “Jesus Prayer” are often used as equivalents. They should, however, be clearly distinguished one from the other. According to a person’s degree of spiritual maturity, the “Jesus Prayer” can be either active or contemplative. In the latter case, it becomes a true “prayer of the…
People will persist in dysfunctional patterns of behavior simply because they’re familiar. A woman who divorces an abusive alcoholic husband will be very likely later on to marry someone with a similar addiction. The “good ol’ boys” will continue to tie one on Saturday nights, even though the Sunday morning hangover is inevitably excruciating. A…
On March 2nd of this year, the PBS program Frontline invited the public to witness the assisted suicide of Craig Ewert, a 59 year-old sufferer of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”). Viewers followed Ewert through the last phases of his life—a life he intentionally ended through the ministrations of the Swiss non-profit…
An unshakable conviction among Jews at the time of Jesus held that the Holy Scriptures had to be “fulfilled.” From the time of their exodus from Egypt and their sojourn in the wilderness of Sinai, the people of Israel viewed all of history, including their own personal and collective destiny, as under the authority and control of the One God, who…
American culture throws up peculiar challenges to thoughtful and serious members of any traditional religious faith.
There’s the thoroughgoing confusion we have made between capitalism and democracy, which makes taboo any public questioning of the merits of our economic system, even during these times of financial crisis. (Which is more in keeping…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…