“Life in Christ”

Any doubts that Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a true saint, a genuinely holy person, have been amply, if ironically, dispelled by revelations of her self-professed doubt and near life-long journey through “the darkness.” Even before her personal journal and letters were published under the title, “Come Be My Light,” a large number of articles on her…

When the syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker writes about religion and society, she tends to be right on the mark. It must cost her dearly in the present atmosphere of myopic “tolerance” and abusive PC. As she and a few other brave souls have pointed out, Western culture today embraces any and every form of religious persuasion, as long as it is…

Best-selling, easy-to-read novels can provide welcome distraction when we’re feeling too tired or cooped-up to concentrate on serious literature. Those potboilers, the kind we find in airport bookstores or on the “For Sale” cart of the local library, serve a useful purpose—at least until they begin to play havoc with basic truths of Christian…

When William Lobdell was assigned to the religion beat at his paper, the Los Angeles Times, he was delighted. A born-again Christian, he was preparing to convert to his wife’s faith, Roman Catholicism. As a reporter, he dedicated himself to “report objectively and respectfully about how belief shapes people’s lives.” His obviously sincere quest,…

When he wrote his various letters to churches around the Mediterranean and throughout Asia Minor, the apostle Paul used a literary convention widespread in the Hellenistic world. He began with a personal identification and blessing, followed by a word of thanksgiving for all that God had accomplished through his ministry in the life of that…

Will God soon have competition from the laboratory? It’s a question increasing numbers of people are asking, given the spate of articles showing up in everything from serious scientific journals (Science, Nature) to Internet blogs. What exactly is going on?

I’m not a scientist, so all I can do is summarize a little of what has appeared recently in…

The center or heart of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy is made up of a triptych that includes the Words of Institution, the Anamnesis or Memorial, and the Epiklesis or invocation of the Holy Spirit. These elements of the Anaphora or Eucharistic Prayer of Consecration express the mystery of divine activity accomplished for the life and salvation of all…

To Orthodox Christians the Eucharist or Holy Communion is the very culmination of our life in Christ. It gives direction and meaning to our entire cycle of liturgical services, all of which ultimately serve to prepare us to receive the life-giving Body and Blood of our risen and glorified Lord. The Eucharist is Christ Himself, “the Bread that came…

A few months ago someone sent me a posting from an Internet site that spoke to the issue of communion among various Christian confessions. In answer to the question why a Protestant believer was refused the sacrament at Easter in her boyfriend’s Catholic parish, the writer declared that non-Catholics do not believe in “the presence of God’s body in…

The so-called Gospel of Judas burst on the popular scene over a year ago. Although scholars had long known of its existence, its presentation by the National Geographic society^[1] created a predictable stir, largely because of its apparent challenge to the image of Jesus’ disciple Judas furnished by the canonical Gospels of the New Testament. Those…

In our civilization, so rich in knowledge and in power, we can no longer offer any reply to the enigma of death. We want only to forget death. Yet it meets us again and again in the form of hatred, oppression, separation, illness, and the disappearance of persons we love. This is why the message of Easter, of Holy Pascha, resounds today with such…

Of the fifteen Old Testament passages read in Orthodox practice at the vesperal Divine Liturgy of Holy Saturday, the fourth consists of the entire, brief book of Jonah. Although the book is numbered among the “Minor Prophets,” it is unique: rather than offer a compilation of prophetic utterances, it recounts a spiritual pilgrimage. However we may…

A professor at Sarah Lawrence College long made it a practice to bring some of her students to St Vladimir’s Seminary, to introduce them to Orthodox worship. It was always a welcome sight to see her and the group of young men and women arrive as the community was gathering together in the seminary chapel. Interestingly, she chose to offer them this…

Why indeed do Orthodox Christians still fast? For most people, life is challenging enough without adding self-imposed limits on what we eat, drink and do on certain days of the week and during long periods of the Church year. Does God really care if we eat meat on Fridays or clear the fridge of dairy products during Lent? Does it really matter?

To…

Attitudes of submission, respect, awe, wonder. These are basic qualities of the emotion we know as “reverence.” Humble deference and veneration also have a part in reverence, as do tenderness and love. Reverence is such a complex emotion that it’s almost impossible to describe. It has no synonyms. It can be neither taught nor imposed. Yet it can be…

Those who hold that the only sure ground of knowledge is scientific inquiry and rational analysis actually represent not so much science as the heresy of “scientism,” a purely materialistic view of reality. Yet science itself debunks that approach with its acceptance of principles such as those embodied in quantum mechanics and relativity theory. In…

The names Dennett, Dawkins and Harris have recently become well-known in both atheistic and fundamentalist circles. ^[1]Their writings and interview musings have elicited a heated response, especially from people who are convinced that the world was created some six thousand years ago and that the Bible was virtually dictated, word for word, by the…

As much as any other Christian feast, the significance of Christ’s Nativity comes to expression by means of “antinomies.” These are paradoxical affirmations that speak of the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation by juxtaposing apparent contradictions.

The most obvious of these is found in the prolog of St John’s Gospel, which declares that “the…

The “holy war” we associate today with militant Islam was practiced no less relentlessly by ancient Israelites. In the days of Samuel and Saul, it often meant destroying an enemy or even an entire people, and to offer the booty as a sacred offering (hérem) to Yahweh, the Lord God. Saul, for example, “defeated the Amalekites…and utterly destroyed…

For over a century biblical scholars have debated whether the Old and New Testaments contain “mythical” elements. The answer depends on how we define “myth,” and here there is very little agreement. The Brothers Grimm held that myths are stories that speak of “gods” (in the plural). If this is the essential criterion, many scholars have held, then…