Home / Work of the Church / Reflections in Christ
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…
Someone asked the other day how we should read Genesis 2-3, the story of Adam and Eve. Behind his question lay troubled concern over the apparent conflict between science and Scripture. “If we take the biblical account seriously,” he concluded, “then we have to reject evolutionary theory altogether and align ourselves with those ‘creationists’ who…
A special example of Advance Directives (AD) for end-of-life care is a document concerning the withholding or withdrawing of life support systems. A typical declaration begins with the person’s name, followed by a request such as the following: “If my medical condition is deemed ‘terminal’ [optional addition: or I am determined to be permanently…
It’s particularly difficult in American culture to talk about death and the dying process. Yet sooner or later, most of us will have to make decisions concerning the end-of-life care we want for ourselves or for those close to us. It may be that we will die suddenly, in a car accident or of a heart attack. Today, however, increasing numbers of us…
A Roman Catholic friend (and a good theologian) recently asked me whether the Greek Fathers of the Church understand the term “righteousness” in a forensic sense. He was referring to a Protestant doctrine that holds that God does not “make” us righteous; He “declares” or “counts” us righteous. That is, God imputes righteousness to us, while we…
In the previous column, we stressed the point that God does not “punish” us for our sinfulness. If He allows us to know pain and suffering, it should not be construed as punishment meted out in vengeful anger. Because God in His very essence is Love, any suffering we may know or any penance we may be called to exercise is to be understood as a…
Sometimes priests come away from hearing confessions with a sense of profound sadness. That sadness is often due to the realization that we have allowed our faithful to acquire and live with images of God that are woefully distorted, images that seem to have little to do with the One who reveals Himself in Scripture and the Church’s worship. This is…
Yesterday’s local paper relegated the brutal war in Afghanistan and Iraq to page eight and didn’t even mention that California is in imminent danger of breaking off at the San Andreas Fault and floating out into the Pacific. The lead article on page one read “Episcopalians ‘regret’ gay rift.” This was conjoined with another piece, titled “Trinity by…
by John Whitehead
There are some things so evil that, even in a world filled with pain and suffering, it is almost incomprehensible that they exist in a so-called civilized society. What’s more, such evils should be opposed by any and every person who claims to be a champion of human rights. Partial-birth abortion is one such evil. Now the question…
Tuesday after Western Easter, six p.m. in the Paris underground. People packed in so tight I can lift both feet off the floor and not fall. Commuters back to their usual grind of “métro-boulot-dodo”: the smelly subway, the boring job, then home for a little sleep before it starts all over again too early the next morning. We arrive at Châtelet, a…
Times of trial and testing can make us doubt a great many things. When they occur within the Church, they can very easily obscure reality, skew our perspective, and in the worst cases, push us to the point where we abandon faith.
A conflict arises among members of the parish that the priest can’t begin to deal with adequately, and the situation…