Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Tithing: The Sacrifice That Gets Us Unstuck
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Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost / Sixth Sunday of Luke, October 25, 2015 Galatians 2:16-20; Luke 8:26-39 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Most of the time, we do not take responsibility for our own being and destiny. Part of this is that we don’t really know ourselves…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Walking with Luke on the Road to Emmaus
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Feast of the Apostle and Evangelist Luke, October 18, 2015 Colossians 4:5-11, 14-18; Luke 10:16-21 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. On the eighteenth of October we celebrate the holy apostle and evangelist Luke. His is one of those names we often hear in our services, but…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Preaching Christ in a World That Doesn't Need God: Orthodox Christianity and Secularism
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The following is from a larger talk I am working on about Orthodoxy in the West. Secularism is essentially the idea that one can conceive of a world without God. It is the belief in an autonomous order existing apart from the divine order. It is not necessarily a denial of God’s existence, by the way. Such outright atheism has never been that attractive…
Nearly Orthodox
Seeing through the progressive lens...
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As a testimony to the accumulation of my years, I have graduated to progressive lenses. I’ve had them a couple of weeks, and I confess that I just can’t work ’em out. Everything is blurry except in one little spot in the middle. I have watched YouTube videos and asked opinions from fellow glasses wearers. I have practiced with them, going up and down stairs, working on the computer, reading a book,…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
How I Made My Peace with "Ethnic" Orthodoxy
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Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
12 More Things the Normal Orthodox Christian is Doing
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As a follow-up to my previous post, 12 Things the Normal Orthodox Christian is Doing, I thought I might offer a few more “every day” kinds of things that I associate with being a “normal” Orthodox Christian—that is, one who is living according to the norms of Orthodox Christianity. (This will unfortunately differ from what the “average” Orthodox Christian is doing.) And thank you…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
12 Things the Normal Orthodox Christian is Doing
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The normal Orthodox Christian—who is living according to the norms of the Orthodox faith—will be doing the following (this is not an exhaustive list, nor is this in order of priority): 1. Participating in church services as often as possible. Attendance at every Sunday morning liturgy is a minimal baseline for worship life—in most cases, it is not enough. And participation doesn’t just mean…
Nearly Orthodox
Garden in the East
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I’ve been working on the new book this past few months. It’s going well. I think that’s what I’m supposed to say, by default, whenever someone asks, and so that is what I say. If they press further, I might mention the potholes, the detours or the time wasted at the truck stops because the road to finishing this book has been, at times, no damn fun. Writing books is not always…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Come Out and Be Separate: Redeeming the World by Standing Apart
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Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost / First Sunday of Luke, September 27, 2015 II Corinthians 6:16-7:1; Luke 5:1-11 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. I had a friend who was a Ph.D. student at a university in New York City. He was a brilliant, traditional Orthodox Christian who…
Nearly Orthodox
Pray for me...
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Not long ago I had the great pleasure to attend Liturgy at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Sante Fe, NM. I communicated by email with the priest of this parish in the weeks before I planned to be in town for a writing conference called The Glen Workshop. Apart from my home church in Chicago and my home church in Nashville, I’d never attended Liturgy and accepted Holy Mysteries anywhere else. So,…
Nearly Orthodox
Out of habit
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About 10 years ago, I could not drive past a Starbucks without stopping to buy a cup of coffee. At that point in my life, the number of children in my household was increased to four and the number of sleep deprived nights was compounding at a rate that any IRA would envy. But it wasn’t the tiredness and stress that led me into the store and the line, sometimes with all…
Nearly Orthodox
Spoken words...
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So, I meant to get a post up a few days ago but the week got away from me as I was doing this: The bad news is that I didn’t have time to put together a thoughtful blog post for you guys last week but the good news is that if you’re the sort of person who likes to listen to audiobooks you’ll get the chance in the near future…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
You Bleed Just to Know You're Alive
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The Forefeast and Sunday Before the Elevation of the Cross, September 13, 2015 Galatians 6:11-18; John 3:13-17 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. This week, I noticed a pattern in popular music of our time that I had not noticed before. It was something I heard in…
Nearly Orthodox
Gift of God
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Three years ago this week I was welcomed into the Orthodox faith. It’s a sort of a happy accident that the date also coincided with my “name day” on September 11th. I’d been fidgeting with the schedule for months, trying to get a date on the books. I was tired of waiting. I hate waiting. I had my nose pressed up against the glass of Orthodoxy for so long, looking in like…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Warnings at the Wedding Feast
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Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost / Fourteenth Sunday of Matthew, September 6, 2015 II Corinthians 1:21-24, 2:1-4; Matthew 22:2-14 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. The Gospel passage this morning is one that we do not hear every year in our lectionary. It is appointed for the Fourteenth…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The First Fruits of Achaia: Setting Ourselves for the Ministry of the Saints
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Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost / Thirteenth Sunday of Matthew, August 30, 2015 I Corinthians 16:13-24; Matthew 21:33-42 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Many times when we’re reading something, we come across a phrase or two in parentheses, and we might skip over that part because it’s…
Nearly Orthodox
The Body is a Garden
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The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. -Isaiah 58:11 When I took my certification exam for the American Council on Exercise in 1998, I was on crutches. I’d just torn my ACL (ligament at the knee joint) and had it surgically repaired. I signed up…
Nearly Orthodox
On Blank Pages and Passion Planners
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And in this I give advice: It is to your advantage not only to be doing what you began and were desiring to do a year ago; but now you also must complete the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to desire it, so there also may be a completion out of what you have. For if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
What is the Secret to Eternity?
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Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost / Twelfth Sunday of Matthew, August 23, 2015 I Corinthians 15:1-11; Matthew 19:16-26 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. “What good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” So asks the rich young man who approaches Jesus. He is looking for the…
Nearly Orthodox
Doughnuts to Donuts: The Cost of Comparison
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Or, comparison is the thief of joy…. The feeling that swept over me was familiar, too familiar. I read the post on Facebook and that feeling wriggled up from my gut, through my chest, clutching my throat and scraping the sides of my trachea til it reached my brain. I hate that envy. I hate it a whole lot. But I have it. I hold it deep in the recesses of my…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
"Off For More Adventures": An Alaskan Family Connection
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Last week, I had the great blessing to speak on St. Ignatius of Antioch (AUDIO) at the Eagle River Institute at St. John Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral in Eagle River, Alaska. Since it was my first time in Alaska, I prefaced my talks with the following notes, delivered on Saturday, August 1st. Before I begin speaking about one of my favorite subjects, St. Ignatius of…
Nearly Orthodox
On Moving and Standing Still
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This morning I am pleased to be sitting in a quiet, sunny living room in Middle Tennessee. The vacation house is intimately familiar as I lived in this log home for five years when my children were very young. We turned it into a vacation home a few years ago, when we moved back to Chicago. I cannot remember it ever being this quiet. In those years, they would wake me up…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
From "Membership" to Ministry: Feeding the Five Thousand
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Feast of St. Paraskeva / Eighth Sunday of Matthew, July 26, 2015 Galatians 3:23-4:5; Matthew 14:14-22 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. We are all familiar with this account from the Gospels of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Though we read today from Matthew 14, this…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Not Abolition, But Fulfillment: Reading Everything in the Light of Christ
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Fathers of the 4th Ecumenical Council, July 19, 2015 Titus 3:8-15; Matthew 5:14-19 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. I would like us to hear the short text of today’s Gospel again, because this is what we will speak on today. These are the words of the…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Do You Have to Read the Fathers to be Orthodox?
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I recently posted the following on Facebook and thought I might put it here, as well: I have sometimes seen the sentiment expressed that authentic Orthodoxy means everyone reads the Fathers (perhaps “graduating” out of everything else). But that’s really a historical impossibility. Access to the writings of the Fathers for most people is a recent phenomenon that is only due, ironically, to the…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
St. Ignatius of Antioch and the "Upstairs/Downstairs Church"
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The following is an excerpt from a series of lectures I am soon going to deliver on St. Ignatius of Antioch. Men of flesh cannot act spiritually, nor can spiritual men act in a fleshly way, just as faith cannot perform deeds of unfaith or unfaith those of faith. But what you do in relation to the flesh is spiritual, for you do everything…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
St. Paisios and Salvation from Distraction
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Sixth Sunday after Pentecost / Sixth Sunday of Matthew, July 12, 2015 Romans 12:6-14; Matthew 9:1-8 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Today we have a rare privilege in church life in that today is the very first time the feast of a saint is celebrated—St. Paisios…
