Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
When the "A-ha Moment" Turns into "Gotcha"
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When I was younger, especially in my twenties and early thirties, I was always looking for a sort of “skeleton key” that would explain Life, The Universe and Everything to me (or at least some specific issue), a meta-narrative that brought it all together. I’ve since learned that the only true narrative in that regard is the Gospel. Every other skeleton key–even theological ones,…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Awake, O Sleeper! Dream Logic and Spiritual Life
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Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost / Thirteenth Sunday of Luke, November 29, 2015 Ephesians 5:8-19; Luke 18:18-27 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. One of my favorite metaphors for spiritual conversion is to awaken from sleep. There is actually a lot about spiritual life that resembles sleeping or…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Oneness in the Church: The Key to Generosity and Good Works
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Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost / Ninth Sunday of Luke, November 22, 2015 Ephesians 4:1-7; Luke 12:16-21 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Paul is in prison, and he writes to the Christians of Ephesus the beautiful words we hear today. Let’s hear them again: “I, the prisoner…
Nearly Orthodox
Comfort and the heart's condition
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Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. -2 Thessalonians 2:16 My youngest son is what you’d call “spirited.” He comes by it honestly. Whether you subscribe to nature or nurture or a combination of the two, having parents who are— at their core—…
Nearly Orthodox
Nativity: On being prepared
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First, an explanation— for the last two weeks I have pondered about a post. I made this little pact with myself when I began blogging, lo those many years ago, that I would never post just for the sake of posting. I broke that one month a long time ago while laboring under the mistaken notion that there was some secret formula to keep people reading. It was after that month of…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy 2.0 is now here. Here's an excerpt.
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Update: New episodes are now available at this link. As I’ve announced on social media and elsewhere, I’m in the process of producing an updated, revised, and expanded version of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy—both the podcast and the book. New episodes of the podcast begin airing on Ancient Faith Radio on November 22. This new podcast series (and book!) represents a full revision,…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Christ is the Samaritan & I Am the Beaten Man
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Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost / Eighth Sunday of Luke, November 15, 2015 Ephesians 2:14-22; Luke 10:25-37 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. As we continue our parish meditations on serious giving as a critical element of the spiritual life, we hear today the famous Parable of the…
Nearly Orthodox
Better than Sin
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I love baked goods; that’s no secret. I love them, but I can’t live on them alone. I mean, if I were starving and all there was to eat was an endless supply of say, cupcakes, then, of course, I’ll survive. I think I dreamt that once. It was a good dream. But given the choice (and that’s the operative word here) I’ll have my brussels sprouts and my lean proteins and…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Why Does the Orthodox Parish Exist? The Rich Man, Tithing & Lazarus
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Ss. Cosmas and Damian / Fifth Sunday of Luke, November 1, 2015 I Corinthians 12:27-13:8; Luke 16:19-31 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. One of the things that is most important for any community is to ask the question of who they are, why they exist. This…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
6 Reasons Why Tithing is Good for an Orthodox Parish
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Tithing is good for the Orthodox Christian and therefore good for the Orthodox parish. So why don’t more Orthodox Christians tithe? We know the usual reasons: We’re not used to it. Back in the old country the government paid for the church. The parish was founded on the “dues” model. Tithing is “Protestant.” Orthodox people are stingy. We just don’t have it in our…
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…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Review of 'Orthodox Readings of Aquinas' by Marcus Plested
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Dylan Pahman [Note: A version of this review was published in The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 184-187. Published here with permission.] ORTHODOX READINGS OF AQUINAS. By Marcus Plested. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 276. $99.00 Hard Cover, ISBN: 978-0-19-965065-1. The encounter between the works of Thomas Aquinas and the Orthodox Church is often told in a…
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…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
A New Ecclesiology for the Orthodox Church?
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Orthodox Christians often find themselves answering the following question: why is Orthodoxy divided along ethnic lines into different churches? At least officially, the answer to that question has been quite clear: we are not divided; we are one Church, united in faith and worship, with an administrative structure that organizes itself along local lines, in accordance with the ancient traditions and canon…
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…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
One Quote from St. Ignatius Converted this Guy to Catholicism?
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I happened upon this article today. Here’s an excerpt: Like St. Paul before him, St. Ignatius, in his capacity as Bishop of Antioch, is writing with authority against those who break off from the Church founded by Christ. Anyone, says Ignatius, who walks in heresy—that is, against the teachings of Ignatius and the other appointed Bishops—is, alarmingly, “out of sympathy with the…
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…
