Glory to God for All Things
The Mystery of Goodness
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Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God (3John 1:11). One of the most common affirmations in Orthodox services is the goodness of God. Many services conclude with the blessing: “For He is a good God and loves mankind.” The goodness of God is utterly foundational to our faith – and yet…
Praying in the Rain
Me and God and the Bible
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“Trust not in princes or the sons of men….The Lord makes wise the blind…. He will adopt for himself the orphan and widow….” In my last blog, I revealed a little about my childhood and my rough start in life. I’ve often wondered not just why God saved me from a life of drugs, crime and institutionalization–a trajectory that I avoided by a mere hair’s breadth on a couple of occasions–but I…
Glory to God for All Things
The Sacrament of the Present Moment
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There is a wonderful translation of Jean-Pierre De Caussade’s  Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence, which bears the same title as this post. I am borrowing the phrase, not to comment on the volume (though I highly recommend it), but to bring into focus something of at least equal importance. It is the reality of our moment by moment encounter with God. We confess that God is everywhere present and fills all things, but we still…
Praying in the Rain
Unresolved Grief and Forgiving Again
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Occasionally, when I am with my spiritual father and the topic of my childhood comes up, he suggests that I am unaware of how much my childhood experiences affect me. He never pushes me, and I usually say nothing. I don’t know what to say. I can talk about my childhood without feeling anything in particular. It is to me as though it were someone else’s childhood. I seldom think about it.…
Glory to God for All Things
Giving Thanks as a Way of Life
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The act of giving thanks is among the most fundamental acts of love. It lies at the very heart of worship – in which, in the words of Archimandrite Zacharias of Essex, there is an exchange. In giving thanks we make an offering which itself is always inferior to what we have received – but which is itself an enlargement of the human heart. To live rightly in the presence and communion of…
Praying in the Rain
War and Peace and Suffering
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“The wondrous love of God toward man is recognized when man is in misfortunes that are destroying his hope. Here God manifests His power for man’s salvation. For man never recognizes the power of God in tranquility and freedom.” — St. Isaac the Syrian I have almost finished War and Peace–300 pages to go is almost finished.  When asked to summarize the novel, my first response was that it is about a few…
Praying in the Rain
The Marriage Icon
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In the Orthodox wedding icon, the icon of the wedding in Cana of Galilee, Christ is not at the center. Christ is in the icon, in the foreground and in an exalted position, but not the center. In the center of the wedding icon is the bride. The bride is both at the center of the icon, and she is also the only one who is crowned–the groom is not crowned. In…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Scripture and Tradition
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Ancient Faith Radio now has both parts of my talk “Scripture and Tradition” available for download here and here as part of the Roads From Emmaus podcast. This talk is the second installment in the four-part Foundations of the Orthodox Faith series and was originally delivered on May 23, 2010. Those interested in a particular aspect of this talk, namely, the formation of the…
Glory to God for All Things
Mind and Heart
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I write frequently about what I term the Religion of the Heart. Archimandrite Meletios Webber has a short piece on what can be called the Religion of the Mind. The distinction between mind and heart is not a distinction between thought and feeling. Rather it is a distinction between the mind (seat of thoughts and feelings) and the heart (the seat of a deeper awareness – sometimes called the nous in Orthodox writing).…
Praying in the Rain
Sinner Versus Sinning
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St. Theophan the Recluse said (roughly) that it is a small thing to acknowledge that you have sinned, but it takes enlightenment to acknowledge that you are a sinner. In confession, penitents often asked why they always seem to have the same sins to confess. Sometimes I think the answer to this question is that the penitent has not yet begun to see him or herself as a sinner. They still think…
Praying in the Rain
One Orthodox Church in Canada
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Fr. Michael reports from the Parish Life Conference–at 35,000 feet. The biggest news from the PLC is that there is indeed a move by the Ecumenical Patriarch and all of the Autocephalous churches to create a single Orthodox jurisdiction in each country or region of the world that has a significant Orthodox presence. It looks like it will be happening much more quickly than anyone would have imagined even one year ago.…
Glory to God for All Things
To Guard the Heart
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I often think about the admonition of the fathers to “guard your heart.” It seems so obvious to me that the disposition of my heart has everything to do with how I will perceive and react to everything around me. An anxious heart perceives everything as a threat – a disaster or vexation in the making. An angry heart perceives the slightest hindrance as a great provocation. A sad heart can have…
Praying in the Rain
Are You Saved?
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In the western Christian world, “saved” is a static concept. One either is or isn’t saved. The only difference among the various heterodox Christian confessions is how one acquires this state of salvation. For the Orthodox Christian, salvation is not something static. Salvation is iconic. A person is saved, ultimately and fully, when he or she is conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. That is, salvation is to be an icon…
Praying in the Rain
Education
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Praying in the Rain
26 Minute Friendship
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[At Seattle Airport] Bonnie has this amazing ability to make friends with people on airplanes. On the 26 minute flight from Vancouver to Seattle she had such an intimate conversation with the Pakistani woman sitting next to her that they exchanged phone numbers on landing in Seattle and the woman was earnestly inviting Bonnie to visit her home in Surrey. The Moslem woman kept talking about what the Koran says about Mary…
Glory to God for All Things
Envy and the Fullness of God
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In the Praises for Matins of Holy Wednesday, we read: Oh, the wretchedness of Judas! He saw the harlot kiss the footsteps of Christ, but deceitfully he contemplated the kiss of betrayal. She loosed her hair while he bound himself with wrath. He offered the stench of wickedness instead of myrrh, for envy cannot distinguish value. Oh, the wretchedness of Judas! Deliver our souls from this, O God. We are also told in Scripture…
Glory to God for All Things
The Nature of Things and Our Salvation
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Reflecting on yesterday’s post, I thought it worthwhile to share these thoughts again on the nature of our salvation. Few things are as critical for me as the distinctions given here. Perhaps it is timely. It offers a short summary of the difference between a moral and an existential understanding of the Christian faith and why the difference matters. Indeed, as I look through my writings I know this is a recurring…
Praying in the Rain
Choices and God's Will
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Living in today’s world we are confronted with hundreds of choices every day: red or blue, sweet or savory, toast or muffins. We cope with this plethora of choices by habit. We have our usual breakfast, our usual half-sweet, decaf mocha (no whip), our favorite color, our going-to-bed routine. And yet in spite of our routines and predictable patterns, all of the choices in our life serve a purpose in our culture.…
Glory to God for All Things
To Tell the Truth
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Abba Poemen said, “Teach your mouth to say that which is in your heart. Speaking the truth is as fundamental as the Ten Commandments. It also receives a great deal of attention within the pages of the New Testament. Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image…
Glory to God for All Things
Tradition and the Heart
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He who possesses in truth the word of Jesus can hear even its silence. St. Ignatius of Antioch (To the Ephesians, XV, 2) The faculty of hearing the silence of Jesus, attributed by St. Ignatius to those who in truth possess His word, echoes the reiterated appeal of Christ to His hearers: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” The words of Revelation have then a margin of silence which…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
A Localist Moment in Emmaus, reprise
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I wrote last week regarding the proposed opening of a swingers’ club (to be named “The Vault”) on Main Street in Emmaus, at the very heart of the borough. Last night, to consider the matter, the borough’s zoning hearing board met at the Emmaus Community Park (an aptly named venue for this event), rather than their usual borough hall location. Suffice it to say…
Glory to God for All Things
Reading Tradition
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For those who are unused to the place of Tradition in the understanding and interpretation of the Christian faith, it is easy to assume that Tradition is simply an additional set of texts to be read alongside and in addition to Scripture. There are certainly texts which belong to Tradition (indeed the Church would consider the texts of Scripture itself to be part of Tradition). The teachings of the Apostles were “handed…
Praying in the Rain
Serving God
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Praying in the Rain
Fasting
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At the end of Romans, starting with chapter 12, St. Paul begins to give practical application. It is the common pattern in St. Paul’s letters to start by thanking and praising God (doxology), and then move on to explaining a little about who God is and what He has done for us (theology), and then to move on to behavioral application, the “so what” of theology: how we apply theology in our…
Praying in the Rain
Assurance and Spiritual Advice
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In War and Peace, Tolstoy describes a certain military advisor named Pfuel, a German expert in military science. He says of Pfuel that he is a “hopelessly, permanently, painfully self-assured man…on the basis of an abstract idea–science, that is, an imaginary knowledge of the perfect truth. [He] is self-assured worst of all, and most firmly of all, and most disgustingly of all, because he imagines that he knows the truth, science, which…
Glory to God for All Things
Reason's God
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In a comment to my recent post on the “problem of goodness,” I was challenged on the question of “proving God’s existence.” I understand the question but I do not think the question understands God. There is a definition of God that has floated around philosophical circles for centuries – a very reasonable definition – but not a definition that has anything to do with the Christian God. The modern rise of…
Praying in the Rain
Wheat and Tares
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In St. Gregory Palamas’ homily (#27) on the parable of the wheat and the tares, he explains that one reason why God does not allow the angels to separate the ungodly before the End (that is, to allow death to take the ungodly immediately) is the following: “Many impious and sinful people, living alongside those who are godly and righteous, eventually change by means of repentance, learn to be pious and virtuous,…
