Glory to God for All Things
Moses and the Unknowable God
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Last week, while conducting a retreat for youth at Sts. Mary and Martha monastery, we concentrated on the topic of “Who Am I?” It seemed to me an appropriate topic for an age where youth are frequently struggling with issues of identity. They live in a socially dangerous world – the cruelty of young teenagers towards one another can be brutal – thus it is not an age of risk-taking. Young people…
Glory to God for All Things
Now Lay Aside All Earthly Cares
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Glory to God for All Things
A Day at a Time
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One of my favorite books, for many years, has been Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel. It’s hard at first thought to say what draws me to the book (I’ve probably read it ten times). It makes occasional remarks that are religious but it would not be described as an overtly religious novel. Though it’s set in largely the same place and time of the books on…
Glory to God for All Things
The One Thing Needful
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Having spent half of the last week at Sts. Mary and Martha Monastery, it is unavoidable to think about these Holy Myrrhbearers. Among those who were the first witnesses of Christ’s resurrection, these Myrrhbearing women are perhaps better known for their conversations with Christ when he visited in their home and at the time of their brother Lazarus’ death. In our encounters with them in the gospel we learn that Martha was…
Glory to God for All Things
Why is Love so difficult?
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As I’ve noted, I’m on retreat with about 15 youth at a monastery. Our topic has been freedom and love – the two most important things necessary in our journey to become fully what God has created us to be. It’s not a complicated subject. “Everybody’s in favor of love,” Fr. Thomas Hopko says. What then, is so difficult about love? Of course, love is not difficult as a topic. As discussions…
Glory to God for All Things
On the Shoulders of Giants
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One of the peculiar things (though not really) about the Orthodox Church in America (and by this I mean all the jurisdictions) is the fact that in a little over 200 years on this continent, we have been blessed by the showing forth of many saints. And not only have saints been shown forth, but many of those saints have been among our hierarchs. Men such as St. Innocent of Alaska and Metropolitan…
Glory to God for All Things
From a Monastery in the Deep South
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I am leading a retreat with young teens this week. All prayers are welcome. This is my evening break time to read comments and relax a moment. My thanks to my wife for checking on comments during the day and clearing the spam. The joy is to be with youth and to here their voices lifted to God. This has been an almost annual event for me since 1999. I have much…
Glory to God for All Things
The Level of Difficulty
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In the past weeks and months I have posts entitled, “How hard is it?” “How much is enough?” “How Much is Too Little?” “What is at Stake?” In all of these I have pointed towards the maximum as the standard by which we live the Christian faith – even if we cannot live at the maximum standard. This neatly coincides with the Scriptural notion of sin as “missing the mark.” Of course,…
Glory to God for All Things
Music from Heaven
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Glory to God for All Things
On Hope in God alone and on Confidence in Him
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Although, as we have said, it is very important not to rely on our own efforts in this unseen warfare, at the same time, if we merely give up hope of ourselves and despair of ourselves without having found another support, we are certain to flee immediately from the battlefield or to be overcome and taken prisoner by our enemies. Therefore, together with complete renunciation of our selves, we should plant in…
Glory to God for All Things
A Prayer Request
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I was deeply embarrassed when I came home this evening, checked the web site and found that a flagrant piece of filth had managed to slip through the various screenings and post itself on my site. I apologize to any who may have seen it before I was able to remove it. I will continue to work with the WordPress management to prevent such things. More than that – if you are…
Glory to God for All Things
New Martyrs from Optina
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Glory to God for All Things
Can There Be Morality on the Moon?
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I rarely refer people to a blog article by someone whom I don’t know. But I was recently directed to an article by William Gairdner that does an excellent job of looking at the fact that none of us lives in a “moral bubble.” Our lives are always connected to the lives of others. In Orthodoxy this is a fundamental doctrine of the nature of persons. His article, though largely exploring the…
Glory to God for All Things
Lost in Translation
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Engaging in conversations about the Orthodox faith – with others born and nurtured in the West – I sometimes feel that something is “lost in translation.” I say, “Church,” and something else comes to the listener’s mind: either something Roman or something Protestant, perhaps Anglican. I begin to explain that Orthodoxy cannot be explained or defined in terms of either Rome or Protestantism, for Orthodoxy did not come from Rome or from Protestantism…
Glory to God for All Things
What Is at Stake?
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In the struggle to come to the wholeness of Personhood – to become the “true self” rather than to sink into the “false self” our very existence as spiritual beings is at stake. If you read across Orthodox books that center on the issue of Personhood – a common theme becomes visible. Our fall and our brokenness leave us vulnerable, even in our religious efforts, to the development of a “false self”…
Glory to God for All Things
Hopko on the Cross of Christ
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An excerpt from Fr. Thomas Hopko’s commencement address at St. Vladimir’s. The whole is the address is exquisitely true and I would encourage you to read all of it. The link to the whole commencement address is given at the bottom of this post. …I can tell you that being loved by God, and loving Him in return, is the greatest joy given to creatures, and that without it there is no…
Glory to God for All Things
Hope and the Heart - Fr. Dmitri Staniloae
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The following comes from Fr. Dmitri Staniloae’s Orthodox Spirituality. (pg. 178) You have the experience of the congestion [crowdedness] of the heart when you are disturbed, and “ample room” when you are peaceful. But uneasiness, in regard to the future is the fruit of uncertainty, just as peace is the fruit of certainty. Care is the offspring of the fear of the future, thus of uncertainty, of the timidity that it won’t…
Glory to God for All Things
The Struggle of the Person
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I have begun to touch on issues of the “false self” and the “true self” for which we could find other language, a number of different metaphors. Theologically all this is grounded in the proper understanding of what it means to exist as a person. Of course, it means to exist in a completely unrepeatable, unique existence. There will never be another you. It also does not mean to exist in isolation…
Glory to God for All Things
The False and True Self
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Part of the experience of being involved in religious activities in the late 60’s and early 70’s was the not infrequent encounters with members of cults (they seemed to be everywhere). I’m not certain how I would define a cult (not purely by doctrine but certainly by its destruction and control of its members as whole persons). I worked in a “coffee house” (which in that particular time period, oddly enough, was…
Glory to God for All Things
I Pause to Give Thanks
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Numbers only mean so much – but Glory to God for All Things passed the 200,000 views mark this morning – all since late October. I generally write at night before going to bed – it clears my head and puts a better ending on the day. I am deeply moved that so many (and from so many places across the globe) read, and share kind comments and questions. May God bless…
Glory to God for All Things
Where the Truth Abides
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The old addage, “Seeing is believing,” pretty much sums up our modern attitude to the world around us. Common sense and a modest commitment to reason both accept the notion that the world is, pretty much as we see it, and that what we see is the truth of things. Over the years I’ve heard any number of believers suggest that they would like to be able to go back in a…
Glory to God for All Things
How Do We Know One Another?
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One of the more curious aspects of Christ’s resurrection appearances are the stories told of Him not being recognized at first. I have heard what seem to me to be silly explanations – that “the disciples were grief stricken and therefore did not recognize Him” – is one that seems completely implausible to me. It seems implausible primarily because grief does not work in such a manner. Indeed, my own acquaintance with…
Glory to God for All Things
Friendship
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There are many who have written on the subject of friendship over the centuries. It is an important topic and one that is worth thinking about. I began thinking about it this morning because I received an email from my friend, Fr. Al Kimel (Roman Catholic), telling me of a new Pontifications website. Al is a friend whom I first met in the late 80’s when I was doing work at Duke.…
Glory to God for All Things
The Faith of the Apostles
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We have learned from no others the plan of our salvation than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and at a later period, by the will of God, handed down (tradiderunt) to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith… Matthew issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while…
Glory to God for All Things
Man and Nature
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Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow said that “the truth of the Holy Scriptures goes far beyond the limits of our understanding,” adding that man was created last in order to enter into the cosmos “like a king and high priest.” According to the teaching of the Fathers, man’s royal and priestly role gives an ecclesiological accent to biblical cosmology. For St. Maximus the Confessor, the world is a “cosmic temple” in which man…
Glory to God for All Things
He Became Sin
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One of the (dis)advantages of travel, is that you are likely to get bored in your hotel room and turn on the tv, or get bored in your car and turn on the radio – and thus you will see or hear what you might otherwise have missed. It seems that any town in South Carolina has twice as many Christian radio stations as any town in Tennessee – if that can…
Glory to God for All Things
A Few Quiet Thoughts
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I spent the day with one of my daughters, taking care of business needs, and visiting my aging parents. Tonight I’m back in my hotel room and ready for the drive home tomorrow. Looking back over the blog for the past several days – and maybe because I’m tired and my emotions are a little brittle tonight (seeing people I love and don’t see enough always leaves me a little brittle) –…
