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,…
Glory to God for All Things
Pardon my absence
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Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Deepwater Horizon: Why Evangelical theology is helpless in the face of a catastrophic oil spill
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Every so often, I think it’s okay to indulge in an inflammatory headline. I recently read the lament “Ecological Catastrophe and the Uneasy Evangelical Conscience” by Russell D. Moore. It seems to have gotten a decent amount of circulation online, if only because it is written by an Evangelical Protestant talking about how ashamed he is that “environmentalism” has been the near exclusive realm…
Praying in the Rain
The Role of Apologetics
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Based on my last blog post, some may come to the conclusion that I think there is no place for apologetics in the Christian life. That is not the case. I think apologetics have a small, but important role to play in the Christian’s dialog with the world. When Christians communicate with unbelievers in specific contexts, apologetics play a role. For example, Justin the Philosopher and Martyr used Roman religion and law…
Praying in the Rain
Shall Thy Wonders Be Known in That Darkness?
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“Shall Thy wonders be known in that darkness?” In our culture, the words “faith” and “believe” and “truth” have been hijacked by rational assumptions in ways that limit their meaning and usefulness in a Christian context. According to our rationalist assumptions, to believe (or have faith that) something is true means that you assent to the historical, physical reality of something. To say that something is true is to say that it…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
A Localist Moment in Emmaus
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It seems that “quaint” Emmaus (the word the newspapers all use to describe our borough) has been targeted as a potential home for a swingers’ club, to be situated right on downtown Main Street. The fellow behind the club claims that it’s not going to be a “sex club,” that they’re going to be more innocuous than the Freemasons (will they also have funny…
Praying in the Rain
Who Sinned?
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Saturday as I was mowing the lawn, a young woman, somewhat disheveled and wearing very dark glasses, came walking up my driveway (we live in the countryside) and asked me if she could use my phone. She explained that someone was supposed to pick her up, but she was afraid that he had gotten lost. I got her the phone and as I took a closer look at her and caught phrases…
Glory to God for All Things
Here and Now
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Strangely enough, the one place that most of us avoid is here and now. In the observations of Fr. Meletios Webber, we prefer either the past or the future. The past is marked by the thoughts of “if only,” the future with thoughts of “what if.” These thoughts are the voice of the logismoi, the constant barrage of thoughts and feelings that distract us from ourselves and from the world as it…
Praying in the Rain
Sequoia Blackberries
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Sin is a little bit like Sequoia Blackberry bushes. It’s an invasive species that takes over, yet because of the sweet berries, you let it. But the berries are only there for a few weeks, and the thorny bush it there all year. At first you decide you can live with the thorns. You try to avoid and ignore the thorny parts and think longingly about the next season of sweetness. And…
Glory to God for All Things
The Problem of Goodness
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From my first class in Philosophy 101 in college, the so-called “Problem of Evil” has been tossed up as the “clincher” in arguments against the existence of God. How can a good God allow innocent people to suffer? The most devastating case ever made on the subject was in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Ivan Karamazov, in the chapter entitled “Rebellion,” which is the chapter preceding the famous “Grand Inquisitor,” makes the details of his…
Praying in the Rain
The Proud Man
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Praying in the Rain
Our Duty
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Praying in the Rain
Oil and Miracles
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[Last day on the farm] I’ve got mixed metaphors rolling around in my head. They have to do with two kinds of oil, small amounts of oil that are given away. The first picture is of an oil pump on the side of an engine. Compared to the engine, the oil pump is very small and has very little power. It just squirts oil, a little bit at a time, onto the…
Glory to God for All Things
The Crisis of Religion
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The term “sacramental” means here that the basic and primordial intuition which not only expresses itself in worship, but of which the entire worship is indeed the “phenomenon” – both effect and experience – is that the world, be it in its totality as cosmos, or in its life and becoming as time and history, is an epiphany of God, a means of His revelation, presence, and power. In other words, it…
Praying in the Rain
Light in the Darkness
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[On the farm in Saskatoon] We’ve been looking pretty hard and long at the darkness over the past few days, and if we’re not careful, we’ll forget to lift up our eyes. God saves those who come to Him, even you and me. Instead of bringing our broken hearts to God, if we are not careful, we will let the serpent beguile us into figuring it out. The deceiver will give us…
Praying in the Rain
A Quote
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Glory to God for All Things
The Price of the Liturgy
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Having written about the temptations of secularism within modernity – even within the liturgy – I offer this as a balance for our troubled hearts. +++ “We celebrate the Liturgy together. But we must pay what this costs: each one must be concerned for the salvation of all. Our life is an endless martyrdom.” The Elder Sophrony +++ The Divine Liturgy (the Holy Eucharist) is not a ritual action of the Church…
Praying in the Rain
God Gave Them Up
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[On the Farm in Saskatoon] What does it mean to give up? In English, a lot depends on the preposition and word order. I can give up, as in surrender, and stop fighting. I can give up something, as in to stop smoking: “I gave up smoking.” I can give up on someone, which means to despair, to no longer hope that the person I have given up on will succeed. And…
Praying in the Rain
The Wrath of God
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[In the Calgary airport] Carl Barth, a famous Protestant theologian and a hero of mine at one point of my theological development, once said, “God is not man written in capital letters.” What he was saying is that you cannot understand who God is by working back from who you are. A good example of how we tend to work back from who we are to try to understand God is illustrated…
Glory to God for All Things
Donald Sheehan - Memory Eternal
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Longtime Dartmouth professor and Orthodox Christian, Donald Sheehan, fell asleep in the Lord on May 26 this year at his home in Charleston, S.C. I learned of his death just this past week. Probably one of the most moving stories involving Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov was written by Dr. Sheehan. I first posted it back in 2007. The link is still up and the story is very much worth taking the time…
Praying in the Rain
On The Correct Use of Secular Leaning
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His Grace Bishop Joseph, Antiochian Bishop of Los Angeles and the West (our archpastor and my boss), was given an honorary doctoral degree from St. Tikhon’s Seminary. His Grace’s commencement speech gives an excellent overview of the Orthodox Christian understanding of the relationship between secular learning and what we in English normally call spirituality (which in Orthodoxy is just called experience or noetic knowing, or knowing above reason). He provides a nice…
Glory to God for All Things
A Secular Eucharist
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Thinking about God and communion with God are not the same thing. The modern world is a difficult place for those who believe in God. The reigning culture has relentlessly moved God out of the day-to-day world and relegated Him to various “religious spheres” of existence. And so it is that we live in what I describe as a “two-storey” universe. We dwell in a world defined by nature and its laws,…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Mystery of Christ
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