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,…
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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