Glory to God for All Things
Assimilating the Gospel
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A pilgrimage is reduced to tourism if it does not become a part of the pilgrim himself. I have been home for a little over 24 hours – most of it in the stupor of “jet-lag.” I have sat down to write several times, only to find that I was too tired to say much. This week may carry some aspect of that until my body is back on Eastern Daylight Time.…
Glory to God for All Things
Flying Home
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Today we fly home, with an overnight lay-over at Heathrow. Many thanks to all of you for your prayers. As God wills, I’ll be posting photos and writing more when I reach home. Doubtless there will be parish matters to attend to – thus how quickly I get back into rhythm is anybody’s guess. May God grant us all to make pilgrimage to the true Jerusalem of the heart. A pilgrimage cannot be…
Glory to God for All Things
Away From Home
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From a modern American perspective – one of the interesting components of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is to find yourself largely outside of the news cycle. There has been no television or radio. I have looked briefly at the internet, but mostly to answer email or tend the blog site. I am not unaware that the American economy is having difficulty, and I understood from my daughter at home that…
Glory to God for All Things
Jerusalem and the Modern Heart
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Jerusalem, more than any city of the Holy Land, is a place of layers. This is generally true of most places here. Long before Jerusalem was the City of David, it was the city of the Jebusites, the city where Melchizedec, King and Priest, ruled and prayed – he who offered bread and wine and received tithes of Abraham. But the city of the Jebusites, and perhaps cities before that, are only…
Glory to God for All Things
The Hardest Pilgrimage of All
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I have stated – not tongue in cheek – that “I am an ignorant man,” and I have also added that “I am a man still in need of a Savior.” These things do not change on a pilgrimage but become only clearer. The most difficult of all pilgrimages is the pilgrimage to the heart and finding there, not only the treasuries of paradise, but also all the garbage stuffed there over…
Glory to God for All Things
The Borders of the Grace of God
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Today, walking and weaving our way through the streets of Old Jerusalem, shops on each side of the alley, the smells of a rich mixture of spices and a thousand other things, shop-keepers calling with eagerness to the “foreigners” passing by – we were on a free morning, and there were gifts to be found. We came across another pilgrim, separate from our group, who took us to a greater gift. In…
Glory to God for All Things
A Particular Pilgrimage
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One of the common aspects of my pilgrimage to the Holy Land – and this my wife and I have discussed and find we share in common – is the particularity of certain experiences. There are inherently overwhelming experiences, such as kneeling beside a priest in the actual sepulchre of Christ, and reading names aloud for him to remember in the proskomidie, as he prepared the bread and wine for the Divine…
Glory to God for All Things
A Brief Note from Nazareth
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Glory to God for All Things
On the Edge of Heaven
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We traveled today to the Monastery of St. Saba, in the Judean desert. Founded in the 5th century, it is the longest continually functioning monastery in the Orthodox world. There are 15 monks there today, though during its height, there were as many as 5,000 in the cliffs surrounding the monastery and the monastery itself. In the 7th century, the Persians invaded and martyred a number of monks, but the monastery survived, and…
Glory to God for All Things
Jerusalem - Heaven and Hell
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I am taking the day off from the pilgrimage (my wife and others are in the vicinity of Jericho today). I have stayed behind to allow my back and some swollen feet to mend – they are already better after much needed sleep – and I wanted to use some free time to offer a reflection or so on my pilgrimage to date). There has been at least one profound moment in…
Glory to God for All Things
Risky Business - Revisited
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I offer this reprint from last year – my pilgrimage time in Jerusalem is not leaving much time for writing. It is obvious in this city of Holy Places that how we keep such places – including those within the heart is deeply important. This reprint seemed to fit those thoughts. May God bless. Amoun found Abba Poemen and told him, “When I visit a neighbor or he visits me, he hesitate…
Praying in the Rain
Ever Virgin Mary
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I’m often asked by Protestants if the phrase “ever virgin Mary” means that the Church teaches that Mary the Theotokos never had sex. If I am tired or grumpy, I just answer “yes” and prepare myself to respond to the predictable objections with off-the-shelf answers. And in most cases, this is all the inquirer wants. However, sometimes, I answer by saying “no.” Then I say that it means the Mary’s heart and…
Glory to God for All Things
Single in the City
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I’ve been in London the past two days, as we are making our way to the Holy Land. London is a marvelous city, one of my favorites. It is quite English, very international and increasingly Euro. Like many places in Europe, secularism is far more advanced than in America (or America expresses its secularism in a far more “religious” manner). Today I was thinking about clothes as we traveled around the city…
Glory to God for All Things
Scattered Thoughts Revisited
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We have noticed with sadness that nowadays men suffer dreadfully because their mind is fragmented. Imagination, which is only one of the mind’s activities, is overindulged and dominates men’s lives, leading some to hardness of heart due to pride, and others to mental illness. According to the teaching of the Gospel and the Scriptures, the mind works naturally only when it is united with the heart. Mind and heart are naturally joined…
Glory to God for All Things
In the Great Sweep of History
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“The Great Sweep of History” is an event that occurs in the rear-view mirror, easily characterized in various fashions as we choose to label certain events as important and certain event as without significance. I believe that for the Christian there is no great sweep of history and that the temptation to view history in such a manner is Just that: a temptation. Thus it is a temptation to look at the…
Glory to God for All Things
I Have Set My Face To Go To Jerusalem
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This Thursday, my wife and I, two parishioners and their son, will be traveling towards the Holy Land. We make connections on Sunday in Tel Aviv with a group of pilgrims, mostly Orthodox, led by Met. Kallistos Ware. We will spend two weeks in the Holy Land, meet with the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and generally pray a lot in various places (I’d spend 2 weeks with Met. Kallistos anywhere). I am traveling…
Glory to God for All Things
Deliver Us From the Evil One
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The following words of St. Silouan are fairly straightforward. God give us grace and good hearts to hear him. If you think evil of people, it means you have an evil spirit in you whispering evil thoughts about others. And if a man dies without repenting, without having forgiven his brother, his soul will go to the place where lives the evil spirit which possessed his soul. This is the law we…
Glory to God for All Things
Prayers By the Lake XCV - Children and Saints
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XCV Children and saints cling to You, O Lord, the rest rebel against You. Children and saints are the boundary between the Kingdom of existence and the shadow of nonexistence.1 Guardians call themselves parents and cast Your children off crags into chasms. Guardians presume that they are parents, and so they direct Your children as though they were their own property. Truly, they are directing nothing but aberrations…
Glory to God for All Things
Raising A Saint
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Most of us would be satisfied to raise children who remain faithful believers. It is not always an easy thing and every parent who has such a child should rejoice constantly. There is no method to raise a child to be a saint, for God alone gives the grace that results in the mystery of such wonderful lives. However that may be, I am often struck in reading the writings of St.…
Glory to God for All Things
Pray for the Gulf Coast
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I have a daughter and her husband (Khouria Kathryn and Fr. Philip Rogers) who live in Lafayette, LA. They and some other parishioners are riding out Gustav in the home of a parishioner that is “hurricane proof”. That entire area of the gulf suffered so greatly when struck by Katrina – please keep all in your prayers that they be protected from the ravages of the storm. May God have mercy on…
Glory to God for All Things
Global Cooling
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The following is a reprint of an article I published back in December. Thought I’d offer it again. The reference to “Global Cooling” is a play on Kalomiros’ description of the coldness of the modern heart. I have been listening to a tape of the talk, “The River of Fire,” given by Dr. Alexander Kalomiros in 1980. By now it has become a very frequently cited and discussed document within the modern…
Glory to God for All Things
How Simple Should Christianity Be?
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There is a tendency in our modern world to make things as simple as possible. We hide the complexities behind a keyboard (I don’t know how my computer works – or not very well) or we treat things that seem complex as unnecessary obfuscations. This same drive to simplify was very much alive in the 16th century as Christianity underwent reform in many places of the world. Thomas Cranmer, the English Reformer,…
Glory to God for All Things
He Shall Exalt the Humble and Meek
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All heaven and earth exalt the humble Saints, and the Lord grants them the glory of being with Him. ‘Where I am, there shall also my servant be.’ The humility of the Mother of God is greater than any, wherefore all generations on earth exalt her, and all the heavenly hosts serve her; and this His Mother the Lord has given us to intercede for us and be our help. There is…
Glory to God for All Things
Prayers by the Lake - XIX - by St. Nikolai of Zicha
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XIX Amidst the racket and ridicule of people my prayer rises toward You, O my King and my Kingdom. Prayer is incense, that ceaselessly censes my soul and raises it toward You, and draws You toward her. Stoop down, my King, so that I may whisper to You my most precious secret, my most secret prayer, my most prayerful desire. You are the object of all my prayers, all my searching. I…
Glory to God for All Things
Truth and Existence: Conclusions to be Drawn
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Reflecting on the previous posting on Truth and Existence, there are a number of conclusions that can be drawn for our lives and our communion with God: 1. God is generous. He does not begrudge existence to anything that exists. Even the devil is not begrudged his existence. 2. This generosity of God is not an indication of laissez faire, but of love. God has given us existence as a gift, not…
Glory to God for All Things
Truth and Existence
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Perhaps one of the greatest contributions of Orthodox theology to contemporary thought is the correlation between truth and existence. I am not well-enough versed in writings outside of Orthodoxy to know whether this correlation is made by others as well – I have to drink the water from my own cistern. This understanding has been a particular emphasis in the teachings of St. Silouan, the Elder Sophrony of blessed memory, and the…
Glory to God for All Things
Facing the Consequences
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Some thoughts on a comment by Archbishop DMITRI of Dallas: Commenting on the stories of the Transfiguration in Matthew, Mark and Luke, Archbishop DMITRI of Dallas observed that each of the stories contains the phrase “coming down” in reference to the disciples’ descent from the mount of glory into the world of daily ministry. In each gospel, he noted, they come down to controversy and difficulties. In drawing a conclusion he stated:…
