Glory to God for All Things
The Iconostasis and Modern Piety
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This is meant as a follow-up with more personal reflections to accompany my earlier post on the Iconostasis in Orthodox Churches. I know from my many conversations with bright young seminarians (two of whom are married to my oldest daughters) that there is much, much more to know about the history and development of Eastern liturgical practices than I begin to know, despite my years of reading. But I do know something…
Glory to God for All Things
Over at the Undercroft
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Glory to God for All Things
The Iconostasis
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A recent email suggested to me that I might write about the iconostasis (the icon screen) found in Orthodox Churches. Some Protestants in particular have problems with it, feeling on the one hand that they are “shut out” of the liturgy to some extent or that Orthodox practice is restoring the “curtain of the Temple” that Christ’s crucifixion rent in two. Those are not surprising thoughts and are worth some comment. I…
Glory to God for All Things
Hollywood Goes for the Jugular
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Sometimes I can’t help myself – I simply have to comment. Larry King, commenting on the controversy raised by the Discovery Channel’s latest silliness – the bones of Jesus – asks the seminal question: “Can this be the end of the Easter Bunny?” Surely both East and West could get together and issue a joint communique: “There is no such thing as an Easter bunny,” and that would help Hollywood feel better.…
Glory to God for All Things
Some Modest Thoughts on the Atonement
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The doctrine of the Atonement, that is, the doctrine of how exactly it is that Christ has reconciled us to God, is a matter of much discussion. For some, particularly among conservative Protestants, the Atonement is defined by the model of the penal substitution (Christ bore the wrath of the Father that we deserved and thus made propitiation for us). Some have rejected this model as either bound too strongly to a…
Glory to God for All Things
Sailing to Byzantium
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I recommend for your reading interests, a series on The Undercroft, which, thus far, is doing an excellent job of setting forth matters of the faith. Today he looks at Scripture and the Church. It’s a good read. I offer a short quote: Where, then, is the record of holy souls in the first centuries, raising their voices and shedding their blood for the sufficiency and pre-eminence of scripture against the rise…
Glory to God for All Things
The Unplanned Life
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One of the geniuses of modern life is the plan. It is certainly the case that if you have a company and a product, or whatever passes for those in these days, there is probably a plan to go with them. Occasionally you hear from Christians, “God has a plan for my life.” Several years ago I was flying from Dallas back to Tennessee and was sitting in the middle of two…
Glory to God for All Things
From Dostoevsky - Miracles
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From Chapter 5 Elders …but it seems to me that Alyosha was even more of a realist than the rest of us. Oh, of coure, in the monastery he believed absolutely in miracles, but in my opinion miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not…
Glory to God for All Things
Prayer and the Name of Jesus
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From Archimandrite Sophrony’s On Prayer. The Name Jesus as knowledge, as ‘energy’ of God in relation to the world and as His proper Name, is ontologiclly bound up with Him. It is spiritual reality. Its sound can merge with its reality but not necessarily so. As a name it was given to many mortal men but when we pray we utter it with another content, another ‘frame’ of spirit. For us it…
Glory to God for All Things
Why People Become Orthodox
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Now this is indeed a presumptious title for a post – as if there were only one reason that people convert to the Orthodox faith. There are certainly many reasons, nuanced by the various personalities that come. And do they ever come! I was asked in Minneapolis, “What sort of Evangelism Events do you have at St. Anne?” I had to confess that other than making ourselves accessible and somewhat “convert friendly”…
Glory to God for All Things
Thoughts on Dostoevsky
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I have begun re-reading The Brothers Karamazov, this time in the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, which, I am told is a great improvement over earlier efforts. I readily confess to being a great fan of Dostoevsky and easily touched by his novels. I find an occasional brilliance in them that reveals the world in greater clarity than I see almost anywhere else. I read the following today in the…
Glory to God for All Things
News Media Loses Its Mind Yet Again - They'll Believe Anything
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Roughly paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton: “When a man ceases to believe in God, it’s not so much that he believes in nothing, as it is he is willing to believe in anything.” Proving this maxim once again, the media have given splash to a completely discredited discovery of the “bones” of Jesus (including an assumption that they are buried in a tomb with his “wife,” Mary Magdalen). I have to admit this nonsense…
Glory to God for All Things
It's Not Just the Details, It's Not Just the Particulars, It's Something Personal
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I have long been intrigued with the notion of our common responsibility, or rather, that I am responsible for the sins of the whole world. I think I first came across the notion in a quote from the Elder Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov. And even there, Dostoevsky was only putting on the lips of his fictional Elder the sentiments of the saints and the common teaching of the Church. At one…
Glory to God for All Things
It's Not Just the Details - It's the Particulars
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I wrote earlier of the details – and my own wrestling with the details of my travel. Slowly, I am decompressing and regaining my own composure. The difficulty of life is not really found in the details but in its very character as particular. I think people do very well in general – that is to say – with things in general. When we think of things on the general level we’re…
Glory to God for All Things
In the Details - God Reigns
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For the second day, I am sitting in airports, just one of many thousands effected by a snow storm and a storm of flight cancellations. I cannot complain – I was comfortable last night and am so now. I will have missed my Tuesday appointments and responsibilities but it cannot be helped. But these are the events that precisely make up the stuff of our life. A plane doesn’t work. Traffic won’t…
Glory to God for All Things
Pictures from Minneapolis Sunday of Orthodoxy
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Glory to God for All Things
If You Weren't in Minneapolis - Thoughts on the Sunday of Orthodoxy
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My weekend in Minneapolis was a tremendous joy. The Minnesota Eastern Orthodox Clergy Association is a wonderful brotherhood of Orthodox priests and deacons that has obviously helped foster a strong since of common Orthodox identity and true brotherhood. It was a pleasure Sunday evening to be in the altar with so many brothers from various jurisdictions. I long for the day, as do most Orthodox in America, for a single common jurisdiction…
Glory to God for All Things
Who's To Blame?
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I frequently buy used books (indeed with the used books feature on Amazon, I often can only afford to buy used books). You try to get a good, clean copy, but occasionally they come with marginal comments. My volume of St. Silouan the Athonite is used, and has a number of marginal comments from my anonymous predecessor. Sometimes the comments themselves are interesting. Reading today, I ran across marginal comments that said:…
Glory to God for All Things
Happy Birthday Khouria!
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Glory to God for All Things
Godly Grief
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I spent two years working as a Hospice Chaplain in the Mountains of East Tennessee. When you’re working with hospice, death and grief are ever-present. You have no choice over your patients. Mine ranged from Mountain Pentecostals, to unbeliever scientists here in Oak Ridge (a science city). But grief was universal. I learned many things about grief, both by watching and listening to others and by paying attention to myself. One of…
Glory to God for All Things
St. Silouan and the Church
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The following excerpt from St. Silouan the Athonite, begins with a quote from the saint, and is followed by the comments of Archimandrite Sophrony. It is given to our Orthodox Church through the Holy Spirit to fathom the mysteries of God, and she is strong in the holiness of her thought and her patience. The mystery of God which the Church understands in the Holy Spirit is the love of Christ. The…
Glory to God for All Things
A Request for Your Prayers
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I fly Friday morning to Minneapolis where I will be speaking at several Churches, including St. Mary’s Cathedral for the Sunday of Orthodoxy Vespers. Minnesota is also expecting one of its worst winter storms of the year. Sounds about right to me… I have been assured that I will be “kept warm, fed, and entertained…” But if any of you know me you know that flying is not one of my favorite…
Glory to God for All Things
The Lenten Eucharist
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There can be little surprise that on the Sundays in Lent the Liturgy of St. Basil is used. It’s longer than St. John Chrysostom’s, and that alone is reason enough to use it during Lent. It is also “deeper” if I can dare to say such a thing. There’s just more doctrine in St. Basil’s Liturgy than in Chrysostom’s, mind you, not much, but more. In good Orthodox parlance, I might say…
Glory to God for All Things
Lent in the South
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One of the hallmarks of my generation in the South is that we never grew up without a great deal of attention to God. Whether it was the absolute assurance in the sermons of preachers who could say with some precision who was going where when they died, or even with assurance describe heaven, or the far more mundane mutterings of public figures giving lip-service to the God in Whom we believed.…
Glory to God for All Things
Lenten Thoughts
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Glory to God for All Things
All Things Were Created For Him
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St. Paul makes the remarkable statement in Colossians: “For all things were created through Him and for Him.” This remarkable statement gives rise to a later even more remarkable statement by St. Maximus the Confessor: “The incarnation is the cause of everything.” This statement takes the “all things were created for Him and sees it applying to the incarnation itself, rather than to Christ as some eschatological point. In truth, the incarnation…
Glory to God for All Things
St. John Chrysostom on Fasting
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The following text comes from Monachos.net’s Great Lent 2003 (a CD I purchased), though the text is from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 9. As we begin the fast I can think of no better passage in the Fathers for our consideration. By St John Chrysostom From Concerning the Statues, Excerpts from Homily III I speak not, indeed, of such a fast as most persons keep, but…
