Glory to God for All Things
A Momentary Lull
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I ask patience of readers for my lack of activity for the last 2 days. I am recovering from a virus and hope to be well enough for work by tomorrow. Your prayers are appreciated. A good feast to all (Transfiguration). What a blessed event as Peter, James and John saw the manifestation of the marriage of heaven and earth in its most splendid form! May God grant us all eyes to…
Glory to God for All Things
Solzhenitsyn and Where the Battle Begins
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A short but insightful quote from Solzhenitsyn. It came to him during his time in the Gulag: …. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through…
Glory to God for All Things
Solzhenitsyn - The Harvard Address
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn, addressing an assembly at Harvard University in June of 1978, offered profound insights on the West and the future of our society. His thoughts were anchored in a vision of man that was profoundly Christian, transcending the limits established in present societies. He issued a call for a deeper pursuit that can only be called “prophetic.” These two paragraphs are only a minor excerpt, but give a sample of his…
Glory to God for All Things
Solzhenitsyn Has Died - Memory Eternal!
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One of the most spiritually significant events in my life was first reading Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. It was not his fiction that first fell into my hands, but a collection of essays, From Under the Rubble. He was, at the time, in the international spotlight as he struggled to maintain his witness to the Truth while remaining out of prison (having already spent a substantial part of his life in the Soviet Gulag).…
Glory to God for All Things
Drawing Lessons from the Maccabees
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I offered yesterday the text of the martyrdom of the holy Seven Maccabees, who refused the violate the commandments of God and suffer death instead. The most amazing character in the story of these great Old Testament martyrs, is their teacher, Eleazar. He was offered an interesting option regarding his martyrdom. The issue that the wicked Antiochus Epiphanes, who was an agent of pagan Hellenism a la Alexander the Great, was focused…
Glory to God for All Things
The Seven Holy Maccabbees
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August 1 is the Feast of the Precious and Life-Giving Wood of the Cross, but also the feast of the martyrdom of the Seven Maccabees. Since Protestant Christians do not include the books of First and Second Maccabees in their canon, they will be unfamiliar with this historically accurate and Godly tale of the courage of these holy martyrs from the Old Testament. In their honor I share the story of their…
Glory to God for All Things
The Absence of Beauty
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We can say without hesitation that God is the ultimate author of Beauty, and what we know and love of beauty is an echo or stronger of our desire for the Beautiful God. It becomes a major problem of sin, largely unrecognized, when beauty begins to recede from the consciousness of people, or something tawdry or ersatz becomes substituted for that which is beautiful. We live, of course, in a culture which…
Glory to God for All Things
The God Who Is Beautiful
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I suggested this as reading in a comment yesterday and decided to re-post it so that it would be more readily available. It belongs with the question of God and beauty that I started in yesterday’s post. Everything is beautiful in a person when he turns toward God, and everything is ugly when it is turned away from God. Fr. Pavel Florensky I come to the end of a day that has…
Glory to God for All Things
Beauty - The Great Mystery
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Having spoken about the world as perhaps not best understood (theologically) in terms of cause and effect – I turn my attention for a short time to the mystery of Beauty. God created the world and said it is good, but both the Hebrew and the Greek translation of that statement in Genesis carry the double-meaning of beautiful. The world is not merely good in its creation, but is as well created…
Glory to God for All Things
The Paradox of Prayer
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Writing about his experiences in praying for the sick, the Elder Sophrony writes: It is still not clear to me why less intense prayer on my part might occasionally cause the illness to take a favorable turn, whereas at other times more profound supplication brought no visible improvement. From On Prayer He says later that he never sought the gift of healing but committed everything to the will of God, “Who knows…
Glory to God for All Things
Don't Be Angry
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Abba Agathon said, “If someone who is angry were to raise the dead, God would remain displeased with the anger.” Sayings of the Desert Fathers The most difficult part of our Christian life is found within us – our inner life. It is certainly the case that many of the outward things we do – acts of charity and the like – have a great effect on our life – but at…
Glory to God for All Things
What Kind of People Are We?
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From Fr. Sophrony’s book On Prayer: [The author recounts his arrival in France from the Holy Mountain.] In france, having arrive from Greece, I met with the sort of people I had become unfamiliar with during my twenty-two years on the Holy Mountain-especially during the latter period when I was spiritual confessor to several hundred monks representing every aspect of the ascetic life on Mt. Athos. I make no secret of the…
Glory to God for All Things
The Feast of the Dormition of St. Anne
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Today is the patronal festival of my parish, the feast of the Dormition of Righteous Anna, mother of the Theotokos. The details we know about her life, and that of her priest-husband, Righteous Joachim, are from sources within the Tradition (though not within the Scriptures). They are often pointed to as one of the great examples of married saints. Their story, like many in the Old Testament, include a time of barrenness…
Glory to God for All Things
Who's in Charge of Our Life?
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Glory to God for All Things
The Essence of the Passions - Staniloae
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Dimitru Staniloae, the great Romanian Theologian, offers an excellent introduction to the passions as understood in Orthodox Christianity. The following excerpt is from his Orthodox Spirituality, which I highly recommend. The passions represent the lowest level to which human nature can fall. Both their Greek name, pathi, as well as the Latin, passiones, show that man is brought by them to a state of passivity, of slavery. In fact, they overcome the…
Glory to God for All Things
Sanctify Those Who Love The Beauty of Thy House
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After communion in an Orthodox Liturgy, the priest prays the “Prayer Behind the Ambo,” a prayer offered from the midst of the Church (more or less). It gives thanks for all that God has done for us, and asks blessings on His people. I particularly love the phrase that asks, “Sanctify those that love the beauty of Thy house. Glorify them in return by Thy divine power.” I think in particular…
Glory to God for All Things
The Passion to Consume - Revisited
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This article first appeared last March. It seems to bear reprinting at least for a fuller discussion of the passions. I have mentioned the role that the passions play in our consumer culture. I would like to write in greater depth about that phenomenon. It permeates our culture – and yet, strangely, I do not find it to be a dominant concern of people when they think about their sins or when…
Glory to God for All Things
Hypocrisy of the Stomach
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I have no intention in this posting to preach to those who struggle with gluttony, or, more likely, just feel guilty most of the time when they think of their weight, etc. Orthodoxy is not a weight-loss program. However, this passage offers wonderful insight into the struggle with the passions. It is quoted from Fr. John Behr’s The Mystery of Christ. Eating itself is natural to a human being, and there is…
Glory to God for All Things
Apocalypse Now
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I am a “child” of the 60’s, which means I was born in the early 50’s and spent my youth and late adolescence in the thrall of all that was swirling around in our culture in the late 60’s and early 70’s. My experience is probably similar to that of many of my generation – the parents of many of my younger readers. Things of note from that time: A sense that…
Glory to God for All Things
In The Last Days
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Abba Ischyrion was asked, “What have we done in our life?” He replied, “We have done the half of what our Fathers did.” When asked, “What will the ones who come after us do?” He replied, “They will do the half of what we are doing now.” And to the question, “What will the Christians of the last times do?” He replied, “They will not be able to do any spiritual exploits,…
Glory to God for All Things
The Voice of the Lord
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Psalm XXIX (XXVIII) Give unto the LORD, O you mighty ones, Give unto the LORD glory and strength. Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the LORD is over the waters; The God of glory thunders; The LORD is over many waters. The voice of the LORD is powerful; The voice of the LORD is full of majesty.…
Glory to God for All Things
Is Suffering Necessary?
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While reading spiritual writings it is possible, on occasion, to draw the conclusion that suffering is necessary. Taken to an extreme it is easy to believe that Christians teach that God demands that we suffer and that we see it as a good thing. These are wrong conclusions based on a wrong presumption. It is more correct to say that suffering is unavoidable than to say it is necessary. The fundamental story of…
Glory to God for All Things
The Communion of a Book
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I did not list the Scriptures on my list of “books of influence,” since it would seem somehow wrong to place it as a book among other books. Of course, it is a book, but it is unlike anything else we read. Over the body of the dead we chant the psalms so long as the body lies in the Church. If it is the body of a priest, we chant the…
Glory to God for All Things
With What Little We Know
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I have written and posted at least three times that “I am an ignorant man,” which is to say that I do not consider myself a great source of wisdom and insight and that what knowledge I do have is indeed limited. It is also true that wisdom and insight are in short supply these days. We do not live in a land that has monasteries everywhere within walking distance (or even…
Glory to God for All Things
Will He Know Me in Heaven?
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Some time ago I spent two-and-a-half years serving as a hospice chaplain. I have mentioned this before and some of the stories I encountered among the faithful people in East Tennessee. Most Hospice situations in America (home hospice) have a sort of commonality. One is that the vast majority of patients are older. Indeed in my time with hospice we never once had a patient who was a child. The reason, I…
Glory to God for All Things
The Endless Knowledge of God
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How often are we brought up short, incapable of understand His will. His first and last thought for us. We do not easily abandon ‘our ways’ and with enormous difficulty search out ‘His ways’. The instant it seems to us that now I begin to see…He demonstrates how immeasurably distant He is. My soul is strained to the limits of her strength, my spirit fails. I am appalled at the endless profundities…
Glory to God for All Things
The Soul In Prayer
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Vast numbers of people with no experience of the beneficial action of prayer do not know that a world of indescribably magnitude is disclosed to the spirit of man through prayer. Prayer unfolds both the dark depths of hell and the luminous heavenly spheres. Without faith in the resurrection almost all suffering is without meaning, pointless. It may subdue the obstinate soul but does not rid the soul of passion. suffering gradually…
