Glory to God for All Things
Praying with Icons
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In one of our recent services (Paschal Vespers as I recall) we had a handfull of visiting Russian Nationals. I’ve noticed this before – it’s sort of a cultural distinction – but the women (they were all female) came in, and stood for extended lengths of time before the icons, as if waiting for something, and then lit their candles. It is not universally true, but I have often noticed that we Americans,…
Glory to God for All Things
Deep in the Heart of Texas
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Today (Wednesday) and tomorrow I am in Dallas, Texas, with my Archbishop, DMITRI of Dallas and the South (OCA). I’m here for a small meeting with him and my fellow deans. Probably more social than practical – but time will tell. The Church in Dallas could have been pulled from the countryside of Russia. Built around 2000, it’s frescoes continue to slowly grow as the entire interior of the Church proclaims the doctrine…
Glory to God for All Things
The Struggle for Prayer
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Fr. Sophrony relates part of his struggle for prayer and the grace he received to help others. The passage is from On Prayer. …On more than one occasion I felt as if I were crucified on an invisible cross. This would happen on Mt. Athos when I got angry with those who vexed me. My wickedness would destroy prayer and fill me with horror. At times it seemed impossible to struggle against…
Glory to God for All Things
Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev on the Descent into Hades
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Glory to God for All Things
A Journey through the Heavens
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Not to be too melodramatic, but I will be traveling today at about 20 to 30,000 feet to the city of Dallas, yes in a airplane., to meet with my Beloved Archbishop Dmitri and fellow Deans of the Diocese of the South. I have a post loaded alreday which should appear around noon. I’ll check in on the web this evening. I never imagined I’d be flying this much when I converted.…
Glory to God for All Things
Carolina in my Mind
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Some readers might appreciate the fact that I was born in South Carolina. For some other readers, I think especially of our Europeans and others across the internet globe, South Carolina means little. It is “Deep South” in the U.S., with its own distinctives. Perhaps one of its striking characteristics is that it has a strong sense of place. I know many Americans who do not have a sense of place –…
Glory to God for All Things
Reflections on Florovsky
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The following is from my earlier post of Florovsky on Ecumenism: The entire western experience of temptation and fall must be creatively examined and transformed; all that “European melancholy” (as Dostoevsky termed it) and all those long centuries of creative history must be borne. Only such a compassionate co-experience provides a reliable path toward the reunification of the fractured Christian world and the embrace and recovery of departed brothers. It is not…
Glory to God for All Things
With Apologies to my Readers
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There really are no shortcuts – even in something as trivial as a blog. My last two posts have been pulled – one a small quote from Fr. Sophrony, added last night before bedtime (because you have to add something), the other written today when I was not entirely certain of what I wanted to write. But both of those are part of the stuff of life. Comments were on target and…
Glory to God for All Things
The Ecumenical Vision of Fr. Georges Florovsky
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Fr. Georges Florovsky remains, in my mind, one of the most neglected of modern Orthodox scholars. His vision of the place of Orthodox theology in relation to the West was instrumental in the birth of the ecumenical movement – which has sadly lost that vision. The cruciform nature of his ecumenical vision exonerate him from charges of “ecumenism” in the negative sense of the word. He saw a mission for Orthodoxy within…
Glory to God for All Things
Cleansing the Temple in John
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A rather oddly placed story – always a problem for those who need to harmonize the gospels (and many of the Fathers tended to desire this themselves) – is the story of the “cleansing of the temple” found in the second chapter. In other gospel accounts it is always part of the story of Holy Week. But here in John it follows immediately after the miracle at the wedding in Cana (another…
Glory to God for All Things
You Must Be Born From Above - John 3
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Absolutely one of the strangest conversations to occur anywhere in the gospels takes place between Jesus and the inquiring Nicodemus in the third chapter of John. Of course, at least one of its verses (or at least its Stephanus Pagination verse number) has become nationally famous as an attendee at almost all televised American sporting events (3:16). The language of being “born again” has passed into American Evangelical popular parlance for probably…
Glory to God for All Things
Mystagogical Catechesis and the Gospel of John
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I promise to get “off topic” from time to time – but I would like to do a bit of a “series” here in the post Pascha period – doing what has been done in the history of the Church – and look at the Gospel of John and what it means for us as believing Christians. I’m not suggesting a straightforward Bible study – but to look at a number of…
Glory to God for All Things
Knowing God - After Pascha
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We approach things so differently in our modern world (as opposed to the ancient world). All of us have access to a great deal of information, although the information that comes to us when we are in the passive mode is less than useless (here I mean television and popular media). Thus I would paraphrase Our Lord and say, “How hard it is for a couch potato to enter the Kingdom of…
Glory to God for All Things
And Into the Brightness
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Bright Week – such a marvelous phrase – descriptive theologically and in many other ways of the time after Pascha. If we only knew, we all live in Bright Week – despite the fasting that we take up from season to season – despite the disasters that plague our earthly sojourn – still, we are all living in Bright Week. In Bright Week, the Bridegroom has come, and the friends of the…
Glory to God for All Things
Which Way Does Time Work?
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I have a 19 year-old son, who would probably rather watch episodes of almost any science fiction show than eat pizza (almost). He particularly loves shows about time travel. In a town like Oak Ridge, it’s possible to have serious discussions with serious people about things that I thought only young boys took seriously (we have some particle physicists in the parish (Russians) and, as I say, Oak Ridge is a town…
Glory to God for All Things
Lament Me Not
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Do not lament me, O Mother, seeing me in the tomb, for I shall arise and be eternally glorified as God. I shall exalt all who magnify you in faith and in love. From the Paschal Service I stand by the tomb with chills each Pascha, listening to the choir, and for that major chord, “For I shall arise.” The priest then lifts the “Winding Sheet” (Plachinitsa) and carries it into the…
Glory to God for All Things
Father, Forgive Us All
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Some part of me issues a “knee-jerk” reaction to the way our culture treats Christian holydays. We did this at Christmas, and we’re doing it again. For whatever reason, mainstream media have largely decided that Christian holy days are occasions for airing the most specious programs. Whether its more of the DaVinci nonsense or a focus on the “Christian Right,” almost everything but a quiet and reverent moment of reflection or something…
Glory to God for All Things
For Our Sake
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Today, is suspended upon the Cross, He Who suspended the Earth upon the waters. A crown of thorns crowns Him, Who is the King of the angels. He, Who wrapped the Heavens in clouds, is clothed with the purple of mockery. He, Who freed Adam in the Jordan, received buffetings. He was transfixed with nails, Who is the Bridegroom of the Church. He was pierced with a lance, Who is the Son…
Glory to God for All Things
Of Thy Mystical Supper
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On this day the Church remembers Our Lord’s institution of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. The Liturgy is that of St. Basil’s, which is used on all the Sundays of Lent as well. It is one of the most complete statements of the faith, despite its brevity (compared to Catechism or a book). Printed here is a portion of the Anaphora of St. Basil’s Liturgy, in the translation of Archbishop Dmitri…
Glory to God for All Things
The Lamb - Slain from the Foundation of the World
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It was granted to him [the beast] to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If anyone has an ear, let him hear. These are strange verses from the…
Glory to God for All Things
He Who Has Ears to Hear
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I am convinced after years of preaching and listening to preaching that the bulk of Scripture has become lost to our ears. We hear it, but fail to “hear” it. And I do not mean this merely in the moral sense (doubtless we fail to be “doers” of the word). Rather, I am aware of a kind of dullness, of seeing a very narrow set of things that become the lens through…
Glory to God for All Things
The Bridegroom Comes
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Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, are Thou, O our God. Through the Theotokos, have mercy…
Glory to God for All Things
Reaching Holy Week
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Holy Week has long been my favorite time of year. I remember coming to it rather slowly in my college years. My wife and I were active Episcopalians at the time (while in college we volunteered to be in charge of the junior youth group – some 60 teenagers – that qualifies as being “active”). For whatever reasons I had never paid much attention to Holy Week before. There was Palm Sunday…
Glory to God for All Things
A Last Minute Word to Catechumens
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“Are we really going to do this?” Those were the words I greeted by dear wife with upon waking in our hotel room on February 15, 1998. We were in Columbia, SC, for the purpose of being received into the Orthodox Church by Father Peter Smith (then Rector of Holy Apostles in Columbia). Along with us were our four children, the oldest being 17 and the youngest age 7. This day that…
Glory to God for All Things
The Incarnation: Cause of All Things Made, And Caused by None
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The title of this post is a chapter heading in George Gabriel’s Mary the Untrodden Portal of God. Gabriel occasionally strikes hard at the West and the book would perhaps be strengthened with a less combative approach to the differences of East and West in the faith (my own opinion), but I liked the book and found Gabriel addressing many things, well foot-noted, that are not found in many other places. I share…
Glory to God for All Things
That You May not Grieve as Others Do Who Have No Hope
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Most of the services and words of Holy Week are the ones I expect – I’ve heard them before and though something will leap out at me as though I had never heard it (this always happens), I still feel somewhat secure that I know what is coming. In the Orthodox calendar, Holy Week begins on Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday. The services bear some similarity, as is appropriate, to…
Glory to God for All Things
The Boundary of Death
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Having spent two-and-a-half years as a Hospice Chaplain, I had opportunity to be present to over 200 deaths (that does not include the many I have witnessed in my years in ordained ministry. As you sit with someone who is dying, there finally arises a boundary beyond which you cannot go: death itself. I can pray for the “departure of the soul from the body” (the priestly service done at the time…
