The Morning Offering
Tuesday November 8, 2011 / October 26, 2011
·
I believe the words of Metropolitan Hilarion are of such grave importance that I am choosing to post this article from Interfax for all to read. Please contact your congressman and ask that the United States government speak out in defense of our Coptic brothers and sisters. The US and the other western nations need to make it abundantly clear…
Glory to God for All Things
Living the Life of the Publican
·
For many people in our culture, the idea of private confession is neither attractive nor comforting. We prefer “to put our best foot forward,” and make the best impression on others. Everyone is aware that everyone has faults. Those who have grown up Protestant may have been frequently reminded, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). In the polite Southern Protestant culture in which I…
The Morning Offering
Sin as Illness
·
Graduate Students from Seattle Pacific Univerity Church as Hospital of the Soul Our Orthodox Faith defines sin as an illness that is in need of healing, not as a crime that requires punishment. The Church is a hospital for the soul whose therapists (priests) first sought therapy and then became the therapists. As a healing institution the Church is a…
Nearly Orthodox
home...
·
Another Sunday, another Divine Liturgy to experience in yet another Orthodox church. I wasn’t going to go. I thought I’d stick with St George and the Dragon. Something gnawed at me, though, and each time I thought about going back I was uneasy. I had questions, I had reservations. I was pretty sure they were all about me and my shortcomings. I’d dialogue with myself about this all day long. Won’t wear…
The Morning Offering
Faith Without Action
·
Abbot Gerasim and Abbot Tryphon A Faith Without Action is Dead Although eternal life can not be attained by works, for no one can do any good but by the power of Christ, faith without works is dead. Transformation is necessary for any of us to enter into God’s kingdom and requires us to cooperate with God in our salvation.…
The Morning Offering
Re-Adjustment
·
I thought there would be a grave beauty, a sunset splendour In being the last of one’s kind: a topmost moment as one watched The huge wave curving over Atlantis, the shrouded barge Turning away with wounded Arthur, or Ilium burning. Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the…
Glory to God for All Things
And Now for Something Completely Different...
·
[vodpod id=Video.2162156&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26] The God Gene, posted with vodpod
The Morning Offering
Vision and Mission
·
Click on photos to enlarge. Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 9:18). I was privileged to be an Observer for the Orthodox Church in America’s All American Council, held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Bellevue, WA. It was a particular blessing to be in attendance as it afforded me an opportunity to spend time with many…
Glory to God for All Things
Face to Face
·
There are few joys of a blogosphere writer greater than to meet face-to-face with his readers. Such has been my experience at my time at the 16th All-American Council of the Orthodox Church in America. To embrace someone who can say that my articles on the death of my parents helped them to endure the death of their own parents is beyond anything I can express in words – for the love…
Nearly Orthodox
momentum...
·
I’m headed down to Nashville next week. I’m hoping for a week to catch up with friends, do a lot of writing and to visit St John’s. And it’s an interruption in momentum. Stupid momentum. I’m hoping to visit one more community before I go. This one is very small, much like St John’s. I’m a little wigged about it. Small crowds make me nervous. I can hide in big crowds, in…
The Morning Offering
Compassion
·
Love Involves Suffering If we are indeed to love one another we must be willing to suffer with others. The Lord tells us that we must “Bear one another’s burdens, and so be filled with the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). When we learn to love others our compassion is such that we are willing to suffer with them. Their…
The Morning Offering
Humus
·
Humility Comes from Humus We all struggle with our passions and like Saint Paul we can say we do that which we do not want to do and do not do what we want to do. The passions hold us down close to the ground in our sin and fallen nature. We are like the rotting soil beneath dead plants,…
The Morning Offering
A Pure Heart
·
Concelebrating with my OCA brothers at their All American Council in Bellevue, WA Recollection of God is required if we are to be reconciled with God. Seeking to be aware of God throughout the day helps us remember to do battle with the passions and leads to repentance. Contrition brings on the grace needed to gain a pure heart, which…
Glory to God for All Things
Reading Rightly
·
The course of your reading should be parallel to the aim of your way of life…. Most books that contain instructions in doctrine are not useful for purification. The reading of many diverse books brings distraction of mind down on you. Know, then, that not every book that teaches about religion is useful for the purification of the consciousness and the concentration of the thoughts. St. Isaac of Syria quoted in The Spiritual…
The Morning Offering
In Response to a Critic
·
My Criticism of Islam Following my article titled The Period of Decline, a Vashon Island man accused me of being a bigot, calling my words anti-Muslim hate speech. He further compared my words to those of Anders Behring Breivik, the insane Norwegian man who murdered countless youth on an island in Norway some months ago. As an American of Norwegian…
Nearly Orthodox
reformation...
·
One year ago today, on Reformation Sunday, I sat in the congregation of the Presbyterian church I’d been attending and had myself a revelation. I heard the pastor preach about the value of the Reformation and even get a bit teary eyed about the whole thing. I realized, just then, that I was not a protestant, that I’d never really been a protestant. I’d been attending catechism classes and Vespers services at…
The Morning Offering
The Period of Decline
·
A Western World in Need of Christ The western world has entered a period of decadence and decline, departing far from her Christian roots. With the European Union denying the historical and cultural Christian heritage of her member states, a secular based world view reigns dominant. This, together with the mass immigration of peoples from Islamic countries at a time…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Speaking of Books reviews Orthodoxy & Heterodoxy
·
The Morning Offering
Blessed is the Kingdom
·
Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit The Divine Liturgy begins with the words, Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages. This kingdom is our true home and our lives as Christians are centered around the great…
Nearly Orthodox
slaying the dragon...
·
I spent a couple of hours last night at a bible study. Bible studies are not my usual bag. Don’t get me wrong, I love to study the bible, it just that the “group bible study” aspect hasn’t been part of my normal gig. I spent 12 years in Catholic schools and contrary to popular protestant belief, we do actually read and study the bible. So, over the years whenever presented with…
The Morning Offering
The Christ Centered Family
·
click on photos to enlarge Any good parent knows that he must love all his children equally. No favoritism should be displayed when raising children if we want them to know they are loved. Troubled children often get more attention from a loving parents because mom and dad know this child is in greater need of parental support. One child…
Glory to God for All Things
Pilgrimage to Seattle
·
I fly Saturday from the beautiful autumn leaves of Appalachia and make a pilgrimage to Seattle. Every three years the Orthodox Church in America has an “All-American Council,” in which we conduct a certain amount of Church business, pray some, and do the sorts of things you do at conventions. St. Gregory the Theologian thought that Councils were a waste of time, “producing only anger and rancor.” He was correct, of course,…
Praying in the Rain
Priests and Prophets; Bishops and Charismatics
·
One of the mysteries of the Church throughout the ages, Old Covenant and New, is that God has set up at least two sources of authority among His people. In the Old Covenant these were often typified by the priest and the prophet, in the New Covenant this same reality, this same tension, is seen in the bishop and the charismatic. The priest/bishop and prophet/charismatic are both sources of authority in the…
The Morning Offering
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow
·
and All Russia’sLetter to Patriarch Shenouda III of the Coptic Church To: His Holiness SHENOUDA III His Holiness SHENOUDA III Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the Throne of St. Mark in All Africa and the Middle East Your Holiness, It has deeply grieved me to learn about the new attacks against Christians in Egypt and the bloody clashes in…
Glory to God for All Things
Is the Bible True?
·
There is a fundamentalist anxiety that I hold in great sympathy. My sympathy is driven by the fact that I lived for many years under the burden of that very anxiety. It is the hidden fear that possibly, despite all faith exercised in the opposite direction, the Bible may not, in fact, be true. A great deal of energy is spent in maintaining the integrity of the dike that withstands this anxiety.…
The Morning Offering
Inner Silence
·
God is Heard in the Silence of the Heart The very heart of Orthodox monasticism is found in hesychia, that is, keeping stillness.The hesychast denies in order to affirm. Based on Christ’s injunction in the Gospel of Saint Matthew to “go into your closet to pray”, hesychasm in tradition has been the process of retiring inward by ceasing to register…
The Morning Offering
Holy Images
·
God Infuses His Energies into the Icons The Old Testament God was revealed to us by Christ Jesus. Prior to the incarnation of the Logos, God’s people were forbidden to make any image of Him, for no one had seen His face. Yet when Christ said to His disciples, “he who has seen Me has seen the Father”, the fullness…
