Faith Encouraged
You ARE Our Letter of Recommendation
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It’s always funny to hear people talk about what they think the Faith means by eternal life. I remember one movie from the 1990 called “Ghost” with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. The movie was about this tragic murder of a man and how the woman he loves copes with this tragedy. Of course, the murdered man becomes a “ghost,” a disembodied “spirit and he spends the whole movie trying to learn…
The Morning Offering
The Prayer Rule
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The Prayer Rule is the medicine that helps us progress on our journey to God One medicine for the heart, is the use of a “Prayer Rule.” This “Rule” is of the utmost importance, for the prayer rule helps develop the discipline we all need to progress, spiritually. It is one of the great tools the Orthodox Way has to…
Time Eternal
NEW PODCAST EPISODE: Time and Grief According to Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper
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Faith Encouraged
Want to Know how to Fight Sluggishness?
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It’s hard to admit, but there are times when I really struggle with laziness. I know, I know, how can I say that with all that’s going on in the ministry. But laziness isn’t merely inactivity. It can also be the wrong allocation of strengths and gifts that waste those strengths and gifts. It is the diffused illness of inattentiveness to proper priorities. Let me give you an example. One of my…
The Morning Offering
Loneliness
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What to do when we feel isolated and lonely While on my pilgrimage to Alaska, I met a number of priests who serve isolated village parishes, many of whom expressed difficulty in overcoming a sense of loneliness. This sense of isolation is not reserved for those who live in tiny villages, in remote areas of our globe. Many people have…
The Morning Offering
Our Beloved Dead
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Showing proper respect for those who have gone on before us Every time I walk in a cemetery, I look at all the outrageously expensive monuments and consider the immense amount of money not only spent on them but on embalming (creating a vast pool of embalming fluid under ground, just waiting to seep into the ground water), expensive bronze,…
Eastern Christian Insights
Strength and Integrity Through Faith and Faithfulness: Homily for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost and the Tenth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church
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1 Corinthians 4:9-16; Matthew 17:14-23 Hypocrites bring judgment upon themselves by saying one thing and doing another. Those who declare themselves holy do themselves and others much more harm than good. It is better to keep our mouths shut than to claim qualities we do not possess. St. Paul had such concerns in mind when he responded to his opponents in Corinth by contrasting the ministry of true apostles with the…
The Morning Offering
Pride is the Enemy
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The enemy of faith is pride The absolute necessary element for salvation is faith. Faith alone will save us, for only faith brings us into communion with God. Faith is a free gift, for nothing we can do can save us. No good works can save us. Being a good person will not save us. Only faith in Christ…
Behind the Scenes
Words for Our Time: A Book That Lives Up To Its Name
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Father Bill's Blog
140. Guns in Church, Part One - 2009, Now, Statistics, Back in the Old Days
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In summer 2009, when I was still pastor of Saint Nicholas, Cedarburg, I posted this notice at the three entrances to the church. Firearms are not permitted at Saint Nicholas Church. The Church is a sanctuary of peace. Here’s what brought this on: All churches and businesses in town had just received a letter from the Cedarburg Police Department stating that the Attorney General of Wisconsin had (rather suddenly) determined that the Constitution…
A Lamp for Today
Mediatrix of our Salvation: The Dismissal Theotokion in the Third Tone
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(With help from Jeremiah 31, Genesis 3, Isaiah 6) The dismissal hymn for the Theotokos this week (in tone three), though quite brief, prompts many questions for those who are not Orthodox. It also suggests some points for deep meditation even for those who have been following in the Orthodox way since birth, or for a considerable time. Since it is one of the eight resurrectional hymns (of the group addressed to…
Faith Encouraged
Humble AND Obedient
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“We are of one mind about this.” I heard his words and I understood each word and its meaning, but I had never heard this put this way before – “of one mind.” What did he mean? But, hey, I was a kid of 22 and the situation was such that I was hoping he meant we were in agreement. Too embarrassed to ask, I assumed (dangerous, I know) we were, in…
The Morning Offering
A Compassionate People
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We must become a more compassionate people “In this way will the inequalities of earthly states be leveled out at God’s judgment (Saint Theophan the Recluse).” It is right that we consider the teachings of the Orthodox Church concerning our duties to those who have less than we. Saint John Chrysostom taught that, “the poor are not the spectacle of…
Glory to God for All Things
Justice, Temperance, Prudence and the Virtue of “No”
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I have sometimes quipped that children are born lawyers. Their cries of, “That’s not fair!” would be at home in any court in the world. Children reveal our instinct for fairness, the root concept in the virtue of justice. Of course, as every parent knows, that instinct is often distorted, with the desire for fairness being expressed only as “fairness for me.” Justice is a virtue with deep, visceral content. Whenever it…
Time Eternal
Life After Easter: Notes From My Conversion
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I think I mentioned last Christmas that I had recently found a treasure trove of entries I wrote years ago, as I was contemplating becoming Orthodox. I meant to post the below musings, written in April 2010, after Pascha, but I forgot. I decided to post them in the wake of Dormition, instead, since the central idea applies…
Faith Encouraged
Comforted to Comfort
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Recently a Presbytera (that’s what we call the wife of the priest) passed away after a heroic struggle with breast cancer. This woman was a young woman with a husband and 17-year-old daughter who struggled with their mother for the years she battled this illness. I knew this family because I had attended seminary with the husband who became a priest, and a good priest at that! As I learned of the…
The Morning Offering
The Hospital of the Soul
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The life-giving grace of the Church is for everyone For many Orthodox Christians, clergy among them, it can be a great temptation to judge others harshly, especially if we think their sin or lifestyle is so horrid that we can’t think of them as worthy to enter our churches. If we look upon others, especially in this age of “gay…
Faith Encouraged
A Great Opportunity Always has Great Opposition!
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Let’s see; thinking of things that go great together – ham and eggs, peanut butter and jelly, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Tom and Jerry, a crisp, cool morning and a warm cup of coffee, bacon and, well more bacon! OK, so that’s a bit silly, but there are some things in life that simply always go together. It is understanding the power of these pairings that help us see deeper into…
The Morning Offering
Noetic Faculty
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The energy of the mind inside the heart In the patristic tradition the heart is the center of our self-awareness. This self-awareness is the energy of the mind inside the heart, something the holy fathers referred to as our “noetic faculty”. There is an important distinction that must be noted concerning the difference between the Western and Eastern understands of…
No Other Foundation
Bread and Peanut Butter and the Forgiveness of Sins
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What do bread and peanut butter have to do with the forgiveness of sins? More than one might think at first glance. Recently a friend told me of how he met a pan-handler in the parking lot of a grocery store, asking for spare change. He knew the man well, for he had often met him and given him the requested spare change. They hailed each other by name as usual, but…
Faith Encouraged
How Are the Dead Raised?
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“But, how does it work?” That was the question burning in my mind as a young, curious, typical pre-teen boy. So, I did what any normal kid would do. I took the clock apart! Still didn’t get my question answered because I didn’t understand the concept of the gears and spring system AND the clock never worked again because I didn’t know how to put it back together again! Needless to say,…
The Morning Offering
Bodily Suffering
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The role of bodily suffering in the salvation of human kind Elder Ambrose of Optina Monastery said, “We should not forget that in our age of ‘sophistication’ even little children are spiritually harmed by what they see and hear. As a result, purification is required, and this is only accomplished through bodily suffering….You must understand that Paradisal bliss is granted…
Faith Encouraged
Do You REALLY Believe?
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Friedrich Nietzsche declared “Faith means not wanting to know what is true.” And Fr. Seraphim Rose responds: “Atheism, true ‘existential’ atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ.” In our modern world, gripped by what I call the religion of scientism, reduces…
The Morning Offering
The Transfiguration
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The Feast of the Holy Transfiguration of Christ The Transfiguration of of Christ is the episode in the New Testament narrative in which Our Lord is transfigured and becomes radiant with bright rays of light. At that moment the prophets Moses and Elijah appear next to Him, and He speaks with them. The voice of God the Father calls Him,…
Glory to God for All Things
A Crisis of Virtue - The Good That We Need
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C.S. Lewis once said that courage is the “form of every virtue at its testing point.” It is easy to forget that figures such as Lewis, Tolkien, and even Chesterton, did not write during a time of Christian ascendancy. Lewis was denied a chair (a full professorship) at Oxford for years precisely because of his embarrassingly public profession of faith. To the “learned” sceptics around him, it made him seem “less than…
The Morning Offering
Prayer of the Heart
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The Jesus Prayer and the Acquisition of Inner Peace The Jesus Prayer, also known as the Prayer of the Heart, is the central prayer for monastics. One of the early desert fathers, Saint Macarius the Great, said of the phrase from the Psalms, “The meditation of my heart is in your sight”, “There is no other perfect meditation than the…
Eastern Christian Insights
Staying Grounded on the One True Foundation: Homily for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost and the Ninth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church
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1 Corinthians 3:9-17; Matthew 14:22-34 People view the church in many different ways. Some think of it as a private club for meeting the spiritual needs of its members in a way that is ultimately self-centered and insular. Contrary to popular opinion, the mission of Christ’s Body is not to help us ignore or escape from the world, but to manifest a sign of its salvation. As members of the Savior’s…
