Author: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

The Very Rev. Archpriest Andrew Stephen Damick is Chief Content Officer of Ancient Faith Ministries, former pastor (2009-2020) of St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and author of The Lord of Spirits, Arise, O God, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, Bearing God and An Introduction to God. He is co-host of the following podcasts: The Lord of Spirits (with Fr. Stephen De Young), The Areopagus (with Michael Landsman), and Amon Sûl (with Richard Rohlin). He is also host of The Orthodox Pilgrim, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, Orthodox Engagement, and Roads from Emmaus. With Richard Rohlin he is collaborating on the major documentary series The Wolf and the Cross. You can follow him on YouTube, Facebook, Telegram and Instagram.

Sweet Afton

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Flow gently, sweet Afton! amang thy green braes, Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. Thou stockdove whose echo resounds thro’ the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green-crested lapwing thy screaming forbear, I charge you, disturb not my slumbering Fair. How…

The Defamiliarization of the Christ

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
There are many times when I am speaking to someone about Christ, even within a church context, that I feel like I am speaking about an alien visitor from outer space. It is quite similar to the feeling I sometimes have when referencing some piece of history that interests me for which my interlocutor has no context or experience to make it meaningful. I…

My Emmaus

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
I remarked to my wife the other day that I now really don’t want to live anywhere but in Emmaus (we live in Allentown for the moment but hope that that will change in the next few years). I have started referring to this place occasionally as “my Emmaus.” (The genitive case is, of course, not merely the possessive.) I’ve moved a good many…

“[He] didn’t see any God there.”

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. On October 4, 1957, the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union made the following transmission: “As a result of great, intense work of scientific institutes and design bureaus the first artificial Earth satellite has been built.” Indeed, it had not only been built, but Sputnik 1,…

The Voice

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Today’s saintly commemoration is the conception of John the Forerunner, known to most English speakers as John the Baptist, which is narrated for us, along with his birth, in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel. A major thematic element for today is the Voice. Zachariah, not believing the archangel, is made bereft of his voice until such time as he participates in the naming…

For us, there is only the trying

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Among other saintly commemorations today, we remember Ninian, the Enlightener of Scotland. From all apparent worldly analyses, St. Ninian was something of a failure. He’s called the Enlightener of Scotland, because he first brought the Christian faith there in the final years of the 4th century, but he wasn’t terribly successful. He never saw the astounding conversions the way Columba did nearly 200 years…