We have every right to feel that we may be at the beginning of a golden age of Orthodox content creation in the English language. But at the very same time that a renaissance of Orthodox content creation is happening, expanding into new platforms and providing insight and challenges for new fields of human life, there are marginal, extreme forces seeking to pierce into the middle.
If we sit depressed and are anxious over all the things that depress us, that anger us, that cause us to despair, then we become more like those thoughts. But if we orient our spiritual sight toward what is holy and good, then the evil thoughts being suggested by the demons will have no place in us to take root and grow.
Justice is indeed coming, the very justice of God. This justice will wipe away every shred of demonic rule and influence from creation and set everything right. The cries for justice of those who have been crushed beneath the heels of the powerful and the violent have been heard by God, and they will be vindicated.
The Christian life is not easy, but it actually is simple. When we clearly understand what sin and holiness are, then our choice to turn away from sin and be holy becomes clear, too.
Orthodox Christians should find their identity in Christ and in the saving dogmas proclaimed about Him universally in Orthodox tradition. How we calculate Pascha (which was not set by the Apostles) is not one of those things.
The Scriptures and all the liturgical services of the Orthodox Church include the theme of spiritual warfare, but it is particularly prominent in the liturgical services for the martyred saints.
Ten years ago, I was present at a sermon on the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy given by the late Fr. Thomas Hopko, three years before he died. The title he gave the sermon was “What Triumph of Orthodoxy?” And he said that there never really was such a thing.
