Abdication in the Soul

...  width="540" caption="This document was ratified by the British Parliament on Dec. 11, 1936"][/caption] December 11, 2011 In the ...  glory”? How can you and I appear in glory? I don’t know about you, but my day-to-day life is not really one in which the word ...

“We have to begin building our own institutions.”

...  width="568.8" caption="Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon (by John Martin)"][/caption] October 9, ...  fundamentalism that they would never consider eventually acknowledging him as a colleague. I asked him why he was there, since he knew he ...  in an empire that is becoming more and more hostile to the Gospel. This time it is not paganism, however, but secular fundamentalism.  ...

As Lambs Among Wolves

...  Sunday After Pentecost, August 21, 2011 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God.  ...  His beyond the Twelve who were commissioned to bring the Gospel to the world. Thaddeus, whose feast day is today, was originally from ...  an imprint of His countenance. That cloth has come to be known as the “Icon Made Without Hands” or the “Holy Napkin,” and it has ...

The Voice and the Silence

...  Elizabeth as she speaketh with the Virgin Mary: Wherefore art thou, the Mother of my Lord, come unto me? Thou ...  festal commemoration is the birth of John the Forerunner, known to most English speakers as John the Baptist, which is narrated for us in the first chapter of Luke's Gospel. A major thematic element for today is the Voice. Zachariah, not ...

Consumption, the Ascension and the Dignity of Man

...  align="alignright" width="205" caption="The Women at the Grave of Christ and the Ascension of Christ"][/caption]The ...  all of us to “come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of ...  Light that illumines the darkness. Truly, as the Gospel reading says to us today, “the people who sat in darkness have seen a ...

“Spiritual But Not Religious” and the Path to God

...  width="220" caption="St. Irenaeus of Lyons, the Gnostic's least favorite guy"][/caption] I sometimes encounter folks who ...  the SBNR are those who are often likely to respond to the Gospel not so much with outright rejection but rather with "Sure, ...  of private revelation and opinion over corporate knowledge and tradition. It is also essentially Protestant, in that its basic ...

Be merciful to me, a sinner

...  align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Publican and the Pharisee"][/caption] In the Name of the Father and of the ...  Ever since Adam and Eve thought to themselves, “You know what? We like our way better than God’s way,” human beings have not ...  put ourselves first? Why does the Pharisee in today’s Gospel pray “with himself,” “God, I thank Thee that I am not like other ...

Make His paths straight

...  align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Baptism of Christ in the Jordan River"][/caption] In the name of the Father ...  No one who lives in the endless Twelfth Night can know who he is, because the whole world is designed to deny it and keep it ...  St. John the Baptist, called John the Forerunner. In the Gospel account, John is baptizing people in the River Jordan when he sees Jesus ...

Priorities and Practicalities

The following is a recycled post from my previous weblog, originally posted in October ...  to questions of eternal significance. What I didn't know was that that statement would reveal that I "live in la-la land."  ...  in the next. That's been true from the beginning of the Gospel's preaching. But what really astounds is that this is a hard sell even ...

Discerning the One Thing Needful

...  align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Church of the Dormition, Jerusalem"][/caption] Holy Dormition, August 15, ...  yet how often do we find ourselves saying, “I don’t know how I lived without that”? Today let’s spend a few moments thinking about attention and how we divide and focus it. The Gospel reading which is appointed for this Great Feast of the Virgin Mary, her ...

The Cosmic Cathedral

...  of the Forefathers of Christ, December 13, 2009 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen ...  Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. If you follow the news, you know that this past week and in this coming week, the city of Copenhagen, ...  possessions, which has been highlighted for us in many Gospel readings lately and is so visible before us at this time of year. The ...

The machine thus spoke for itself”

...  Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick Emmaus, Pennsylvania In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God.  ...  The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph.” Though no one probably realized ...  encounter with Jesus as told by St. Luke in his Gospel describes a man with just such a dedication to objects over communion.  ...

“[He] didn’t see any God there.”

...  the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God.  ...  for a nation and culture who thirst for true knowledge of reality, we have a curious hesitation when it comes to using the ...  “acceptable.” Yet it is not so much Christ and the Gospel which became “acceptable,” but rather that Christians bought into ...