Holy Week is upon us in the Orthodox Church. We have celebrated the confirmation of the universal resurrection in our Lordās raising up of his friend Lazarus, four days in the tomb. We have also cried out with the children running before our Lord in his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Last evening we returned to Church to contemplate the approach of the Bridegroom. The troparion still rings in my ears. Behold, the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night, and blessed is the servant He shall find vigilant; but unworthy is he whom heā¦
Dr. Cyril Jenkins interviewed Fr. Daniel Greeson about the intellectual legacy and work of Stratford Caldecott. The conversation was wide ranging but definitely worth your time!
“The knowledge of what is good and what is not ā¦ is an original and fundamental part of our nature, and ā¦ the Law of Moses praises it, and getteth praise from itā¦.”Ā St. John Chrysostom I recently ran across an amusing meme on social media that went like this: Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai carrying the two stone tablets engraved by the finger of God with the Ten Commandments, and a thought bubble comes from the crowd below, saying, āWhew! Glad my nameās not āThou.āā When we think of the Law of Moses, weā¦
Critically reflecting and commenting upon the deleterious effects of television, computers, video games, smart phones, and all sorts of new smart gadgets is nothing new. Jeremiads are an incredibly popular genre. I myself am partial to them. I mean, who doesnāt love a good lament?!? Jeremiads especially come to mind having just read āThere are Spying Eyes Everywhere – And Now They Share a Brain.ā We apparently now have the computing skills to be able to fuse all sorts of information feeds and technologies so as to have an all seeing eye of surveillance trained onā¦
In the previous entry in this series, I discussed the idea in Saint John Chrysostomās homilies of marriage as freedom, but as freedom paradoxically defined as mutual service. From this idea of freedom-as-mutual-service, which is the idea of the marriage as a miniature church, we can begin to see how the importance of communion arises. The distinction between unity and communion is a subtle one, but it is important to Saint John and important for our purposes. It consists in the analogous Liturgical difference between the Holy Mysteries of Baptism and of the Eucharist. The processā¦
