Category: Orthodox Blogs
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Let the Righteous Rejoice
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Reflections on Florovsky
The following is from my earlier post of Florovsky on Ecumenism: The entire western experience of temptation and fall must be creatively examined and transformed; all that “European melancholy” (as Dostoevsky termed it) and all those long centuries of creative history must be borne. Only such a compassionate co-experience provides a reliable path toward the…
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You Must Be Born From Above – John 3
Absolutely one of the strangest conversations to occur anywhere in the gospels takes place between Jesus and the inquiring Nicodemus in the third chapter of John. Of course, at least one of its verses (or at least its Stephanus Pagination verse number) has become nationally famous as an attendee at almost all televised American sporting…
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Mystagogical Catechesis and the Gospel of John
I promise to get “off topic” from time to time – but I would like to do a bit of a “series” here in the post Pascha period – doing what has been done in the history of the Church – and look at the Gospel of John and what it means for us as…
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Knowing God – After Pascha
We approach things so differently in our modern world (as opposed to the ancient world). All of us have access to a great deal of information, although the information that comes to us when we are in the passive mode is less than useless (here I mean television and popular media). Thus I would paraphrase…
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The Lamb – Slain from the Foundation of the World
It was granted to him [the beast] to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation…
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The Gift of Hospitality
This delightful gem from the Desert Fathers comes from Benedicta Ward’s The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers (157) There was a saint in Egypt who dwelt in a desert place. Far away from him there was a Manichean who was a priest (at least what they call a priest). Once, when this man was going…
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Words from St. Isaac of Syria
St. Isaac stretches love and mercy to it’s farthest limits, occasionally beyond the bounds of canonical understanding. He remains a saint of the Church and his words are very important to hear. Let yourself be persecuted, but do not persecute others. Be crucified, but do not crucify others. Se slandered, but do not slander others.…
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Without Expecting in Return
Our culture is famously ordered along commercial lines. We work, we earn, we spend, we spend until the card maxes out. Though there need not necessarily be any conflict between a free economy and the practice of the faith, many find Mammon to be a formidable foe. On November 1, the Orthodox Church celebrates the…
Kenneth, “Judgment,” particularly in the Old Testament, generally describes someone acting to “put things right.” We should think in terms…