St. Isaac the Syrian said that only the tomb is the āland of certaintyā.Ā Writing to hermits living in the desert, St. Isaac wanted to free them from the delusion that they could be certain about anything in this world.Ā I wonder if St. Isaac was reflecting on the words of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 8: āKnowledge puffs up, but love builds up.Ā If anyone thinks he knows anything, he knowsā¦
I wrote a series of commentaries on the hymns and themes of Holy Week. Ā Since this year we were kept from church by the social distancing practice due to COVID-19, I thought I would reflect on some of the themes of Holy Week with our unprecedented situation in mind. Here’s the first one. Tonight and tomorrow morning we celebrate the raising of Lazarus from the dead after he had been āasleepā inā¦
Faith is not the subject of scientific investigation and analysis, nor is itĀ the product of reason and our brains, but rather the ontological experience of the presence of God in our hearts and minds.Ā Faith is participation in the grace and glory of God, it is the Revelation of the Truth of God in our hearts and lives and in the world as a whole. Faith does not require complicated thinking,ā¦
You canāt read the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. Ch. 5 – 7) without coming away disturbed. Perhaps thatās why we donāt hear too much sermonizing based on Jesusā longest sermon (and perhaps his only sermon recorded in the Gospels if you count Lukeās version as a different telling of the same sermon). We donāt hear many sermons based on these words because in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seems toā¦
Recently I have encountered several people who are in distress because they donāt feel that they are doing some aspect of their spiritual life correctly. They experience stress, depression, fear, even trembling and extreme anxiety because, for example, they fear they arenāt fasting correctly, or are not believing completely in the resurrection (or incarnation or the authority of the Church), or are not confessing well, or are not attentive enough in divineā¦
āShall Thy wonders be known in that darkness?ā In our culture, the words āfaithā and ābelieveā and ātruthā have been hijacked by rational assumptions in ways that limit their meaning and usefulness in a Christian context. According to our rationalist assumptions, to believe (or have faith that) something is true means that you assent to the historical, physical reality of something. To say that something is true is to say that itā¦
