Yesterday marked the 35th anniversary of the falling asleep of Fr. Alexander Schmemann. I would like to follow up on this occasion with some poignant thoughts from one of his lesser-known works, The Liturgy of Death, a compilation of four talks Schmemann gave in 1979 at a summer institute at SVOTS. In these talks, Schmemann traced the historical…
Recently, I was making a mad dash through the campus library, trying to scrounge up enough interesting books before they closed for the evening. My eye caught this title by David S. Cunningham: Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Literary Meditations on Suffering, Death, and New Life. I was drawn to the title because, like Cunningham, I have come to…
Fact #1: I grew up believing in the Rapture. Fact #2: I no longer believe in the Rapture. Really, I don’t. Fact #3: When I walk into a mysteriously empty room or a quiet home, my first (subconscious) instinct is still to check the floor for heaps of clothes and other telltale signs that people have been raptured.…
