“Thoughts in Christ”

We bid farewell for another year to the glorious and joyful forty days of the Paschal celebration, lifting up the hearts of our fellow believers by sharing the news that “Christ is risen!” As we do, my thoughts go to that enigmatic woman who had been blessed by God to be first to face the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Reading slowly the passage above, we…

Here’s a quotation a mother might embroider and frame to present as a daughter’s wedding gift. Here is a text to ponder for us all. If only every Orthodox Christian home had this as an inspiration to live by, for parents to practice and to make as the standard for their children. To “carefully observe the path of the perfect” is to find role models…

Not only did she not know what was needed to take away the anguish in her soul: Like so many women and men in our time, she assumed that life was nothing other than a constant search for a fulfillment that never comes and a satisfaction unattainable for all persons. Jesus has such a well of empathy for her: “If you knew the gift of God,” He says to…

I remember where I was and how I felt upon reading the above passage for the first time. The wonder-filled truth of the message glowed in my soul. I was sixteen years old. Being irascible by nature, that admonition has come to mind many times ever since to quell the pique of the moment and subdue my temper. It stands with works like Dante’s Divine…

Between the exchange of rings and the formal wedding, the priest leads the couple on their first formal walk together from the back to the front of the nave. As they proceed, the choir sings the poignant Psalm 128:

“Blessed is every one who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways!
You shall eat of the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be…

This alone if nothing else one realizes and takes away from the Divine Liturgy—the peace of Christ. This makes it worth every effort to be present among Christ’s loved ones. Who is more fright-filled than those Galileans in Jerusalem on the day when Jesus Christ had been crucified, and they were certain that they were next. Trembling with fear,…

Here is the first monastic family. They’re called communities, because they want all who care to become members to feel they are entering a new society; but they really are new families similar to the bonding of the Mother of God and the disciple whom Jesus loved. And of course Jesus Himself always heads them, as we might imagine from the above…

I know just how he felt. Something similar happened to me in my first years of the priesthood. I was the youngest priest at our cathedral in New York City at the time. The order of services for Holy Thursday provides for the ritual of feet washing in cathedrals. It’s done in Russia, and our cathedral continued the practice. In reading the gospel of…

The real God of Israel was revealed the moment Jesus expired on the cross. While those who had their way, accomplishing their task to punish our Lord Jesus for the audacity of defying their rejection of His messiahship, hurling at Him the false accusation that He had claimed to destroy and rebuild the temple in three days, the temple veil was torn…

Oh, what a promise! To enjoy the bliss of fellowship that one feels at a banquet—not any banquet, but that which awaits us after this lifetime is over, and to sit with the saints, “those who continued with Me in My trials,” and most of all with Him, our loving Lord. This is the glorious promise of the Kingdom of heaven. But we have not endured…

What a glorious phrase to explain the motivation behind the Orthodox Christian way of salvation: straining forward to what lies ahead [Gk. Epektasis]. We don’t tally up our virtues or mull over our past sins; we thank the Lord for our blessings and confess our failings so that we can get on with the process of growing into unity with God. In the…

The second Sunday of Great Lent features the forgiveness of sins. Every Orthodox Christian understands the requirement of a formal confession in this sacred time. Priests spend a great deal of their time during these weeks at the confessional. The premise at the final prayer before the closing of the casket at the time of burial: “This my spiritual…

The gospel for the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the first Sunday of Great Lent, is the last part of the first chapter of St. John. It’s all about seeing, which is one but not the only reason why we celebrate the victory of icons today. The feast of feasts, the sacred Pascha reading is the first part of the same gospel. The common element is vision. Philip…

A new book has found its way into book stores in the land: Why Men Hate Going to Church, by David Murrow. The author claims to have discovered that more women than men attend services, apparently enjoy worship, and gain satisfaction from prayer. Really! How interesting! Or, as the kids would say, “Duh!”

He goes on to insist that men are bored with…

The world led by the media seems to assume that the Middle East is a land where only Muslims abide, except for Israel. We easily forget that many Christians, especially a multitude of Orthodox Christians, survive there despite the ongoing persecution inflicted upon them, and the multiple attempts to drive them out of their homelands. Recently an…

The love of the world in kindest terms is humanism. More accurate would be agnosticism, since that means those who either don’t think through a faith in God, or just don’t care. Because it’s everywhere in our society, it’s not so simple to define, like asking a fish what water looks like. Perhaps it’s like the judge struggling to give a legal…

The faith-filled Christian is ever aware of being watched by the all-seeing eye of the Lord. We understand that to refer to the Holy Trinity. We realize also that the above passage from the Sermon on the Mount referring to a healthy eye filled with light was embodied in the Son of Man, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ. How blessed are His eyes…

To get to the love for God means according to St. Maximos that we must pass through fear. Is there some other way? We in our time just don’t like that word, that four-letter term that we spend our lives trying to avoid. On top of that, we are to fear punishment. He doesn’t mean that the loving Lord will punish us for not loving Him in return. He has…

We hasten to explain this discourse between our loving Lord Jesus and the Greek woman over the border of Palestine. He’s not calling her a dog, which is the height of insolence, and she doesn’t understand it as an offense. Her demur is as witty as His comment: First the children, then the pets! To which she replies: Puppies eat what falls off the…

After my ordination a priest told me that the age of a pastor is determined by the number of the Book of Needs he wears out in his ministry. They are like the rings of a tree. The Book of Needs is a manual of prayers for all situations that he has with him at all times. I’m on my third such book and wondering if I should invest in a new one or make…