He kept his head, but he wasn’t able to keep it on, that glorious and most precious saint, John the Baptist, whom our Lord called the greatest of any born of woman (Matthew 11:11). But while it was attached to his body, it was always clear, direct and without compromise. There was no way to shut him up other than to put him to death.
The Orthodox…
We might get a preview of what the children of God will look like in the faces of infants and the icons of the saints: The babies in all their innocence and purity, and the saints who have attained their purposes as having been open to the action of the Holy Spirit in their lives. As for the rest, we should not want to have our faces frozen for all…
Blessed are those who live in the hope and faith in the Kingdom of God; or as the Creed concludes, “look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” We hold in our hearts the ultimate life insurance policy, the reward and fulfillment of a life on earth serving, following and loving the Lord Jesus who invites us to the…
It takes just a bit of imagination to be with the Lord Jesus on the hillside at the time when the anemones and scarlet poppies, here called lilies of the field, burst into an array of exciting colors. They last but for a few days, then dry up, and they were gathered by the women to heat up their ovens. Why then bother to offer the world such beauty…
With the above phrases, the evangelist John begins and ends his gospel. He writes about the Word—not a spoken or written word only, but the Logos, the ever-living Word of the heavenly Father, and one of the Agents of all creation. Miracle of miracles, the Word became a man and lived on earth for a brief time. John captured that marvelous event as…
If we are to reach out to today’s young people with the word of God, we must first find where they are, and a good place to begin is with their passions. The motion picture sequence “Star Wars” third chapter, released in the theaters in May, helps not only adolescents but also all viewers to identify with Luke Skywalker battling the forces of…
In our ever more secularized society it ought to be pointed out that the founding fathers of our nation understood the existence of our Creator to be a truth so self-evident that no sane person would deny it. However, I would not be surprised if dedicated atheists are even now searching to find some appeal that would modify that salient text of our…
If we say, “Why do we meet again at an All American Council?” it means that we have forgotten the purpose of council. We can speak of agendas and problems, budgets and departments, reports and reviews; but the primary reason is to be together in Christ. We may occupy an entire continent and scatter over three nations our parishes, monasteries and…
In my junior high school civics class we were made to memorize those words. Ever since, I have mulled over the phrase “the pursuit of happiness.” Our culture not only permits but also encourages us to chase after whatever gives us pleasure, or in modern jargon, whatever turns us on—but within limits. In an earlier era those limits were well known…
Recently a tsunami of wrath and condemnation against America roiled up throughout the Muslim world, stimulated by a false report in “Newsweek” magazine that interrogators in the Guantanamo prison in Cuba flushed down the toilet pages from the Koran. The supposed intention was to provoke the prisoners and stimulate them to confess whatever they might…
Every year I try to comprehend the reason we as a spiritual community set out to make serious progress from Forgiveness Sunday through the Great Lent and Holy Week, making the ominous trek to the place of Calvary, experiencing once again the trauma of our Lord Jesus’ crucifixion, imbibing the overwhelming joy of His holy resurrection, then…
Esau the elder twin was a constant grief to his parents. They had no control over him. He insisted on running around with the local girls. Finally he took two of them to wife. The parents gave up trying to influence him. Mother Rebecca devised a plan to marry her obedient son Jacob to a girl of her own kind, somebody from her home country. He would…
I find it odd that the great and joyful feast of the Ascension is often not well attended by our faithful. Understandably they are yet not over the euphoria of Pascha. Even forty days is not ample time to greet one’s friends and family with the joy of the Resurrection of Christ, and maybe some of the paschal foods have yet to be consumed. Also,…
So much of the thrust of the Church teachings have to do with encouraging us to overcome worldly lusts. So much of our culture’s media is designed to do the opposite: To convince us that what the Bible and Jesus Christ warn against is in fact natural. Our young people especially are confused between the Church’s teachings and the society that…
The writer of the book of Hebrews was a Jew himself. He wrote to convince his people that they were wrong to dismiss Jesus Christ as Messiah, because He fulfilled and completed all that they had been prepared to understand about God’s will through them ever since the time of Abraham. And he uses a key word, better. Everything their ancestors had…
The great irony is that the city above all others in the world, venerated by three great religions and named “City of Peace” is anything but. Jerusalem is not where one goes today to find peace. On the contrary, it’s where a sensible person fears to be among any crowd that might tempt a human bomb to explode her or himself.
The other irony is that…
Frequently I’m asked: “Why does God let good people die, and so many sinners live to old age?” I resist replying that God has no need of sinners, coming up with a better response: So that the sinners will have an opportunity to repent and be saved, because God loves the sinners just as He does the saints.
I thought about it when I was waiting a…
I recall while in seminary reading The Diary of a Russian Priest, by Father Alexander Yelchaninov for the first time. In it he wrote of confessing a whole family, and in each year’s Great Lent the Lord would give him a single thought to share and convey. I thought of that quote often in my more than two score years of hearing the Great Lent…
The Lord meets us in a group, but again as an individual. As in the sacred services we are all one in Christ, and yet He comes to us as though we were the only person He ever created. It’s so clear in the relationship between our Lord Jesus and Judas Iscariot. We notice several significant moments:
1. Judas is treated with deference. He cannot say…
When you are asked about the Russian style third bar at the foot of Christ’s cross, say that it is for all who look upon it. It speaks to us about our own lives and death. It shows the way either from death to Paradise or to an eternal damnation. It describes the passage from this lifetime to wherever we will spend eternity. For all humans, whether…