“Thoughts in Christ”

The media journalists enjoy reporting various “appearances” of the sacred ones by Christians of good will who claim to find images of the Mother of God in a potato chip, on the reflection from the wall of a glass building, Jesus Christ in the knot of a tree, or some other odd location. The reporters declare the alleged sighting without comment,…

In all the obituaries in the newspapers one comes to the list of “survivors,” listing the members of the deceased’s immediate family. The term always fascinated me. My first thought is of an accident, where only one among them died, the others were spared; however, not often is that the situation. The deceased more commonly was the only person whose…

These questions were put to the prophet Job when he asked God why he had to suffer so much. Of course Job had no response to the Lord. These were unanswerable—far too profound for the limited mind of any human being. God used sarcasm to meet the prophet’s audacity for questioning the ways of the almighty Lord. Today, with the exciting discoveries…

“Why do we call the Virgin Mary ‘Mother of God’?” we are asked by the visitor to our sacred services, “God has no mother.” Of course not, but the only-begotten Son of God, equal to the Father and the Holy Spirit, entered the world through Mary’s womb, and for that we celebrate her as the bride of the Holy Spirit. The Greek term Theotokos means just…

The simple yet productive way to progress in union with the Holy Trinity is to pray slowly enough so that you will listen to what you are communicating to the Lord. Sometimes we make a habit of saying our prayers by rote, reciting them without thought of what the words mean. That’s what our loving Lord Jesus means in the above quotation. We don’t…

Within the halo of every icon of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, you may notice three Greek letters, an “o” with a backward comma above, a fat “w,” and a “v.” They mean, “He who is,” the Septuagint [Greek translation] of the four Hebrew consonants that mean: “I am Who I am,” or “I am ‘He who is.’” [YHWH]. When the Almighty appeared to Moses…

To understand what St. Paul means by unveiled face we must recall Moses descending from Mt. Sinai where he had been speaking with the Lord (Exodus 34:33). His face shone with light, and it frightened Aaron and the people. So he wore a veil when talking with them, but he removed the veil when speaking with God. Paul takes it to mean that the glow of…

We members of an earlier generation were raised in a culture that lifted up the best a person could be in life. We were inspired by greatness in all walks of life. This generation will laugh at the myth of George Washington and the cherry tree episode: “I chopped it down. I cannot tell a lie.” Or that Abe Lincoln borrowed a book and put it in the…

It is impossible to conceive of a gift more precious and valuable that a human being can possess than to be freed from the disintegration of our essential being and to share in that portion of divinity that is possible for created beings. Of course it is out of the question to have a share in whatever the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are in their…

What does it mean, thinks no evil? {KJV} Another translation has it as resentful. A person filled with agape love holds no evil thoughts about other people, and he or she is not resentful about anything they do or say. But the Greek logisesthai suggests somebody who keeps score on all persons with whom he has dealings. You know the type, and Lord…

I’m ever intrigued by the impressions that our sacred services have upon visitors who attend Orthodox worship for the first time. The most evident feature of our weddings is the use of imperial crowns. Like royalty in general, crowns are a throwback to times past; even the queen of England wears her crown only on rare occasions. And what impresses…

The Last Supper has ended; Judas Iscariot, His betrayer, had gone off into the night’s darkness to perform his wicked deed, and our loving Lord lifted up a prayer to the heavenly Father. He wanted the apostles to hear what He was praying.

It’s a prayer full of joy. One might think it odd that He would be in high spirits at a time like this, when He…

This is the moment Leonardo da Vinci lifted up in his famous painting of the Last Supper. Yet his painting along with all western paintings of that event missed the poignant contrast between love and betrayal. We learn from Luke’s gospel that even on that very night the apostles had been arguing with one another over priority of placement in their…

Now here’s a challenge to set before our entire parish as an inspiration and an aspiration! It appears in reading the whole epistle that St. Paul may have been exaggerating in ending his second letter to the Church in Thessalonica. He spent much of the contents explaining that they must be vigilant. They must not waver, nor fall prey to false…

I made myself a mini-experiment during this holiday season. I decided to greet the cashiers, check-out persons, ticket booth operators and others in the public with the greeting, “Merry Christmas!” Actually, I don’t much like the phrase because it has the overtones of Santa Claus, commercialism of the department stores and the syrupy generalized…

The trauma of Christianity is the great number of communities called by the Name of Jesus Christ. We have many elements of faith in common, but we are not a community. Some see it as unfortunate, even a scandal, while others consider it normal and even inevitable. It’s worth mentioning that in the early fourth century, when Christianity was no…

Hard words for a soft society. The Lord Jesus puts us to the test. He challenges us to question our values. What are we living for, and what would we die for? We go to Him with our worries, and we may wonder why we don’t feel that we are getting the answers we expected, needed or wanted. Silence is the response, and we lose faith. Prayer “doesn’t…

For a nanosecond I felt a twinge of guilt as I twisted off the car radio just as Rudolph was bearing gifts from afar, or was it Santa roasting chestnuts by an open fire? Guilty, because the ex-pats I correspond with across the Atlantic say they pine for the American way of celebrating Christmas. But we who live here must endure the seemingly endless…

St. John rarely repeats what the other gospels relate. We already know the scene in Gethsemane garden. Here he shares with us the intimate struggle that went on in the mind of our Lord Jesus. We sinners can only imagine the agony of One who had never known what it’s like to be anything but open, honest and truthful, yet being hated and persecuted by…

The mystery that St. Paul is referring to is the incarnation of Jesus Christ, which was part of God’s plan before creation. This mystery is deeper than even the creation of the universe, since it involves the entry into time, space and creation—in a word, into a human life—of Jesus Christ. And the reason for His coming to be one of us while…