“Thoughts in Christ”

Is it any wonder that those who first heard that glorious, astounding promise left everything they owned or valued behind just to follow the Speaker? And the invitation resounds down through the centuries, remaining just as bold and fresh as the day that it was first proclaimed. It’s why we call ourselves after His name, Christians.

But the promise…

There are such persons who cannot be persuaded to change their attitude regardless of what is told them or shown to them. So it was with Pharaoh. He was confronted with Moses, the man of God, who performed mighty miracles to prove that God was with him, and the Lord was determined to help Moses lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Pharaoh was a classic…

It’s not just one mountain but rather three huge mountains that stand before us as we travel through this lifetime on our way to the Kingdom of heaven. They are: Greed, vanity, and the desire for pleasures. They are constant obstacles that get in our way and make it so difficult to advance towards the place where our Lord is waiting for us. And the…

This reading concludes the passages of Great Lent. We then move to Palm Sunday and the Passion Week. My soul is warmed when I listen to these parting words of Jacob to his twelve sons. He died content. He had fulfilled his, or rather God’s purpose for him on earth, and he was certain that his offspring would continue to fulfill the sacred covenant…

Don’t the Athenians seem so much like people today? It’s hardly worth explaining to us that “they spent their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.” That’s why it’s called “news.” Many are addicted to news. They cannot go to sleep before the eleven o’clock news is over. They read the same in the morning papers, and they surf the…

It was a village church in central rural Russia where we stopped by to visit and pray. There was nothing really extraordinary about the sensibly constructed square wooden church, but it was the cemetery surrounding the temple that caused me to reflect on how far even we Orthodox Christians in America have gone in our relationship to our beloved ones…

Our Lord Jesus is quoting from memory what all good Jews knew—neighbors were basically other Jews; all others were in the category of gentiles. He had the courage to advance His native religion from tribalism to a universal attitude to all humankind. And He paid the ultimate price for His bold insight regarding the Father’s love for…

It’s the story of the prophet Jonah. Prophets are those who hear the word of God and proclaim the tidings to the people. They also are God’s students. They too have to learn what the Lord’s will is. Sometimes they pay an enormous tuition for the tutorial.

Jonah was sent to Nineveh, the capitol of his people’s greatest enemy, the nation that…

The difficulty many of our people have in explaining the joy and beauty that comes only by faith in the Holy Trinity experienced in the Orthodox Church is that there is just so much to tell, and the expression of our sacred faith can appear to be overwhelming. Salvation itself is a process leading to deification. It’s not one simple point about…

Consciousness, or the awareness of what is happening to us—our thoughts, impressions, reflections on our experiences, are stored up in our memory. What is immortal in us has to do with our memory. When we leave this lifetime, we shall take with us the memory of our existence here on earth. It will be painful for us to recollect the bad, wicked and…

When the priest prepares the Holy Host for communion before the public part of the Divine Liturgy begins, his last action is to thrust the cutting spear he uses into the side of the square of bread. While doing so he recites the above words. It means that our Lord’s heart was receptive to the very end of His life on earth. He was forgiving us all,…

Our Lord Jesus Christ was an outstanding communicator, because He spoke to the values and needs of those He encountered. To a merchant He talked of jewels. To the farmer He spoke of sowing and fertile earth. To the fishermen He used nets and species of fish to make His point. And to the housewife He talked of housecleaning. To each person He found a…

We Americans have a special problem with this text: Many of us are on a salt-free diet. But from time immemorial, salt always has had a profound meaning. It was so precious that it was how wages were paid. Payment for services in the military, what we call a salary, comes from salt [sel]. Like so many blessings in our modern lives, salt has lost its…

It seems that the more I age, the more I grow estranged from the society around me. I realize it now, sitting in an airport terminal waiting for my flight connection. Upon touching down from a transoceanic flight, the flight attendant [I still catch myself calling them “stewardesses,” politically correct language to the contrary] announced, “George…

Jesus sent the disciples off in their boat. He could deal with the crowd better without them, because they too had imbibed the enthusiasm of the moment. They wanted to make our Lord their king. All the Jews were frustrated and angry. John the Baptist was alone in having the audacity to stand up to Herod and condemn him for sinning in the palace. Now…

It’s not what we know that identifies us as Orthodox Christians, but Whom we love. Our parishes struggle to find ways to educate our children and adults in the true faith. We teach them creeds, prayers, church history, doctrine, liturgical theology, the meaning of icons, and all that is right and necessary. But if they leave without having found a…

All of the Orthodox Church services of worship begin with either the terms “bless,” or “glory.” We continually thank the almighty Lord for the blessings of grace showered upon us, His unworthy servants, and we return those blessings with our love. We also express our gratitude with songs of glory to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It reminds us of…

What happens to you when you get angry? Actually you surrender to anger or, better stated, you indulge yourself in anger. Everyone except the frustrated parent can smile and ignore a child in the throes of a temper tantrum. But anger at any age or stage of life is just a reversion to the infantile self-indulgence of a tantrum. The result is that the…

To gain some understanding of the significance of our blessed Lord’s crucifixion from the point of view of His contemporary Jews, we require the knowledge of the Old Testament together with our own creative imagination. We need to have in our mind’s eye the temple of Jerusalem. We must walk as it were through the separate sections and find ourselves…

Interesting to put the question to any daring to speak the Word of God on behalf of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ. With what boldness, self-confidence bordering on arrogance so many present themselves as spokespersons for the Lord in our day. Rarely are they asked: “By what right do you dare speak in God’s Name? Who gave you the authority…