Reflections in Christ

by Fr. Lawrence Farley

A Lethal Legacy

A friend of mine just returned from back east where he had attended the funeral of a friend and was mightily impressed by it—but not in a good way.  The deceased was an older woman who had died, leaving behind a grieving family who loved her very much.  The eulogy applauded her as a devoted wife, a steadfast friend, and an apparently perfect…

Dying Like a Disciple

Every year on August 15, the Church bids us come to the final bedside of the Theotokos and learn how to die.  It is an important lesson, and all the more important because the secular world offers us no clue.  Indeed, the world seems intent on denying the reality of death.  In earlier and saner ages, everyone mostly died at home, surrounded by loved…

Learning Lessons from the Loaves

The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves bears a significance and symbolism like few others of Christ’s miracles, which is perhaps why it is the only miracle from His ministry that we can find in all four Gospels.  It is, in fact, an image of the Church.  That is why in the catacomb art the Church’s Eucharist is symbolized not, as one…

The Mathematics of Misery

One of the many memorable lines from the classic The Princess Bride says it admirably.  In that film, the then-mysterious Man in Black says to the Princess, “Life is pain, Highness.  Anyone who says differently is selling something.”  This is not cynicism, but consensus, for it expresses a universal feeling.  Life is filled with pain and loss,…

Letting Down the Nets

When the Lord called His apostles to follow Him, He told them to let down their nets for a catch (Luke 5:4).  After they took in a tremendous catch of fish and had brought it to land, He called them to follow Him, and they left everything and followed Him (Matthew 4:22).  After that catch that day, their lives were never the same.  Before that day,…

The Fathers of Nicea: Why Should I Care?

Those for whom ancient history is irrelevant and who equate “old” with “out-dated” (or better yet, “medieval” with “barbarically primitive”) will have trouble appreciating the Fathers of the First Council of Nicea, since they met and produced their work well over a thousand years ago, in 325 AD.  How could a creed so old be remotely…

The Longest Week

What is the message for us on Paschal evening, when the churches celebrate Paschal Vespers?  When we read the story of Thomas’ doubt and anguish, we want to jump ahead to finish the tale, and reflect on how Christ at length came to Thomas to resolve his doubts, fill him with joy, and elicit the saving cry, “My Lord and my God!”  But that story…

Saint Basil the Great Polemicist

It is easy looking back at Saint Basil and his patristic compatriots from such a distance to forget that they too lived in times of struggle and uncertainty.  As we look back at the fourth century we can view it as the beginning of Byzantium, the start of a long stretch of glorious Christian ascendency, and we somehow assume that they knew at the…

Praying the Great Litany

It is easy to miss the significance of the Great Litany.  It comes so early in the Divine Liturgy, immediately after the opening “Blessed is the Kingdom,” that if one is somehow late in getting to church one can miss it entirely.  Its true significance can be seen by reflecting upon its original position in the Liturgy and its abiding function. …

Lenten Cuisine

The first question which presents itself during the Lenten season is one of cuisine:  “What on earth can I eat since the Church forbids eating meat, fish, and dairy?”  It is a reasonable question, but must not be allowed to skew one’s understanding of what Lenten fasting is all about or give the impression that Lent is primarily about…

Sanctity of Life: Covering the Massacre

Newspapers are always happy to cover bad news—as the old saying has it, “If it bleeds, it leads.”  Stories of kindness and heroism are not considered news in the same way as are stories of atrocity and disaster—and massacre.  Consider the coverage given to the slaughter in Paris of late associated with the Charlie Hebdo magazine.  Consider…

Living In Galilee

Christians read the Hebrew Scriptures with different eyes than do their Jewish neighbors.  For Jewish readers their Scriptures are primarily about—well, themselves.  That is, the goal of their sacred history remains the nation of Israel, established and secure in their own land, each one sitting under his vine and fig tree, and worshipping in the…

Christianity Makes No Sense

Christianity makes no sense.  Just ask self-proclaimed intellectual giants like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens.  They will tell you that Christian claims are crazy, outrageous, and intellectually scandalous.  The very idea that a man who lived in Palestine two millennia ago, who wrote not a single line that survives, who never travelled…

Surveying the Old Testament

On the two Sundays prior to Christmas, we focus on the Old Testament.  Two Sundays before that blessed day, we focus liturgically upon all the Fathers of the Old Covenant, and on the Sunday before Christmas, we focus upon the actual ancestors of Christ, as reckoned through His legal father, Joseph.  Throughout all this time, we meditate upon the…

“The Magic of Childhood”

“The magic of childhood” is a phrase which has become so proverbial that there is a Pinterest selection dedicated to it.  Childhood is wistfully hailed and enthusiastically applauded as a magical time, golden with innocence and purity.  We view children with dewy eyes because of a special magical quality they somehow possess which enables them to…

Learning from Brittany

On Saturday November 1, 2014, Brittany Maynard committed suicide.  She had been diagnosed last spring with a rare form of brain cancer and given six months to live.  She decided she did not want to live that time suffering from her disease with its increasingly severe seizures, and so she moved to Oregon with her husband and took the overdose of…

Dealing with Anger

The apostles’ hearts were filled with rage.  The Master was heading toward Jerusalem, and He had sent messengers on ahead to secure lodging for Himself and His apostles.  Some of the messengers had entered a town of the Samaritans, but when the Samaritan villagers learned that Jesus was making for Jerusalem, they abruptly refused them all…

Do You Know Who You Are?

One of the Church most pressing needs today has nothing to do with money, or with weathering scandal, or with achieving greater importance in the eyes of the governing powers.  The Church’s most pressing need today is for its members to rediscover who they are.  I say this because there is every evidence that many Christians have forgotten who…

The Church Richard Dawkins Cannot See

Richard Dawkins is blind.  Spiritually blind.  I say this not to pick on him especially; multitudes of people are spiritually blind.  In one sense, it is nobody’s fault; we were all born that way.  And unless our eyes have been opened through the Holy Spirit and holy baptism, we remain that way.

One of the many things Mr. Dawkins cannot see is…

The Light of Thy Countenance

In the translation provided in our official OCA Divine Liturgy book of the festal material for the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross there exists a puzzle.  All of the material there is quite appropriate to the feast—the psalm for the First Antiphon is Psalm 22, which begins with Christ’s cry of dereliction from the cross, “My God, my God,…