Reflections in Christ

I suppose I cannot be the only pastor who has often been asked by his parishioners what the unforgivable sin is that Christ mentioned in the Gospel.  Admittedly it can sound a bit alarming, especially to tender consciences.  Christ said that “every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven”…

The words of the title of this post were spoken by Reza Aslan, author of a new book on Jesus entitled, Zealot:  The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.  Despite his boasting of being “an expert in the history of religions,” Aslan actually makes his living as an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at a local college, so that in writing his…

The story of the deliverance of the Gadarene demoniac reappears often in our Orthodox lectionary, so it seems that someone thought we really needed to hear its message.  You know the story:  Our Lord crossed the Sea of Galilee with His disciples and disembarked on the eastern shore, in the region whose main city was Gadara.  There He met a demoniac,…

Old guys like me might remember a theological comment on the human condition heard over the radio in 1967.  A group called “The Youngbloods” offered the following assessment of mankind in their song “Come Together”:  “Love is but a song we sing.  Fear’s the way we die.”  They might have gone further, for fear is not only the way we…

In 1996 National Geographic magazine featured an article on my old hometown of Toronto, in which a Torontonian commented on how the great urban city has changed over the years and become more multi-ethnic.  The aging Torontonian delighted in his city’s diversity, and compared it to the more monochrome Protestant Toronto he had grown up in prior to…

In one of my favourite Woody Allen films, “Love and Death” (a spoof on such Russian novels as War and Peace), the following dialogue takes place between Boris (played by Woody Allen) and his cousin Sonia (played by Diane Keaton):

Boris: “What if there is no God?”

Sonia: “Are you joking?”

Boris: “What if we’re just a bunch of…

In May, I was privileged to visit the Holy Land, including the building at the summit of the Mount of Olives, the so-called Imbomen (from the Greek en bouno, “on the hillock”).  In the days of Egeria in the fourth century, it was not so much a chapel as a circular colonnade, for Egeria writes in her famous travelogue that it was a place where…

I have only one thing on my bucket list, and through the kindness of a friend I was able recently to cross it off the list.  That is, I have fulfilled my life-long dream to see Jerusalem and venerate the holy places.  My friend and I spent a wonderful and breathless week or so there.  We visited many holy sites such as Nazareth and Bethlehem, but…

We live in a Facebook world—that is, in a world characterized by the presence of what has come to be called “social media.”  Much ink has been spilled describing this revolutionary new phenomenon, some people lauding it, and some lamenting it.  But whether it is laudable or lamentable or some combination of both, it seems to be here to stay. …

At the end of October in 1840, the celebrated author Hans Christian Andersen (famous for his fairy tales) left his native Denmark for an extended trip in the east.  He wrote about his travels in his book A Poet’s Bazaar: a Journey to Greece, Turkey and Up the Danube.  Andersen was an experienced traveller, who had visited Italy some years before. …

“A tough week.”  This is how President Obama described the week of April 14, 2013—a week that saw acts of terrorism in Boston and a tragic fire and explosion in Texas compounding the other challenges with which life is often filled.  Boston also experienced the emotional roller-coaster of lockdown, manhunt, shoot-out, and arrest.  A tough week…

The Boston Marathon, first held in 1897, is a time of joy.  People from all over the world gather in Boston every year on Patriots’ Day, the third Monday in April, to test their endurance and celebrate the nobility of the human spirit.  Usually 500,000 gather for the happy event, including about 20,000 registered runners.  On the third Monday of…

In a well-known passage from Saint Matthew’s Gospel about one of Christ’s resurrection appearances, the passage read at the baptismal service, we find the following words:  “The eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed.  When they saw Him, they worshiped Him, but some doubted” (Matthew 28:16f).  A…

In the rough and tumble of world of online polemics against Christians, it is common for our detractors to object that our Faith is fatally simplistic and essentially violent.  Many say that religion is the cause of all the wars that were ever fought (possibly forgetting that the greatest blood-lettings in the twentieth century, World Wars One and…

In most Orthodox churches, the image of the Mother of God towers over us—sometimes literally, as her icon fills the upper apse of the church temple, proclaiming there how she united heaven and earth by her willing assent to the Incarnation of the divine Messiah.  In all her icons, she is a majestic figure—regal, composed, serene.  Many icons of…

Just the other day I opened a Bible and was saddened by what I read.  For there, on the initial fly-leaf, were written in beautiful calligraphic script the words, “Presented to Cathy Ruth by Mom and Dad, April 18, 1993.” In the subsequent pages allowing space for the recording of marriages and deaths, I also found a number of names and dates,…

It is difficult these days not to find the Roman Catholic Church when one tunes in to almost any news programme.  In response to the historic resignation of Pope Benedict, Roman Catholic cardinals, charged with the task of electing his papal successor, are flocking to Rome, along with multitudes of journalists, charged with the task of covering it…

The Pharisees get a lot of ink in the New Testament, perhaps surprisingly for a sect that hasn’t existed in its original form since the first century (though much of their approach has survived in classical Rabbinic Judaism).  Since one can no longer find a listing for “Pharisees” in the Yellow Pages, isn’t all the New Testament denunciation…

In the Gospel for the Sunday of the Canaanite Woman (Matthew 15:21-28) we find a phrase that some have found troubling.  The troubling nature of the phrase was brought home to me in a university lecture I once heard, for the lecturer said that in this passage “Jesus called a Gentile woman a dog.”  He thought it rather odd, and evidence that…

The Great Feast of the Meeting of the Lord, which we celebrated on February 2, commemorates the time when Simeon and Anna met Christ in the Temple after His Mother came there to present Him to the Lord and to offer the sacrifices for her ritual purification after childbirth.  On February 3, we celebrated the post-feast of this great event.  And,…