4/23/2011
Fr. Stephen Freeman
Likening a human being to a computer works for many people. It does so because we have a distorted sense of how human beings live and function. This distortion, strangely, has its roots in theology.
In the great images of the Holy Week services, the horror of man’s sin and the suffering of the Creator leading to the great triumph of the resurrection, I suddenly discovered that eternal, indestructible beginning, which was also in that temporarily quiet spring, hiding in itself the seed of a total renewal of all that lives.
The sin of the world is revealed in the death of God.
Where does God fit in a world of equals?
There is a great spiritual battle that is being waged in the human heart. This battle is the true struggle of our time.
We are able to give thanks always and for things, not because we think suffering itself is good, but because the One who alone is good has Himself become our suffering.
Our hearts long for “Jerusalem,” indeed. But the city we long for is not the project of William Blake’s dreams. It is ironic that Blake lived in a culture that had intentionally destroyed all of its monasteries, murdering many of its monks. And then it wondered where Jerusalem had gone.
So, what is the narrative that explains our vote? Do we imagine that history depends on such a thing, that the world is being constructed through politics?
Public liturgy is particularly difficult for a nation that has slowly changed the notion of “secular” into the absence of religion, or anything readily identified as such. The emotional needs of the nation have not changed – only its way of expressing them.
Secularism is not the rejection of God, but the assertion that the world exists apart from God and that our task is to do the best we can in this world.
The gospel of Jesus Christ rightly identifies chaos at its source and bravely goes into its yawning maw. It is there alone that death becomes life, order is re-forged, and the world emerges from the watery depths and becomes dry land once more.
Rating: 8.2|Votes: 17
Finding the “core of life” (for want of a better term) is synonymous with the naked experience of the soul, the deep life of our existence.
Rating: 8|Votes: 25
All such loyalties (country, family, sports team) do not belong in the same breath with the love of God. It’s like saying, “I love God and my cellphone.” Nothing belongs in a category with God.
Rating: 7.5|Votes: 29
A holy hide-and-seek, the pattern is not accidental nor unintentional. It is rooted in the very nature of things in the Christian life. Christianity whose God is not hidden is not Christianity at all. But why is this so?
Rating: 8.8|Votes: 33
How is it that merely gazing at something, we are changed into its very image? This question takes us into the heart of Biblical and Orthodox understanding.
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 37
We move rather than repent. We say that we “make progress” but it is all a lateral move, without depth. The new start becomes a substitute for actual renewal, something that can only come through true repentance.
Rating: 9.2|Votes: 15
This “truth of all things” is the revelation of the world as sacrament. The waters and all that is in the world is a means of communion with God because of His Divine condescension.
Rating: 9.6|Votes: 10
The nostalgia, I think, was for the commonality, an experience that banished loneliness and gave meaning to even the smallest actions. The prosperity that followed was hollow. For what purpose do we now shop?
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 106
Where do the demons lurk in our own time?
Rating: 8.5|Votes: 23
I have been slowly reading my way through John Gray’s book, Seven Types of Atheism. It is not an argument with Atheism so much as a study of its underpinnings, strengths and weaknesses.
Rating: 7.7|Votes: 20
It is occasionally the case that we remember precisely where we were at a point in time, in which everything is before or after that moment. It is a Kairos, a particular moment that changes everything.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 23
Providence is not a theory about how things are – it is the very nature of salvation.
Rating: 9.3|Votes: 31
No matter our thoughts on the subject, the general landscape of a certain portion of the world is utterly married to wealth and property. Christians who live in such societies will most likely continue to find ways to accommodate the gospel.
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 21
The most revealing thing within human history is the appearing of Jesus Christ in our midst. In this coming-among-us, we see the face of God. That face alone can tell us who we truly are.
Rating: 9.2|Votes: 33
At its deepest level, I came to see that becoming Orthodox was a renunciation of comparisons and the empty efforts to improve the Church.
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 39
Perhaps the most difficult personalities encountered in anyone’s life are those that can clinically be labeled “narcissistic.”
Rating: 9.4|Votes: 36
If we stand back a moment and look at our world from the perspective shown in Daniel, we will understand that the “we” in a nation’s life includes something “off-world” as well.
In a time when the world is entering ever deeper into its madness, it is difficult for Christians not to be drawn in. The voices calling us to the barricades (on both the Left and the Right) easily describe their cause in Christian terms.
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 60
Modernity is not about how to live rightly in the world, but about how to make the world itself live rightly.
Rating: 9.9|Votes: 23
This letter should become a classic of Orthodox writing and witness to the faith that sustained so many and is today being resurrected in so many places. The triumph of the Resurrection so transcends his prison cell it’s a wonder that the walls remained.
Rating: 8|Votes: 40
How is it that our lives exist only in such a shared manner and yet many want to image that our salvation is entirely individual?
Rating: 8.1|Votes: 10
This, I think, points to a proper (and rather simple) meaning of the term. It is not just some form of “social justice.” There is something more cosmic and eschatological about it. Wherever the Kingdom comes, its “righteousness” is made manifest. What does that look like?
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 34
If you want to strengthen your prayers, make friends of the poor. This story is a great illustration...
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 29
American Christmas demonstrates the amazing influence of literature on a culture.
Rating: 9|Votes: 65
America has an odd view of the poor. It is a view that reveals much about the underlying theological assumptions that create and support our culture.
Rating: 7.5|Votes: 19
We imagine ourselves to be the stars in our own drama (we do not wear the red shirt). But we live in a culture where everyone is somebody else’s Red Shirt.
Rating: 9.8|Votes: 15
From my childhood, I have memories of the phrase, “Great White Throne of Judgment.” It comes complete with an abundance of frightening images and threats. It is the last possible moment before all hell breaks loose and the preachers at long last get one right.
Rating: 9.9|Votes: 13
Morality (good behavior) has a way of self-justification. The morally competent all-too-frequently see themselves as the products of their own self-discipline and inner character. They fail to see that they are doing little more than conforming to the social morality of their class.
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 24
A very poignant question was sent privately to me after my last post. It asked how I was able to go about my parish work when I was battling with depression and anxiety.
Rating: 9.6|Votes: 116
Somewhat problematic, I think, is the not infrequent distinction made between anxiety and depression as physical/medical problems and as so-called “spiritual” problems. There is no such distinction. We do not have “spiritual” problems that are not also physical problems, simply because we do not exist as some sort of divisible creatures.
Rating: 9|Votes: 3
The cycle of prayers assaulting Hades reaches a climax on the day of Pentecost. On the evening of that Sunday, the faithful gather for Vespers. During that service, they kneel for the first time since Pascha. And in that kneeling, the Church teaches them the boldness of prayer, the cry of human hearts for God’s solace and relief.
Rating: 6|Votes: 2
The first three days of Holy Week are collectively known as the End. And it is this End that forms the character of judgment. The end of something always reveals the truth of a thing.
Rating: 8.2|Votes: 5
The English vocabulary exceeds 200,000 words. Thus, it is interesting when English doesn’t quite have a word for something. This is the case with the language of worship.
Rating: 10|Votes: 9
The teaching of the Orthodox spiritual fathers is that we should forgive everyone for everything. Only in this can we be “like our Father in heaven.” But make no mistake: it is scary, hard, and without promise of safety or reward.
Rating: 5.5|Votes: 6
Many who read the New Testament see it as advocating for and supporting the oppressive structures of its time. They argue that it is patriarchal and pro-slavery.
Rating: 9.9|Votes: 18
Each person is his own authority. And I will add, that if every person is his own authority, then there is no authority.
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 10
The modern project holds that the world can be improved and made better. It also holds that human beings can be improved and made better. And finally, it holds that the means of that improvement and betterment are political.
That Christ is the precise image of the Father is put forth in the book of Hebrews (1:3). This is refined in Nicaea’s language of “homoousios” (“same substance”). But while that language speaks of “being” or “substance,” we easily lose sight of what is being put forward.
Rating: 2|Votes: 1
In our voluntary union with Christ and His Cross, we bear a little shame, and bring the cycle of shame and violence into the silence and healing of paradise.
In both Latin and Greek, the word translated as “person,” actually refers to the face, or a mask (as a depiction of the face). The face is not only our primary presentation to the world, and our primary means of relationship, it is also, somehow, that which is most definitively identified with our existence as persons.
Rating: 1.8|Votes: 4
It is easy to say, without fear of contradiction, that no group within Christianity holds greater reverence for the name of Jesus, in word and in practice than Orthodox Christianity.
Among the greatest difficulties faced by Orthodoxy in the New World has been the relative prosperity of an immigrant Church. Prosperity makes for a Church that is nicely comparable to denominational America, but it does not produce saints.
Rating: 10|Votes: 1
The adherents of modernity not only feel certain of the correctness of their worldview; they believe that it should be utterly obvious to any reasonable person. Resistance is reactionary, the product of ignorance or evil intent. But from within classical Christianity, this is pure heresy, and perhaps the most dangerous threat that humanity has ever faced.
We keep the feast of Christmas, not by consuming or affirming our place within the world of consumption—we keep the feast by entering more deeply into the life of communion—with God and with others.
I once had a conversation with a friend about monastic hermits in the desert. He dismissed them as of no relevance. “Who even knows that they’re there?” He asked.
Rating: 10|Votes: 5
We humans are a curious lot. We want to know everything about our business and much about what is not our business. In a world that has deeply internalized the notion that everything is a democracy, we cannot bear hearing that not all knowledge is meant for us.
Rating: 9|Votes: 1
Most of the actions and rituals of the Orthodox life are quite simple. It requires approaching “things” as gifts from God. Everything in all of creation is icon and sacrament, a gift that bears the revelation of Christ, through Whom all things were made.
Among the greater mysteries of the New Testament are those surrounding the Mother of God. A large segment of modern Christianity has become tone deaf in this regard, a result of centuries of antagonism towards certain aspects of older tradition.
The prominent place of thanksgiving within the life of the Old Testament seems strangely obscured by most Christian treatments. The system of sacrifice is often misunderstood.
All of us stand falsely accused. Our lives are a strange mix of virtue and vice.
Virtue is not a common word in our culture. It sounds somewhat “antique.” For some, it has very little meaning, or a meaning far removed from its original.
Rating: 10|Votes: 2
I think it is possible to speak of the “soul” of a culture, its inner sense of itself and reason for being. How does it judge success? What does it mark as a hero?
We are always “watching” from somewhere else, always engaging the false self with its criteria of judging, weighing, deciding. The world becomes a beauty contest but never a wedding.
The Fathers often point towards human rationality as an excellence that sets us above the rest of creation. In modern thought, however, we seem to think that we are somehow distinct from the rest of creation, with little in common.
Can a nation ever sin? If so, how can it be forgiven?
Rating: 8|Votes: 3
We live in a culture of fast food, and tend to want grace to operate on the same speed track. Some versions of Christianity make grace as “quick” as walking the aisle. This, of course, is misleading.
Rating: 8|Votes: 4
Within the list of sins that come up in the Scriptures, “drunkenness” has its honorable mentions. However, there is a deeper addiction, far more pervasive, that plays a greater role, both in Scripture and in our own lives: greed.
We live in an age where the passions are carefully studied and used as the objects of marketing. Those things that are sold to us (even those that supposedly appeal to our intellect) are marketed to our passions. Apple computer famously researches the “feel” of its packaging, presenting a sensual experience that is associated with quality, precision and value. It is a successful strategy across the whole of our culture.
Among the more problematic words in the New Testament is the Greek hilasterion. It is translated as “propitiation” in some of the older English Bibles, and “expiation,” in newer ones. It’s actual meaning is neither.
Understanding the true nature of the “end of things,” or, in theological terms, “eschatology,” is a difficult task at first. It breaks many rules of space and time, and requires a certain shift in perspective.
A Christian must say that there is a natural spiritual compass within every human being, inasmuch as we are created in the image of God. Some would say that the spiritual compass is distorted by the world and its many noises. I think this is mistaken. What is missing in any human life is not the compass itself, but the willingness of drawing near to read it.
Rating: 10|Votes: 4
A very apt word for the world we live in is: disenchanted. It was first used by Max Weber and a number of others to describe a certain aspect of the modern world – the absence of the sacred.
Thinking is among the most misleading things in the modern world, or, to be more precise, thinking about thinking is misleading.
A modern or contemporary Christian would generally see this as a quaint ceremony, perhaps going so far as to think that the Gospel book is being used to “symbolize” the hand of God (meaning nothing more than a psychological notion). But in no way would a contemporary believer think that God’s hand is actually in the Gospel Book.
I often struggle when people speak of their “sins.” Indeed, it is not unusual to be asked, “Is ___ a sin?” The question always makes me feel like a lawyer.
Tolkien and Solzhenitsyn (and others) gave great attention to the “littleness” of our lives. Our spiritual lives are surely no less specific. Our salvation is found in the little things, as is the truth of our existence.
Rating: 1|Votes: 1
St. Paul notes that “faith works through love”. This describes the very heart of the ascetic life.
Rating: 4.9|Votes: 10
Our exchanges point to an inescapable aspect of reality: it is filled with contradictions or at least something that we perceive as contradictions. Reason, as it is commonly used, is quite abstract. Syllogisms step back from reality and speak in terms that are actually quite removed.
Everything you do, all your work, can contribute towards your salvation. It depends on you, on the way you do it. History is replete with monks who became great saints while working in the kitchen or washing sheets. The way of salvation consists in working without passion, in prayer….
If there is a true normal, it is deeply spiritual. It moves between transcendent good and a frightful evil. And the movement is not between people or classes or political persuasions, but within each human heart. We should not ignore what is going on around us. However, when we ignore the inner life of the heart, we remain unhealed and in the darkness.
Rating: 6.5|Votes: 2
For a variety of reasons, I have been spending a fair amount of time with A.I. Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer who died in 2008.
At every turn, the source of our hope is simply what we have seen accomplished in Christ. We have His promises: I go to prepare a place for you, and if I prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. (Joh 14:3) The fullness of the life of the Church teaches us how to hope and how to pray. It does not teach us what has not been given us to know.
Rating: 8.5|Votes: 19
The monastics in the British Isles, like the monastics across the Christian world of Late Antiquity, became a primary force within the whole of Church life. They were missionaries. They were librarians. They were copyists. They were authors. They were hymnographers. They were a hedge against the power of the state. They were protectors of Orthodox teaching.
Rating: 9.8|Votes: 6
In Orthodoxy, this imagery is the coin of the realm in the hymns surrounding Pascha. All of Holy Week is predicated on the notion of Christ descent into hell and radical actions of destroying death and setting free those held in captivity. St. John Chrysostom’s great Paschal Homily, read in every Orthodox Church on the night of Pascha, is an “alley, alley, in come free!” of salvation.
The apex of the year for Orthodox Christians is easily Holy Week and Pascha. I had the opportunity in 2008 to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. To receive communion in the tomb of Christ, or to stand at Golgotha is no little thing. And yet, the services of Holy Week within one’s own parish are a greater thing.
Rating: 6.7|Votes: 9
The path of modernity carries no humility. It breeds pride, and frequently contempt. Failure is its nemesis. We blame ourselves for laziness and sloth, certain that a little more effort will make the difference.
Rating: 7.5|Votes: 2
As a young priest, I fancied myself to be a “problem solver.” A good parish, I thought, was a happy parish. Conflict and crisis were things to be managed. I even took a number of courses in seminary that were focused on “management.” And this, I believe, was the secular option, the breeding ground of despair and unbelief.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 6
To recognize that the world is wonderful and larger than you know, is to begin to understand your place within it. You do not control it, nor can you ever. It is too frequently the case that people speak of God as though they knew very well what (who) they were talking about.
The directness of Christ’s commandments (“forgive your enemies”) and the consequences of ignoring them (“if you do not forgive others neither will your heavenly Father forgive you”) can easily make forgiveness into a heavy, soul-crushing burden of spiritual failure. Understanding the true nature of forgiveness, however, carries us into the very mystery of our existence and reveals why such importance is given to its practice.
Orthodox Christians make a beginning of their Lenten discipline with the forgiving of everyone for everything (theoretically). The ritual expression of forgiveness can easily and often be little more than a ritual. It reminds us of the need to forgive, but does not, on its own, achieve what it expresses. This should not be surprising – forgiveness is perhaps the most difficult spiritual undertaking.
Rating: 10|Votes: 3
But the Solzhenitsyn-inspired thought asked, “But what about those who sometimes act like sheep and sometimes act like goats?”
I have had occasion to be with a saint on at least three occasions. Mind you, this is my opinion since none of the three are canonized.
Rating: 6.4|Votes: 5
Since all of this is true, and pretty universal, it is deeply surprising to discover that there are great saints who have chosen to make fools of themselves for the sake of their salvation and the salvation of others.
Rating: 5|Votes: 1
Ecumenism is back in the news and with it comes a deluge of misunderstanding and theological confusion.
Rating: 2.5|Votes: 2
Christianity is deeply associated with the word “mystery.” Its theological hymns are replete with paradox, repeatedly affirming two things to be true that are seemingly contradictory.
No spiritual activity permeates Orthodoxy as much as veneration. For the non-Orthodox, veneration is often mistaken for worship. We kiss icons; sing hymns to saints; cry out “Most Holy Theotokos, save us!” And all of this scandalizes the non-Orthodox who think we have fallen into some backwater of paganized Christianity.
The relationship between Old and New Testaments is much less straightforward than most people realize.
One of the most striking features of the Gospels is the frequent response of the Disciples after the resurrection of Christ: doubt.
Rating: 10|Votes: 8
There are two thoughts I want to offer in this article. The first addresses the illusion of the better world and making a difference, while the second addresses what it is that we can do.
It is solely and completely the gift of God and subject to no human effort.
Rating: 8.3|Votes: 4
At a certain point in history, people began to be told that they could take charge of history; they could change the world and make it a better place.
I want to turn our attention in this article to how our sentimental psychology distorts our concept of God and what it means to be in relationship with Him.
Rating: 7|Votes: 4
The following article offers some thoughts on the purpose of fasting.
We cannot live in the abstract and suddenly attend to the real. We cannot “care” and then turn to love. “To live” is an active verb. The passions of mass experience are something else.
Rating: 5.5|Votes: 4
Modern people do not live – they dream. And their dreams sometimes become nightmares.
Rating: 6.8|Votes: 8
Shame is the unbearable emotion, according to psychologists. It is also the first recorded human emotion in Scripture.
Of course this is fiction – but it is fiction based on how many Christians think of their spiritual lives. Christ is the physician of our souls. The Church, the Fathers say, is a hospital for sinners. So why do we think like Bob and his doctor? Why do we think that who we are and how we are doing can be described by how well we adhere to rules?
Rating: 7.8|Votes: 4
A deep failure of modernity is its jettisoning of soul stories. Contemporary music is simply insufficient for the soul. The result can be a struggle for the life of the soul – to exist without being swallowed whole by the consumption that surrounds us. “Man shall not live by bread alone.”
People, including children, make sense of the world through the stories they know. Children without stories are forced to stumble through the world without a clue.This is not only true of children, but of people in general.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 7
Among the most noble words ever applied to human life, its meaning has been changed and placed in service of the greatest reduction our humanity has ever faced. It is time to take back our rationality.
The concept of the One Church shifted during the Reformation. I offer a case in point as well as a reflection on how it changes our current understanding.
Put yourself in the fourth century. There is only one Church, and that Church is One.
The Church is steadily diminished in the life of the nation, privatized and relativized. Its loyalty becomes subsidiary to the loyalty of the State.
Rating: 9.9|Votes: 7
Prayer is directing our hearts outside of ourselves and towards God. Pray. Kindness places the other ahead of ourselves. Be kind. Love God. Love His Cross.
Thomas More was martyred by Henry VIII in England for his refusal to approve of the king’s adulterous marriage to Anne Boleyn. Like St. John the Baptist, he preferred God’s law to man’s. He died as a lawyer and a prophet. It is a lesson worth considering.
What good is a compass that points to itself? It means nothing. It is a compass for people who are going nowhere.
When the gospel becomes an expression of personal desire and happiness, it has been hijacked by a foreign narrative. What do the pleasures of this world have to do with the Cross of Christ? Christ did not die for our self-fulfillment.
Rating: 9.2|Votes: 10
Christianity should be seen not just as a set of beliefs, but as a set of practices.
The most difficult part of my Orthodox experience to discuss with the non-Orthodox is the place and role of the Mother of God in the Church and in my life. It is, on the one hand, deeply theological and even essential to a right understanding of the Orthodox faith, while, on the other hand, being intensely personal beyond the bounds of conversation. I am convinced, as well, that the Orthodox approach to Mary is part of the apostolic deposit, and not a later accretion.
First, the Orthodox Church is not better than some other Church. If you declare such a thing to be true, then you have actually denied the truth of Orthodoxy. We believe the Church to be One. We believe the Church is One because God is One. And, as in the case of God, it is One of which there is not two. If Orthodoxy is The Church, then it’s not the better Church. It is not something that can be compared to anything else.
The soul is our life and is the proper anchor of our existence. The consumer-self is ill-equipped for true existence. The loss of choices and its incipient narcissism plunge the consumer-self into despair. People in the modern world often shop in order to treat their depression.But the soul is our true life. It is only in the soul the the inherent suffering of the world makes sense. The consumer-self cannot bear suffering and supports every false hope that promises relief from suffering.
For many, the idea that we are somehow responsible for the sins of others, or can repent on their behalf is counter-intuitive and deeply troubling. It is distinctly non individualistic. However, it is a cornerstone of Orthodox devotion. Dostoevsky presented a very popular version of this teaching in the words of the fictitious character, the Elder Zosima, in his The Brothers Karamozov.
The most essential proposition within this philosophy is that reality itself is a “social construct,” that is, our experience of the world is formed, not by the world itself, but by the social interactions and agreements by which we agree to name and describe the world. The world is what we think it to be.
Rating: 10|Votes: 17
It is little wonder that the American Dream is so powerful and popular. The alternative is nothing anyone would choose.And yet, the American Dream may be the greatest obstacle to salvation the world has ever known.
Rating: 5.4|Votes: 19
On one of the roads leading into my small city a billboard has recently appeared. It is part of a larger campaign by a nationally known evangelist who is to have a revival in Knoxville. The sign is simple. In very large bright yellow letters (all caps), the sign says: HELL IS REAL. In small letters beneath it, in white, that can be read as your car nears the sign is the statement: so is heaven.
What do we mean when we speak of the personality? Do we mean a certain set of memories? A collection of experiences and preferences? Is it our set of skills and techniques? How many of these would we have to lose for the personality and personhood to disappear?
Rating: 9.4|Votes: 15
Do we cooperate in our salvation? Do our efforts make a difference?These questions lie at the heart of a centuries-old religious debate in Christianity.
Rating: 7|Votes: 3
I consider it both a strange mystery and a settled matter of the faith that God prefers not to do things alone. Repeatedly, He acts in a manner that involves the actions of others when, it would seem, He could have acted alone.
Can such a man find God, or even be saved? That may sound like a strange question, but it lies at the heart of the modern religious crisis.
It has been noted that forgiveness is often directly tied to repentance. This is doubtless true, but also fraught with misunderstanding. It is important to understand what forgiveness is and is not and what repentance is and is not.
As the day draws near for the US Supreme Court to insist on nationwide approval for gay marriage, a watershed in modern thought has been reached. For although the Supreme Court is not the arbiter of morality, its decisions generally signal a deep level of cultural acceptance.
If Christian morality is not a legal or forensic matter, how are we to think about moral behavior? Does the word have no use for Orthodox Christians? What do we think about when we confess our sins?
There is an abiding discomfort for many with my assertion that we generally do not see moral progress in our lives. That discomfort comes from many directions. Perhaps the most serious is the question that asks, “Then why bother? If we are not making progress in our battles with the passions, why make the effort?”
Rating: 10|Votes: 11
The key in these surveys was to determine precisely what gifts and talents someone had, match them with the right ministry, and fit them all together. The end product would be more effective ministry for the parish and happier parishioners. What priest wouldn’t want such a thing?
Though many struggle with the so-called “Problem of Evil,” the greater moral problem is that of goodness. How do we account for goodness in the world – particularly self-sacrificing heroic goodness?
The human relationship with time is a strange thing. The upright stones of neo-lithic human communities stand as silent reminders of our long interest in seasons and the movement of the heavens. Today our light-polluted skies shield many of us from the brilliant display of the night sky and rob us of the stars.
Rating: 8.2|Votes: 22
“Sin” is a word that is used frequently in a wrong manner. Thus when someone asks, “Is it a sin to do x,y, z?” what they mean is, “Is it against God’s rules to do x,y, z?” But this is incorrect.
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 28
“Acquire the Spirit of Peace and a thousand souls around you will be saved.” This is perhaps the most famous quote of the great Russian saint, Seraphim of Sarov. Many of his icons have this saying on them. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like it. On the other hand, I think there are many who do not understand it. And understanding what he meant can take you to the very heart of Orthodoxy.
Modern thought, including modern Protestant thought, tends to think of “reality” as consisting of only one kind of thing. And this is the way the word is used whether it is referring to green dragons, God, heaven, hell, what I ate last week, etc. My goal is to help readers, on a popular level, understand better the Orthodox teaching on the nature of things – on the world as sacrament – on the character of truth and reality – and thus the nature of our salvation.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 9
The phrase, “behind closed doors,” has become synonymous in English with things being done in secret – generally of an unsavory or nefarious sort. Institutions speak of an “open door policy,” and promise “transparency” to those from the outside. Closed doors have always had a sense of secrecy about them. Sometimes the secrecy hides the darkness of evil, other times it protects us from the wonder of the holy.
In the feast of the Holy Cross, the hymnography at one point makes the statment, “The Tree heals the Tree.” It is one of the marvelous commentaries on the life of grace and its relationship to the human predicament. It refers to the relationship between the Cross of Christ and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Though we commonly use the word “mystery” (for example), popular speech never uses it in the manner of the Church. I cannot remember using the word “fullness,” or even “fulfilled,” in normal speech. More contemporary words have come to replace these expressions. This doesn’t mean that an English speaker has no idea of what the words mean—but, again, they do not understand these words in the manner of the Church. There is a reality to which words such as mystery and fullness refer—a reality that carries the very heart of the Orthodox understanding of the world and its relation to God.
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 28
It is a rhythm. Our modern world has lost most of its natural rhythm. The sun rises and sets but causes little fanfare in a world powered and lit by other sources. In America, virtually everything is always in season, even though the chemicals used to preserve this wonderful cornucopia are probably slowly poisoning our bodies.
The verse in John implies just the opposite – hell (condemnation) is what it is – only because we want it so. As a priest this portrayal of condemnation has been by far the most helpful approach in dealing pastorally with people. It is not the threat of what someone (God) may do to them, but the existential reality of what you are doing to yourself – even now.
