I still have the Bible that Mom and Dad got me one Easter. That this Bible, a RSV, has a dark green cover, my favorite color, was one good fruit of the seventies. Nobody was going to make the parents raised in the Age of Aquarius stick to basic black on the leatherette covers. There are notes from Dad’s sermons, Sunday school, and a few attempts at poetry. The many scrawling notes confirm two things: I never could spell. The... Read more
Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the Cross. He who is King of the angels is arrayed in a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery. He who in Jordan set Adam free receives blows upon His face. The Bridegroom of the Church is transfixed with nails. The Son of the Virgin is pierced with a spear. We venerate Thy Passion, O Christ. Show... Read more
We do what we must, take joy when we can, knowing an eternal holiday is coming. A holy day for most of history had to be a work day, because most people have been farmers. The goat and chickens needed feeding. If you had a cow, the cow needed milking. There were, naturally, jobs that could be put off, yet nature naturally acts according to the nature of the various plants and animals. Just as we have to wash, eat, and... Read more
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? We are God’s workmanship as a we and not alone, never alone, because we are God’s own. The deepest truth in this passage is not what we should not do to our bodies. Our pastor pointed out that sometimes this passage is used to forbid assorted things (tattoos! smoking!), with the focus on... Read more
Easter, Pascha, makes our life normal. Death is defeated by life. We are given a future. We are all the Bride of Christ and the Bridegroom is coming! There is joy, natural, healthy, joy in the Bride of Christ coming to the Bridegroom. This is Pascha: normality restored. Jesus Christ will bring us as His consort to a city that will be kept in safety for all time: the City of God. When humans rejected God in the Garden, we... Read more
Love is so mighty, so foundational to reality, that hatred is overwhelmed in the sea of charity. Just as the proud tyrants of Atlantis were swept away by a mighty wave, buried in the sea, so the good God will sweep away our hatred, our pride, and bury them. As the faithful get ready for Pascha, we are reminded of love: we await the Bridegroom. He will come for His Bride and we need only be ready for the splendid party! The Bridegroom... Read more
Celebrate a good Father who always rejoices in his children. Today recollect how history should have been if all our choices had been good and all of the “is” of history had been as our choices “ought” to have been. If every mother had been Mary and every father Joseph what would the cosmos be like? Palm Sunday is a moment in time when the “oughts” of history that the pious heart longs to see for one day became an... Read more
“Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.” Before the New Testament was completed, Christianity was African. Africa was, is, and always will be a powerful center of the Christian life and message. The patriarchate of Alexandria (Egypt) was a center of scholarship and culture that radiated out to lands such as Aksum with her great King Kaleb. One remarkable leader was Peter, Patriarch of Alexandria, scholar, preacher, servant to the poor, and defender of orthodoxy against external... Read more
Patriarch Hermogenes loved the freedom to worship more than his own life. Could Russia be liberated? Could the Faithful be free of foreign rule? Moscow was in the hands of a foreign power in 1612. A wonderworker, a man who served the poor, left a heritage of great beauty, roused the people to fight, saved his Church, but at the cost of his own life. Service to one’s nation is not the greatest loyalty, but is part of the duty of... Read more
The trends were never his friend, just God. He refused a Christianity of a particular place, people, or time for a Faith kept in safety for all time by the prayers of the Mother of God. The man who became a saint, Patriarch Tikhon, was a professor in a seminary. This is a job that rarely produces saints, but Tikhon could not be bought by the state or bent by intellectual trendiness. He wanted the truth and vowed death to... Read more
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