We are to live our lives offering to God, and to all others, our love and devotion. This is what God wants from us. God does not want us to engage religious rituals without that intention. God does not want “sacrifice” if our engagement of such sacrifices do not come from our heart. This is what the prophets had to explain to the people of Israel: it was not the sacrifices which God wanted, but the intention which came from... Read more
When I became Byzantine Catholic, I became more than Catholic, but also a member of the greater Eastern Christian tradition, and not just any Eastern Christian tradition, but the Byzantine tradition, and not just any Byzantine tradition, but the Byzantine Catholic tradition. The Byzantine tradition manifests itself in a variety of cultural situations, adapting itself to meet each situation, which is one of the legacies of the work of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. For me, that cultural background, as with... Read more
I remember growing up and being told that we must do more than talk the talk, but we must walk the walk. It is easy to put on a show, to make ourselves look good by saying the right things. But do we mean what we say? Do we put any effort into living it out, especially when it is difficult to do so? That was a message which I picked up as a Protestant, and not only does it... Read more
Christ expects us to use the grace given to us to grow and become better persons over time. He does not want us to sit back and do nothing, thinking if we do anything, we circumvent grace by placing our trust exclusively on our works. Faith is more than mere belief, it requires action; to be faithful to Christ means we will do as he told us and we will do it out of love. Those who think they should... Read more
The Apostle John reveals to us in various texts under his name, texts coming either directly from him or indirectly through his community, the love he experienced from Jesus. He did so with a desire for us to experience that love for ourselves. What we find in those texts is the constant mention of God’s love for us, but also, the way which we are to embrace that love by acting in and with love in all that we do.[1]... Read more
Humility is important. We can and should be self-critical, but we should not be so self-critical that we end up hating ourselves, incapable of seeing how and why God loves us. We need to be honest with ourselves. We need to accept our imperfections, for then, when we strive to move beyond them, we will be able to accept our need for God’s grace to do so. We must not think we can do it all by ourselves. We should... Read more
One of the ways the Nazis controlled the general populace was through propaganda. Sometimes, the propaganda was aimed at creating an emotional bond with the people so that the people not only agreed to what the regime wanted, but ending up fighting, and wanting destroyed, anyone who denounced what the Nazis were doing. The propaganda encouraged citizens to report to authorities anyone who did not show proper compliance and acceptance to the Nazi regime. Those who were turned in were... Read more
Jesus came to us to save us and the rest of the world. He wants his followers, once they have put their trust in him and joined themselves with him (in baptism), to live out their faith by following the way he lived out his life, loving the world and all of God’s creation. It is not that he expects Christians to do everything he did, for that would be impossible; rather, they should see his way of life as... Read more
God is without gender, and yet, we appropriate and apprehend God through various metaphors, various images which point to some element of the divine, including those with gender. Genesis tells us God have made humanity, male and female, in the divine image: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27 RSV). There are many ways to interpret this verse. For example, one interpretation suggests... Read more
What God created is good; this is why, though sometimes we speak in ways contrary to this, nothing is truly evil by nature. It’s when nature is corrupted, or defiled, so that something or someone is hindered from attaining their true natural potential, we find evil emerging. Thus, while conventionally we treat evil as some sort of thing in and of itself with its own substance or nature, in reality, it is not; evil is nothing but the defilement or... Read more
Select your answer to see how you score.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In