The Great Fast, Lent, is a time of spiritual reflection. The forty days not only reflect Jesus’s journey into the desert, upon which he fasted for forty days and faced severe temptations before the start of his public ministry, but also the years which Moses and the children of Israel were said to wander between Egypt and the Promised Land. It is a time of struggle, a time of purification, and hopefully a time of spiritual enlightenment. By how it... Read more
Government is meant to serve justice, and when justice is served by the government, then its authority is to be accepted and followed. However, when government fails at its duty, when it promotes injustice in the name of justice, when it establishes laws which invalidate justice, then its laws are no laws, its authority is to be denied, and indeed, its leaders are to be condemned. The common good is to be served by the government, not the good of... Read more
In one of his annual letters given out on the first of September, the beginning of the new ecclesiastical year in the East, Patriarch Bartholomew wrote of the combined guilt of evil leadership and their irresponsible followers for the destruction taking place on the face of the earth: Unfortunately, the coercion of nature to act destructively against itself and the human race not only derives from the will of certain evil leaders but also is supported by many who deny... Read more
This is the second and concluding part of an essay begun here. There are limits to what any text, including the Holy Scripture, can say. Holy Scripture represents and points to truths beyond itself. It uses conventions, some which were more readily understood at the time of its compositions, some which are still easily understood, to represent the transcendental reality which lies itself. The truth cannot be contained in words, but it can certainly be exemplified and symbolically presented by... Read more
There are several purposes for which Holy Scripture can be used. First, it is to reveal the Word of God, Christ, in iconographic form. Its texts, when collected together, establishes the foundational image the church uses to proclaim the truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ. The book, when looked as a whole, points to Christ, so that all of it can be said to speak of Jesus. The Torah, and with it the prophets and wisdom literature which emerged... Read more
In the weeks before the Great Fast, Lent, the Byzantine tradition prepares the faithful with spiritual reflections on both the judgment and mercy of God. Beginning with the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, the faithful are reminded of the superiority of humility over vainglorious religious legalism, for humility, not external piety, is shown to be salvific. Next, there is the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, where the loving-kindness of God is emphasized, reminding all who fall into the... Read more
Abba Pambo asked Abba Anthony, “What ought I to do?” and the old man said to him, “Do not trust in your own righteousness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach.”[1] Like many others who had gone into the desert, and would later find themselves honored for their sanctity and wisdom, St. Pambo had received spiritual and monastic direction from St. Anthony. He started his monastic career as a young, illiterate ascetic. He used... Read more
When you said that you voted for Donald Trump based upon your prudential decision, because you thought he was the lesser of two evils, I disagreed but could understand the argument. Trump did not promise to be the lesser of evils; he only promised evils. Be it as it may, Trump won. Now we have a rogue President who has no interest in the rule of law: he denies the authority of the judiciary to override his illegal decisions. He... Read more
Self-deception lies behind much, if not all, of the evil we do. There is always some good which we use to justify our sin. We find some excuse which we use to justify our actions not only to ourselves, but to those who question us for the sins which they see coming from us. We might know that the ends do not justify the means, and we might state it, but we then find every excuse to ignore the implications... Read more
The excellence of the Logos is revealed in the various ways the Logos can be encountered, both in accordance to his eternal Divinity, but also in his assumption of humanity in the incarnation. The divine nature of the Logos, in which the Logos is one with the Father and the Spirit, is the foundation for his personal activity. As a person, the Logos assumed human nature, revealing to all the divinity is a variety of ways, both in and through... Read more
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