When Christ shows us love and mercy, doing so despite our many sins, we should not think that means he approves our sin, and therefore think we can continue sinning without restraint. Rather, his love and mercy towards us proves the opposite, for they are given to us to help transform us, to lead us away from sin. It is important to understand how he does this: he doesn’t confront us with hostility, trying to shame us because of our... Read more
We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, which means, we are to love ourselves. “ Let us,” St. Caesarius of Arles wrote, “possess such great charity, brethren, that we can love all men with our whole hearts. If you love all mankind as yourself, there will not remain a door whereby sin can enter into you.”[1] We are not to be selfish, nor are we to be prideful, thinking ourselves to be greater than all (or most) others. We... Read more
One of the most common, and also, insidious ideological errors which pervades politics is the notion that evil exists in and of itself, that it serves as its own principle, being self-subsistent. Once this notion is accepted, that someone or something which is deemed as absolutely evil, having no good in them, it is easy to be led to believe that such evil must be completely annihilated. History consistently shows us where this line of thought leads: people become agitated... Read more
Anger, even if it is justified, is quite powerful, capable of causing us to act without thinking, that is, without wisdom; if we let it guide us, we likely will end up doing something which we will later regret. This is when, even if it is justified, it is something which needs to be tempered, lest we let it distract us from what we should actually be doing. It will have us ignore the greater good by looking at only... Read more
The birth of Mary, the Mother of God, was a special event in human history. Her parents, Joachim and Anne, were childless and ridiculed for years. They were told by their peers that they would have been given a large family if they were good and faithful servants of God, but because they had been denied children, they were told that there must be something wrong with them, some great sin which they have committed. This is because it was... Read more
At the heart of Christian praxis is love, a love for God and a love for one’s neighbor. If we love someone, we will want to know about them, and the more we know about them, the more we will discern things about them to love. There are many ways we can come to know someone. We can watch them and what they do. We can talk to them. We can listen to them and what they have to say.... Read more
One of the things Christians must realize is that their doctrines and dogmas, however important they are, can become distorted when they are written down. This is because many, if not most, Christians end up thinking what is to believed is found in the letter of such written declarations instead of the spirit which lay behind their creation. This has never been the intention of those who wrote them down. Christians must learn and engage the intended meaning behind them,... Read more
I’ve been a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien and his works for most of my life. Looking back, I think my initial interest came from Rankin/Bass and their versions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King, though I remember seeing Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings with my family. We also owned a lp of The Hobbit, which I listened to when I was young. All of these influenced my initial take on Middle Earth, so that when... Read more
In the Byzantine tradition, the first of September begins the new ecclesiastical year, echoing the belief that Christ begun his mission to the world (by entering the synagogue and preaching) on September 1. It is also the day which tradition suggested the world was created. The Byzantine use of September 1 for their new ecclesiastical year is symbolic, pointing to the beginning of creation, but also the beginning of Christ’s public ministry, tying them together to the Byzantine spiritual life.... Read more
St. Moses the Ethiopian early on learned that no one was completely outside of God’s love and providence; that is, he found out that anyone, and so, everyone, could be saved. But he also understood the kind of transformation people needed for their salvation could be and would be difficult, perhaps taking all of one’s temporal life, if not beyond – but no matter how difficult it is, such transformation is possible, and we should do what we can to... Read more
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