Holiness does not come from knowledge. Holiness does not come from being smart or appearing to be wise. Holiness comes from love. The more someone loves, the more that love transforms them, making them better. God is love, and to pursue love is to pursue God. To act out of love is to follow the way of God. If one holds fast simply to love, nurturing it, developing it, they will develop their relationship with God. They will be like... Read more
Jesus is coming again. When he comes, he will judge the living and the dead. Through that judgement, Jesus will reveal to everyone, including ourselves, who we are. No one will be able to hide from the truth. What we have made of ourselves, who we have become, will be clear. We will not dispute it. There will be nothing which we can dispute, because it will be true, and we will know it is true. We will know ourselves... Read more
The COVID19 pandemic not only continues, its threat to society worsens as mutations are making the virus much more contagious. While several vaccines have been developed which help protect those vaccinated against COVID19, either by helping them resist infection, or to be able to deal with the infection better, it has proven difficult to mass produce  and distribute those vaccines so as to properly ward off the COVID19 threat. Through social distancing practices, it can sometimes seem as if the... Read more
St. Moses the Ethiopian has become a much loved saint. It is easy to be inspired by his story. Once a runaway slave, he found himself involved with and leading a gang of robbers. Eventually, trying to hide from authorities, he came upon a monastery in which he found welcome, and with it, a newfound faith in God. He not only converted to the Christian faith, but through dedication and effort, he was to become a leader in his monastic... Read more
While the should know better, many Catholics are incapable of engaging moral arguments because they have not been taught, or they reject, basic moral qualifications and categories which must be used in order to make a proper moral claim. This has become a serious problem as many Catholics, especially in engaging political or social questions, reduce everything to an overly-simplified position without any nuance. They think if they can say a particular act is wrong, from an objective standpoint, then... Read more
One of the most difficult things for Christians to navigate is the way they are to use the freedom  given to them by Christ. If they are not careful, they will abuse it and lose themselves once again to sin. Sin imprisons us; it detracts from us, harming us and our ability to act, creating habits and conditions which limit us in their aftermath, destroying the freedom which we desire. Christ grants us, indeed, restores to us, the freedom we... Read more
Gnosticism, both directly and indirectly, has a history of confusing Christians concerning the world and our relationship to it. Gnostics denied the goodness of material creation. This led them to declare that the human body, being a part of material creation, was bad. The material world, and all that is within it, was said to be created by an evil (or ignorant) creator. The human spirit was created by, or came from, a good creator, but found itself trapped by... Read more
January 27, 1945. Soviet soldiers, without looking for it, without knowing what they would soon discover, arrived at Auschwitz. The Germans had already given up on the concentration camp. They left it, forcing many of its inmates to go with them on a death march. Those who were too infirm, the elderly and the extremely young, those who could not make such a march, were left behind, as were the bodies of several hundred of the Jews which had recently... Read more
When we look across history, as well as in the present, we can find a mix of good and bad coming from humanity. We see people who have lived good and noble lives, filled with selfless love, giving of themselves to others, even dying so that others can live, even as we can find some living a life of selfishness, taking whatever they can from others, doing whatever they can to appease their own desires, no matter the consequences of... Read more
Preparing the faithful for the Great and Holy Fast (Great Lent), the Byzantine tradition gives us various Sundays with spiritual lessons and teachings which remind us of our need for grace. We are not to presume too much about ourselves based upon our spiritual disciplines. We learn this especially this week with the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisees, a Sunday which reminds us that we should not become prideful, thinking we can and will be justified before God... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In