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
Evil corrupts and divides. That is how evil works. It perverts the good, using elements of the good to destroy the good from the inside. Evil wants to appear to be good, and to be united with what is good, so that it can take more of that good and corrupt it, thereby rendering the good null and void. Unity with evil only leads to corruption and division, while on the other hand, what evil takes, still possesses some good,... Read more
“But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 Jn. 3:17 RSV). John pricks our conscience in this passage. He wants us to know that if we abide in God with love, God will abide in us in love. But this love must be a love for God which has us reach out and take care of others. If we love... Read more
Martyrdom, baptism in blood, cleanses martyr from all their sins. Passion bearers, those who renounce the path of violence all the way unto death, imitate Christ in the way they accept death. Passion bearers, when confronted with death, do not fight back. They do not resist their killers. Instead, with a great love for humanity and a disdain for violence, they show love, compassion and forgiveness even to their murderers, imitating the way Christ faced his own death. Martyrs, unlike... Read more
The incarnation must not be treated as the ultimate form of deus ex machina; when it is perceived as God acting in a contrived manner to fix the problem of sin, its purpose is misunderstood. God the Son, the Logos, entered creation in order to deify it, completing and fulfilling what was intended for it since its inception. Evil perverted creation, but it could not stop God’s plan for it. It was important for the incarnation to engage evil, to... Read more
The March for Life should be cancelled. Yes, COVID19 is one reason why it should be cancelled this year, because if they want to promote life, they need to protect the people who would go to the march and those who would otherwise come in contact with them. But, more importantly, the March for Life serves a political purpose, one which runs contrary to the promotion of life. This can be seen in the way in 2020 Donald Trump used... Read more
“For if any one thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Gal. 6:3 RSV). If we understands this statement correctly, we should realize that no one is something in and of themselves. Everyone comes out of nothing, for God created us out of nothing, ex nihilo. Outside of God, we are nothing. Thus, as St. John of Kronstadt points out, when we realize our inherent nothingness, we should discern how only God can be said to... Read more
Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, said it is better for the body to lose its eye or hand than to use them for evil: If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that... Read more
Jesus sanctified the world through his baptism; he brought his saving grace to creation. What was touched by his grace could and would spread that grace to others. Water, by itself, is just water; water filled with grace is far more. Just as we bathe in water in order to cleanse ourselves, we can now receive the water of baptism, filled with grace, and be spiritually cleaned. That water can be filled with grace, making it holy water, shows us... Read more
Roger Bacon, a 13th century Franciscan philosopher-theologian, began his Opus Majus, “Major Work,” with a discussion on the four obstacles he believed which diverted people from the truth: “Now there are four chief obstacles in grasping truth, which hinder every man, however learned, and scarcely allow any one to win a clear title of learning, namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our... Read more
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