I remember in the balmy days before the pandemic struck and shoved every other news story out of the journalistic limelight that there was a lot of attention paid to the environment. Up here in Canada, for example, one day the news was dominated by the protests over the building […]

Recently I was talking with a dear Christian friend of mine about the challenges presented by the Covid pandemic and he opined that the pandemic is winnowing all the churches. I couldn’t help but agree. For city-slickers like myself who might not know about the process of “winnowing”: in the […]

Every week I meet with our catechumens, inquirers, and other faithful for a time of instruction, which includes a Q & A session.   Lately we were talking about how Christians were to live differently than the world around them, and one of the catechumens asked the excellent question, “How do […]

In an issue of the Road to Emmaus journal I read a wonderful interview with Fr. Artemy Vladimirov, a priest in Moscow, in which he spoke at length about the sacrament of confession. In it he spoke of the well-intentioned but ultimately false and unhelpful zeal of some confessors who […]

Recently the Public Orthodoxy blog published a post by Rodoljub Kubat, entitled, Rebellion at the Heart of the Bible. Usually I would not respond to a piece referencing a revolt spreading throughout a land as far away from our own as Serbia. But given the revolts and rioting happening here […]

I think it was in grade eight that I first learned about the Water Cycle. According to this science lesson, the air is full of water vapour. Condensation occurs as the sun causes the water to evaporate and rise into the sky, so that the water vapour turns back into […]

I remember once hearing a light-hearted and self-deprecating bit of comedy from a country music station, in which the person repeatedly said, “You might be a red-neck if…” followed by a series of scenarios. For example, “You might be a red-neck if you cut your grass and find your truck”. […]

The year 2020 will be remembered by Orthodox as the year without Pascha. At the beginning of the year, and even at the beginning of Great Lent, it hardly seemed possible. I remember the second Sunday of Great Lent here at St. Herman’s. We had served the Liturgy of St. […]

This Lent we have lost so much. I am reminded of images that I sometimes see on television of people returning to their homes after forced evacuation due to flood or fire and of them pawing through the ruins to discover how much of what they had before still remained. […]

National disasters and times of war seem to bring out the crazy in all of us, and the present Covid crisis is proving to be no exception. One finds some people suggesting that it is all a conspiracy and that no such virus actually exists, while others tell us that […]

As I write these words, we are under effective lockdown because of the spread of the Corona Virus, often referred to as “Covid 19”. In the current absence of a vaccine, the health departments of the various governments here in Canada have determined that the only way to slow the […]