In 2019 we need the church to be retro enough to withstand the incoming flood, and its leaders to fearlessly proclaim its timeless teaching regardless of the cost. We need such saints as Athanasius, who stood against the flood in his own day.

Like many pastors in the Orthodox Church, I have been asked recently for my opinion about the events currently happening in Ukraine. I am quite willing to give my opinion when asked, since that is my job as a teacher and a presbyter. But I will not do so here, […]

Our secular society seems to believe that if an afterlife exists, it is a uniformly pleasant one, and that with the possible exception of mass murderers, Nazis, child-molesters and a few others who commit monstrous deeds, everyone goes to heaven after they die. The technical and theological term for this […]

Just as it is difficult to gain a true perspective of the size of a mountain when one is actually on the mountain, so it is difficult to understand how revolutionary a change is when in the midst of the revolution. And we are today in the midst of a […]

All the more reason today to know our Master’s manger, and to recognize that all that we have comes from Him. Oxen and donkeys know who their true benefactors are, and we should be at least as smart as they are. Let us give thanks to God, and know that all that we have and ever will have comes from Him.

In fact the church is not an institution, however many outward similarities to an institution it may possess. The term ‘ekklesia’ meant a gathering, an assembly. People assembled or gathered—that is, they left their homes to congregate in a particular place for a particular reason.

The church must become a place of radical rejection of the current insanity, a place where unpopular truth is spoken often and plainly, a place where words do not mean whatever we choose. There is no time to lose. Soon enough the lies of the prophets of immoralism will also sound in every land throughout the West.

We must admit that the Mosaic Law was not God’s final word to Israel, but rather but a step on the way to something truly final—a necessary step, but a mere step nonetheless. Mosaic Judaism and its Law were never intended as God’s final word to Israel. The Law was but a tutor to bring Israel to a better place.

Some forms of Christian spirituality are built upon the false definition of joy as an emotion. For emotion can be induced, especially with music. Singing loudly and long can induce a kind of euphoria and a feeling of well-being, which is then equated with joy. In fact joy is not an emotion, and so can indeed be sustained.

The world is crammed with chaos, with loud distractions, each one screaming like the loud wind on the sea to look away from Christ. But as long as we focus upon the Lord, we can have peace, even in the midst of the storm. The chaos of the world can lash our faces and soak us to skin, but it cannot sink us.

With its multiplicity of rules, canons, and liturgical stipulations, one might be forgiven for thinking that Orthodoxy is primarily about rules and regulations, coupled with a corresponding fear of breaking the rules and regulations. Orthodoxy therefore would then involve going through life fearful of infraction, mistake, misstep, and contamination from […]