The trembling soul should not be given the false medicine of Eternal Security, but the true medicine of the Eucharist. Salvation is not just a single experience; it is also an ongoing journey. On that journey one continually returns to God for renewal, forgiveness, and cleansing.
One is reminded of the aphorism of JFK: “You cannot negotiate with those who say ‘What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable’”. It is possible to enter into debate with anyone. But honesty should compel us to make our true intentions and goals known.
The history of the Christian world is the history of dramatic interrelationships between God and His new people. The Lord chose and raised up a hitherto unknown people who were sitting in historical darkness. The Lord gave them Himself, and it was good for them, as long as He was their main wealth.
The white man of the Old World will be further content to think that he has the right to live and sin as he wishes. But the malevolent paupers with the Koran in their hands will, like nomads taking over a desert oasis, occupy the living areas piece by piece, biting it off block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.
After several centuries people can get used to any mistake, or come to love any distortion. But objectively speaking, the nature of this distortion does not change. It only grows into the consciousness of those who are used to it. However, the threat it carries has not gone anywhere.
God is an obvious reality, but man is a paradoxical being—God’s beloved creation, fallen away from real life and caught in some fiction, in a kingdom of crooked mirrors—and has lost himself in this kingdom, feeling his great torment and discomfort from his being in this false life.
If one disbelieves in Christ and Pascha, then our cultural of denial of death makes good sense. We can’t do anything about the fearful fate which awaits us, so why think about it? Eat, drink, be merry, and watch television. But if what the Church says about Christ and Pascha is true, we don’t need the lies or the denial.
You don’t necessarily have to be interested in the details of the lives of earthly kings, but no matter what, sooner or later, the decisions they make will affect you.
Nations (and individuals) who ignore their wounds and griefs do not leave them behind – they bring them forward and repeat their battles endlessly. Subsequent generations who never knew the first cause, become the unwitting bearers of the latent violence and destruction that they have inherited.
Millions of people have learned to read, but have not learned how to cull their choices of books. Tons of DVDs are available to millions of people, but the ability to cull a pearl from the manure is not.
If the church were to produce a new canon which read, “If anyone teaches that a woman may be ordained to the sacramental and holy priesthood just as men can, let him be anathema!” would these Orthodox feminists sign on and agree with the canonical sentiment?
Literary fiction, which evolved out of the texts found in the Gospel, turn the reader toward himself, toward his own conscience. And the more similarities between the lives of Dorian Gray and the reader (external celebrity purchased at the price of internal compromise), the more obvious and irrefutable the inner parallels.
An ISIS fighter: ‘I was forbidden at the Gates of Heaven…’ (161,187)
A New Twist in the Investigation into Flight MH17 (37,540)
Grandmaster Putin’s Trap (30,790)
Pakistan’s Asymmetrical Response To Trump Is A Clever Way To Flip The Tables On Afghanistan (27,123)
What The Guardian Is Afraid Of When Attacking Honest Syria Reporters? (25,910)
Andrew KORYBKO 
Nikolay STARIKOV 
Vladislav SOTIROVIC 
Gulam ASGAR MITHA 
Vladimir KOZIN 
Eric MARGOLIS 
M. K. BHADRAKUMAR 
Fr. Lawrence FARLEY 
Thierry MEYSSAN 
Peter CHAMBERLIN 
Michael AVERKO 
Fr. Andrey TKACHEV 
Fr. Stephen FREEMAN 
Nauman SADIQ 
Adam GARRIE 
Iqbal ALIMOHAMED 
Oliver RICHARDSON 
Sophie MANGAL 
Matthew COOPER 
William DUNKERLEY 
Comments