What is Man? Series (2)- Male and Female Engaged in the Holy Struggle

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Beloved in Christ,

Before we start discussing anything, we have to recognize that there is a difference, an enormous difference, between the state of Creation before the Fall and after the Fall. We also have to acknowledge that we only know, through our senses and through our rational knowledge, the formal, the fallen world. All we know about the state of the cosmos, before… Continue reading

What is Man? Series (1) – The Abortion Debate

“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’” (St. Anthony the Great)[i]

Beloved in Christ,

The raging war that is going on in our culture for some time has at its center the understanding of man and his relationship with the Divinity, if one even recognizes one. In other words, it is a problem of anthropology. To understand this, according to the well-known Christian Orthodox bioethicist, Tristram Engelhardt, of blessed memory, one “ought [to] acknowledge that the[se] disputes […] are located in a fundamentally religious conflict: a conflict between a traditional Christian… Continue reading

Lost in New Year Resolutions

Every New Year countless resolutions are sworn into completion: I want to be more fit, I want to lose weight, I want to quit smoking, I want to speak Spanish, and so on. Most of these ambitious dreams, however, remain just that, dreams left behind together with the prepaid fee for the gym program that never happened.

I, for one,  have always enjoyed taking the challenge of learning a new language and so I’ve been trying to learn proper Greek for a while but, somehow, the mastering of this tongue continues to elude me, despite my best efforts. I even prayed for it with no success, well, it was mostly my fault. See, many years… Continue reading

Like through a mirror dimmly

mirrorLent is upon us and as we start cleaning our fridges of the food that we feasted upon until this point, we also start a much deeper interior cleaning of our inner being to prepare our souls for the joy of the Resurrection of our Lord.

Every year though, Lent looms over as a big and scary thing, mostly because it is something that stretches us to our limits. How much should I fast? How long can I resist standing? How many prostrations I should do? How many services are there to attend? Is it Pascha already? As thoughts like this pass through our minds we boldly move ahead with the discipline of fasting and the heightened rhythm… Continue reading

Blessed is the Way – On Suffering Death and Resurrection in the Orthodox Church

Judgement 001This is a talk I gave on January 31st at the NTOM conference “Falling Asleep in the Lord: An Orthodox Perspective on Dying, Death and Grief” at St. Demetrios Greek orthodox Church in Fort Worth.

Blessed is the way in which thou shalt walk today, O soul, for a place of rest is prepared for thee (Prokeimenon of the Apostle, Funeral Service)

Reverend Brothers, Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

When confronted with the reality of death most people reveal a deep-seated fear of such an event beyond any human control. This is especially acute nowadays when the science of medicine has made great strides in curing diseases that only a century… Continue reading

The Tao of Whatever and the Abolition of Man

Entrance in JerusalemLiving in a multi-cultural, post-modern world brought to us by the new era of rapid communication, we are more and more exposed to cultures that are, or at least seem to be, very remote from our own. Although many of them are in fact foreign, there are times when we find in them something that strikes a sensitive chord with us. Take for instance the concept of “Tao,” found in the homonym religious movement, Taoism, but also in Buddhism, Confucianism, and even in Eastern Martial Arts.

An easy explanation of Tao would be a path or way of life. James Legge, a famous researcher of Chinese culture, described Taoism as “the exhibition of a way or method of… Continue reading

The conflict that never was – How science and Christianity can live together in harmony

Creation_heavensTalk given at the North Texas Orthodox Missions 2013 event called “How to Talk with Your Children and Grandchildren About God”.

You can also listen to the live recording of the talk on Ancient Faith Radio here. Note: The live version differs a bit from the written version.

In preparing for this talk I had some interesting conversations with a couple of friends regarding the possible conflict between science and, for a lack of a better world, religion or spirituality in general.  Comments varied from saying that religion has no right to interfere with scientific truth and religion is only a way to cope with yet… Continue reading

Beyond Semantics

One of the interesting linguistic phenomena is semantic change, or in layman terms, the change in one of the historical meanings of a word. Archbishop Dmitri of blessed memory, for example, was always making waves during pan Orthodox Lenten Vespers when he was blessing the fasting meal using the prayer “Our Lord Jesus Christ bless Thee the meat of Thy servants”. He always enjoyed clarifying that the original meaning of the word meat in Middle English was actually food, of all varieties, not just of animal origin. It made for sure an interesting conversation over baked potatoes.

There are other changes, however, that occasionally can draw attention to cultural shifts in the society. Take for instance the word holiday… Continue reading

Why We Come to Church or Entering the Bridal Chamber

Christ is risen!

A new church opening is a major event in the life of a parish that gathers together the entire body of its members in the extraordinary joy of a mission well accomplished. The reason why parishes build such new traditional Church buildings, beside the obvious capacity requirements, is to bring the community closer to the ideal Orthodox way of worshiping, through spaces, shapes and finishes that are appropriate for its intended liturgical purpose. This means that a new church will not only host more people but will also allow them to worship in a more meaningful manner.

As a community gets closer to enter a new… Continue reading

The Uncomfortable Church

On the fifth Thursday of Lent in the Orthodox Churches we chant the service of the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete.  It is a monumental work of hymnography with more than 250 odes, or verses, to which we also add the lengthy reading of the life of St Mary of Egypt. This makes it probably one of the longest services of Great Lent. If one also a counts the number of prostrations performed after each ode, it becomes also one of the most uncomfortable services for any casual observer.

But the length of the service and the physical discomfort of the standing and the prostrations is not the… Continue reading