Quite some years ago a parishioner of mine was going through some very deep waters, a terrible time of darkness, a long tunnel with seemingly no light at the end. It was for this person that I wrote the Akathist Jesus, Light to Those in...
Needs within the Church change with the times. Take, for example, the need for theological education: in older days parish priests in Greece did not need to have any formal theological education, nor were there any institutional...
The term “schism” is not much used in ecclesiastical literature these days. That is partly because referring to a church group or person as “schismatic” is considered a form of profanity in these ecumenical times and also because...
Many historians have noted that Christ did not write any books or leave written instructions about how He wanted His Church to be run. He did not write a systematic theology to explain the Faith or anything like The Institutes of the...
In a recent blog post I wrote in closing about the violence inherent in the ideological Left. In a piece entitled “The Pro-abortion Argument from Viability” I concluded by saying this: “The drive for access to unfettered abortion is...
September 7 is a very special day for me: my dad was born on this day in 1924. Were he still with us, he would turn 101 years old today. That’s a lot of birthday candles. My dad was born in the little Francophone town of...
First of all, I suppose I should apologize for the title of this blog post. I couldn’t resist the temptation to multiply alliteration. Could have been worse; I momentarily thought of calling it “The Cacophonous Character of Catechisms...
The West seems determined to deconstruct as much of its Christian past as thoroughly and as quickly as its can. Witness the provocatively lewd nature of Gay Pride parades (I will spare you the slides); witness the left’s enthusiastic...
In the early morning of September 6 way back in 1934 Frank Lenwood suffered a tragic and fatal fall. He had always been fond of mountaineering and was mountaineering in the French Alps when he slipped and fell to his death in the...
Recently I had my first experience of virtual reality (that is, if you don’t count watching the news on the CBC, our Canadian equivalent of CNN). My grandson had graduated from high school and my youngest daughter wanted to treat her...
Effective communication is a matter not simply of chosen words but also of how those words are spoken—i.e. of the tone of voice used when speaking. As C. S. Lewis once observed, “In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses...
Towards the end of his book That All Shall Be Saved Dr. David Bentley Hart makes the following extraordinary statement: “I have been asked more than once whether, if I were to become convinced that Christian adherence absolutely requires...
What was the Church like in 60 A.D.? We do not know as much as our curiosity might demand, but we do know some things. In many ways the Church back then was very different and in other ways it was same. I would like to look...
Now that I am retired from active (and stipendiary) ministry I find that I have more time to write and devote myself to my first love which is studying and teaching the Scriptures. Much of my previous work on the Scriptures is already...
They were fighting to the end. The Jews who had retreated into Jerusalem, the Holy City of God, were determined not to surrender to the besieging Romans but would hold out, daily expecting divine deliverance. Certainly only...
