I suspect that every pastor has been asked this question at one time or another, and it usually comes from one of the more junior members of the congregation who has just lost his beloved cat or dog. (The loss of goldfish seems not to...
I sometimes find that it is very depressing not to live under a rock. If I lived under a rock, I would not know how bad things are progressing in the western world, but as it is, with newspapers, Facebook, and the six o’clock news, one...
For most English speaking people in our culture, the Lord’s Prayer ends with the words, “For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.” This is, however, an ecclesiastical and liturgical conclusion, not a part of...
The next petition in the Lord’s Prayer is, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”. These two conjoined sentences should be considered as a single petition in Hebrew poetic parallelism, like the earlier petition, “Thy...
We come now in our series on the Lord’s Prayer to the petition, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. This rendering could perhaps use a little help. It might be more accurately and literally rendered,...
We continue with our examination of the Lord’s Prayer, and come now to the petition, “Give us today our daily bread”. One might be tempted to wonder what one could say about this petition by way of elaboration or explanation, since it...
We continue with our examination of the Lord’s Prayer, and come now to the petition “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. It seems clear that these words constitute a single petition expressed with Hebrew...
We continue in this series with our examination of the Lord’s Prayer phrase by phrase, using Matthew’s version of the Prayer. We turn now to the next petition: “Hallowed be Thy Name”. To understand this petition we must first understand...
We continue this series examining the Lord’s Prayer phrase by phrase, using Matthew’s version of the Prayer rather than Luke’s. We will begin by working from the archaic version of the text as commonly prayed in our liturgical tradition...
What would you do if you knew you were soon going to die? When a number of people aboard the Titanic knew that soon they would perish in the icy waters of the North Atlantic they could think of nothing better to do than to gather...
Much of the hymnography adorning our Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple causes the raising of eyebrows—talk about Mary being escorted into the Holy of Holies by Zechariah the high-priest and remaining there, being...
We Orthodox are fond of referring to the Church Fathers as authorities within the Church. When faced with a new or controversial issue, an Evangelical Protestant will ask, “What does the Bible say?” A classic Roman Catholic will ask,...
Recently I was reading a foreign-language newspaper (well, the English part of it) and there was an article in it about the church. My eyes were first attracted to the article by a photo of an old priest in a stole, having a long white...
For gaining a deep insight into the minds of cross-sections of the populace, you can’t beat blogging. People will say in the comments section of a blog what they really think about certain topics (sometimes on topics only minimally...
In one part of the rite for hallowing water in the Orthodox baptismal service, we read the following: “The priest then blesses the water by dipping the fingers of his right hand into it and tracing the Sign of the Cross three times. He...
