The term “dialogue” (along with its synonyms, “conversation” and “discussion” and “engagement”) seems to have taken its place alongside the proverbial terms “motherhood”, “apple pie”, and “the flag” as sacred and untouchable. It used to...
The apostles’ hearts were filled with rage. The Master was heading toward Jerusalem, and He had sent messengers on ahead to secure lodging for Himself and His apostles. Some of the messengers had entered a town of the Samaritans, but...
If there is one thing that is often calculated to get the polemical blood flowing in the veins and send one rushing to the barricades, it is the origin stories in the Book of Genesis. One’s understanding of those first eleven chapters in...
Those contending for the creation of a new order of women clergy in the Orthodox Church under the guise of restoring the ancient order of deaconess (such as those at the St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess) make up in tenacity what they...
The Biblical Song of Solomon (also called the Song of Songs) has always been read by Christians on two different levels—that is, it has been read on an historical level and on an allegorical one. This is how Christians read the entirety...
Thomas had a heart that had taken one too many beatings. Despite his often being stigmatized by later generations as “Doubting Thomas” there is nothing in his past record to indicate such a defect of character. In John’s account of...
Orthodoxy is known for its pomp. Or rather (as our apologists and partisans like to say) for “its glorious worship”. We like to share the old story of the delegation from the then-pagan land of the Rus who visited an Orthodox Liturgy in...
In a thoughtful article published recently on Public Orthodoxy entitled, “It’s That Time of Year Again: in Tone Four, ‘The Murderers of God, the Lawless Nation of the Jews…’” Bogdan Bucur offered some reflections about the advisability...
In a well-known passage from Matthew’s Gospel about one of Christ’s resurrection appearances, the passage read at the baptismal service, we find the following words: “The eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain to which...
One often hears the refrain that “the Septuagint is the Old Testament of the Orthodox Church”. (For those late to the party: the Septuagint—often abbreviated as “LXX”—is the Greek translation of the Old Testament made in Alexandria...
In the service of Sunday Matins (in Greek Orthros) of the Orthodox Church we find a series of eleven hymns called “the songs of light” (Greek exaposteilaria or photagogika), short stichs which summarize and describe the content of the...
There is much talk among Christian feminists of the necessity of utilizing “women’s gifts” in the Church and of the subsequent necessary ordination of women in order to allow for this utilization. Obviously nobody wants to have anyone’s...
I cannot be the only Orthodox pastor to have been asked occasionally by my people about the meaning of the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian. In its (OCA) translation, it reads, “O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the...
Devotion to St. David of Wales (and to all the western saints) serves a very important role in the Orthodox Church—it rescues us from the accusation that we are merely “the Eastern Church” (as some textbooks describe us), the eastern...
If there is one thing that is lamentably common in almost all feminist writing it is the apparent inability to reconcile the complementary concepts of ontological equality and hierarchical subordination. Briefly, if two things are...
