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...
Christ’s counsel to Nicodemus that “ye must be born again” (John 3:7) with its assertion that one must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God is arguably the favourite verse of Protestant Evangelicals. It certainly formed the bedrock...
With Fr. Marcus Burch, Chancellor of the Diocese of the South, my host in the area and arranger of the talk at Furman University. The crowd at the Daniel Chapel of Furman University where the talk “Who Goes to Hell?” was given. The...
My grandchildren are growing up in an odd world, much odder than grandpa could have imagined when he was their age. Much of the oddness and insanity in their Brave New World has to do with sexuality and gender. Their school system...
On Monday February 5 I will be flying to South Carolina to spend the following week and weekend with the good Orthodox people of South Carolina and Georgia and giving talks at Furman University and in the local parishes about the...
I have been reading the Book of Daniel for many years since my conversion to Christ in 1970, which also means (a bit unfortunately) that I have been reading commentaries on the Book of Daniel for almost as long. The commentaries came in...
In this last February 2017, the Patriarchate of Alexandria ordained six “deaconesses” in the Congo, an action which was hailed by some as a courageous and much-needed step forward, and decried by others who warned that it was a dangerous...
Good theology can pop up in unexpected places. One such place is the writing of Dr. Seuss, writer of children’s books. My favourite theological work of his is How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a story of conversion and redemption. I...
Polemics has a rather bad name—perhaps not surprisingly, since it comes from the Greek word polemos, meaning “war”. Some people in particular are distressed when they see in Christian writers anything polemical or negative. Why, they...
Our Lord’s baptism, though it formed the beginning of His public ministry when He first stepped upon the world stage (and thus was the first thing narrated in Mark’s Gospel, which focussed upon that verifiable and public ministry) was...
Having observed the annual round of Christmas festivities in my culture for all of my sixty-three odd years, I have come to the conclusion that my culture knows absolutely nothing about the true meaning of Christmas. And this is not just...
In the Divine Liturgy, after the faithful have received Holy Communion, the service draws to its close. In the early Church, after a final thanksgiving for Holy Communion, the deacon simply announced the end of the service by giving the...
Next in this commentary series we examine the Anaphora, which is a Greek word meaning “offering” (the verb form is used in Leviticus 17:5, for example, where it describes the offering of sacrifice). It is a long prayer, punctuated by a...