Part of the Law of Moses forbids moving the boundary marker. It reads, “In the inheritance which you will hold in the land that the Lord your God gives you to possess, you shall not move your neighbour’s boundary marker which men of old...
Our Lord’s parable of Lazarus and the rich man is unique among the parables, for in this parable alone one of the characters has a name. The parable begins, “There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted...
I spent a lot of the Divine Liturgy this last Sunday looking at a woman’s face. The woman was St. Elizabeth the New Martyr, and I was looking at her face because one of the faithful had brought her icon to church for me to bless, and...
My guess is that nothing can stop Orthodox conversation and divide a room quite so fast as someone loudly asking the question, “How ecumenical are you?” If ever I was asked the question, I think that I would feel compelled to answer the...
Of late my computer has been helping me out with my spelling rather a lot. In particular, whenever I try to write to someone about “prosphora”, it assumes I meant to type “phosphate” and autocorrects me as a type. If I am not careful, I...
A great gulf separates those who read the Scriptures over the shoulders of the Fathers and those who read over the shoulders of modern secular academics. The former are open to the possibility that the ancient worldview might have...
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Franklin Graham (son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham) opined on NBC Nightly News that Muslims pray to a “different God” than do the Christians. Around the same time the Reverend Jerry Vines,...
Christianity makes no sense. Just ask self-proclaimed intellectual giants like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. They will tell you that Christian claims are crazy, outrageous, and intellectually scandalous. The very idea that a...
Presented for your consideration (as Rod Serling would say): a great and powerful society, yet one whose laws and culture were a standing offence to God and in open defiance of His Law. At the heart of this society stood a principle that...
The hardest thing that a Christian can do in the world is to keep his balance. One thinks here of that wonderful image of G.K. Chesterton, where he spoke of the Church as having “the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses,...
The last few weeks of my life have been spent writing a commentary on the Book of Daniel, which of course includes pouring over the so-called “Benedicite” (to give its western name), the long hymn found in chapter three and put on the...
We don’t often hear the word “perversion” used much any more, and anyone using the term in print to describe any form of sexual practice better have a good lawyer handy. Some people are proving themselves very aggressive these days, and...
Though Marcion has been dead for a long time, his legacy is still among us. Marcion was a heretic in the second century who said that the Old Testament was un-Christian, and that the God of the Old Testament was not the Father of our...
“Dialogue” is a happy word, along with other happy words like “inclusive”, “tolerance”, and “acceptance”. It is assumed by our culture that all reasonable people are open to dialogue—that is, open to hearing the other person’s point of...
An article about a presentation made in my neighbouring province of Alberta some time ago made me wonder if I didn’t live in the Twilight Zone rather than Canada. Twelve years ago, a baby girl was born in Alberta by the name of Wren...
