The Church has the same task in whatever land it takes root and finds itself, namely that of making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Trinity, and of teaching them to observe all that Christ commanded. How it...
Quiet confession just between us: nostalgic freak that I am, I still like listening to old songs from the Christian folk group “Children of the Day”. The group was one of the earliest Jesus People music groups, and consisted of four...
I have been reading liberal theology since my college days—i.e. theologies which deny many, most, or all of the major tenets of the traditional Christian Faith. The theologies are as many and as varied as their authors, but they all...
The earliest Church, from the days of the apostles and into the first centuries, had an abundant share of guts and what everyone else regarded as perversity. Its claims were so outrageous that it was hard for the average Jew or Greek or...
I sometimes tell inquirers at St. Herman’s when they ask that I began my Christian life in earnest as a Jesus People—which usually results in blank stares, since most of them are too young to have heard of the cultural phenomenon known...
I cannot be the only one who has had the experience of visiting a non-Orthodox church service and finding it stunningly empty and plain. After long familiarity with Orthodox worship with its icons, incense, candles, vestments, Gospel...
Recently I heard a very dark and serious song about the judgment of God and His wrath against sinners. It was the folk song “Great God Almighty’s Gonna Cut You Down” (accessed here). I was not aware of the song before; apparently it is...
I would like you all to meet a young woman, raised a devout Roman Catholic, who converted to Islam. Her online story reads in part as follows:“I’m one of the many western converts out there…I grew up in a very traditional orthodox...
One sometimes hears of Orthodox Christians converting to Roman Catholicism. In my experience, they usually do not leave Orthodoxy for Roman Catholicism because of their delight in the Novus Ordo post-Vatican II Mass, nor out of...
I know a man in Christ who prays for Marilyn Monroe every day as a part of his prayers for all the departed. He doesn’t pray for her under her stage-name of “Marilyn” though. He prays for her under her real name of “Norma Jeane”, the...
Many people from around the world have kindly contributed to my parish of St. Herman of Alaska in Langley, B.C., helping us and saving us from financial catastrophe as we struggled to build a new church temple on our property, striving...
One would not have guessed that the question of whether to receive a person into the Orthodox Church by baptism and chrismation or by chrismation alone would be a hot issue given the history of reception into the Church. Both methods...
There is today in the Orthodox Church a cult of personality—or, more precisely, of personalities, in the plural. That is, there are a number of men, mostly monastics and wearing the badge of “elder” who have set themselves up as judges...
We conclude our series examining St. Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament. Today we look at his citation of Isaiah 40:3, which reads, “A voice cries, ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of Yahweh! Make straight in the desert a...
We continue our series examining St. Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament. Today we look at his citation of Jeremiah 31:15. It reads, “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children;...
