The question is sometimes asked: “Who may the Church pray for in its Liturgy?” What are proper subjects for the Church’s ministry of intercession? For example, may we pray for the repose of non-Orthodox and intone the “Memory eternal”...
Many decades ago, I was a Wolf Cub. This is not, of course, a confession of lycanthropy, but of my membership in an organization for young boys. The Wolf Cub organization was patterned after The Jungle Books written by Rudyard Kipling,...
To really appreciate and understand the Old Testament, one needs to place it in the religious and cultural context of the Ancient Near East. Having done this, one can then see how much the Old Testament shares with that world and also...
The current Covid pandemic is leaving many people scrambling, doing their best to navigate through (the now proverbial) uncharted waters. Government workers are trying to devise policies to combat the pandemic while inflicting as little...
We conclude our series on the Beatitudes with an examination of our Lord’s words, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” This Beatitude overflows into the next one: “Blessed...
We continue with our series on the Beatitudes. Today we examine our Lord’s words, “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the sons of God.”In our modern culture dominated by the United Nations, the idea of a peace-maker...
Many of our converts at St. Herman’s church in Langley come from the Evangelical churches, and some begin their journey to Orthodoxy by asking if we accept the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Naughty person that I am, I...
We continue with our series on the Beatitudes. Today we examine our Lord’s words, “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God”.We note immediately that the usual rendering of this Beatitude begins, “Blessed are the pure of...
We continue with our series on the Beatitudes. Today we examine our Lord’s words, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy”.Long familiarity with our Lord’s words and Christian teaching generally have desensitized us to how...
Carl Trueman’s newly-published masterpiece The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self opens with an examination of the thoroughly modern statement sometimes heard, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body”. Dr. Trueman observes that this...
We continue with our series on the Beatitudes. Today we examine our Lord’s words, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied”.A comparison with the Lukan version of this Beatitude reveals its...
We continue with our series on the Beatitudes. Today we examine our Lord’s words, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”.The English word “meek” is not a happy word. It conjures up images of spinelessness, moral...
We continue with our series on the Beatitudes. Today we examine our Lord’s words, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”.It is safe to say that the secular world today does not have much time for mourning. It rejects...
We now begin our series on the Beatitudes. Today we examine our Lord’s word, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven”.We have said before that the Beatitudes should not be read as moral maxims applicable to...
I was introduced to the Beatitudes very early in life—in my Protestant Sunday School class, we were given memory work (yep; I’m that old), and one of the things we had to memorize was the Beatitudes. For successfully reciting them, I was...
