A friend who had spent some time at a Trappist monastery told me a story that illustrates this point [that those closest to us may often be our “enemies”]. There was a monk there who had impressed my friend with his kindness and humility. When my friend was leaving the monastery, he went to say […]
Read MoreIt is not accidental that the undivided Church of the first eight centuries and its historical continuity in Orthodoxy in the East based its catechesis of the faithful, that is the announcement and transmission of her truth, chiefly on the liturgy. From the liturgical cycle of the Church’s services (vespers, matins, the Liturgy, the hours) […]
Read MoreWhat the modern man does not understand, that to which he has become blind and deaf, is thus the fundamental Christian vision of death, in which the “biological” or physical death is not the whole death, not even its ultimate essence. For in this Christian vision, death is above all a spiritual reality, of which […]
Read MoreThis great Feast of the Church and the icon celebrates a fundamental teaching of our faith—the Resurrection of the body. In the case of the Theotokos, this has been accomplished by the divine will of God. Thus, this Feast is a feast of hope, hope in Resurrection and life eternal. Like those who gathered […]
Read MoreUntil now, I didn’t think it was possible to show … self-confidence without alienating myself from the very people with whom I wished to identify. But now I began to understand that the confidence I felt could only be in direct proportion to the confidence I had in the people around me. The higher I […]
Read MoreFrom The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor … a certain glibness on the altar is more than just a bare possibility. For when we do anything, however important, over and over again, when by repetition we reach the point where we could do this thing without thinking, the danger is that we will […]
Read MoreIn order to understand the depths of this danger and its genuine horror, one must first of all sense the essence of what we have termed “unity from below,” in contradistinction to the “unity from above.” It is that unity that, however much it is fallen, dead and “lying in evil,” lives to the same […]
Read MoreWhat does it mean to bless the kingdom? It means that we acknowledge and confess it to be our highest and ultimate value, the object of our desire, our love and our hope. It means that we proclaim it to be the goal of the sacrament–of pilgrimage, ascension, entrance–that now begins. It means that we […]
Read MoreIn a few hours, the plane that brought me to this country [South Africa] crossed over oceans and countries which have been a crucible of human history. In minutes we traced the migration of men over thousands of years; seconds, the briefest glimpse, and we passed battlefields on which millions of men once struggled and died. […]
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RJB
October 31, 2020
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