I was asked today… Abouna, why is it that some people have a deep connection with God for some time and then fall into sin, while they are very aware that they are breaking God’s heart? How does God see these people? I mean maybe before they experienced Him, they didn’t know Him at all […]
Some have imagined that in the resurrection our human bodies will be spiritual, like the angels, and even that the body of our Lord Jesus was of this nature, and was no longer physical after his resurrection. The passage of Scripture which is used to justify this opinion is 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, in which St […]
One of the most interesting and moving documents from the early Church is the small diary kept by Perpetua, a catechumen of the Church of Carthage, in the days before her martyrdom with other Christians in about 203 A.D. When we read her own words we find ourselves brought into the life of the earliest […]
In this post I wish to consider one of the works of the early Father of the Church, St Irenaeus. This Irenaeus, one of the most important of the second century teachers of the Church was born in Smyrna in about 130 A.D., and had been taught by the equally famous bishop of Smyrna, St […]
In this further reflection in detail on the writings of the Fathers about the work of Christ on the Cross, I intend to consider some of the Letters of St Severus. He was a prolific correspondent both before his consecration as Patriarch of Antioch, during his years in Antioch, and then during his forced exile […]
When we consider what Christ achieved on the Cross, what his death and suffering means, we discover that there are a variety of analogies and mutually illuminating explanations which the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church use to express this mystery of God experiencing death. Much of the controversy which sometimes surrounds this subject […]
I don’t want to write a long article about the modern day rejection of the idea of absolute and transcendent truth. I spoke about this in a lecture I gave at the SCOOCH youth conference in New York this year. The video of my lecture is here…. Video Lecture It is an important subject, because […]
Surely no one wants to live a life without purpose. It would be the same as living a life without value or meaning. Waking up and knowing that nothing we might say or do was of any consequence is a soul crushing experience. yet for the Orthodox Christian, more than any one else, there should […]
Most of us desire to be guided by God. We do not want to wander aimlessly through life, or make wrong choices. But it is very easy to find ourselves confused about what God wants from us, and desires for us. This is especially so when we are considering actions and choices which have significant […]
Who is the Church for? The answer to this question depends to a great deal on another. What is the Church for? When I was a member of an Evangelical congregation, and involved with various Protestant ministry drawing together people from a wide variety of Protestant groups, we had a sense that the Church was […]