“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4) A wonderful, reassuring promise: those who mourn will be comforted. But what kind of mourning is Jesus talking about? Certainly the mourning that we all experience when we lose someone. But that’s not a uniquely Christian thing. All people mourn! Remember what …
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”
In his commentary, Gregory of Nysa - whose feast is today, January 10th - skipped the second beatitude in order to ask a question about the third beatitude: Is it a step down from the first beatitude? From kingdom of heaven down to earth? But didn’t the Word come down to this earth, to meet our lowliness? …
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“Blessed are the poor in spirit”
There is no other way to be raised up to God but by constantly looking upwards and having an unceasing desire for sublime things, so as not to be content to stay with what has already been achieved, but to regard it as loss if one fails to attain what lies above. ουκ έστιν …
A Burning Love for Christ
And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. (Acts 6:5) These were the first deacons of the church. Stephen was a deacon in the original sense of the word. He served, he ministered …
The Divine Child
A sermon by my beloved professor of liturgical theology, Father Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory: The Divine Child. Fr. Schmemann was a remarkable teacher, a true visionary, an advocate of genuine Orthodoxy rather than the false, pretentious versions that are on the increase, especially in North America. He worked tirelessly for ecclesiastical unity, but his …
The Difference a Sigma Makes
I got a bit of a shock tonight during the Liturgy of December 24th. The Gospel reading was the nativity narrative from Luke 2:1-20. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese has been using the Revised Standard Version of the Bible for several decades now, and so do several other Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States. Usually that's not a problem, and …
Our Genealogy
Every year on the Sunday Before Christmas we read the genealogy of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew. It's our annual exercise in getting through a long list of tongue-twisting names, but I look forward to it. I love reading these names. And, as the great Catholic biblical scholar Raymond Brown asserted, this genealogy contains …
The Rules of the Game
As almost always when reading the Gospels, context is everything! It is easy to take today's Gospel reading, the Parable of the Great Banquet, as a moralistic lesson about getting into heaven; or as a rejection of the Jewish people, in that racist and anti-Semitic interpretation that has been popular through most of Christian history and continues to endure in …
From darkness to light
In today's reading from Ephesians 5:8-19 Paul tells us to expose darkness and bring it into the light so it becomes light! This beautifully summarizes what was Jesus’ own customary way of healing and teaching, which was to bring people out into the open, where they could be healed and brought into communion with Christ. So in …
Trinitarian Community
We are living in treacherous and confusing times. In a recent book, I read the following: “the growth in Muslim populations across Europe since the mid-twentieth century runs parallel to secularization or, perhaps more aptly, de-Christianization. As Muslim populations grow and assert their religious identities in the public sphere, Christianity’s public role and influence fade. …
Ancient Answers 