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“Above all else, guard your heart” (Proverbs 4:23).

In January of 2019, Patriarch Kirill warned the Orthodox world about addiction to smartphones. While the Church is not opposed to technology, he stated, we must be wary of becoming “slaves to our devices,” and especially slaves to devices “aimed at controlling a person’s identity.” Our dependency on world-wide web technologies will usher in the “coming of the Antichrist.” Of course, this remark triggered a wave of laughter and criticism all across the West and likely makes us squirm a little. Why is that? Why might this make us uncomfortable? How does such advice align with Holy Scripture and the Church Fathers?

Continue reading “Unplug from Antichrist”

“True freedom knows no attachments other than Jesus Christ…True freedom can walk away from anything – wealth, honor, fame, pleasure. Even power. It fears neither the state, nor death itself” (former Archbishop Charles Chaput).

Our Lord challenges our dedication today. In one ultimatum, he expresses what exactly God expects from us: Render to Caesar what is Caesars. Render to God what is God’s. If that does not convict you, look into your heart and get real.

Continue reading “On God and Government”

“If a man insults me, kills my father, my mother, my brother, and then gouges out my eye, as a Christian it is my duty to forgive him. We who are pious Christians ought to love our enemies and forgive them. We ought to offer them food and drink, and entreat God for their souls. And then we should say: ‘My God, I beseech Thee to forgive me, as I have forgiven my enemies” (St. Kosmas Aitolos).

We need to forgive everyone and everything. There is little in life so urgent and so healing as forgiveness. Forgiveness is so strong a medicine, that we must learn to see every insult, every slight, every misfortune as one of the greatest gifts possible: to teach us to forgive.

Continue reading “To Forgive Everything”

Every human action is a religious action.

Modern architecture was brought to America in the 1920’s, by refugees from the German Bauhaus art school. They were the leaders of a revolution, who aspired to design homes and buildings that fostered devotion to the ideals of Marxism. It took like wild fire. Over the next several decades, skyscrapers, apartment complexes, and Christian churches across the country celebrated the new look. America was transformed.

Continue reading “To Serve a King of Kings”

“Come, Creator, Spirit, come from your bright heavenly throne, come take possession of our souls, and make them all your own. You who are called the Paraclete, best gift of God above, the living spring, the vital fire sweet christ’ning. . . .O guide our minds with your best light, with love our hearts inflame; and with your strength, which ne’er decays, confirm our mortal frame.”

St. Rabanus composed this hymn during the reign of Charlemagne. As a schoolmaster, abbot, and eventually, archbishop, he spent his life contemplating, teaching doctrine, and pursuing holiness. During a famine, he was known to feed up to 300 people a day from his house. His heart and energy were strained constantly towards heaven.

Continue reading “Our Moral Stance Today”

“Prayer begins at the moment when, instead of thinking of a remote God, ‘He’, ‘The Almighty’, and so forth, one can think in terms of ‘Thou,’ when it is no longer a relationship in the third person but in the first and second persons’” (Metropolitan Anthony Bloom).

What do you think of the Messiah? Christ asked this question to the Pharisees. How would you answer? Is the Messiah an idea to you? Is he an aloof deity in the clouds, a clockmaker, who gets the universe going and sits back to watch? Is he a personal acquaintance, perhaps your most intimate companion? Where do you stand in your relationship with Christ? I hope this question keeps you up at night.

Continue reading “My Lord, My God”

We are called to be in the world, but not of the world. This implies that Christians actually live differently, think differently, and look differently. It also implies that the world will not like the way we are different. A true Christian lifestyle is a scandal to the world. So how should we respond when people around us think we are crazy? Just do the right thing.

Continue reading “Scandal to the World”

He bound two nails together to make a cross for his altar. He used a piece of string for a stole, and a bucket for a chalice. Each starving prisoner hid a crumb of bread and gave it to Elder Arsenie to be consecrated. In this way, the Orthodox saint offered up daily Mass during his imprisonment. Each time the soldiers caught him, they locked him in a freezer. One, two, or three days passed, they released him, he went back to praying Mass, they locked him in the freezer again, and the pattern continued years on end. Can we value the Eucharist with the same fervor and dedication?

Continue reading “To Touch God’s Body”

“Smash the television set, turn out the lights, build a fire in the fireplace, move the family into the living room, put a pot on to boil some tea and toddy and have an experiment in merriment…The hearth, like good soil, does its work invisibly, in secret, and slowly. After a long time beneath the earth of a quiet family life, green shoots of vigorous poverty appear; you have become, in a small way, poor” (John Senior).

Simplicity and Focus. So many of our problems today stem from one thing: our priorities are jumbled up. Christ shows us another life, a happy life, in which all of life becomes a quiet focus on the Kingdom.

Continue reading “Smashing Our Idols”

“We need each one of us and the help of one another more than one hand needs the other” (St. Basil the Great).

Christian faith is as social as it is internal. The minute faith becomes private, it has stopped being Christian. We are here to love God and love our neighbor, simultaneously, and it always starts in parish life.

Continue reading “The Church in an Era of Social Isolation”