Contemporary Issues Archives - Page 11 of 17

Orthodoxy and our role in it

Mar

9

2015

The first Sunday of Great and Holy Lent is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy. At Divine services we listen to the story of the first gathering of the disciples around Christ. The Lord says of one of them, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit.” (John 1:47) Why is this particular gospel ...

Cursed is the one who trusts in man

Jan

23

2015

(Jer. 17: 5) “Thus the Lord saith: Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord.” And still the Lord says: “Put no trust in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save.” (Ps. 146, 3) Thus the Lord has said to his ...

Return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning

Jan

15

2015

(Joel 2, 12) I do not know if it can be worse for us than it is now. That, worse, it seems to me that could only be finally destroyed. But God do not give us, to be witnesses of greater evil than this which has already happend to us. I also do not know, ...

Why Lord does not the prevent war?

Jan

3

2015

The answer to this question I sought where the answers to the many of my questions I seek – in the Scripture. Why war? Because the time for a war comes, when the evil accumulates, as pus under boil and once it must burst. Simply there is a “War time and peace time” (Eccl. 3: 8) ...

Go and do likewise

Dec

22

2014

Luke 10:25-37 The Holy Gospel, in Luke 10:25-37, offers many topics to reflect on. Currently one of them seems most prominent to me and it is Christ’s very emphasized appeal to move from words and contemplation to deeds. The holy Evangelists have noted down, for our spiritual growth, a conversation between our Lord and the ...

The basis of primacy

Dec

6

2014

Mark 10:32-45 Here we are faced with an answer to a question that any Christian may ask himself or others – whether he is the Pope in Rome who, in his pride, has taken the place of God, or an illiterate shepherd who may not know how to sign his own name. The question is: ...

Everything in its own time

Nov

8

2014

I watch our youth, our boys and girls, at their fullest strength and energy, how carelessly they spend their lives, their days and their years, given from God; how they squander them in vain. When meeting with my parishioners, I see a little girl transformed over night to an adolescent, and to a young woman, ...

“No one can hinder us”

Oct

27

2014

“No one can hinder us; we are stronger than fate,” is the main lyric of what is considered to be a “folk” ditty. I’ll come back to this imbecile poetaster’s oeuvre later. However, it did prompt me to think about what happens to those who are so conceited, plunged so deep in stupidity, that they ...

Abirams, Dathans and their unfortunate brethren

Oct

13

2014

All kinds of strange things happen to us, lately more often, and that some of my parishioners ask me, if I knew, and if I met this or that “priest”. They say that this “honor” usually happens to them in bars. They met, they say, that fortunate fellow and that he introduced himself with his ...

Come with me into the deep

Sep

26

2014

Luke 5:1-11 The evangelical reading for the eighteenth week after Pentecost is an invitation to all of us to delve more deeply and widely into our faith. The story that delivers this invitation to us is as follows. The Lord happened to pass by the shores of Gennesaret Lake, “and saw two boats standing by ...