A Prayer in Time of Trial

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I am sunk into the depths and there is no foothold to be found anywhere. I’m nearly worn out with calling for help. My throat is hoarse and my eyes fail me in looking for you. Scorn has [...]

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The Mother of God

Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And [...]

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The Mystery of Prayer: Consolation and Cross

Because in prayer we have to do with a Trinity of Persons, and not some cosmic divine process, there is a certain mystery to prayer, and in prayer, that continually confounds our best understandings. We know, by virtue of dominical revelation and authority, that our Father in heaven cares for us deeply and intimately. [...]

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The Mystery of Our Condition

I do not know what it means to suffer. But if I could imagine what might be among the most difficult kinds of suffering to undergo, it must surely be that sort of pain which the fracturing of our human relations with one another brings. In his inscrutable wisdom, God took the betrayal [...]

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Praying in Faith

Stating the obvious, these last several posts on prayer have been my own personal working out of my thoughts and experiences of prayer. I no doubt carry a universalizing tendency in all these reflections, but I trust my readers to discern what is my own experience from theirs, and further to take all these things [...]

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Enoch, Trust and the Unfathomable Abyss of God’s Love

Now Enoch lived one hundred and sixty-five years, and begot Methusaleh. After he begot Methusaleh, Enoch was well-pleasing to God for two hundred years, and begot sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Thus Enoch was well-pleasing to God, and was not found, for God translated him. [...]

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A Reminder about Prayer and Fasting

Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.” [...]

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The Dynamic Psalter According to the Seventy

Gabe pointed me to this great resource (for anytime, but especially Great Lent):
The Dynamic Psalter According to the Seventy
Very nice for cubeland.

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Great and Holy Lent 2008

Today marks my first Lent as an Orthodox Christian. I am already finding the experience qualitatively different than any of the previous five Lents which I’ve traversed as I made my way into the Orthodox Church. It is, in all ways except for the bodily, far more difficult than anything I’ve ever [...]

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Your Forgiveness

For all those whom I’ve caused offense, pain, or scandal, forgive me, a sinner.

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