The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. … The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. — G.K. Chesterton, Part One: The Homelessness Of Man, Ch. 5 : The Unfinished Temple […]
Missions and Phronema
What does the Greek term “phronema” mean? According to the Wikipedia, “Phronema is a transliteration of [a] Greek word, . . . which has the meanings of ‘mind’, ‘spirit’, ‘thought’, ‘purpose’, ‘will’, and can have either a positive meaning (‘high spirit’, ‘resolution’, ‘pride’) or a bad sense (‘presumption’, ‘arrogance’). . . . The term phronema […]
Monk wanna be
Pithless Thoughts did it to me again! When I saw this “magazine cover,” I laughed and laughed. And, then, I wondered whether I should be crying. Yes, it challenged me again. Sadly, we have some monk wanna be people in Orthodoxy. It is a serious enough problem that our bishops had to address the issue […]
Pilgrimages and delusion
I must admit that this cartoon from Pithless Thoughts quite challenged me. I have been to several countries. In those countries, I have visited the tombs of famous saints, or their places of death. I have visited famous cathedrals, or monasteries. I have imagined what it would be like to have stood up to evil […]
Five Types of Christians
Mother Maria Skobtsova, a martyr of the Nazi concentration camps, and an early 20th century intellectual and nun, wrote an insightful essay entitled, “Types of Religious Life.” In it she articulates five ways of being religious: the “synodal,” the ritualist, the aesthetical, the ascetical as well the ideal way, the “evangelical” (or “way of the […]
Why don’t we reach out to the inner city?
A fellow blogger has asked the question as to why non-inner city Christians do not do more inner city work. I was going to answer his question, and then I realized that my answer would be too long for a simple comment, so I decided to put it here. There are a complex of reasons why non-inner city […]
Fr. Ernesto . . . take off your shoes
Today I had a “take off your shoes” moment. Through an unexpected series of events, I was suddenly invited at the end of last week to go to Kansas City to attend a convocation of people involved in various Orthodox charities. But, even to say “Orthodox charities” is misleading because it lets you picture a […]
Travel Day
Today is a car travel day as I return home. May the Lord bless all of you and prepare you for the Lord’s Day. For today, I will simply include a copy of Metropolitan Jonah’s message for Sanctity of Life Sunday. It is one of the most balanced pro-life messages that I have seen. === […]
Ancient faith, ancient monastics, modern methods
I was meandering the Internet when I ran across the blog of a Catholic deacon named Greg. To my utter surprise, he had the video below posted on his site. And, he had received it from someone else. It is a wonderful story of monastics who basically follow the old rules, but have come up […]
