By Todd Starnes Pastors and churches have been banned from helping the thousands of illegal immigrant children housed in border detention facilities run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, clergy in Texas and Arizona tell me. “Border Patrol told us pastors and churches are not allowed to visit,” said Kyle Coffin, the pastor of CrossRoads […]
A Cold Age
by Fr. Lawrence Farley One of the benefits of reading history is that it enables one to compare one’s own era with other eras, and so identify the blind spots of former times and as well as the blind spots of one’s own time. As C.S. Lewis once pointed out (in his essay On the Reading […]
Why Church?
by Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) Many people who rarely attend church have a kind of consumer’s attitude towards church. They come to church, for instance, before a long trip – to light a candle just for the sake of it, so that nothing would happen on the road. They come for two or three minutes, hurriedly […]
Welsh Church Uncovers Medieval Iconography
Although they seem to have forgotten the word, this is obviously iconography in a Welsh Church, in the Medieval European style – Orthodoxy in the life blood of Welsh churches. Built on the site of a 7th century monastery and founded around 1200, St Cadoc’s in Llancarfan, Vale of Glamorgan is, from the outside, just another beautiful […]
Freed From Sin – Freed From Evil Spirits
by St. John Chrysostom “To show that it is not true that the soul, when it departs from the body, comes under the dominion of evil spirits, hear what St Paul says: “He that is dead is freed from sin,” (Romans 6.7,) that is, he no longer sins. For if while the soul dwells in the body, […]
Orthodox Truth in an Age of Relativism
by Gabe Martini It is not loving to affirm a person in their sin. It is not loving to affirm a person in their rebellion against both God and his created, natural order—not “supernatural,” or “unnatural,” but the way nature was always intended to be, revealed most perfectly in Jesus Christ and the Mother of […]
Everywhere, Always, and By All
by St. Vincent of Lerins “Moreover, in the Church itself, all possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.” Commonitory, Chapter 2
Was the Mystical Supper a Passover Meal?
by Fr. Emmanuel Hatzidakis This article is a slightly edited version of a “Mini Study” from The Heavenly Banquet, Understanding the Divine Liturgy (Orthodox Witness, 2008). The Divine Liturgy did not appear ex nihilo (out of nothing). It came from somewhere. The question is, from where? Its origins are traced in the Jewish worship of […]
Learning Saving Truth
by St. John Chrysostom “Sound doctrine and saving truth are to be learned with accuracy, not from evil spirits, but from the Holy Scripture.” On Lazarus and the Rich Man, Homily 2
The Disposition of the Body at Prayer
The fact is that body and spirit are inextricably linked in man, and the spirit cannot act completely autonomously from the body. It was no accident that the ancient Fathers said: “If the body does not labor in prayer, then prayer will remain fruitless.”