The thinking seems to be this: It was horrible in Wuhan, it is horrible in Lombardy, and horrible in some other country nobody gives a damn about. Therefore, when it happens to my town—and it’s when, not if—it will be equally horrible everywhere. And worse than horrible, because we are not as prepared or as willing to be as draconian …
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Alexander Schmemann, “On the question of liturgical practices,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. 17, 3, 1973, pp. 239-243. The monastery at Valaam keeps the complete cycle of daily services everyday. Vespers, Compline, Midnight Office, Matins, First, Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours together with the Eucharist are celebrated daily. On average this takes between 8 and 10 hours and this even …
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If we fail, we fail because we haven’t taken advantage of the opportunities God has given us in planting the Church in countries and cultures in which not only is the Church NOT established but frequently criticized. Or as Schmemann concludes, “there is nothing in the American culture which could prevent the Church from being fully the Church, a parish truly a parish, and it is only by being fully Orthodox that American Orthodoxy becomes fully American” or Ukrainian or German or Mexican or whatever.
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We are not saved without the renewal of all of creation because human beings are both a microcosm and a macrocosm. To be human means that we are both an image of all creation and that all creation is fulfilled in us.
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The more I have come to understand that everything I have and do as a priest is not mine but only entrusted to me, the more I find real joy and peace.
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To help sketch out how the Orthodox Church envisions what it means to say “Emmanuel” that “God is with us,” I want to look with you at the icons and hymnography of four feasts—the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple and Theophany. Taken together these are meant to fix our hearts on that “great mystery in a cave” that “opened once again … [the] gates, O Eden” and granted “the world great mercy.”
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A university that fails to turn out students who are virtuous has failed not only the student and society but also itself. Without virtues of diligence and honest but also piety and gratitude and hope, scholarly life is impossible.
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…done right, or rather preached rightly, the Gospel even more so than “history rescues precious memories from the darkness into which they would otherwise disappear, forging a sense of continuity with the past” and more than in the past. Done right, or rather preached rightly, the Gospel and Holy Tradition connects us to God, to each other, and to the Kingdom that is to come.
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The Orthodox ascetical ethos does not know division and dualism; it does not reject life, but rather transforms it. The dualistic vision and denial of the world is not a Christian concept. Genuine asceticism is luminous and charitable
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