By Father Stanley Harakas One of the most confusing words in the Christian vocabulary is the “world.” Sometimes it seems to have good meanings, sometimes neutral and sometimes the word “world” has bad meanings. How can we make sense of this? The World as the Creation is Good: In the story of the creation of the world by God, repeatedly we see that world is described as good (Genesis 1). Because God is goodness itself, the
By Katherine Johnson Tremendous power lies hidden in the smallness of a single word. Seemingly insignificant, a word holds within itself the power to encourage or to unleash the demon of despair. All of creation came into being by the Word. It seems God’s creative example holds within itself the greatest model for the human tongue. I suppose that’s why I find myself in a constant struggle with my words. As an Orthodox writer I
By Vincent Rossi “Whoever does not love trees, does not love God.” This was the teaching of the renowned Greek Orthodox monk, Elder Amphilochios of Patmos (1888-1970). According to Orthodox scholar Bishop Kallistos Ware, Fr. Amphilochios was an ecologist long before environmental concern became fashionable. “Do you know,” the elder said, “that God gave us one more commandment, which is not recorded in Scripture? It is the commandment, “Love the trees.” When you plant a
“Elders like him [Elder Ephraim], even though austere at times, are capable of loving everybody unconditionally precisely because they can see the other person in his natural state, beyond the external characteristics of personality,” Fr. Maximos explained. “That’s who the late Elder Ephraim really was, not the fearsome person I imagined him to be before I met him. Elders like Papa Ephraim are capable of loving even the worst among us because they know that
Logos and Creation The fundamental cosmic intuition of the Christian spiritual path is that creation is the manifestation of an order that at one and the same time transcends it, sustains it from within and manifests itself through it. This intrinsic, transcendent, immanent order is the Logos — the eternal son of God. The term ‘Logos’ in Christian theology marries, through the revelation of St. John’s Gospel and the Epistles of Paul, its Greek philosophical
One of the elders said: “I never wanted work which was useful to me but a loss to others. For I have this expectation, that what helps the other is fruitful for me.” And Abba Theodore of Pherme said, “In these days many take their rest before God gives it to them.” IN THIS SOCIETY, work has become the way we make money the way we enable ourselves to do what we would really prefer
During the reign of the impious Roman Emperor Maximian, there lived in the East, near Heliopolis, a wealthy, renowned nobleman named Dioscorus, by ancestry and faith a Hellene. He had a daughter named Barbara, his only child, over whom he kept watch as the apple of his eye. The maiden was exceedingly beautiful, and no girl or woman in the country could compare with her. Thinking baseborn, common folk unworthy to behold his daughter’s fair
GOD, THE SUPREME AUTHORITY, has spoken since the beginning of Creation, and continues to speak, in thunder and flood, in light and darkness, in seasons of rain or drought, in war and peace. We are bound to listen to his voice, for there is no other. And because he sent us his Word, and there is no other, our ears must be open to hear it. When God speaks the entire world must answer. Some
The Original Christian World-view: A study of the lives and writings of the great spiritual masters of the First Millennium of the Christian Church — East and West — will show that a sacred cosmology was integral to the Church’s world-view. Salvation, or deification, as the ancient Church and the Orthodox Church of today calls the process of reconciliation with God, was cosmic as well as personal in scope. It included not only human beings
“Man’s Divorce from Nature” What I wish to suggest is a way to recover the lost cosmic dimension of religion by showing how it might be found again in the Christian tradition. What must be recovered above all is the vision — not only that religion needs to be imbedded in the cosmos, but also that the world is imbedded in God. For it is this loss that inevitably led to the separation of religion
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