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Keeping our Faces in a Facebook World (Part II)

By Father Lawrence Farley  The truth is that real communication and authentic communion with another always involves face to face encounter—that is why there is so much hugging at airports when people are physically reunited after being separated for a time.  Did those people who greet each other at the airport not keep in touch by Facebook while they were gone?  Did they not phone each other?  Did they not exchange e-mails?  I’ll bet they

Human Beings and the Cosmos (Part VII): Church and Cosmos (Part II)

The spiritual discipline and mysticism of the early Church, which have come down to us chiefly through the Eastern .tradition, amount to a veritable ‘physics of the glorious body’. The body, being flooded with light, then illuminates the surrounding cosmos to which it is inseparably joined. Solovyev writes that by the act of descending to the roots of life, and crucifying the cosmic eros in order to transform it into a regenerating force, ‘we release

Human Beings and the Cosmos (Part VI): Church and Cosmos (Part I)

Between the first and second comings of the Lord, between the God-man and the God-universe, between the fallen and transfigured states of being, stands the Church, as a boundary and a crossing-place. And every Christian, through communion with holy things, i.e. the Eucharist, and in the communion of saints, is himself a ‘living boundary’, a place where death passes over into life. The cosmic history of the Church is the history of a childbirth, that

Great and Holy Thursday

The Institution of the Eucharist At the Mystical Supper in the Upper Room Jesus gave a radically new meaning to the food and drink of the sacred meal. He identified Himself with the bread and wine: “Take, eat; this is my Body. Drink of it all of you; for this is my Blood of the New Covenant” (Matthew 26:26-28). We have learned to equate food with life because it sustains our earthly existence. In the

The Saturday of Lazaros and Palm Sunday

By the Reverend Alkiviadis C. Calivas, Th.D. The solemnities of Great Week are preceded by a two-day festival commemorating the resurrection of Lazaros and the triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem. These two events punctuate Christ’s ministry in a most dramatic way (Jn 11. l- 12, 19). By causing the final eruption of the unrelenting hostility of His enemies, who had been plotting to kill him, these two events precipitate Christ’s death. At the very same time, however, these same events emphasize His divine

Thirteenth Day of Christmas Advent: All About Thanksgiving

By Father Lawrence Farley The Christian Faith is all about thanksgiving.  Our secular North American society thinks that thanksgiving is moderately important, and so it has a wonderful Thanksgiving Day feast once a year.  I love this feast.  Every October…when the leaves start to turn colour and the days become a little cooler, we gather if possible with our extended families and sit down to a turkey dinner.  There are no pilgrims and no Plymouth

God and Caesar (Part III): The Sacrament of our Neighbor

The essence of God the Trinity is love, so personal existence directed towards God can only be existence in communion. ‘By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother’ (1 John 3.10). In St Matthew’s overpowering portrayal of the Judgement, Christ says to those who are truly

God and Caesar (Part II): The Last of the Righteous

The first task of the Church and of Christians is therefore to open up history to the eternity whither she is destined to ‘pass’ one day in a final Passover, whither she is already ‘passing’ by the prayers and the blessing of the liturgy and of liturgical people. To those who see with the ‘eye of the heart’, the reintegrating power of the sacraments holds the world in being, preserves history from decay and slowly

Second Friday after Pascha, Christ is Risen!

In the Early Church the rite of Christian initiation was not divided. Three of the sacraments belong together: Baptism, the Holy Chrism (Confirmation), and the Eucharist. The Initiation described by St. Cyril, and later on by Cabasilas, included all three. Sacraments are instituted in order to enable man to participate in Christ’s redeeming death and thereby to gain the grace of His resurrection. This was Cabasilas’ main idea. “We are baptized in order to die

Holy and Great Thursday

On Great Thursday the focus of the Church turns to the events that occurred in the Upper Room and at the Garden of Gethsemane. In the Upper Room, while at meal, Jesus established and instituted the mystery or sacrament of the holy Eucharist and washed the feet of His disciples as well. The Garden of Gethsemane calls our attention to Jesus’ redemptive obedience and sublime prayer (Mt 26.36-46). It also brings us before the cowardly,