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Second Tuesday after Pascha. Death and Resurrection: The Illusion of Separation

Hopefully we begin life as “holy innocents” in the Garden, with a conscious connection to Being. The gaze of loving, caring parents can mirror us as the beloved and gives us a primal experience of life as union. But sooner or later we all have to leave the Garden. We can’t stay there. We begin the process of individuation, which includes at least four major splits, ways of forgetting our inherent oneness and creating an

The Twenty-Third Day of Christmas Advent. Anxious About Life.

THEREFORE, I TELL YOU, DO NOT BE ANXIOUS ABOUT YOUR LIFE.” That is what Jesus says, but is it really possible to live without anxieties both big and small? We are anxious about children, friends, jobs, health—and the list goes on and on. We are anxious about so many things. There is unbelieving anxiety, and then there is anxiety encountered by faith. John Henry Newman said of Christian faith, “Ten thousand difficulties do not add

The Marriage of Love and Hate

By Father Stephen Freeman The genius of Dostoevsky lies in the profound theological insight of his tumbled novels. They can be difficult reads for many people – particularly in our modern setting. He has “too many characters” and they “talk a lot.” His characters are complex: I was a scoundrel, and yet, I loved God…  Good and evil are in a monstrous coexistence within man.  So says Dmitri Karamazov. And this statement describes all of

Great and Holy Friday. Condemned by a tree, Saved by the Tree

When Jesus had received the vinegar, He said, ”It is finished”; and He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. John 19:30 (Gospel of the Ninth Hour on Good Friday Morning) In Genesis, we read that God created the world in “seven days.” We also know that God’s time doesn’t move according to our concept of time. So, the world wasn’t created in seven “literal” days, meaning seven 24-hour periods of time. Specific things

The Ascension and the Glorification of Man (Part II)

By Father Lawrence Farley The Church has always proclaimed that Man’s ultimate glory and destiny find fulfillment in Jesus. He is the Son of Man to whom God subjects all things, putting them under His feet. He is the One whom God crowned with glory and honour (see Heb. 2:6-9), the true and representative Man ruling over all creation. And the moment of this crowning, this final and supreme exaltation, was the Ascension. That is

From Desert to Garden

But what then can we do with our essential aloneness which so often breaks into our consciousness as the experience of a desperate sense of loneliness? What does it mean to say that neither friendship nor love, neither marriage nor community can take that loneliness away? Sometimes illusions are more livable than realities, and why not follow our desire to cry out in loneliness and search for someone whom we can embrace and in whose

ON THE GARDEN OF THE HEART

THE new life you have just entered has often been likened to that of a gardener. The soil he tills he has received from God, as well as the seed and the sun’s warmth and the rain and the power to grow. But the work is entrusted to him. If the husbandman wishes to have a rich harvest, he must work early and late, weed and aerate, water and spray, for cultivation is beset by