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Psalm Eight and the Mystery of the Incarnation

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As we continue—or for those of us observing the Old Calendar Feast, as we begin—to meditate on the Incarnation of Christ, following our celebration of His Nativity, we can find a luminous source of insight in the typology and prophetic power of Psalm Eight.

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon’s classic work, “Christ in the Psalms,” shows us how not only this psalm, but the entire Book of Psalms needs to be understood “through the lens of Christ,” precisely because “the voice in the Psalms is Christ’s own voice.” Fr Patrick’s commentary on this psalm, then, follows our rendering of the text itself.

St. Ephrem the Syrian: Hymn of the Nativity

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St. Ephrem’s “Hymns on the Nativity” are like a dazzling display of Christmas lights — or better yet, like the brightly shining stars shimmering over the fields of Bethlehem. St Ephrem believes that God reveals Himself through “raze” (symbols, mysteries, hidden meanings) found not only throughout Holy Scripture, but everywhere in nature as well.

However, they can be truly apprehended not by the merely inquisitive, but only by those who approach them with humility, with love, with wonder, and above all with faith. Perceiving God as revealed in these mystical symbols, we are elevated to an eternal dimension that nevertheless remains linked (through the “raze”) with historical time and everyday space.

Here, Adam and Eve are co-eternal with Noah and Moses and King David, the staff of Moses (itself transformed from a serpent) is united with the staffs of shepherds outside Bethlehem and then the staff of the Good Shepherd Who has just been born there. Poetic imagery of birth and fertility, of virginity and marriage, of sacrifice and death and rebirth, swirl together with pastoral imagery of sheep and lions and predatory wolves. Angels and animals and townspeople of all ages and conditions come together here to worship the Newborn Babe, who restores to those who understand (along with Adam and Eve) their youth and innocence.

This is not just a hymn, but theology of the highest sort done poetically, as St Ephrem believes the symbolic character of God’s revelations in nature and scripture requires.

Recent Articles

St. Paisios: Too Many Worries Will Distance Us From God

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Like Jesus’ friend Martha in the Gospel of St Luke, we “are worried and troubled about many things.” But as we prepare ourselves for the Nativity of Christ — as we look ahead toward His birth not in a royal chamber, but in the rustic and unpretentious cradle of an animal trough — and as we anticipate his quiet but earth-shaking Incarnation into a distracted and wayward world, which nevertheless yearns for him, we seek to simplify our lives from worries and distractions. Appropriately, this set of dialogues with St Paisios itself mirrors this theme in a simple and unassuming manner. Indeed, it is for this very reason that we find it so deep and so compelling.

Analyzing the “New Totalitarianism” of Today

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Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce (1910–1989) argued prophetically more than half a century ago, that modern technology was being used to implement a “quiet totalitarianism,” one that by avoiding the overt violence of the Nazi and Soviet regimes, could quietly exercise the same absolute control within society.

Totalitarian systems, he explained, monopolize power by identifying their own ideological narrative with rational discourse itself and thereby exclude beforehand any kind of criticism. Critics (such as those objecting to the ongoing “sexual revolution”) can therefore be branded as “irrational,” — dismissed and demonized as pathological or immoral, as exhibiting “repressed psychology,” “bigotry,” “hatred,” “prejudice,” and so forth.

This stealthy totalitarianism operates by discrediting and undermining any source of resistance that transcends technological control (such as philosophical rationality, the great traditions of Western culture and local identity, the family as a source of values, and especially religious transcendence), making the individual completely dependent on society. It is precisely in the re-affirmation of transcendent realities, and above all religious transcendence, that Del Noce finds the only ground for resistance to technological domination and ideological manipulation.

St. Porphyrios On Prophecy and Repentance in Times of Peril

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When we sense that our sins are leading us toward a dark and perilous outcome, individual Christians know to stop and pray and repent. But when we hear that our “collective” actions are leading us into darkness, too often our tendency is to look for conspiracies and cast out nets of collective blame. But neither collective subjects nor collective objects actually exist: only individuals can take upon themselves the onus of action. What kind of action?

St Porphyrios explains that it is only the prayers and repentance of those individuals who walk in the light, however haltingly and uncertainly, that can avert the peril to which prophecy awakens us. For authentic prophecy, he explains, consists not in deterministic pronouncements of imminent doom, but in urgent warnings meant to alert us and avert the danger—to wake up precisely those individuals who know better than to react by casting blame on chosen enemies, but know instead to cast their prayers heavenward for the sake of our brothers and sisters and own selves as well.

Although this article comes to us from the year 2012, it is surely even more timely now, as the harrowing year that is now concluding raises apprehensions of even darker times to come.

Dostoevsky And Memory Eternal: An Eastern Orthodox Approach to the Brothers Karamazov

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Why do Orthodox memorial litanies melodically reiterate “memory eternal” with such feeling and such energy? And why did Orthodoxy’s greatest novelist end his last great work so triumphantly with these same words? By going very deeply into a single passage in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, “The Brothers Karamazov,” Donald Sheehan leads us not only into the the center of the novel, but into the heart of the Orthodox faith as well.

Orthodox Responses to the Nihilism of Cultural Revolution, Self-Destruction, and Social Division

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“Another City” has striven to set aside partisan politics in its editorial policy, and this commitment remains. But sometimes cultural and politics issues substantially overlap, as is the case with certain dark forces that are now manifest in Western culture and American society and which are important to understand deeply rather than in a partisan manner. Deacon Paul Siewers’ fine review article addresses these issues in a balanced and insightful way that many of our readers will find helpful.

How to Read the Bible and Why

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“The Bible is a biography of God in this world. In it the Indescribable One has described Himself.” So declares St Justin Popovich, not only a saint of the Orthodox Church, but one of its greatest theologians of the twentieth century.

How To Read The Holy Psalter

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The Psalms of David are the Prayer Book of the Bible, not only for the ancient Jewish people, but even more for Christians, who discovered that these elusively simple poems contained far more than their Hebrew predecessors had realized, for Christ Himself appears everywhere throughout them. As Fr Patrick Henry Reardon points out in his fine book Christ in the Psalms, it is the Old Testament book that is most often cited in the New Testament.

Not Merely Islam: C.S. Lewis Assesses the Religion of Mohammed

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Until relatively recently writes Jacob Fareed Imam, what we call Islam today was most often called Mohammedanism. Islam was understood for centuries as a Christian heresy, a definition that began with St. John of Damascus (d.749) in his work Heresies and continued well into modernity. “All great heresies are known by their founders (e.g., Marcionism, Arianism, Nestorianism, etc.) and therefore Islam, for as long as it was still considered a Christian heresy, was generally known as Mohammedanism,” writes Imam.

Twenty-six Patterns of Living to Enhance the Glory of Your Marriage

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“Marriage is a revelation and a mystery. We see in it the complete transformation of a human being, the expansion of his personality, fresh vision, a new perception of life, and through it a rebirth into the world in a new plenitude,” writes Fr. Alexander Elchaninov. That certainly is far from the knowledge of most people today, and those who have an intution that marriage is meant to be something more than cohabitation might not dare even hope that they might ever experience what Fr. Elchaninov describes.

The Cross as a Means of Sanctification and Transformation of the World

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In one month’s time we celebrate the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross. The cross, writes Orthodox theologian Fr. Dumitru Staniloae, is the means — if we adopt it — by which paradise is restored. This paradise is not only that which which will be experienced at the end of the Christian’s earthly life, but “…may also be an evolving paradise here on earth, a restitution of the original paradise.”

The Perpetual Adolescent

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“At a certain point in American life, the young ceased to be viewed as a transient class and youth as a phase of life through which everyone soon passed. Instead, youthfulness was vaunted and carried a special moral status. Adolescence triumphed, becoming a permanent condition.”

Closer Than My Own Father: Elder Paisios and His Spiritual Children, Parts I & II

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Can we faithfully and with any confidence transpose the life of St Anthony the Great, of St John Chrysostom, of St Gregory Palamas onto a subway car in Manhattan, or a park bench in Cedar Rapids? What would it be like to live a fully Christian life, here and now, in the twenty-first century? What would a truly Christian life look like in our time—the life of an authentic disciple of our Lord?

Blocking Puberty in Transgendered Children Unethical

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Postmodern theory propounds that reality is a social construct, and thus that we are men or women according not to our bodies but our beliefs. Worse yet, many think that reality sometimes needs more than a little coercion to conform to the social construction. It is becoming increasingly common for the bodies of children to be drugged and mutilated to force them to adapt to the beliefs of parents, school counselors, and sometimes the children themselves who are suffering from gender dysphoria. Orthodox bioethicist Wesley Smith documents here this violence against our children and discusses the harm caused by these errant ideologies.

The Great Homecoming: The Life Of The World To Come

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In the darkness of our contemporary world, God has provided us with abundant illumination cast from from the lives and works of many holy saints of the Orthodox Church. St Nicholai of Žica and Ohrid, who along with St Justin Popovich was one of the brightest lights shining in Serbia, ended his life in the United States at St Sava’s Seminary, St Tikhon’s Seminary, and St Vladimir’s Seminary, reposing in 1956. The text below, the final section of his catechistic elucidation of the Nicene Creed, “The Faith of the Saints,” makes it radiantly clear why he has been called The New Chrysostom. It can be read independently, for it stands on its own as a luminous summary of the Orthodox Faith.

“Pray for Our Loved Ones who Are Beyond!”: Canon of Supplication to St Varus

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The Orthodox Church considers prayers for the dead to be of the greatest importance. As stated by St Theophen the Recluse: “The lot of the departed is not considered decided until the general Last Judgment. Until then, we cannot consider anyone as finally judged; and on the basis of this we pray, convinced in our hope in God’s immeasurable mercy!” But what about those who have died outside of the Orthodox faith—beyond its boundaries? One of the most treasured Orthodox prayers for the reposed answers this question with the splendid affirmation that even though our loved ones are beyond our terrestrial realm, they are by no means beyond the merciful love of God. It is this prayer that is reprinted below: the poignant and hopeful Canon to St Varus.

Fr. Seraphim Rose and the Signs of the Times Part II

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In these times of global pestilence, it is easy to engage in speculations about whether the Last Days are upon us, seizing upon things uncommon or extraordinary as signs of Apocalypse. Anything from the arrival or locusts in East Africa to corona shaped hailstones in Mexico may be taken as coded messages from God.

It is, then, perhaps a good time to reflect soberly upon Orthodox teachings about how to recognize the End Times when they do arrive; and we can find no better guide for this than Fr Seraphim Rose, who in Part Two of his lecture, helps us to “read” a number of perplexing “signs of the times” and understand them in relation to Orthodox teachings.

Fr. Seraphim Rose and the Signs of the Times Part I

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In these times of global pestilence, it is easy to engage in speculations about whether the Last Days are upon us, seizing upon things uncommon or extraordinary as signs of Apocalypse. Anything from the arrival or locusts in East Africa to corona shaped hailstones in Mexico may be taken as coded messages from God. It is, then, perhaps a good time to reflect soberly upon Orthodox teachings about how to recognize the End Times when they do arrive; and we can find no better guide for this than Fr Seraphim Rose, who unlike many moderns takes prophecy quite seriously, while always holding up its interpretation to the light of patristic teachings.

In Depth Articles

Original Sin According to St. Paul

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In regard to the doctrine of original sin as contained in the Old Testament and illuminated by the unique revelation of Christ in the New Testament, there continues to reign in the denominations of the West a great confusion, which in the last few centuries seems to have gained much ground in the theological problematics of the Orthodox East.

The Divine Liturgy as Mystical Experience

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There are cases in scripture where God appears directly and sensibly to man—indeed, does not only appear to him, but walks, speaks, dines, and even wrestles. There is no suggestion that, because God is “purely spiritual,” such appearances are not of God “as He is in Himself.”

Nature and City in the Greek East

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The poet seems to suggest that we can now find the natural city only in the imagination. The bridge for the modernist poet is now an interior, and even a psychological function. It was not always so.

Lost in Manhattan

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