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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.”

So writes Joseph Epstein in a witty and now-classic article that is even timelier than in 2004, when it was first published. In our tastes and values, in our political opinions and our moral judgments, in our cynical or ironic or frivolous approach to serious matters, we cling desperately to a fading semblance of youth and a fondness for its follies.

But we live in a time that calls for mature and balanced judgment, for the wisdom that the ancients knew comes only from those situations in which we take life seriously and put ourselves on the line, drawing as best we can upon the counsel of our own elders and the inimitable Wisdom of a Fatherly God.

Meanwhile, our own children search in vain for adults, for actual grown-ups who will lead them and give them a direction in life, seeking instead in popular messiahs and social media chatter what their parent-pals, still pursuing their adolescence, have withheld from them—only to learn too late the advice of Ecclesiastes (7:5) that it would have been “better to heed the rebuke of a wise person than to listen to the song of fools.”

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?

If we are exceptionally blessed, we may have met one or two figures here or there who gave us a real glimpse of such a life, the life of an Orthodox Christian in our time as it is lived fully, deeply, radically. But such glimpses are often as rare as they are fleeting and unassuming; they don’t announce themselves with bright lights and trumpets, for they are moments when an inner holiness, the glimmer of an illumined heart, barely becomes visible and catches our gaze.

Much of the time, however, these exemplary figures may very well seem to external observation no different from anyone else. Hence the importance of holy ones such as St Paisios, whose very being was utterly saturated with the light of divine grace—whose every word and gesture manifested the kind of life we should be seeking.

And therefore, the serious seeker cannot hear enough stories about these wonderful figures such as Sts Paisios and Pophryrios. We want to hear even the smallest details of their lives, things that may seem unimportant or trivial, for its is here perhaps most of all that we can see how life would look if it were filled with grace. And as we listen and learn, divine grace may itself pass through them into us as well.

Recent Articles

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.

Grandma’s Icons

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When Communist theorist Antonio Gramsci fled Rome for Russia, he was disappointed to discover that Bolshevism was not going to succeed. He concluded that it was the deeply ingrained Orthodox Christian culture of the Russian people that stood in the way. And as many of our readers can attest, it was the babushkas, those mothers of all mothers and fathers, that most of all kept the flame of Orthodox faith and culture alive. On this Mothers’ Day, the simple, loving remembrance in this story can help us understand how the light and warmth of Orthodox culture was preserved through those many dark years and passed on to future generations.

Fr Georges Massouh on the Myrrh-Bearing Women

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The true disciple of Jesus, whether a man or a woman, is not the one who carries a Christian identity on account of having been baptized, but the one who imitates the courageousness of Joseph of Aramathea, the Myrrh-Bearing Women, and the martyrs who offered themselves up in order to hold fast to their faith… only the courageous deserve to be beloved of Jesus.

The Stubborn Apostle

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The Apostle Thomas, writes Fr. Daniel Sisoyev, was by nature skeptical and stubborn. He demanded to see Christ in his body after the resurrection before he would believe the apostolic testimony that Christ rose from the dead. “Christ acquiesced to the demand by appearing to Thomas, and in so doing affirmed that His rising was indeed a resurrection of the body as well as the soul.

St. Porphyrios Elucidates the Meaning of Pascha

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Unlike the English term Easter, which evokes the Teutonic spring-goddess Ostara or Eastra, the Greek word Pascha is a direct transliteration of the Aramaic pascha, which in turn renders the Hebrew pesach, meaning Passover. St Porphyrios explains here in simple, but compelling language how Christ Himself has become our true Passover from darkness into light, from sin and death into life—how His Resurrection has accomplished “the most important thing in [our] life and in the life of the entire universe.” And in this way, he tells us why, like kid-goats in the exuberance of spring, we should leap and frolic with joy as the light of this incomparable event dawns upon us!

The Sign of the Prophet Jonah in Our Days

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This Holy Week and Pascha, the Covid-19 pandemic has given the faithful a hard saying. They will be deprived of celebrating these high and holy days in their parishes. They will be deprived of receiving holy communion. Nevertheless, they need not, now or ever, be deprived of Christ, for nothing, neither death nor life, neither things present nor things to come, can ever “separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).

Prayers for a Time of Devastating Pestilence

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“Are any among you suffering? Let them pray. Are any cheerful? Let them sing praises! Are any among you sick? Let them call for the presbyters of the Church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the Name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will heal those who are sick and the Lord will raise them up. If they have committed sins, they will be forgiven. Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective!” (James 5: 13-16)

St. Patrick of Ireland: A Saint for Dark Times

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In this talk, given to monks and pilgrims at the St. Herman of Alaska Monastery on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1977, Fr Seraphim Rose shows how St Patrick must be regarded not just as a romantic figure from a bygone era, but also as our own contemporary, enlightening not just the ancient Celts but ourselves as well, who are surrounded by a very different kind of darkness from that of pre-Christian Ireland.

How Not To Be An Accidental Iconoclast

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The Triumph of Orthodoxy, which we celebrate on the first Sunday of Lent, entails both an affirmation and a negation. It commemorates the restoration, in the year 787, of icons to Orthodox temples and homes, and at the same time it commends what the Seventh Ecumenical Council called their “veneration and honor (timitiki proskynisis)” while reserving their “real worship (latreia)” for God alone.

The Threshold to Lent: Remembering our Explusion from Paradise

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First we must remember what we have lost. Indeed, “all mankind weeps and sighs over the first Adam, over the now elusive phantom of happiness.” But we don’t realize that it is paradise itself from which we have been expelled and that this is why we live as exiles. “The whole world, harassed and weary, weeps because of its waywardness, because of its naked soul; because life is aimless and joyless. Nothing can fill our life so that we might unconditionally feel the fullness of true—not phantom—happiness; for this fullness is only in God.”

The Prophetic Role of Mount Athos in the Contemporary World

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Mount Athos, the center of Orthodox Monasticism located on an autonomous peninsula in Northern Greece, has what Dr. Jean Claude Larchet calls a “prophetic role” in the modern world. This is true not only for Orthodox Christians, but believers in other religions and even atheists, Larchet writes.

How The Great Truth Dawned

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A lingering vestige of the Cold War between the United States and Russia includes what could be called a ‘reflexive bi-polarism,’ a simplistic and crude reduction that caricatures not only Russia’s political role in the world today, but its history, culture, and people. It’s an unfortunate and impoverishing state of affairs.

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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