Hats off to Byantine TX for publishing this handy guide for Lent and Holy Week and a special thank you to Fr. Jonathan Bannon of Christ The Savior Orthodox in Rockford Illinois who created it. The guide outlines this penitential period in ways easy to comprehend and digest! The "How to Participate" section is especially valuable for inculcating simple practices into our daily … [Read more...] about Journey to Pascha 2019
Articles
Orthodoxy in the USA: Its Historical Past and Present
Fr. Seraphim Rose (1934-1982), a convert to Orthodoxy and whose story mirrors that of many Americans looking for a way out of the superficiality that characterizes much of the American religious landscape, left writings that guide pilgrims even today. Fr. Seraphim was a child of the West who knew its riches along with its soul-destroying pitfalls and marshaled this knowledge … [Read more...] about Orthodoxy in the USA: Its Historical Past and Present
How Western Urban Planning Fueled War in the Middle East
The Ottoman Empire, Roger Scruton writes, was not composed of nation-states but of creed communities. Peace between the sects could not be ensured by borders, as in Europe, but only by custom. Peace is precarious and requires constant work and architecture is part of that work. When France was given the madate to govern Syria in 1923, the character of the ancient cities of the … [Read more...] about How Western Urban Planning Fueled War in the Middle East
God’s Commandments as Divine Energies
Drawing upon the Patristic distinction between God’s transcendent and hidden essence (ousia), and His energies (energeia,) which are operative and manifest throughout creation, we can understand God’s commandments not as formal dictates but as His own energies addressing us personally and inviting us to be “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) … [Read more...] about God’s Commandments as Divine Energies
Our Society Needs Stoic Values More Than Ever: A Response to the New APA Guidelines
The Early Fathers of the Church drew upon the philosophy of Stoicism, not only by appropriating certain elements of its philosophical lexicon, but also in shaping the Church’s articulation of moral virtues. Questioning from a secular perspective recent criticisms of “traditional masculinity” for its “stoic” restraint of the passions, this essay effectually defends the moral … [Read more...] about Our Society Needs Stoic Values More Than Ever: A Response to the New APA Guidelines