by Fr. Hans Jacobse Let me condense what rejecting the masculine pronoun for God really means. To reference God with the masculine pronoun (He, Him) affirms that His (God's) manner of creating differs from how new life is brought into being within His creation. Within the creation new life is brought into the world through a birth. But God did not create the world through any birthing process. God spoke the world into existence. Speaking the world into existence creates ontological separation between the Creator and His creation. God and creation are not the same. In a manner of speaking this distinction is the primordial binary. Put another way, if we call God "She", we imply that … [Read more...]

by Abbot Tryphon Of all the miracles of Christ, the greatest is the Eucharist. The Gospels are filled with accounts of miracles performed by Christ, but the greatest of them all was when He offered the simple elements of bread and wine, made by man, and transformed them into His very Body and Blood. This miracle continues to this very day, after some two thousand years, to bring Christ into our very midst and allow us to receive Him for the healing of both our bodies and our souls. That He would use as agents for this transformation, priests, to call down the Holy Spirit to continue this miracle, is one of the great mysteries of our Christian Faith. Just before the priest offers Holy … [Read more...]

In the soul we find three powers: the intellect, the will, and the heart, or, as the Holy Fathers say, the intellectual, desiring and incensive powers. Each of them is assigned particular curative exercises by the holy ascetics. These related exercises are both receptive and conducive to grace. They need not be contrived according to some theory, but rather chosen from tested ascetic labors particularly suited to a given power: For the intellect 1) Reading and hearing the Word of God, the writings of the Holy Fathers and the lives of the God-pleasers. 2) Studying and impressing upon yourself all the God-given truths in brief statements (the catechesis). 3) Asking questions of those … [Read more...]