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 older … [Read more...]

On Tuesday, 13 September, 2022, the election of the new Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia by its Council of Bishops took place. In accordance with the Act of Canonical Communion, signed on 17 May, 2007, the Council will send the Act of the election, drafted by the counting committee to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia with a request to bless the electee to assume the duties of the First Hierarch entrusted to him by his brethren archpastors, and for confirmation of the election by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. The rite of enthronement of His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas of Eastern America and New York, newly-elected First … [Read more...]

Former university provost and chief academic officer Michael Emerson has publicly testified that faculty and administrators conspired to get rid of Nassif for standing in the way of the school’s transition away from the Christian view of marriage. The administration characterized his views of marriage as “too extreme.” A tenured Orthodox professor was fired recently from Chicago’s North Park University for taking a stand on traditional marriage. The school is sponsored by the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), which itself professes that, “A publicly declared, legally binding marriage between one woman and one man is the one appropriate place for sexual intercourse.” However, it … [Read more...]