The Orthodox Christian Network Blog

In the Gospel reading this morning, we have a scene that's not so unusual for Christ in the Gospels. He takes pity on an ill person and he heals them; he has a run in with the religious authorities of His day. These things come together several times in the Gospels, and they happen separately on many occasions. Our Lord uses these confrontations with the leaders of the Temple to try and show

This is a very sobering Gospel reading we have this morning (reading can be found at the end of this entry), especially relevant to this "financial crisis" that our nation finds herself faced with (what's happening to all of our wealth?--is the commentary we hear constantly right now).

The rich man in the parable is already wealthy, he already has land and barns and goods. And this particular

Click here to listen to this week's episode of Jason's Get Wisdom podcast, and click here to download the free study guide for this episode.

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There are few areas of life that are more problematic for the spiritual life than those that involve money. St. Paul teaches that the love of money is the root of all evil, “for which some have strayed from the faith

This is a great video on the teaching of the Orthodox Church on the nature of the Gospel, the End of the Age, the nature of Israel, and Armageddon. American Orthodox tend to absorb Protestant views of all these topics from our environment. The truth of the Orthodox Church is very different from what most of think we know about all these topics.

Click here to listen to this week's episode of Jason's Get Wisdom podcast, and click here to download the study guide for this episode.

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Romans chapter nine deals with the issue of God’s fairness: is it fair for God to extend His mercy to some people, but refuse to extend it to others?

It may be easy for you to read St. Paul’s explanation that God is free to bring anyone

There aren't many situations in which it's good to be called a fool —  except in one little-known category of the Christian spiritual tradition: The fool for Christ.

His Excellency's lecture delivered at Seattle Pacific University.

Click here to listen to this week's episode of Jason's Get Wisdom podcast, and click here to download the free study guide for this episode.

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Imagine that your world is falling apart around you: you are receiving failing grades at school; you are about to lose your after-school job; you learn that someone you do not like has been spreading lies about you. As you look at

It was on Miodrag's account that he and Drazen visited our church on this sad day.  Miodrag's brother, Aleksandar, a long-time resident of Mt. Pleasant, had died-alone-and Miodrag had just arrived from his home in Europe to tend to the affairs of his departed brother.

I had not known Aleksandar in this life.  Still, it is our custom to care for the dead and their survivors, the weeping and the

OCN is at the forefront of using modern media to bring the riches of the historic Christian faith to the world.

I think my favorite service, as a priest, to serve, is the baptism of an infant. It's one of the most magnificent events in all of the life of our Church. To add another member to the Body of Christ; to call on the Holy Spirit to lead and guide this new person through their whole life and eventually into the Kingdom of Heaven. Every time we're present for a baptism, in thinking about the

Click here to listen to this week's episode of Jason's Get Wisdom podcast, and click here to download the free study guide for this episode.

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Overcoming the passions is one of the central foci of the Orthodox life. St. Maximos the Confessor defines passion as “an impulse of the soul contrary to nature, as in the case of mindless love or mindless hatred for someone or for

Click here to listen to the latest episode of Jason's Get Wisdom podcast, and click here to download the free study guide for this episode.

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 In Romans chapter six, St. Paul presents the issue of being either dead to sin or alive in Christ. He is very clear that Christians should no longer be slaves to sin (Romans 6:6). At the same time, however, he tells us to “reckon

Click here to listen to this week's episode of Jason's Get Wisdom podcast, and click here to download a free study guide for this episode.

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In Romans 5:13, the Holy Apostle Paul abruptly stops discussing the entrance of sin and death into the world; in fact, he stops in the middle of a sentence and leaves the thought uncompleted. He then discusses how sin was

My family members are Evangelicals of the Pentecostal variety. I was raised in that faith, but being Orthodox for almost 10 years has distanced me quite a bit from the world of megachurches and televangelists. Still, visiting home frequently means coming face-to-face with it, as my retired dad usually watches several hours of televangelism a day. He's good about keeping the TV off when my kids are awake, but after they are in bed, he often turns on programs he's recorded during the day.

St. Paul begins this morning's Epistle reading, a letter to the Christians of Corinth, with a plea-"We then as workers together with Him (Christ), beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain" (2 Cor. 6:1). The Corinthian Christians are workers together with Paul and the Apostles with Christ; all sent out (which is the meaning of the word ‘apostle') into the world to gather the

 

Riot shields.  A ray of light beaming from the dome of the Church of the Resurrection down into the nave.  A Berlin-ish Wall running over the hillside, dividing families.  The Great Walls of the Old City.  Women bearing machine guns in the streets.  The angelic voices of the nuns at the Russian monastery at En Kerem.  A late night talk with an Orthodox Rabbi who has a well-known radio program

Click here to listen to this week's episode of Jason's Get Wisdom podcast, and click here for the free study guide for this episode.

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Have you ever become impatient waiting on God to act to help you in a situation? Perhaps you have struggled in school, and prayed that God would help you with your studies. Perhaps a friend or a family member has been sick, and

Join Father Chris at St. Demetrios for the weekly Orthodox Study Class. This class is part of the series, "So You Think You Are Going to Heaven?" 

Watch Now>>>  Click here to get the study guide that accompanies it!

You can listen to this week's episode of Jason's Get Wisdom podcast by clicking here , and you can click here for the free study guide for this episode.

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Have you ever said something that deeply hurt another person? Have you ever told a story about someone, and learned later that the story had spread around the school? Have you ever been caught lying, or had someone

This morning we hear our Lord's parable of a wedding. The parable is told as a word about the kingdom of heaven-the parable begins, "the kingdom of heaven is like..." (v2). This image Christ uses in the parable becomes one of the most prominent images for the kingdom of heaven in all of Scripture. The wedding of a Son to His Bride. A beautiful image used extensively in the Church to

Click here to listen to this week's episode of Jason's GET WISDOM! podcast on Romans chapter two, and click here to download the free study guide for this episode.

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Have you ever expressed disagreement with a person’s position, or disapproval of a particular type of behavior, and one of your friends responded, “How can you be so judgmental? Didn’t Jesus say you

This nicely produced documentary, entitled Living Waters: Saving our Seas and Rivers, looks at the environmental work of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. It's now available from goarch.org. 

 Watch Now »

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross of our Lord. We enter the Church this morning and we fall on our faces in veneration before the Holy Cross, and in worship before our Saviour who was nailed to the tree and died for our salvation. Everything in the Christian Church points to Christ, and the defining moment in the life of Christ is the Cross.

One of the greatest arguments, in the secular world, against the existence of God is the so-called "problem of evil." This problem asks the question "with a God Who is good and loving, how can evil exist in the world?" Why does a God who is love allow evil? And to be very timely, the specific question of natural disasters-why does God's creation cause such evil (death from earthquakes, floods,

Click here to listen to this week's episode of Jason's GET WISDOM! podcast on Romans chapter one, and click here to download the free study guide for this episode.

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Orthodox Christian worship involves praying to God; in fact, as Vasili Rozanov writes, “The soul of Orthodoxy consists in the gift of prayer.”

According to St Luke, the point of the Parable of the

As we strive to surrender our wills more and more to God, as we struggle to trust in God and to lean not on our own understandings (Proverbs 3:5-6), it's important for us to be reminded of how God has cared for His people throughout human history. We can see this fact in so many places in the Holy Scriptures, but perhaps no more beautifully than in the person of the Mother of God. She is for us

On Sunday, Sept 7, I am going on a journey across time and geography.  As you read this column, I ask your prayers as I make my way from Charleston to Newark to Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  In July I received the most amazing gift: a two week pilgrimage to the Holy Land, led by the most well-known Orthodox Christian Bishop in the English-speaking world-His Eminence, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware.  We

 

"God is the Lord and has revealed Himself to us, blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord!"  This beautiful hymn, sung at the Orthodox matins service (and a conglomeration of different Psalms) is a significant, if not the most important, starting point for our conversations about God.  When we enter a theological discussion, we do not begin with a generic belief that there is "a"