Glory to God For All Things - Orthodox Christianity, Culture and Religion, Making the Journey of Faith

December 25, 2025

Angels Sing! Christ is Born!

A Serbian Christmas Song – lyrics by St. Nikolai Velimirovich Andjeli Pevaju Noć prekrasna i noć tija, nad pećinom zvezda sija, u pećini mati spi, nad Isusom andjel bdi. Andjeli pevaju, pastiri sviraju, andjeli pevaju mudraci javljaju: Što narodi čekaše, što proroci rekoše, evo sad se u svet javi, u svet javi i objavi: […]
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Reflections
December 24, 2025

The Last Christmas – Ever

This Christmas was the last Christmas – ever. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. Wherever He is, there is the beginning and the end of all things. If Christ is truly present in this year’s Christmas, then it is the last Christmas – and the first Christmas. And if […]
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Feasts, Last Things, The Sacraments
December 22, 2025

I’ll Be Small for Christmas

Children today are raised with dreams of greatness. Cultural affirmations of our limitless potential, well-intentioned, have not produced a generation of over-achievers, but have indeed brought forth hordes of great dreams. This is nothing new in American culture. We are the world’s longest sustained pep-talk. Ronald Reagan loved to quote the 1945 Johnny Mercer hit: […]
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Incarnation, Modernity
December 19, 2025

Looking Like Christmas

One of the most striking features of the Gospels is the frequent response of the Disciples after the resurrection of Christ: doubt. I have always been sympathetic to the doubts and hesitations that accompanied the Disciples’ experience during the ministry of Christ. They are almost endearing in their inability to grasp what Christ is all […]
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Beauty, Knowledge of God
December 16, 2025

The Christmas Play

I was sick last week (stomach bug – my least favorite illness). It cost me a trip to Memphis where we were to spend a few days with family and the joy of watching two of my daughters singing in an Advent Festival. My many years of ministry have put me in some diverse places […]
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Incarnation, Liturgy, Reflections
December 13, 2025

When Your Ancestors Came to Church

Human beings carry within them a burden of time. We are not “fresh starts” as we come into existence. There is an inheritance that seems to carry even more than our genes. Some few years ago, I visited with my father’s oldest surviving cousin. She had known both of my parents across the years, and […]
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Communion, Incarnation, Reflections
December 8, 2025

The Life of the Cosmos

This is a reprint from 2016. I ran across it this morning and found it speaking very much of where my mind and heart have been of late. May it be of use to you. What does it mean to be alive? This is a question whose answer would seem so obvious that it is […]
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Existence, Reflections
December 2, 2025

The Gratuitous Wonder of Unbounded Joy

Any number of Orthodox conversations turn around the topic of “theosis” (to become “like God”). I’m never quite sure what people have in mind when they invoke the term. Do they imagine divine power or a transfiguration in divine light? In a culture marked by success stories, it’s easy to imagine theosis as just that. […]
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Knowledge of God, Thankfulness
November 25, 2025

The Communion of Giving Thanks

Whom should I thank? The question is normally a matter of polite acknowledgement. A gift was given and received. Who gave it? Whom should I thank? It is inherently the nature of giving thanks that thanks must be given to someone. I cannot give thanks to nothing or no one. As such, the giving of […]
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Reflections
November 20, 2025

The Secular Mind Versus the Whole Heart

Thinking is among the most misleading things in the modern world, or, to be more precise, thinking about thinking is misleading. For a culture that puts such a great emphasis on materiality, our thinking about thought is decidedly spooky. The philosophy underlying our strangely-constructed modernity is called nominalism (of which there are many formal varieties). Its imaginary […]
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Reflections