Archive for the 'Faith' Category
Posted by Eric (September 5, 2006 at 5:09 pm)
I came upon a post recently by one Father Joe, priest in Maryland, in which he criticized the notion husbands and wives confront a demonic struggle in the midst of their marriage, and that to be victorious in this struggle they would do well to employ fasting, singled out by Jesus as particularly effective for casting out demons. Fr. Joe writes:
“Marriages are not principally about powers and principalities, they are about dirty diapers, crying babies, doctors’ bills, making beds, fixing the car, going to church as a family, sleeping as husband and wife naked together under the covers, and so much more.”
Unfortunately, my comments in reponse to this passage were removed from the blog. I offer them here—not to give new life to my dispute with Fr. Joe about what he wrote, which was in response to a particular set of circumstances, but because I wish to share what I hope are a few worthy thoughts.
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Posted by Eric (May 3, 2006 at 12:08 pm)
Yesterday I dropped by the Borders in Champaign, IL after a special Divine Liturgy there to pick up Rod Dreher’s book Crunchy Cons (more on that in a future post). While roaming around the store looking for Dreher’s book I saw no fewer than three editions of The Da Vinci Code, including a thick, new “Illustrated Edition.” There were also several books on the so-called Gospel of Judas, and a number of other books purporting to tell us the “true story” of Jesus.
What all these books have in common, of course, is the consoling news that Jesus is not who the canonical gospels say he is, the Son of God who is one with God the Father, through whom the Father sends forth his Holy Spirit to transform the world. I suppose nothing so capsulizes the hubris of this age than such books, which claim to have discovered the “truth” about Jesus that was somehow hidden from his disciples and their closest friends, those who wrote the first “True Story of Jesus” books—the ones you’ll find in the New Testament.
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Posted by Eric (April 4, 2006 at 3:54 pm)
Twice this past weekend I caught the end of a segment on the public radio program This American Life which was apparently some kind of retelling of the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. I happened to tune in right at “the Fall”—an appropriate moment here in the thick of Great Lent.
The piece, what I heard of it, sounded irreverent, even somewhat mocking, but it was interesting nonetheless, especially lines like this one, where Adam is reminiscing about the Garden long after the banishment:
“When you ate the fruit in Eden, it was like eating God,†he would say, “and God was delicious. When you wanted him, you just grabbed him.†Now when he ate fruit, he could only taste what was not there.
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Posted by Eric (April 3, 2006 at 2:50 pm)
Last Thursday, we chanted the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete at St. George Church. This matins service, typically done on Thursday morning in the fifth week of Great Lent, takes about three hours and includes some 220-odd prostrations—down on your knees, face to the floor. Through haunting odes, refrains, litanies and canticles, St. Andrew reminds us, first, of our own sinfulness despite the example of the patriarchs, prophets and holy men of old, and then of the hope offered us in Christ.
It’s a pretty hard-core, Marines-boot-camp sort of service. Not being a complete idiot, I did have a Clif bar and a tankard of coffee before hand. Pretty hungry by the end and scarcely able to walk—going downstairs was particularly difficult.
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Posted in Byzantine, Faith | Comments Off on Have Mercy on Me, O God!
Posted by Eric (March 21, 2006 at 5:54 pm)
This morning I walked down the block to the local Latin Rite church for Mass and Confession. The Gospel for today was Matthew 18:21-35, the parable of the unforgiving servant.
I wonder why the servant whose massive debt was forgiven was so ready to demand repayment of the debt he was owed by his fellow servant. I would think he’d be walking on air after his interview with the master, whose mercy gave him a new lease on life. But he’s not—somehow, his heart is full of bitterness.
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Posted in Faith | Comments Off on Forgive Us Our Debts
