Man’s Unhappiness and Despair Caused by His Alienation from God

Man’s Unhappiness and Despair Caused by His Alienation from Godby Fr. Thomas Hopko –
We have abandoned communion with God and have gone off on our own, following our own ideas, enacting our own plans.

And the result? Through our reckless wasting of the gifts given us by God, we have stripped ourselves of our original and fundamental dignity, glory, wisdom, beauty and strength: we have lost our legacy as God’s children. And the whole cosmos suffers with us in our affliction.

People feel unhappy and they don’t know why. They feel that something is wrong, but they can’t put their finger on what. They feel uneasy, confused, frustrated, alienated and estranged – and they can’t explain it. [Read more…]

Man and Woman – An Orthodox Christian Understanding

Man and Woman – An Orthodox Christian Understanding
In Volume I, Doctrine of The Orthodox Faith four book series, Father Thomas Hopko provides a clear and thorough overview of the sources of Christian doctrines and the theology of the Orthodox Church. In the chapter titled “Man” Father Hopko explains how God created man in His “image and likeness” as male and female and gave them dominion over [Read more…]

Why do the Righteous Suffer? God’s Answer is a Question

Why do the Righteous Suffer? God Answer is a Questionby Chris Banescu –

In his book, Making Sense Out of Suffering, Peter Kreeft offers us a partial explanation of the mystery of why righteous men are afflicted by seemingly random and unjust suffering and many trials and tribulations in this life. He points us to the Scriptures, specifically the Book of Job, and the lessons we can learn from the suffering of the righteous Job and God’s answer to Job. “Who do you think you are, anyway? By what right do you unquestioningly assume that you can know the answer to this question? Are you in a position to answer it? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”, the author paraphrases God’s response to the long-suffering Job.

Kreeft explains that for many of us, the suffering we experience in this life will remain a mystery. While sometimes we may grasp the reason “why” we endure afflictions or God allows us a glimpse into the purpose behind our tribulations, most often we cannot know. To truly understand why we suffer would mean to know the mind of an infinite, omniscient, and omnipotent God. And that’s impossible. [Read more…]

God’s Will Be Done, The True Path to Joy and Peace

God's Will Be Done, The True Path to Joy and Peaceby Peter Kreeft –
In heaven (and in heaven on earth, the sanctified soul) our will conforms to God’s, not God’s to ours. The reason the saint’s desires are satisfied and he has joy is not that God is a divine dispensing machine and the saint has learned to press the right buttons but that he has learned to desire “the one thing necessary”, God’s will, and therefore always gets what he desires, for God’s will is always done.

“Thy will be done” is the infallible road to total joy.

It is testable and provable in daily and hourly experience. Time after time, active willing God’s will, “Yes” to God, leads out of meaninglessness, passivity, depression, or sorrow into joy. And time after time the pursuit of joy as if it were mine leads to disappointment, emptiness, and restless boredom. Life teaches us by millions of repetitions, yet we need millions more.[Read more…]

The Orthodox Church: Fighting Heresies and Resisting Worldly Errors

Sunday of Orthodoxy, Orthodox Church Fighting Heresies and Resisting Worldly ErrorsG. K. Chesterton points out the glorious sanity and vigorous life that has existed in the Christian Church since Her founding. While Chesterton doesn’t specifically mention the Orthodox Church I found his comments most appropriate for the Sunday of Orthodoxy we just celebrated. “This is the Faith of the Apostles, this is the Faith of the Fathers, this is the Faith of the Orthodox, this is the Faith which has established the Universe.” ~ Confession of faith from the Day of Orthodoxy

“This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. [Read more…]