23 Οκτωβρίου 2016

Saint James was the son of Joseph the Betrothed from his (first) marriage. He was blessed by God while he was still in his mother’s womb and was so righteous in his life that all the Jews called him the “Just”. Even from a very early age, James lived a very ascetic life. He did not partake of wine or other strong drinks. In imitation of Saint John the Baptist, he never ate anything that had had the breath of life within it.  He never shaved his head, as the Law ordains for those who devote themselves to God (Num. 6, 5). He never washed his hair nor was he anointed with oil, since he cared more for the state ...

In the synaxarion for Saint James (October 23), we’re told that, like Saint John the Baptist, “he never ate anything that had had the breath of life within it”. Yet we’re also told that John ate locusts. Even if he was, as some believe, as Nazirite, he could have eaten locusts, since they are the only insect sanctioned for human consumption in the Jewish dietary laws (Leviticus 11,12). And locusts do, indeed, flourish in and around Israel. On March 21, 2013, the BBC reported that Israel was “in the grip of a locust invasion”, and that Israelis were making the most of this by deep-frying the insects or covering them in chocolate. The problem is that this was an “invasion”. ...

Separate memorial services are not held for monks on the Holy Mountain. Together with the kollyva for the Saint, a small saucer of kollyva is prepared for the departed. Abbots over the last 100 years are commemorated, as are priest and monks over the last thirty. Kollyva is made every time an icon is put on display in the church to be venerated. Every Saturday, however, there is always a service for the departed, with kollyva, unless it coincides with the handing back of a feast of the Lord. The kollyva here is a little boiled wheat on a tin plate, which is placed under the icon of Christ. The kollyva for a feast requires genuine patisserie skills. On the surface, ...

Rev. Patrick H. Reardon Now, on the basis of the foregoing reflections about man’s knowledge of the true God, are there any directions indicated about what sorts of philosophy we should avoid? We do not have to respond to this question in full detail. Just a brief mention of certain schools of philosophy, with even the faintest recognition of what they hold, is sufficient grounds for discerning their incompatibility with the truth we know in Christ. For example, I submit that Christians should spontaneously reject postmodernism’s radical divorce of narrative from truth. And, apart from seminary professors, most Christians normally do. Similarly, we would promptly repudiate Darwinian evolutionism, Marxist dialectical materialism, the naturalism of Bertrand Russell, the New Age anthropology of ...