2018

1. At the turn of the 19th century, German poet and mystical philosopher Novalis wrote his famous essay Christendom or Europe. Already the title of it was stating clearly the identity of the two historical phenomena; and though Novalis described the process through which Europe was gradually losing “the beautiful chief characteristics of these truly Christian times,” he was convinced that the original identity could not be lost. Europe and the Western World, could be Christianity, better or worse, but they could not be anything else at their core, since there is not (and there cannot be) another ultimate meaning of their historical existence. “Ultimate meaning cannot be annihilated, it can be just clouded, weakened, superseded by other meanings.” And we ...

‘They Brought a Paralytic to Him’ Today, our Lord performs a sign and a miracle in the Gospel reading. The miracle is that He forgave the sins of the paralytic and the sign is that He also cured him in the body. The miracle has to do with the soul, the sign with the body. Together they form the complete cure of the paralytic. The person of the paralytic The paralytic wasn’t some neurotic person who’d sinned deeply and was consumed by guilt to the point of paralysis, as a psychiatrist might tell us. The man wasn’t neurotic, but certainly a sinner and his illness was, indeed, the result and consequence of a particular sin. Efthymios Zigavinos says that many illnesses are the ...

If you wish to be governed by God, don’t wish to sin. Because if you sin, how will you be governed by God?

Three things are needful: to keep our mind in heaven; our heart as the throne of God; and our mouth as the Church.