SACRAMENTAL LIVING

“There is a generalized sense in our culture…that with the eclipse of the transcendent, something may have been lost…Divested of the transcendent, this world is invested with ultimacy and meaning in ways that couldn’t have been imagined before.” (James K.A. Smith) “It seems thousands of years removed from us, but it was not so very long ago that life was marked out by religious feasts. Although everyone went to church, not everyone, of course, knew the exact contents of each

“Christ promises to be present and make Himself known to us. When we spend time with each other, developing our relationship, we no longer ask if the other exists. Rather, we understand that because we know someone, the question of existence is surpassed. This is the kind of knowing and being that we have in relationship with each other, and this is equally true of our relationships with God. So a student may ask, “How do we know God exists?” but this, for me, is the wrong qu

“…secularity is the negation, the evacuation from life, of the experience of the world as sacred reality, as “participant” in divine reality and “participated in” by the divine.” (Vigen Guroian) “Though the secular world denies all invisible spiritual forces, the Scriptures testify to their existence, pervasiveness, and impact on the world.” (Fr. Basil) “It is very simplistic to say that emergencies make people pay more attention to God and reawaken religious feelings. We mig

“Questions about the problem of evil and God's commands are really asking about character of God. The real question is, "Can God be trusted?” (John Njoroge) “I am struck by the preponderance of unbelief in our day and time. Frequently, the “problem of evil” is cited as an overwhelming obstacle to belief. I think of this in particular when I consider that antiquity was dominated by far more suffering on a daily basis than our present age. Our lives would seem magical in their

“…it is in our nature to aim toward what is good, true, and beautiful. But the impulse toward the good often misfires as we follow after merely transitory and temporal goods rather than the Eternal Good, or as we pursue the fleeting ephemeral beauty of this world, which cannot satisfy the soul…The power that transitory goods have to entice us away from the Ultimate Good lies precisely in the fact that they are genuine goods. Because of our fallen state, we do not approach God

“The father of the young man in our gospel lesson had surely rejected simplistic views of faith long ago…But instead of falling into complete despair and cynicism, the father had at least enough faith to say to Christ, “’but if You can do anything, have pity on us and help us.”‘ In response to the Savior’s words, “’If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes,’ the man cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”‘ With an integrity fu

“…the apostle writes that “we are not those who draw back to perdition” (Hebrews 10:39.) The word in the Greek refers to those who “shrink back”…like those who pull back from battle. Rather than quit the fight, the apostle writes, we are those who “believe to the saving of the soul” (vs. 39). The word in the Greek text is “faith,” the conviction of the truth, the reliance on God…It is the opposite of surrendering to the trials that we face. The thoughts of confidence, boldnes

“We go to church… in order to have our eyes opened to see the goodness which God bestowed upon creation… We begin to see God revealed in and through God’s own creation… It is this vision which we lost through sin – it is not the case that the world is totally depraved because of sin but rather that we have lost the ability to see and to have our proper place in creation.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh) “We see the world of God’s creation spread before us, its splendor awakening us to offer

“The narrative of Creation is the story of God creating a sacred space in which to dwell with His creation, humanity…What we see in Genesis is precisely the reverse of this pagan practice. Upon the completion of His own temple, His own sacred space, God then creates His own image. After creating a human person as His image, God Himself breathes into him the breath of life, opening his nostrils and causing him to live and function as God’s image. The gift given to human person

“…even if we have spent time pursuing our deepest desires through the means that were not set up by God, even if we have become addicted by them, we can also repent and turn to Him in faithfulness. It is not wrong to do the things necessary for survival and even flourishing here on earth, but if we put our trust in those things to satiate the hunger for eternity that God has planted deep within us, then we will find ourselves in slavery to those pursuits. There is never enoug