Author: Fr. Johannes Jacobse

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

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Icon of Christ opening the gates of Dachau

Every Pascha, I repost two stories on OrthodoxyToday.org. that tell how Orthodox prisoners in Dachau held the Paschal Liturgy during their liberation. The first, “The Souls of All are Aflame” provides historical background and detail. The second, “Pascha in Dachau” recounts the story of a prisoner who was there.

Dachua was liberated during Holy Week. The Orthodox believers experienced Christ’s triumph over the forces of darkness to a depth that is difficult to understand. It is hard to fathom the depravity the evil ideologies fostered in their persecutors short of any direct experience, but anyone who has confronted lesser evils knows that such great evil can exist.

The resurrection of Christ is the final confrontation to the horrors unleashed when the embrace of Nazism and Communism opened the jaws of a deep hell. We see it in our own day too, especially the embrace of the nihilistic fantasies that fuel the arguments that devalue human life. It began with that faceless figure, the one who lies, who is the father of lies and appeals to the base passions of men, who whispered into the ear of man that he can be like God. Some choose to believe him. They whisper anew that first whisper. The whisper gets louder and louder so that in some corners of our world it is proclaimed from the housetops. Evil always masquerades as good, and not until the evil that those ideas hide is laid bare do most men dare face the consequences of their own beliefs. Others of course, never do.

Only the Gospel of Christ, the proclamation that Christ is risen from the dead, reveals that death is an enemy destroyed and exposes the nihilistic embrace of death as a lie. The grand schemes of the social engineers who are intoxicated by their own pride and contemptuous of what is good and true, will one day come to nothing. Babel will fall. But until it does, destruction and suffering prevail by their hands. Continue reading →

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Met. Methodios implicity criticizes Met. Jonah’s rebuke of EP primacy claim (presumably)

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It’s hard to know for sure because it’s an oblique reference, but a betting man might wager that Met. Methodios’ criticism that other “Orthodox presences…do anything but foster love and cooperation in this land” referred to Met. Jonah’s rebuke of the address given by the emissary of the Ecumenical Patriarch several weeks ago.

Speaking at Holy Cross Seminary Met. Methodios said that, “One must always watch one’s tongue and be careful of what he says…because of the internet, television, cameras, those comments are sent around the world and do a great deal of harm.” These words, it seems, could just as easily be applied to the emissary.

Transcription of Met. Jonah’s Speech on Orthodoxy Unity in America

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Sermon delivered at St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral in Dallas, Texas on April 5, 2009.

Met. Jonah

It is a great joy to see everybody here this evening from so many different communities, from different traditions. Orthodoxy is a celebration of diversity in unity, and unity in diversity. Our unity is in our one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and our one Orthodox faith and our one commitment to living the truth, to living as Christians. Not to live according the spirit of the world, not to live according to our passions, not to live according to the desires that flit by through our minds and lead us into all sorts of trouble, but to live the truth, to live Orthodox.

And, our diversity is something we celebrate, not a diversity of lifestyles, but a diversity that reflects the whole spectrum of our community, people of all races, people of all colors, people from a multitude of different ethnic backgrounds. Continue reading →

Wesley J. Smith: Orthodox Advocate for Human “Exceptionalism”

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Our culture is at a crossroad about the value of human life, argues author and human rights activist Wesley J. Smith in an interview with Kevin Allen on the “Illumined Heart” podcast (Ancient Faith Radio). Do we value human life simply because it is human, or do we value it based on notions and definitions of “personhood” including such characteristics as sentience, awareness, stages of biological development and others factors? The former allows for a universal definition of human rights. The latter reduces human beings to “subjects” that are bound to shifting and often capricious standards that determine who lives and who dies.

Listen here:

widget here (43:38)

It’s a heated battle (one that even spills over into the comments of this blog on occasion). Often, the the level of vituperation in the attacks against religious defenders of human life arise because the utilitarians understand their view allows for no coherent defense of any human rights, Smith says. “They try to avoid thy weight of their own ideas by diverting [the argument] into, ‘Well, it’s just a matter of religion.'” Yet, “They are the ones obsessed with religion…” Continue reading →

Achieving Orthodox Unity

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Fr. Gleb McFatter, who pastors St. Demetrius Orthodox Church in Naples, Florida offered the following homily at the Sunday of Orthodoxy Vespers.

Highlight:

Orthodox unity will only be achieved when the laity, parish priests and monastics lovingly unify themselves and exhibit that unity to the hierarchs. One thing those of us in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) have learned from our recent “times of trouble” is that only when the discontent among the laity, parish priests and monastics rose to a fever pitch — only then were the hierachs moved to action. Imagine what could be accomplished if that same level of energy was focused on achieving unity among those at the parish and monastic level!

Continue reading →

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