444. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive.

In today’s Post I am plagiarizing myself. I’ve written so many Posts that often I can’t remember them. I had a vague memory of writing long ago about forgiveness, so I looked back and, sure enough: Post 55. It was like reading someone else’s writing. I thought some of it (forgive my pride) was really […]

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443. “In the Heart of the Desert” by Dr John Chryssavgis

This Post contains small portions from the excellent book In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, published here with the generous permission of the author, the Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis, Archdeacon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. I think it’s appropriate reading as we near our annual passage through Great […]

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442. The Parable of the penitent Prodigal Son and the forgiving Father and the stupid Elder Brother, in three Scenarios

The word in New Testament Greek is άσωτος/asotos, “dissipated, debauched, dissolute”. The old English word for this was “prodigal”. This guy who has wasted his life on nothing, worse than nothing, thrown away his family inheritance on pig’s slop: What kind of fuzzy-minded liberal would forgive somebody like that? I still remember my granddad feeding […]

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436. The Holy Family’s Mysterious Flight into Egypt: Part Two

Last week when I began to research the Flight into Egypt, I knew nothing about the subject, except what I had read in Saint Matthew. (How could I have been so ignorant all these years?) I found so much material that was completely new to me that I didn’t know how to process it all. […]

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435. The Holy Family’s Mysterious Flight into Egypt, Part One

Did Our Lord Jesus take His first steps as an infant in Egypt, not at home in Nazareth? Was one of His first questions: “Father, what is that?” “It’s a pyramid, my son”. Why ever would I publish this Post in the middle of January? After all, we read the story of the Flight into […]

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