265. Heaven, Part Three – the Holy Mountain and the Garden, from “Hymns on Paradise” by Saint Ephraim the Syrian

Christ has ascended! “When You had fulfilled the dispensation for our sake, and united earth to heaven: You ascended in glory, O Christ our God, not being parted from those who love You, but remaining with them and crying: “I am with you and no one will be against you!” (Tone Six This series of Posts […]

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264. Heaven, Part Two: The Heavenly City in the Book of The Revelation to John

Christ is risen! Truly He is risen! icons by permission of Saint Isaac’s Skete at skete.com Are you interested in the Place where you’re going? * I’m writing these articles to give us a taste of what it’s like There. Actually, one of the two possible places. Someday when I’m in a dark mood I’ll […]

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263. Heaven, Part One: “I go to prepare a Place for you…” What Christ said about Heaven.

Christ is risen! Truly He is risen! Coptic Orthodox Anastasis To those of you who schedule your entire lives around the arrival of this consistently-every-Friday Blog Post * my apologies for being a day late. This has been an extraordinarily busy week. Next week I’ll get things under control again. I will not use the pop abbreviation LOL […]

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262. The beautiful, good, happy, blessed doubt of Thomas: How to be cured of Doubt. I think…

Christ is risen! Truly He is risen! Chora Church, Constantinople, 14th c (US Public Domain) It seems strange to title this Post as I did, then follow it with “Christ is risen!” and a gorgeous Orthodox Paschal icon… and then immediately go back to Thomas and his doubts. However, I intended to talk about doubt […]

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261. Three Startling Newly-Revealed Martyrs

And we do mean newly-revealed. At least by my (old man’s) standards. from Greek City Times It began in the year 1959, on the Greek island of Lesvos (also known as Mytilene). The Martyr Raphael appeared in a dream to the priest of the village of Thermi, identified himself, then began to tell him his story […]

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