Friday Reflection News Today

Phineas (Num. 25:11) Orthodox cal. Maximilian of Theveste Martyr 295 Paul Aurelian Bishop, Brittany 575 Gregory B Rome 604 Anglican, Eastern, Lutheran cals. Theophanes Abbot Confessor, Cyzicus 818 Alphege Bishop Winchester 951 D ante Parlani was 107 when he was interviewed in the 2014 documentary My Italian Secret, which tells the story of Italians who hid Jews from the Nazis. Dante was bright and articulate, with a remarkable memory. Before the war, Italy under the fascists did not persecute ...

Delivered Daily: The Friday Reflection by James M. Kushiner

J esus said, "I am with you always, even unto the end of the age." No man has ever made such a claim. Christians know it to be true. "Our Saviour teaches us every day with His own voice," reads a line from the matins of the Orthodox Sunday of the Prodigal Son, before Lent. Reading the red-letter words spoken by Jesus in the Gospels is not like reading the words of Plato or Cicero. Christs living voice is still heard. His teachings and parables are towering monuments of truth, mileposts marking ...

No Oracular Science: The Friday Reflection by James M. Kushiner

A House Demolished : The Friday Reflection by James M. Kushiner

C alling a thing by its proper name is a service to truth, if not to political ambitions or evil designs. Of course, ambitions abide and creating labels to denigrate an idea, opponent, or promote your agenda is nothing new. If I am a "Progressive" and you are not with me, you must be against Progress. The Dark Ages was a clever label, attributed to Petrarch (d. 1374), stuck on the period after the decline of the Roman Empire which neatly contrasted with an earlier period of antiquity which boas...

I magine facing a world of great turmoil, violence, even death threats. Saying, "Beam me up, Scotty!" doesnt seem to work. One wealthy, radical youth named Paul, to escape the intensifying persecutions of the Emperor Decius, retired to a home out in the country. Upon discovering that his brother-in-law plotted to hand him over to the persecutors, Paul left all behind and fled in fear to the desert. Jerome wrote an account of his life. Paul of Thebes preceded Anthony of Egypt into the desert. An...

T imes of unrest surely outnumber times of peace. Of course, not every age has Attila the Hun. But one of them did. January 8 is the commemoration of Severinus of Noricum, who lived in the fifth century at a time of great upheaval in Pannonia (Austria). His Life was written by his disciple Eugippius after Severinus death in 482. Eugippius wrote what he called a memoir of Severinus and sent it to the Deacon Paschasius, imploring him: "Illustrious minister of Christ, thou hast the memoir. From it...

I n this horrible year 2020, many are wondering what the New Normal will be. Some are anxious about an imminent Great Reset, which would be, it seems, a sinister global and ungodly New Normal. When a society eschews direction from Above, it might, for example, systematically remove the Ten Commandments from courthouses. Or it might deny that church services are in any way "essential" to the nation during a pandemic. Apparently, the New Normal is systemic secularism. Systemic secularism was give...