In Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers, a lawyer affirms, “A person who can believe all the articles of the Christian faith is not going to boggle over a trifle of adverse evidence.”
It so happens that Miss Climpson, the person the lawyer is speaking about, is right, and all the “adverse evidence” which seemed to point in a certain direction was not pointing in the right direction at all. She was right “not to boggle over adverse evidence.” As is very often the case in a classical detective story, this comment seems to be nothing more than a witty remark, but I don’t think it should be taken so lightly.
As politicians begin to lift restrictions around social distancing, I am hearing calls to put pressure on bishops and metropolitans to open church buildings again. When I discussed this with a friend, she pointed out that God does not need us to be in a church in order to come to us. Look at the example of Pentecost, she said. The apostles were in a house, and the Spirit descended with the sound of a great, rushing wind. Or the first time Jesus came to the apostles after the Resurrection, I added. Jesus appeared despite the doors being locked. God will come to us, not because we are in a church building, but because we desire to be in relationship with Him.
To say that the pandemic altered my prayer life is to grossly understate things. As a theology student, I have more opportunities than the average person to attend liturgies of various kinds. Mass at my own college, daily Matins and Vespers at a Greco-Catholic chapel on campus, Divine Liturgy with an Orthodox mission at another chapel, the odd Coptic or even Anglican service thrown into the mix. All of that came to an abrupt halt and, honestly, I miss it. Still, I am nervous about some of the rhetoric around the need to open our churches again. When we hear people arguing that the churches need to be reopened as soon as possible—or even that the bishops made a mistake in closing them in the first place—because it deprived the people of God’s grace, we need to recognize that there is a problem in how they are conceiving of God’s providence. I do not mean to condemn or berate them here. If anything, I feel an even greater charity towards them. Read More
Archpriest Paul Lazor fell asleep in the Lord after extensive illness at a hospital near his home in Tobyhanna, PA on May 9, 2020. Before his retirement in 2007, Father Paul served as the John and Paraskeva Skvir Lecturer in Practical Theology, as priest and one-time Rector of the Three Hierarchs’ Chapel, and as the Dean of Students at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York. For generations of graduates and clergy serving in the Orthodox Church in America and throughout the world, Father Paul was a trusted teacher, guide, confessor, and spiritual father.
Father Paul was born on June 28, 1939, in Canonsburg, PA—a small town located to the southwest of Pittsburgh. His father, Joseph, was a Russian native of Galicia. For 50 years, Joseph served as the choir director and cantor at the Orthodox parish of St. John the Baptist in Canonsburg, PA of which, in 1918, he was one of the founders. His mother, Anna, was the daughter of Michael Lazorchak, another listed founder of the parish. Father Paul was born, baptized, and raised from infancy by his dedicated parents.
Throughout his years in the Canonsburg Public School System, Father Paul was always a good student. In High School he did particularly well in such subjects as mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Upon his graduation, he enrolled at Pitt in 1957 majoring in the field of chemical engineering. During the summer of 1960, he worked as an engineering trainee for the Bethlehem Steel Corp. in Buffalo, NY. In 1961 he received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. Read More
ORTHODOXY IN DIALOGUE 