BEFORE JESUS BEGAN HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY, He prayed and fasted for forty days (see Matthew 4:1-11). The Church’s ascetics look to His experience as the model for their spiritual life. They devote themselves to prayer throughout the night and fasting every day. But even...
IN EASTERN ICONS, such as the traditional representation of the Gergasene demoniacs, demons are often portrayed as little winged black men. In the medieval art of the West the horned, bat-winged and fork-tailed red giant was the most popular representation of the...
WHO WERE THE ROMAN CHRISTIANS to whom St Paul wrote his epistle? We know that the first believers in Jesus were Jews, even in the foreign cities where they had settled. For hundreds of years there had been Jews living in the commercial centers of the Roman Empire. The...
The passage from St Matthew’s Gospel describing the healing of the demoniac begins with the words, “When Jesus had come to the other side…” (Matthew 8:28). “The other side of what?” we may ask, raising questions of where Jesus went and what it meant for His ministry....
MANY CHRISTIAN CHURCHES in America were founded by a pastor who had a Bible, a microphone and a conviction that God wanted him to preach. So he gathered a few followers (often his own relatives), rented space and scheduled services. Americans see nothing unusual in...
