“For everything in the Orthodox Church points toward a way of life; the Church is connected to all aspects of life.”
+ FR. ALEXANDER SCHMEMANN
Orthodoxy is an ocean without shores. Such magnanimity cannot be confined within the four walls of a church building. Reducing orthodoxy to a few performative rituals is the greatest distortion one could possibly make of it. Orthodoxy is not a religious ideology but the most organic lifestyle initiated, practiced and traditioned to us by Jesus Christ for the integral healing of human beings and the wider creation. There is not a single aspect of human life and ecosystem which Orthodoxy does not encompass. A genuine inculcation of this lifestyle would lead us to the cross of Christ where we would discover our true life which is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).
Organic Orthodoxy envisions to theologically engage with the social evils of the world that strive to upend the divine order and impede the realization of the reign of God on earth.
LATEST POSTS
Reclaim the Identity
It so happens that once a woman becomes a mother her identity usually goes for a toss. Everything suddenly becomes riveted around her child. The case of Mary is no different. As the infancy narrative of Jesus unfolds in the Gospel of Luke, a sword pierces Mary’s soul (2:35); her name ebbs from the narrative…
The Sundry Kingdom
The Gospel of Luke is impregnated with healing miracles that upend the physiognomic stereotypes prevalent in the first century Greco-Roman culture. For instance, healing of the paralytic (5:17-26); healing of the man with withered hand (6:6-11); healing of the man with dropsy (14:1-6) and healing of the hunched woman (13:10-17). It was assumed that the…
Wrestle with God
Tyre and Sidon were Gentile regions which shared a political alliance with Israel to defeat Philistines, their common enemy. When Israelites crushed Philistines on land, Tyre and Sidon – being coastal cities – vanquished them on sea. To bolster this relationship, Israelites intermarried with the regions of Tyre and Sidon. Jezebel, the princess of Tyre,…
Harmony of Will
One of the significant Christological titles that is ubiquitous in the Syriac Liturgical corpus is “Physician”. Christ is identified as the Good Physician / Great Physician / Heavenly (Celestial Physician). In the Qolo of Sh’himo Monday Matins we pray; “𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘩𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘩𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵…
Nuptial Economy
The Wedding at Cana is a paradigmatic ‘sign’ (semeion – σημεῖον) that somehow encompasses the implications of the other signs. It is not just the first sign but more emphatically as the text testifies ‘the beginning of signs’. (ἀρχὴν τῶν σημείων – 2:11). It is of prime importance to note that the term John prefers…
Reverberations of Choice
Jonah is a classic example of how interconnected human beings and ecology are that the choices we make have a substantial impact on the entire ecosystem. Jonah typifies that our refusal to obey the will of God not only makes 𝐨𝐮𝐫 lives miserable but also the lives of people associated with us as well as…
Annunciation of Peace
Behind the sanitized, antiseptic and cellophane portraits of Mary one can find a despised single mother with callous feet and hands, perspiration on the brow, persevering to sustain her child and herself in a milieu categorically hostile to women. Therefore in her life and canticles, many women of similar sort find hope and courage to…
Oscillating Ones
What are our kids? Entertainers who recite poetry, sing songs or dance to appease us? Or are they impressionable beings on whom the adults wield dominion in the guise of discipline taking advantage of their innocence and sheer dependence? Or even more are they pendulums vacillating between the desires of their parents and the mores…
Tread in Travail
In the process of theologizing, the position of the theologian is of paramount importance. This is very well discovered when we juxtapose the positions of Peter and the Centurion. Since Peter fled from the Cross of Christ, he could only testify Jesus as the Messiah (Mk. 8:29). On the other hand, it was the Centurion…
Distortion Of The Cross
As we celebrate the Feast of the Cross it is most unlikely that one would not hear about sufferings. Yet certain things need to be made blatant. Christ never romanticized suffering rather He confronted, subverted and transfigured it. In fact, He taught to evade the sufferings which are possible to evade. For instance He said;…
Cherish The Mundane
Today the Church celebrates the nativity of the Jewish peasant girl Mary whose birth was so ordinary that it didn’t even find a place in Scripture. Yet she was filled with grace to bear the Son of God. People like Joachim, Anna and Mary are radical reminders that it’s the least likely ones who end…
The Crisis of Education
The best means to crush the spirit of an egalitarian democracy and make its citizens absolute conformists is to colonize the education system. The profit-driven bourgeois spearheading the privatization of education know very well how to commodify, commercialize and contort the very concept of education by transforming students into “consumers” and teachers into “service providers”.…
Moisten Our Hearts
One of the despicable things that the pandemic has done is reduce death to mere statistics depriving its narrative. Consequently this has made us more callous to death. This callousness is further augmented by media especially the celluloids which make us consume violence to an exceptional degree such that we have grown anesthetic to the…
God in Tabernacle or Flesh?
Mountains do seem panacean sites where one could stay insular to the wounds of life and oblivious to the sufferings of the world, don’t they? Therefore we try our best to spiritually valorize them through some sanctimonious hermeneutics. What’s the point of life then if all we seek are just ways to circumvent pain at…
Do Not De-Incarnate Christ
How often do we whine about our youngsters not coming to church! We then devise ways to 𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕 them to church as if church is an amusement park which just needs a few enticing upgrades – however evanescent they may be – for the pews to occupy. Their coming to church is predicated not just…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dayroyo Fr. Basil of the Syriac Orthodox Church holds a B.Div from United Theological College, Bangalore and an M.A. from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, New York. He also holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Nagpur University and has served in the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI), Nagpur. As of now he serves at St. Avgin Monastery, Arth, Switzerland.
Urho, The Way 
Good initiative! Best wishes!!
I hope and pray that along with the social evils, Organic Orthodoxy will continue to address the evils and hypocrisy within the Christian Churches including our Church, which are part of the society/world.
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Deep thoughts refreshing the richness of Orthodoxy
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The articles seem to have disappeared
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Fixed it. Thanks for pointing it out. God bless!
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