October 18. We have worked to create a community for both believers and non believers alike by sharing the timeless faith of Orthodoxy with the contemporary world through modern media. We have become so used to extreme rhetoric of late where fake news and alternative facts trump common sense and diplomatic reserve. It almost feels like the time is right for the prophet Jeremiah to come in on cue and deliver one of his stinging series of woes. The book of Job proclaims their innocence ….. and after a while their speakers, their leaders, their representatives will look up and turn their eyes towards us in Australia, in New Zealand, in the United States and the United Nations and ask one simple question which they have every right to ask: “are we not your neighbours?” “Are we not your neighbours?”. Amen. Could it be that the Christians in Rome had not appreciated Paul’s earlier long letter to them? “Luke alone is with me.”. Have any of you been to Tuvalu? Click to signup to receive weekly newsletter. Who knows? At times the two shores are so close to one another they nearly meet. There are exceptions, of course. What are we to make of poor afflicted Job? This past week we received a dire warning. Not only was he the only Gentile to write books of the Bible, but he was a close companion of St. Paul. In the end, “beauty will save the world”. Share the Love of Orthodoxy Today! Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. They have done so in the past as one critical decade gave way to another. It’s a great time to be a cartoonist. That should not have been too surprising, of course. This time there is no parable but Jesus does a quick tour of the10 commandments. It can be easy to follow the crowd and become a false comforter to those who may need some sort of good will, help, tempered with wisdom. Remember, Paul wrote what we now call the Epistle to the Romans—you know, one of the most important books in the Bible—before he had met any of its recipients personally. So we celebrate today the proclamation of Good News – the careful work that Luke undertook to “write an orderly account” for Theophilus of the amazing story of the Son of God. He felt abandoned. And yet one of the leaders on Tuvalu has likened the plight of his people to the story of Job. They feel themselves to have been. There are no hills, no gentle rises. Orthodox Christian Network (OCN) is a 501(c)3 and an official agency of the Assembly of Canonical Bishops of the United States of America . And many of those who feel alone experience their aloneness in a particularly dark tone. There is more than a grain of truth in White’s thesis; it is a claim that has haunted Christian thinking on the environment ever since but it is not the whole truth: White himself recognized that there was a minority position within the Christian faith. It has a certain appeal you can imagine for a people who know their Bible stories - but those who know the Earth system sciences know too much – and so too do those who watch the slow rise of sea levels and the loss of land. In Mark the story takes a rather different line: the lawyer is now a rich young man who calls Jesus good and then wonders what he must do to inherit eternal life. Denomination: Catholic. That’s kind of a problem, because we have people all around us, and we interact with them every day. “Luke alone is with me.” One of the themes that Paul keeps coming back to over and over again in his writings is the utter faithfulness, the complete dependability, of God. ©2020 Orthodox Christian Network. The global annual catch from marine fisheries will decrease by three million tons. If St. Paul succeeded in evangelizing the western Roman empire, Luke may have had more to do with it … We would like to think that he was welcomed warmly by the local Christian community when he arrived in the city as a “minimum security” prisoner, but this letter to Timothy is a sign that it may not have been the case. They have needed to be set free from another question that continues to haunt them: what did we do to make God angry that we should deserve this? Some commentators believe that the future may well be turn out to be rather ugly. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. It is time for us to let our faith address those issues and not allow that climate change and environmental concern to be hived off into some separate mental and spiritual compartment. Job has nothing at all to do with climate change, rising sea levels and the plight of a people living on a faraway necklace of islands. The panel - the IPCC - is, of course, not averse to giving dire warnings. There is no elevated land around you. This past week we received a dire warning. Or could it be that the Roman Christians lacked the courage to face Nero’s anger, which could flare up violently at any time, so they left Paul alone for fear of provoking Nero? There is another tradition that looks back Francis of Assisi and considers him to be its patron saint. Its story line has to do with a wager between God and Satan over whether Job is a righteous man and can preserve the integrity of his faith in the face of innocent suffering. Tradition tells us that Luke wrote the third Gospel and the book of Acts. (Now, can you imagine not appreciating the epistle to the Romans? And it is not difficult to see why. What is ‘Byzanfest’ and what’s the purpose of this festival. Your gift today will helps us produce and provide unlimited access to Orthodox faith-inspiring programming, services and community. Will it be home in the same way that we have known? Your gift today will helps us produce and provide unlimited access to Orthodox faith-inspiring programming, services and community. There is, of course, an injustice in this whole situation. I just know it to be true. What does it mean to follow Christ in these changing times, when dire warnings abound, where our neighbours look towards us, hoping against hope that – for Christ’s sake – we do not turn out to be the contemporary equivalent of one of Job’s false comforters? In the background lie the dire warnings of the IPCC. The politics of the time can become populist. I’m not a psychologist, so I won’t speculate as to why this is. But you never know.) Please note, not all Pemptousia articles have bylines. We’ll never really know, but, in any case, Paul felt alone. The people of Tuvalu did not cause what is happening to their islands – and the story of Job helps them out in one other way. If the author is known, he or she is listed in the article above. Their release of carbon emissions has been miniscule. These ‘Job-like nations’. Its tone, its contents, are enough to produce within us what the psychologist of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Robert Jay Lifton – has described as ‘psychic numbing’: That particular condition occurs when we know there is a problem, but the problem is so large and we are so small – and so we do – nothing. A great many people will tell you, if they’re honest, that they feel alone—seriously, depressingly, alone—even those who come across to the world as outgoing and friendly. They may be casual relationships, but even if they’re casual, most everyone has several such casual relationships.