Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a  donation. Thanks!

After Great Lent

Last Sunday Orthodox Christians around the world finally celebrated Pascha and proclaimed Christ risen from the dead. As in Western Christendom, Orthodox Easter is preceded by Holy Week—the liturgical pinnacle of the Orthodox Church. In this week of preparation and commemoration, our services, . . . . Continue Reading »

How To Celebrate Easter

Like Patrick Leigh Fermor did: with red eggs and firearms, alongside one's comrades. From Abducting a General, Fermor's account of his anti-Nazi resistance work in Crete:I got back to the hideout at last on April 16th, which was Orthodox Easter Sunday, the greatest feast of the Greek year . . . . . . . Continue Reading »

Love Flowers

Long before we learned to love, we learned to lose; this is an education the world offers free of charge. As children, we first mourned the roses in October, the neighbor’s night-blooming cactus when we left for school, the rotting tree wrung out by lightning. (Once, at four, I stooped down to . . . . Continue Reading »

Analogia Resurrectionis

Although the resurrection of Christ is unique and unrepeatable, there are analogies for it in the lives of Christians. Jesus says as much when he makes his raising of Lazarus to be an icon of the greater resurrection that’s to come. Continue Reading »

This Isn’t a Barbie How?

My friend Nathaniel comments that he’d like to see a “Jael With Her Tent Peg,” but I think that’s expecting a level of biblical literalism, to coin a phrase which was already in existence and didn’t really need coining . . . Anyway, you tell me. Barbie: Sarah, from the . . . . Continue Reading »

Ideas Have . . .

. . . ways of not playing out in quite the way you’d envisioned sometimes. At least, that’s one way to put it. A friend once told me the story of a play he’d been in, or seen, or heard about, or had a friend who had a friend who had heard this story from someone who was in it, or . . . . Continue Reading »

On the Seasonal Aisle

This display spotted at my local Bi-Lo grocery store:Easter Pretty BarbieJesus, God’s Son. My teenager reports that when you press a button, He intones the Our Father, among other things, in what she describes as a “hunky” voice. Hear Him speak John 3:16! Mary Messenger of Faith. . . . . Continue Reading »

Tags

Loading...

Filter First Thoughts Posts