Being a True Christian and Venerating the Saints

by Erin Doom

Feast of St John Chrysostom

Anno Domini 2020, November 13

1. Bible & Fathers: “Pursue the Economy of the Future Life” by St John Chrysostom

Friday – Feast of St John Chrysostom: Heb. 7:26-28; 8:1-2. Jn. 10:9-16. Online here.

Saturday – Feast of St Philip the Apostle and St Gregory Palamas: 1 Cor. 4:9-16. Jn. 1:43-51. Online here.

Sunday – Nativity Fast begins: Eph. 2:4-10. Lk. 10:25-37. Online here.

Here is the first of two paragraphs from a homily by St John Chrysostom on Repentance and Prayer:

Let us imitate the saints who neither became oppressed by their afflictions nor became filled with conceit by leisure. Many of us suffer this now, and resemble nimble ships’ bilges that are crowded by waves on all sides and capsize. For many times poverty attacked us suddenly, submerged us, and brought us to the ocean bed; and the wealth that came to us puffed us up again, and hurled us into the worst possible conceit. This is why I plead with you to pay no heed to things and for every one of us to direct our souls toward salvation. If our soul is rightly steered, then whatever danger falls upon us—whether famine, or disease, or slander, or plundering of property, or any other such thing—will be bearable and light, by the commandment of the Master and through hope in Him. Likewise, when the soul does not stand well before God, then, even if wealth flows abundantly, and has children, and enjoys immeasurable goods, this person will experience much faintheartedness and many cares. Therefore, let us not seek wealth; let us not avoid poverty. However, above all these, let each one take care of his soul and make it pursue the economy of the future life as well as cause it to depart from the present life to the next.

Read the rest of the passage here.

2. Books & Culture: Eighth Day Books Review of The Cult of the Saints: Homilies by John Chrysostom

Click here to read a review of a collection of homilies by St John Chrysostom on the veneration of saints. And be sure to purchase your copy from Eighth Day Books!

3. Essays et al: A Letter of St. Herman to His Spiritual Son, Simeon Yanovsky

This Sunday is one of three feast days for St Herman of Alaska the Wonder-worker and patron saint of North America (the first one commemorates his death, his burial is commemorated on Dec. 13, and his canonization is commemorated on August 9). Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to his spiritual son Simeon Yanovsky (later Schemamonk Sergius):

Without exalting myself to the rank of teacher, nonetheless, fulfilling my duty and obligation as an obedient servant for the benefit of my neighbor, I will speak my mind, founded on the commandments of Holy Scripture, to those who thirst and seek for their eternal heavenly homeland.

A true Christian is made by faith and love toward Christ. Our sins do not in the least hinder our Christianity, according to the word of the Savior Himself. He deigned to say: not the righteous have I come to call, but sinners to salvation; there is more joy in heaven over one who repents than over ninety righteous ones. Likewise concerning the sinful woman who touched His feet, He deigned to say to the Pharisee Simon: to one who has love, a great debt is forgiven, but from one who has no love, even a small debt will be demanded. From these judgments a Christian should bring himself to hope and joy, and not in the least accept an inflicted despair. Here one needs the shield of faith.

Sin, to one who loves God, is nothing other than an arrow from the enemy in battle. The true Christian is a warrior fighting his way through the regiments of the unseen enemy to his heavenly homeland. According to the word of the Apostle, our homeland is in heaven; and about the warrior he says: our warfare is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spirits of wickedness under heaven (Eph. 6:12).

Read the entire (and delightful) letter here.

If you’ve been encouraged, challenged, enlightened, or found any value whatsoever in my labor of love through Microsynaxis (or any of the other many EDI endeavors), please consider supporting the work of renewing culture by joining the community of Eighth Day Members. Among many other perks, you’ll begin receiving the weekly member’s issue of Synaxis. Learn more about the other perks and sign up here.

Thanks for considering!

In Christ,

Erin John

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What Else is This, if it is Not God? Stumbling Through St. John of Damascus, Part 2

By Luke Taylor Gilstrap • July 31, 2026

"What is it that has ordered the things of heaven and those of earth, the things which move through the air and those which move in the water; nay, rather the things which proceeded them: heaven and earth and the natures of fire and water? What is it that combined and arranged them...set them into motion and put them on their unceasing and unhindered course?..But who is the architect of these things? Or did not he who made them also bring them into being? We shall certainly not attribute such power to spontaneity." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 3 This comes after St. John of Damascus sets out to delineate between the created and the uncreated, a fact which, while at the core of existence, seems for him to be, for this very reason, the simplest to believe. Everything but God is created and, thus, susceptible to change. This means people, but this also means demons, angels, the rest of the created order across the entire cosmos. Everything is vulnerable to unrest. Except for God. If you have ever tried to explain the Holy Trinity to a child for the first time, maybe you have felt as I have the weightier, inexpressible side of God's unchangeability: how do I possibly communicate this essential fact to the person in front of me? (This is usually when my faint stutter starts to pop up again.) I like that here, like St. Patrick reaching for a three-leaf clover, St. John brings us back to earth to better understand the cosmos. Fire and water are no less mysteries than heaven and earth. And yet here we are, cooking and washing, eating and drinking, filled and sustained on what we can neither fully explain nor claim to have created. Only God is unchanging. Vice versa, God is the only constant we need. Maybe the rest is better left unsaid. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.

One Thing to Speak, Another to Know : Stumbling Through St. John of Damascus, Part 1

By Luke Taylor Gilstrap • July 24, 2026

"Now, one who would speak or hear about God should know beyond any doubt that in what concerns theology and the Incarnation not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things unknowable nor are they all knowable. That which can be known is one thing, whereas that which can be said is another, just as it is one thing to speak and another to know. Furthermore, many of those things about God which are not clearly perceived cannot be fittingly described, so that we are obliged to express in human terms things which transcend the human order. Thus, for example, in speaking about God we attribute to Him sleep, anger, indifference, hands and feet, and the like." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 2 When I was studying Fiction in graduate school, one of the first methods I learned to really situate the reader in the story you were about to tell them was disorientation; if you wanted to ground them in one story, first you had pull the rug out from under their feet. So it's fitting that in the beginning of St. John Damascene's On the Orthodox Faith, before rebuilding our foundation, he first puts us squarely in limbo, seesawing back and forth between certainty and uncertainty. To paraphrase, there is no doubt (certainty) that about God some things can be expressed...but not all things (uncertainty). Some things about God are truly knowable (certainty), but some are unknowable (uncertainty). Oh, and while we're speaking about God (certainty), let's admit there's a gap, too, between what we say and what we know (uncertainty). My favorite line in this spiraling excerpt, "...it is one thing to speak, and another to know," takes me back to the final lines in Wendell Berry's poem, "How to Be a Poet," which he wrote primarily as a reminder to himself: Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. Wherever your preferences fall on the cataphatic or apophatic spectrum of theology (whether you lean more toward what we can say about God or what we cannot), Berry's poem, I think, would nod along with St. John: before we say too much, let our words be preserved by the silence from which they came. I'm thinking of the silence, that filling, restorative quiet I feel when I step into a cathedral or in some of my favorite moments with my kids in the early hours. Even before praying, can we hear the One already praying in us? Let's start there. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.

Being a True Christian and Venerating the Saints

by Erin Doom

Feast of St John Chrysostom

Anno Domini 2020, November 13

What Else is This, if it is Not God? Stumbling Through St. John of Damascus, Part 2

One Thing to Speak, Another to Know : Stumbling Through St. John of Damascus, Part 1

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