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Long-form writing on Scripture, the Fathers, liturgy, and the shape of the human person — 30 essays migrated so far from andrewyoussef.ca.
2 April 2026
On the Friday that closes Lent, the Church hears Christ grieve over a city that would not be gathered — and answers, as Mary did, by pouring out what it cannot afford.
Read the essay19 November 2025
A survey of how the female diaconate developed across three Oriental Orthodox traditions, and what the historical record does and does not settle.
Read the essay5 June 2024
The earliest Christians understood themselves as Jews awaiting a Jewish Messiah. The pressure point was practical: how do two communities share one table without one of them breaking the Law?
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8 May 2024
Jesus descends from the wooden Cross into a stone-hewn tomb — from one category of defilement into a deeper one. From that descent, He lifts us alongside Himself.
Read the essay3 April 2024
Christ's Paschal mystery — His death, resurrection, and ascension — reflects the dual Passover: the divine passing-over, and the human passing-through.
Read the essay6 March 2024
God is love; and in His love, He created the soul, a breath emanating from Him, capable of love not on account of its own being, but on account of the soul's relation to God.
Read the essay7 February 2024
Grant me life, compassionate one. Hear me, merciful one. Show favor, forgiving one. — a prayer from the tenth-century Armenian father, the only non-Catholic doctor of the Catholic Church.
Read the essay10 January 2024
The baptismal font of the Church is best understood as a womb and a tomb — and the robe we put on is at once a swaddling cloth and a burial shroud.
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10 April 2023
The Four Gospels can be read in full in about 8.5–10 hours. Reading the Psalms takes about 5 hours. A plan for reading Scripture through Holy Week.
Read the essay8 April 2023
Hosanna and Crucify Him were both cried by the same crowd, unaware that both declarations pointed toward the same redemptive event.
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13 April 2022
The Messiah is hidden in the womb of the Church, and in the womb of our souls being formed day by day within us.
Read the essay6 April 2022
John frames Jesus' ministry between water-to-wine at its beginning and water-and-blood from His pierced side at its conclusion.
Read the essay30 March 2022
The absence of the Messiah visibly, as He ascends in the beginning of Acts, is balanced by the active work of the Spirit who manifests Him in the lives of the apostles.
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27 March 2022
True syncretism — merging distinct religious traditions — represents authentic heresy warranting rejection. Genuine ecumenism is something else.
Read the essay22 March 2022
To discover the Messiah through Luke's account, one finds Him either within one's heart's temple or in eucharistic meals shared with Church members.
Read the essay16 March 2022
Jesus resembled Moses, and surpassed him: Moses delivered Israel from Egypt but failed to reach the promised land; Jesus liberated humanity from sin and death.
Read the essay9 March 2022
No Jewish believer recognizes Him as God's Son. Only at His death does a Gentile centurion proclaim: truly, this was the Son of God.
Read the essay2 March 2022
An introduction to a Lenten series finding the Messiah across the four Gospels, Acts, and Revelation.
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28 February 2022
A reflection on fetal tissue in vaccine testing and on the loss of freedom of conscience in mandates — offered as one alternative way of thinking, open to disagreement.
Read the essay18 February 2022
Neither wrath nor chance adequately describe COVID-19. It was tragedy that God managed to take and use for our best interest, as much as that was possible.
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17 September 2021
By Abraham Ghattas — how the anguish of Gethsemane teaches us to begin with praise, to gather close friends, and to submit fully to God's will.
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8 August 2021
As the wife ought to empty herself for the sake of her husband, so also is the Church called to empty herself for the sake of Christ.
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8 July 2021
The Church is not a novelty created after the incarnation; rather, she is eternal, existing from the beginning of the human race and the foundation of the world.
Read the essay15 June 2021
An interview with David Aziz on how education, academic and religious, helps develop a deeper knowledge of church history and its debates — the close of Season One.
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14 May 2021
Four myths about the Great Schism between East and West, and what actually still stands between the two communions.
Read the essay7 April 2021
A conversation with Fr. Dcn. Symeon Price on God's yearning for humanity, drawing on Chrysostom, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory of Narek.
Read the essay26 March 2021
Denial of miracles is not useful. But the faithful need to be invited to discern the spirits — questioning the frequency of miracles is valid.
Read the essay13 March 2021
The date of Easter and the iconoclasm controversy — resolved, but not exactly the prettiest resolutions history has to offer.
Read the essay15 February 2021
Three categories of disagreement — practice, semantics, and substance — and why telling them apart matters for whether a dispute should ever cause schism.
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25 January 2021
A reflection on mental health, confession, therapy, and the pastoral response to suicide in the Coptic community — written after the death of Moses Demian.
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