Homily on the Saturday of the Akathist Hymn
The Fifth Week of Lent is a week of remarkable hymnody—the alphabetical stichera of Saint Simeon Metaphrastes on Wednesday night, the Great Canon…
Reflections in Christ
Reflection on the Saturday of the Akathist
The so-called Canon of the Akathist, composed by Saint Joseph the Hymnographer, opens with these words: “O pure Virgin, living book of Christ, sealed by the Spirit.” She…
Reflection on the Thursday of the Great Canon
During the first week of Lent, we sang the Great Canon of Saint Andrew over the course of four nights at Great Compline; today this lengthy penitential canon…
Reflection on the Sunday of Saint John Climacus
The Ladder of Saint John leads the Christian, step by step, rung by rung, along the ascent to heaven. Naturally, the higher steps…
Sermon on the Feast of the Annunciation
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Today, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, the holy apostle Paul instructs us that “he who sanctifies”—Christ himself…
Reflection on the Feast of the Annunciation
The angel’s greeting—“Hail!”—literally means “rejoice” in Greek, and this coincidence was not lost on the Fathers of the Church, who saw the angelic announcement as…
Guts and Perversity
The earliest Church, from the days of the apostles and into the first centuries, had an abundant share of guts and what everyone else regarded as perversity. Its claims…
Reflection on the Sunday of the Cross
The Cross stands at the center of the fast as it stands at the center of all our activities, indeed, at the center of our entire life. The world is cruciform, and, as…
Reflection on the Sunday of Saint Gregory Palamas
One week after the Sunday of Orthodoxy, we attach an appendix, as it were, to that celebration: the feast Saint Gregory Palamas. Saint Gregory Palamas’s teachings…
Reflection on the Sunday of Orthodoxy
What is the triumph of Orthodoxy? Historically, this was the victory of the Iconodule party in the Byzantine Empire, with imperial backing. Yet, since…