We begin the awesome soul-transforming experience of the Great Lent with two services specifically for this time: Forgiveness Vespers and the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete. One is dedicated to the cleansing of...
When the icons portray this glorious scenario of countless saints all in white and gold, the viewer can make a conventional error—to think of them not as individuals with their own personalities but as a group without...
It’s termed the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, a prelude to Great Lent; but it may well be called the parable of a father’s inexplicable love. We respond to our Lord Jesus Christ’s fabulous tale of a Jewish father’s...
In time past, only the Orthodox Christian bishops and monastics wore the prayer ropes wound around their left wrists. In our time, one notices lay persons young and old doing the same, often shortened from the conventional...
We are blessed with many icons of angels in our temple: All nine ranks of angels, guardian angels, angels surrounding the holy Mother of God, angels among the figures in the feast day icons—but the most dangerous angel has...
All life is sacred, and nothing more so than human life. Every Jew knew and honored that truth, as does, or should, every Christian. The blessed promise of the Almighty to Abraham was human life [lakhai’m]. Life is a gift....
Consider the first sin following the landing of Noah’s ark. Just when it appeared that the Lord Almighty had found a solution to the rampant sinfulness of humanity by “baptizing” the whole earth, one son having found...
“Honor all people.” Honor, in Greek timi, means respect and more—recognition and dignity—but at times it is a challenge to do so for all persons, especially when they do not respect themselves. A book titled I and Thou,...
The Divine Liturgy begins with a proclamation, a direction and a promise: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages.” We announce the Kingdom because it is, it...
The distinctive feature of our Lord, God and Savior is humility. If the entire scenario of the Nativity from the embarrassment of His mother’s pregnancy to the rude treatment at the inn of Bethlehem, the birth, flight and...