Reflections in Christ

Throughout this week, we continue to our celebration of the Great Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy and Lifegving Cross of the Lord.  At the festal Divine Liturgy this past Sunday, we venerated the “life-giving wood” of the Cross, and hopefully we are continuing to do so in our domestic prayers, alone or with our family members, through the…

We are approaching the Feast Day of the Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross—to give the Feast its full title – this coming Sunday, September 14.  This is the day that we liturgically commemorate and venerate the Cross that will be placed in the middle of the church toward the end of Great Vespers on Saturday evening.  The…

Recently, I was reading and studying what has come to be called “the Sermon on the Plain” found in Luke 6.  In this passage, we come to the very heart of Christ’s teaching, to the words that penetrate both the mind and heart, and which have drawn countless people to Christ from the time they were first uttered and throughout the centuries up to our…

While looking through a catalogue recently from a Christian publishing company, I came across a rather intriguing title: Too Busy Not to Pray.  I say intriguing because this is a theme that I think about often and one that I have raised with others before. Read that title again carefully, because it does not say Too Busy to Pray, but precisely Too…

The Sunday of All Saints fittingly follows the Sunday of Pentecost, for the saints of the Church are the “fruit” and manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s presence among us.  They are the living icons that are transparent to the glory of God that shines in and through each of them as a gift of the Holy Spirit.  The saints—literally, the “holy…

Pentecost Sunday is also called “Trinity Sunday.”  The One God is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit—One God, therefore, worshipped in three Persons.  Pentecost is the final realization of that truth, following many “hints” of God’s Trinitarian nature in both the Old and New Testaments.  We are not Unitarians, but we believe in,…

In my humble opinion, the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman (John 4:5-42) may just be the most profound and amazing dialogue ever recorded in human history. There are, of course, the incredible Platonic dialogues that present the attractive and irrepressible figure of the philosopher Socrates and his quest for moral and ethical truth. …

Today finds us at the exact midpoint of the sacred 50-day period between the Feasts of Pascha and Pentecost.  So, this 25th day is called, simply, Midfeast or Mid-Pentecost.  Pentecost (from the Greek pentecosti) is, of course, the name of the great Feast on the 50th day after Pascha, but the term is also used to cover the entire 50-day period…

“And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour” [Mark 15:33].

“And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen” [Mark 16:2].

Saint Mark the Evangelist is rather precise when he narrates that the Lord was crucified at the third hour (15:25); that darkness fell…

Christ is risen!

Recently, I posed a question to the faithful of our parish:  Is there life after Pascha?  Another question has formed in my mind this morning:  Is there Lent after Lent?  Before proceeding any further, I need to offer two points of clarification:  1.) I apologize if I just happened to unsettle anyone with the frightening prospect…

At the beginning of Holy Week we contemplate “The End”—of the earthly ministry of Christ, of our own lives and the judgment that will lead to, and of the “end of the world.” In other words, there is something of an “apocalyptic edge” to the texts of the services, beginning with the Scriptures and extending into the hymnography. Another term would be…

During the five Sundays of Great Lent we celebrate the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great on the Lord’s Day.  This Liturgy is used on five other occasions during the year, two more of which are during Holy Week - Thursday and Saturday.  (The other three times are the Feasts of Nativity and Theophany, as well as on Saint Basil’s day of commemoration,…

This hymn – together with the accompanying rite of venerating the Cross – replaces the usual Trisagion hymn during the Divine Liturgy on the Third Sunday of Great Lent.  According to The Synaxarion of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion, the full title of this mid-lenten commemoration is “The Sunday of the Veneration of the Precious and…

The season of Great Lent is the time of the soul’s awakening from the sleep of sin, or from sheer indifference, apathy, or what the saints call acedia—a condition of spiritual torpor or unsatisfied restlessness. Is this a term from our spiritual vocabulary that you are familiar with? I have a book stored in my library that I am (finally) beginning…

As we draw closer to the beginning of Great Lent, we are able to set our Lenten efforts against the background of the Last Judgment, thus giving us the “big picture” within which we live our lives and determine our personal destinies.  The Gospel read at the Eucharistic Liturgy on the Sunday of the Last Judgment—Meatfare Sunday—was that of the…

I must say that I enjoy watching the Olympic Games—summer or winter—when they make their way into our homes according to their respective four-year cycles.  In fact, I believe that at this point in the current Winter Olympics, I am fast approaching the status of official “couch potato.”  The level of competition, combined with the skill levels of…

The Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee confronts us with a stark contrast between religious pride and self-righteousness on the one hand, and heartfelt humility and repentance on the other hand. The pharisee, of course, is the one who manifests pride, and it is the publican who manifests humility. The Lord closes this short parable by…

In the liturgical life of the Church, yesterday—Sunday, February 2, 2014—was called “The Sunday of Zacchaeus,” based on the narrative found in Luke 19:1-10.  This is the first “signal” or “echo” that the season of Great Lent is approaching – four weeks away from today to be exact.  (Great Lent always begins on a Monday in the Orthodox…

Orthodox Christians believe that the New Testament Church and the Christian faith itself appeared at a particular point in history because the crucified Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead. The cause behind the emergence of the Church and the Christian faith was not a crucified, dead and buried Jesus. Rather, that very crucified, dead and…

Earlier this week, we celebrated the Leavetaking of the Great Feast of Theophany, on which we commemorated the Baptism of the Lord and the revelation of the Holy Trinity at the Jordan River.  It is this open manifestation of God that accords this feast the name Theophany; as Saint John Chrysostom says:  “Why, then, is this day called Theophany? …