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Saint Nicholas Cathedral
May 31, 2026
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
My beloved children in the Lord,
According to the Gospel we have just heard, today is “the last day, that great day of the feast.” The work that was begun at the time of the Lord’s Nativity and perfected in his Pascha has now borne its…
Christ is risen!
Today Christ opens the eyes of a man born blind, and the blessedness, the happiness, of such a miraculous event seems self-evident. Yet the Pharisees react with hostility, and the formerly-blind man’s parents react with fear. What are we to make of this?
Christ says that he is the Truth, and that the truth will set us free (Jn.…
Christ is risen!
“He told me all that I ever did,” declares the Samaritan woman to her fellow residents of Sychar. All that she ever did – shouldn’t this be a source of shame and regret? After all, she has had five husbands, and the one she has now is not her husband. However, when the Lord tells her what she has done, this does not cause…
Christ is risen!
As we celebrate the Midfeast of Pentecost, we are reminded that the Paschal season is a movement. It is not simply a festive forty days after the Lenten fast, nor simply a lengthy celebration of Christ’s Resurrection. It is a movement from the empty tomb to the tongues of flame in the upper room, and this pause at the midpoint…
Christ is risen!
In ancient days Jacob rolled away a stone to water the flocks, and during these days of Pascha, we contemplate how, the stone rolled away, living water flows from the tomb of Christ to water the flock of the faithful. Today, near the Sheep Gate, the paralytic waits for someone to lift him into the pool when the water is stirred,…
Christ is risen!
On this Third Sunday of Pascha, we continue to contemplate the world-changing reality of the empty Tomb. In particular, this Sunday calls us to contemplate our role in bringing news of this reality to our fellowman. Last Sunday, Thomas Sunday, took place in the intimate setting of the sealed upper room; we saw how a single…
Christ is risen!
On the eighth day, our Lord appears to Thomas, passing through closed doors. When the Lord appeared on the first day of the week, in the evening immediately after his Rising, the other apostles had the doors shut “for fear of the Jews.” But in this case, no reason is given. Why, then, are the doors shut? The shut doors parallel…
Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen!
On this feast of feasts, I pray that each of us would experience the grace and truth that have come into the world through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ’s Resurrection is God’s victory over death, and hence over all the forces of corruption, entropy, bleakness, and emptiness. Now all is filled…
in Commemoration of the Burial
of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ
given at St Nicholas Cathedral on April 10, 2026
Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the Cross. He who is King of the angels is arrayed in a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heaven in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery. He who in Jordan set Adam…
Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary
April 5, 2026
Philippians 4:4–9; John 12:1–18
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Today the grace of the Holy Spirit has gathered us together, and we all take up thy Cross and say: Blessed is he that comes in the Name of the Lord; Hosanna in the…
Joyous feast!
In the troparion for this two-day Feast of Palms, we sing: “By raising Lazarus from the dead before thy Passion, thou didst confirm the universal resurrection, O Christ. Like the children with the palms of victory, we therefore cry to thee, O Vanquisher of death.” Even as Christ goes to his Passion, we children of the Church…
Today is the fifth and final Sunday of Great Lent: though our fasting continues, the Forty Days end this coming Friday, to be followed by the brief but liturgically distinct two-day Feast of Palms, which in turn gives way to Holy Week.
It is during these final days of the Great Fast – the fifth Thursday and the fifth Sunday, especially – that…
Just a few days ago, we celebrated the Annunciation to the most holy Theotokos; now, we dedicate a whole liturgical day to her akathist hymn. This akathist is truly one of the great treasures of the Orthodox Christian tradition. At many services, we hear these words: “It is truly meet to bless thee, O Theotokos.” The akathist hymn is a school in…
The creation of the world began with God’s fiat, his “let there be” (Gen. 1:3). Today, the recreation of the world begins with the fiat of the most holy Theotokos, her “let it be” (Lk. 1:38). St. Gregory Palamas in not exaggerating for rhetorical effect or using Byzantine hyperbole when he says that the Theotokos “made the human race…
Our venerable father John, whose memory we keep this day, instructs us thus: “Blessed dispassion lifts the mind that is poor from earth to heaven, and raises the beggar from the dunghill of the passions. But love, whose praise is above all, makes him sit with the princes, with the holy angels, and with the princes of the people of God” (The…
Holy Trinity Cathedral
Tbilisi, Georgia
March 21, 2026
Your Holiness,
Your Beatitudes,
Your Eminence Metropolitan Shio and members of the Holy Synod
Your Eminences and Your Graces,
Your Excellencies, Mr. President and Mr. Prime Minister
Venerable clergy, monastics, and faithful of the Church of Georgia,
Distinguished guest,
His Holiness Patriarch…
The Cross and Passion await at the end of Lent, but they also stand at the center of these Holy Forty Days. The Lenten season is an invitation to pick up our own cross and follow Christ to Golgotha. At the same time, as we stumble under the weight of our cross, we are reminded that we are sustained in our Lenten podvig solely by the grace of God…
Though St. Gregory is best known as a teacher and practitioner of hesychasm, the cultivation of holy silence, his life was in fact colorful and tumultuous: he was driven from his monastic home on the Holy Mountain because of the Turkish threat, imprisoned on multiple occasions, captured by pirates, and initially rejected by the people when he tried…
To the clergy, monastics, and faithful of the Orthodox Church in America, beloved children in the Lord:
Glory to Jesus Christ!
During the sacred season of Great Lent, the Church calls us to sobriety and renewed stewardship. Through fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, we learn again that every aspect of our life—spiritual and material alike—is…
One of the unique liturgical features of this first Sunday of Lent, the celebration of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, is the proclamation of the anathemas. This rite is generally performed only with the bishop presiding and entails a solemn condemnation of various heretics and their errors.
What is the purpose of these anathemas? The anathemas are not…