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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…
Today we commemorate the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise. On the one hand, this is a sorrowful occasion; it is not without reason that we recall Adam’s lament before the holy gates of his lost homeland. However, on a deeper level, the casting out of paradise was not so much a punishment as a mercy: God’s punishment of Adam ensured that…
In his epistle to the Romans, St. Paul speaks of “that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” The Last Judgment, which we remember today, is part of the Gospel, part of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Why? As St. Romanus the Melodist says in his kontakion for St. Elijah, the name of God’s justice is…
When the father runs out to meet his prodigal younger son, the former has nothing to gain, no profit motive, no angle: he is simply overflowing with love for his child for no other reason than the latter is his child. Likewise, our heavenly Father needs nothing from us, and he does not love us because of what we do; he loves us for who we are, not…
Joyous feast!
Today’s feast is a feast of liminality. For one, it stands on the threshold between Christmastide and Lent. Christ still appears to us as a newborn Child, just as he did at his Nativity, but the lingering joy of the holy birth is blended with tragic foreboding as Simeon, having pronounced his canticle of light and peace, follows it…
The Lenten Triodion begins today, and it begins with a weeklong period of feasting. This fact, coupled with today’s Gospel reading, warns us against pride and hypocrisy: the Lord desires, not that we become puffed up because of our pious works, but that we repent in our hearts and in our lives. Fasting is a means, not an end.
Moreover, by…
Joyous feast!
Today we celebrate three of the great fathers and teachers of the Church: St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom. The works of these three saints have inspired, formed, and guided Christians for over a millennium and a half. This feast thus serves to remind us that the Fathers are not merely to be…
Though the Sunday of Zacchaeus is sometimes understood to be the first pre-Lenten Sunday, it is in fact the final Sunday of the season after Pentecost. Nevertheless, it is certainly a foreshadowing of the penitential season to come. The example of Zacchaeus – his pledge to restore fourfold everything he wrongly took – reminds us that repentance…
Christ is born! Glorify him!
As we celebrate the midwinter feast of the Lord’s saving Nativity in the flesh, in some parts of North America, snow lies thick across the ground, blanketing the whole landscape in white. Many of us who live in other parts of the country are merely dreaming of such a white Christmas. But whether the snow is real or…
In this cold and dark season before the Nativity, we celebrate the memory of one of our great northern saints: the monk who went to Valaam seeking the tradition of the holy Fathers, the missionary who went to Alaska seeking souls for Christ. As we prepare to welcome our Lord and God and Savior into the cold cave of Bethlehem – and, indeed, into…
Joyous feast of St. Spyridon!
St. Spyridon is known as one of the “walking saints”: the cloth covering the feet of his relics constantly wears down, such that his foot-coverings must be replaced more frequently than his other vestments. This miracle is a sign of a deeper reality. After all, the saints no longer need to go about on foot; they…
Speaking of the most holy Theotokos, St. Maximus the Confessor writes that, “She was blessed by all and was full of all grace, and I will say even further that she was supremely worthy of every grace, intelligent with respect to images and words, a scrutinizer of divine visions, completely removed from all restlessness, wrath, and gossip,…
St. Nicholas, known the world over for his miracles, is also specifically known for his depiction on a number of wonder-working icons. Though these miraculous images of St. Nicholas are not as numerous or well-known as the wonder-working icons of the Mother of God, they are clearly worthy of our veneration, celebration, and contemplation. One such…
Happy Thanksgiving to my entire flock in the United States of America! Today many of us celebrate with family or friends, giving thanks for the unnumbered blessings that we enjoy. But why does God give us these blessings? In order to indulge our appetites for mortal pleasures, so we can have as good a time as possible while we are here on earth? No.…
Today we celebrate entrance of the most holy Theotokos into the temple; today the three-year-old most pure Ever-virgin enters into the inner sanctuary, fleeing the company of men in order to devote herself solely to God, attended only by angels. With this feast, the Theotokos is revealed as the model hesychast, the ultimate practitioner of stillness…
The Nativity Fast, whose beginning we mark this day, encompasses forty days of preparation for the Nativity of the Savior. This fast is notably less intense than the fasts of Dormition and Lent, and it culminates in twelve days of feasting (December 25 through January 4 plus January 6), the longest fast-free period in the Church’s year. The fast…
Today we celebrate the synaxis of the holy archangel Michael and all the bodiless powers of heaven. The tradition of the Orthodox Church speaks of seven or eight archangels: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Barachiel, Jegudiel, and Salathiel, to whose number Jeremiel is sometimes added. Michael is the guardian angel of the entire Christian people;…