May the peace of Christ guide your thoughts and prayers today, as we remember the attacks of September 11, 2001. As I ponder where we are twenty years later, I find myself going back not to 2001 but to the ancient times when David was king of Israel. He wrote Psalm 8 when he took …
Life from a tomb
In the beginning was the Word (Logos) and the Word was with God and the Word was God….And the Word became flesh and dwelt (ἐσκήνωσεν, pitched his tent) among us…. No one has ever seen God except the one who is in the bosom of God, the only begotten Son - he has made God …
Life breeds life
In a Gospel reading earlier this week, we heard Jesus say: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit… And I, …
Shout together with the stones: Hosanna!
Today is Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church. It is a sign of our spiritual immaturity 2,000 years after the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem that we Orthodox prefer to stick to an antiquated, hopelessly out-of-sync calendar and thus pretend to have the genuine date for Easter and what comes before Easter. Total example of …
Amazed and Afraid
And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem…. (Mark 10:32-45) It was a …
A sermon for times of unbelief
We are living in times of fading faith. I won’t bore you with numbers, but recent research and polling data shows a marked decrease in people who identify with church or church participation. Yet, most Americans still say they believe in God. Which of course raises the question what God they believe in. Even many who …
A cross is a creative act
Take up your cross.... is not an invitation to passivity. It is not about quietly and submissively accepting whatever hardship falls on you. Jesus was never passive. He did not just react to what was thrown at him. He lived a life of active initiative. He courted trouble! He is not telling us to accept …
The gospel in story form
A wonderful paragraph from the sermons of St. John Chrysostom that I happened to read the other day. It is actually from the first sermon in the series of 90 sermons on the Gospel of Matthew that Chrysostom preached around the year 390. It is quite extraordinary; no wonder Chrysostom is the "Golden-Mouthed". Photo of …
The Divine
A few weeks ago a friend of mine in England, a very fine spiritual writer and blogger, wrote a short reflection that struck me at the time and I feel I should share it here after my own earlier post today on the Trinity. He has posted many poems and reflections inspired by Rublev's famous …
Trinity is not a number
The feast of Epiphany in the western churches celebrates the visit of the Magi to the new-born Jesus. Hence, it is celebrated as the revelation of Jesus to the nations. In the Orthodox Church it’s celebrated as the Baptism of Jesus Christ. Theophany = the revelation of God. The revelation of God as Trinity. Baptism …
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