There is no other way to be raised up to God but by constantly looking upwards and having an unceasing desire for sublime things, so as not to be content to stay with what has already been achieved, but to regard it as loss if one fails to attain what lies above. ουκ έστιν …
A Burning Love for Christ
And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. (Acts 6:5) These were the first deacons of the church. Stephen was a deacon in the original sense of the word. He served, he ministered …
The Divine Child
A sermon by my beloved professor of liturgical theology, Father Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory: The Divine Child. Fr. Schmemann was a remarkable teacher, a true visionary, an advocate of genuine Orthodoxy rather than the false, pretentious versions that are on the increase, especially in North America. He worked tirelessly for ecclesiastical unity, but his …
Our Genealogy
Every year on the Sunday Before Christmas we read the genealogy of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew. It's our annual exercise in getting through a long list of tongue-twisting names, but I look forward to it. I love reading these names. And, as the great Catholic biblical scholar Raymond Brown asserted, this genealogy contains …
The Rules of the Game
As almost always when reading the Gospels, context is everything! It is easy to take today's Gospel reading, the Parable of the Great Banquet, as a moralistic lesson about getting into heaven; or as a rejection of the Jewish people, in that racist and anti-Semitic interpretation that has been popular through most of Christian history and continues to endure in …
From darkness to light
In today's reading from Ephesians 5:8-19 Paul tells us to expose darkness and bring it into the light so it becomes light! This beautifully summarizes what was Jesus’ own customary way of healing and teaching, which was to bring people out into the open, where they could be healed and brought into communion with Christ. So in …
The gospel of peace
How to speak of peace after the terrorist attacks in Paris? And yet peace is the message of both our readings today - especially Ephesians 2, but also the parable of the good Samaritan. Both readings are about peace, about breaking down the walls that separate and divide. Every time there is an …
Come out from hiding!
Saint John tells us at the beginning of his Gospel: No one has ever seen God, but the only Son who is at the Father’s side has made him known. The invisible becomes visible, the unknown becomes known. These paradoxes are at the heart of the Christian revelation. Revelation indeed means unveiling, uncovering - …
People of the Second Coming
Touch is the message of today's gospel reading. The poor man Lazarus was untouchable, except by the dogs who licked his wounds! He was one of the invisibles, one of the people that we choose not to see because they might trouble our conscience or our easygoing relationship with life. And he who did not touch …
You are a parable!
"In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst babel . . . speak the truth." These words were written by William Stringfellow over 40 years ago and they pretty much summarize the message of today’s gospel reading. In the face of a living death, the man was …
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