Thoughts on Today’s Gospel “…God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”  How do we become ‘rich’ toward God?  Christ God is meant to […]

The Parable of the Good Samaritan calls us to come outside ourselves and our self-focus to live as Christ in the midst of a world torn apart and ravaged by the ‘thieves’ of our souls that rob mankind of its greatest treasure: our life in and with God the Holy Trinity, our identity as a child […]

TIME, TALENT, TREASURE: First Fruits Pledge 2020.   As Christians we know that everything is ultimately a gift from God.  Throughout time, the people of God have given back to God a tenth, that is, a Tithe, of all that they had.  In the early Church, some even felt called to give away all that they had to […]

TIME, TALENT, TREASURE: First Fruits Pledge 2020.   As Christians we know that everything is ultimately a gift from God.  Throughout time, the people of God have given back to God a tenth, that is, a Tithe, of all that they had.  In the early Church, some even felt called to give away all that they had to […]

In the Orthodox Faith, when someone departs this life in the hope of the resurrection, we pray “Memory Eternal” for that person, i.e., that God would remember them and bring them into His Eternal Kingdom.  To be remembered, or known, by God who is Life means that they too shall live.  The Fathers of the Church […]

The Parable of the Sower…Our Lord presents us with an opportunity in today’s Gospel to consider how we’re responding to His gracious and loving invitation to life with Him.  The distractions and temptations we face in the world are great: they can smother the seed of faith planted in us; we can find ourselves on the […]

We commemorate today St. Innocent, Enlightener of North America and Metropolitan of Moscow who together with St. Herman, St. Tikhon, and others embody the evangelistic zeal of our spiritual forbearers in this Land.   St. Innocent risked life and limb to bring the light of Christ to the darkness of Alaska; he turned the people of […]

Tuesday we commemorate the miraculous appearance of the Mother of God, which occurred in the mid-tenth century in the Blachernae church of Constantinople where her robe, veil, and part of her belt were preserved after being transferred from Palestine in the fifth century.  On Sunday, October 1, during the All Night Vigil, when the church was […]

Today Christ calls His foremost disciples, Peter, James, and John, from the simple life of fishermen to one of being “fishers of men,” a calling to die to themselves for the sake of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit transforms these ‘simple’ fishermen into the great disciples and then Apostles of […]

The idea of denying oneself anything in our “me first” culture seems almost ‘abnormal,’ but the message of the cross stands in such stark contrast: Christ says to us today, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mk. 8:34). The Lord knows that if we put self, […]