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, […]

Blessings of the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos!  As we begin a new ecclesiastical (Church) year, how fitting it is that we give glory to God by commemorating the nativity of the woman of God, Mary the Theotokos, through whom the Incarnation and our salvation comes to be.  On this day of the Great Feast […]

We learn through Christ and His Church that forgiveness is the path toward freedom—both for ourselves, our families, the Church, and the world.  On this Sunday, we’re reminded of Christ’s desire to free us of hypocrisy, grudges, bitterness, and pride.  And so, we’re given the command to forgive as God has forgiven and continues to actively forgive […]

As we are reminded this day in our Epistle, the Apostles and their successors, and indeed all faithful Orthodox Christians, will suffer living out our faith in this world.  The life of a faithful Christian, by necessity, involves self-denial and our coming outside ourselves to love and to serve. This is part of our ‘cross’ by which […]

In today’s Gospel, the blind men get themselves to Christ, beseeching Him to have mercy on them and acclaiming Him as the long-awaited Messiah by their words, “Son of David, have mercy on us!” It is both their acknowledgement of their need for healingand their coming to Christ, which so loudly demonstrates their faith.  They know the One who has […]

On Today’s Gospel: Matt. 9:1-8 Upon first encounter with the paralytic in today’s Gospel, Christ first heals the man of the ‘paralysis’of his soul by forgiving his sins.  Nothing is too great for God, but we also remember that His grace is sufficient for you and me.  Not everyone receives miraculous healing of body, but all of usnot […]