This Sunday of All Saints confronts us with this radical truth, which is also a challenge: God created us to be Saints, “haggioi,” in the Greek, that is, ‘holy ones.’ St. David confirms this truth when he writes in Psalm 8, “For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,And Thou hast crowned him with glory and […]
Sunday of Pentecost – Orthodox Homily on the Holy Spirit
Today, Pentecost, the Feast of the Holy Trinity, is a day of great rejoicing: All that Christ imparted to us through His saving Incarnation, defeat of sin and death on the cross, resurrection, and glorious ascension, has its fulfillment and culmination on this day of illumination and empowerment by the descent of the Holy Spirit. The […]
7th Sunday of Pascha – Orthodox Homily on the Church
Today we remember the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council of 325 A.D. The Church brings to remembrance those faithful Fathers who defended the Apostolic, Orthodox Faith in the face of the greatest challenges to the truth of Christ. We commemorate them so that we may be vigilant in our own day and in our own lives […]
6th Sunday of Pascha – Orthodox Homily on Miracles
On this last Sunday of Pascha, we’re presented with two miracles in today’s Epistle and Gospel: The Apostles heal a woman with an unclean spirit in Christ’s name and Christ God heals a man born blind who suffers for his witness to the truth of Christ, of this great miracle Christ God works for him. Both […]
5th Sunday of Pascha – Orthodox Homily on St. Photini
Today is the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman who meets Christ God at the well of Jacob and whose life is changed by this encounter with the Author of Life, the Living Water. She’s lost, confused—just like so many people today. She’s been ‘going it on her own’: she’s had five husbands and the man she […]
2nd Sunday of Lent – Orthodox Homily on the Growing Your Spiritual Life
We’ve all heard the expression, “carpe diem(seize the day).” We feel good about ourselves when we get that project accomplished, get those tasks and errands done that we’ve been putting off—they’re sometimes drudgery to do them, but we feel good for having gotten them done. If you think about it, though, these ‘accomplishments’ often don’t reach beyond […]
40th Sunday after Pentecost – Orthodox Homily on Forgiveness
Having arrived at this ‘door’ of repentance, the Sunday of Adam and Eve’s Expulsion from Paradise but also of God’s forgiveness of their and our sins, Christ invites, beseeches us, to enter the Fast for our soul’s sake so that we may make a new beginning, one marked by a renewed and more earnest effort […]
38th Sunday after Pentecost – Orthodox Homily on the Parable of the Prodigal Son
The holy prophet Amos prophesied, “’Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord God,‘that I will send a famine on the land,not a famine of bread,nor a thirst for water,but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). We live in an age when this prophecy could equally apply to us as a people. We live in a […]
37th Sunday after Pentecost – Orthodox Homily for Sunday of Publican and Pharisee
The Triodion, the three weeks before Great Lent, begins today with the Sunday of the Parable of the Publican and Pharisee, and as we particularly heard in the hymnody and teaching at Great Vespers. The Triodion is a time of preparation afforded to us by Holy Church that we may get our ‘spiritual house’readyto make the […]
35th Sunday after Pentecost – Orthodox Homily on the Canannite Woman
We all know the saying, “pride goeth before a fall.” Our first parents, Adam and Eve, suffered a fall that was at its heart a consequence of pride, of disregarding God’s way for what seems good at the time even as they knew it was not God’s will. Their willful sin plunged all of us and the […]