One of the biggest challenges we face as Christians today is becoming complacent or comfortable with our passions and sins, justifying or explaining them away as ‘necessary,’ logical, or ‘no big deal.’ What is behind such complacency varies: laziness, fear, lack of faith or lack of hope that God can change us for the better […]

In today’s Gospel, Christ calls the two sons of Zebedee, Peter and Andrew. Immediately, they leave their nets and follow Christ. You can almost see their willing heart to sacrifice everything to follow Christ and become the “fishers of men” that Christ has called them—and us—to be. Their response is astonishing, childlike in its innocence, […]

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 […]

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. Both are great miracles. Both affirm the interjection of […]

Many people today speak about using “self-help”, or say they are ‘spiritual,’ not ‘religious.’ Often, what they really want is something to legitimize their own thinking, whatever they’ve cobbled together into some kind of self-styled ‘religion’ even if they’d be horrified to call it that. Even atheism itself is a form of religion and often […]

Every age has certainly had its challenges when it comes to following God and the truth He’s revealed. Today’s culture with its dominant secular ‘religion’ of humanism is no different. Increasingly, our Orthodox beliefs are coming under assault, religious liberties and freedom of expression, are being challenged. This Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing woman would have […]

This is Thomas Sunday throughout the Orthodox Church in the world. It is the Second Sunday of Pascha and the first lesson that the resurrected Christ would give us through His holy Church is that of the example of Thomas. Such an example may seem strange at first. After all, in the West, Thomas is […]

Christ raises Lazarus from the grave after he has been dead four days. His full power as God Incarnate, the Word of God, is revealed. He is hailed as the long-awaited Messiah as He triumphantly, yet humbly, enters Jerusalem. The children and those of ‘child-like’ faith laid down palms and garments, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed […]

We hear in the Holy Gospel of St. Mark today, “Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, […]

Our Lord Jesus Christ says to us today, “Whosoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Let’s face it, the very idea of denying ourselves anything sounds foreign to us as Americans. Yet here is Christ’s call standing before us. The death of Jesus of […]