As we commemorated St Anthony this past week I thought it worthwhile to look at one of his sayings: Our life and our death is with our neighbor. If we gain our brother, we have gained God, but if we scandalize our brother, we have sinned against Christ. How often do we think of our brothers and sisters as if our survival depended upon them - “our life and our death is with our neighbor”? We are much more likely to think of them as, at best, companions or fellow travelers, but more commonly as obligations and duties to which we must attend. Perhaps a few of us have been in situations such as w ..read more

It is a sort of happy coincidence that on the civil calendar the New Year begins in the midst of the Church season when we are keeping the feasts that celebrate the birth of the Lord, His circumcision, baptism, and finally His meeting in the temple on February 2. This is, as I say, a coincidence because, among other things, the Church New Year falls on September 1. Nevertheless, I would like to exploit this happy coincidence as we enter the New Year of 2020. All four of the Gospels begin by talking about the beginning of the Gospel of Christ. Matthew and Luke do so with genealogies while Mark ..read more

For the past couple of weeks we have been comparing the hymns before Christmas with another set of hymns which inspired them, those of Holy Week. Let’s continue that exploration with the canon of Holy Saturday, ode 1, verse 2. Beholding Thee upon the throne on high and in the grave below, the things of heaven and the things beneath the earth trembled at Thy death; for in a manner past understanding wast Thou, the very Source of Life, seen dead. A sense of amazement and wonder pervades this hymn: He who is at once in Heaven upon the throne as God and in the grave with His body as man causes bot ..read more

Last week we noted that the hymnographers who composed some of the hymns for the forefeast of Nativity deliberately modeled them on the hymns of Holy Week, in several instances borrowing directly from those hymns of the Passion but setting them in the context of the birth of our Lord. This week we will continue our examination by looking at another example, a hymn from Holy Friday and its corresponding hymn from the canon for the forefeast of Nativity sung on December 23 (ode 9, verse 4). Here is the Holy Friday hymn: Like a pack of dogs they surrounded Thee, O King, smiting Thee on the cheek ..read more

One of the ways that we can prepare for the upcoming feast of our Lord’s Nativity is through pondering the hymns of the feast. When we look at these hymns, particularly those of the forefeast (the days leading up to the Nativity), we discover something very interesting: the hymnographers who composed these hymns took their inspiration from the hymns of Holy Week, the services of our Lord’s Passion. In fact, in many instances they modeled their compositions directly on those of Holy Week. An example of this is the canon on Dec. 22, the acrostic of which is “I SING THE GREAT SONG OF HOLY THURSD ..read more

Having begun the Nativity Fast and survived Thanksgiving, we begin in earnest to prepare for the Nativity of Christ. I would like to ask you to consider this season, for a moment, in light of the icon of the Nativity. It is a very “busy” icon, meaning that there is a lot going on in it: angels proclaiming, shepherds searching, magi traveling, midwives washing, Joseph and the devil debating. It is bustling with activity.  But in the midst of all of that activity, at the center of the icon, lies the infant Christ with his Most-Holy Mother. It is an image of stillness. Not a stillness that ..read more

It’s Thanksgiving, that time of year when we are reminded to be thankful for all of the good things in our life - family, health, a job, freedom...to be thankful, in short, that our lives are not like those of so many others. “There but for the grace of God go I,”we sometimes say, looking at the misfortunes of others. But, of course, that begs the question, what if our life were to become like those poor unfortunates who, according to this calculus, have nothing to be thankful for? Let’s be painfully honest for a minute. This gratitude calculus, this way of accounting for what things we should ..read more

I had a vision a few weeks ago. I don't mean a full-fledged, “pull back the curtain, transported to Heaven” vision. But I did have a sort of vision a few weeks ago when I was visiting Dormition Monastery in Michigan. It was a vision of something that is always happening, that is always true, but for a moment I was able to see it. As I was standing in the altar of the beautiful monastery church, and later while I was preaching, suddenly the faithful gathered there that morning in the Liturgy were indistinguishable from the icons of the saints on the walls next to them and behind them. Young and ..read more

We spend much of our childhood, and particularly our teenage years, waiting impatiently to grow up. Observing the privileges and liberties of grownups, we simply cannot wait to join their ranks and leave behind the seeming confines of childhood and youth with all of its rules and boundaries. Looking back, of course, we laugh at our naivety and wish perhaps with a bit of nostalgia for that more innocent time of childhood. Not that we want to go back, really, but we do long for a simpler time, before the world was so complicated and messy. And when our own children or grandchildren begin to pus ..read more

Many people, like Job’s wife, base their theology on their circumstances. Job’s wife, seeing what was happening to Job, decided that God had abandoned him and cursed him. God, for her, was not unlike the gods of the nations, fickle, given to his own whims, his predominant characteristic being his power. And if, in his power, he had changed and turned against Job, what could Job do? He was helpless and her advice to him was a counsel of despair: “Curse God and die.” Job’s theology, though, was rooted somewhere beyond his circumstances: “If we received the good things from the Lord's hand, shall ..read more