If Adam's lament is the lament of every soul, we need help in discovering the powerful lament within us for God. We also need the help of God to redirect that lament to Him so that our souls may finally come to rest and enjoy His peace. Today we look at how the spiritual disciplines given to us by Christ in Lent help us to uncover our true lament. We also are exhorted to pray the Psalms. 65 of the Psalms are considered Psalms of lament. As we pray the Psalter, we receive help in redirecting and voicing our lament to God alone ..read more

Today, in the testimony of Christ our God miraculously feeding the 5,000, we are reminded of what Christ can do with the little that we have to offer Him. And yet, even though what we have is little and always deficient, He invites us to join with Him in His wondrous works to sustain and fill many. Satan has us always focus on what we lack which leads us to spiritual paralysis denying ourselves the joy that comes to us when we are united with Him in His good works. Our Lord asks us to look upon Him and see that all He asks us is that we offer Him only what we have. He knows it is insufficient ..read more

When we think of Lent and repentance, we tend to think mainly about overcoming our sins and coming out of the ways of our fallenness. While this must be, with the help of the grace of God, a necessary part of repentance; it is truly only one aspect of the repentance through which Christ brings healing to the soul. Repentance is two motions all at once. It is the movement away from our fallenness. But it is also a movement of turning to God seeking His Kingdom and His righteousness. It is both/and, truly a putting off and putting on all at the same time. The Church Fathers teach us that we beco ..read more

Have you ever gone through a season of life where, no matter how faithful in prayer you remain, our Lord seems to be very distant from you? Or, have you been in a season of suffering where your prayers for mercy and relief seem to be met with silence? Journey with Christ long enough and you will encounter one or both of those experiences. Today we hear from the Gospel of St. Matthew15. A Canaanite woman comes to Jesus pleading with Him to release her daughter from demon possession. Her plea is met with silence and then with what would seem to be a rejection of her by our Lord. How does she res ..read more

In Holy Scripture, there were three who fasted for 40 days: Moses, Elijah, and Christ our God. And through each one's fast idolatry was cast down and destroyed or left behind. Today we look each of these to see Christ's great prescription of the 40-day fast of Lent which He sanctified and consecrated for us; that by His presence in our fast our idolatries might be cast down and overcome and we might ascend the mountain to behold Him ..read more

Today Father James shares with us several texts: The Lament of Adam, Lamentation chapter 1, St. Nicolai Velimirovich "Prayers by the Lake" (prayers that aid us to love and pray for our enemies, and the Litany of Humility. As he goes through each, we discover meaningful ways in which we can experience a true change of personhood within ourselves to, by the help of God's grace, become more like our God ..read more

Jesus says in Matthew 6, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." The reality for us all is that God is not entirely the treasure of our hearts. Throughout our days we give in to the many temptations and distractions of this world. The good news is, our Lord has always known this would be our human struggle. We are given the season of Lent to, as the God through the Prophet Joel spoke in Joel 2, "Turn to me with all your heart; with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Return to the Lord your God for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness." Lent and its spi ..read more

We are told in Hebrews 4 that, since we have a High Priest Who is compassionate toward us, we should come boldly before His throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help in time of need. When the blind man near Jericho cried out loud for mercy, Jesus was attracted to Him in His weakness. It is hard for us to consider that our Savior is attracted to our weaknesses when we cry out for help and mercy; that He is not repulsed by them. Let the lie be put to death that He is anything else. From the Incarnation until He comes again, we are in the age where He sits upon the throne of grace and mercy ..read more

The word ontological, when used regarding theology, has everything to do with the nature of God Himself. For us, that word encapsulates all that has been revealed by God to His Church regarding Who He is and how we understand Him. Since we are created in His image to grow in His likeness, we also use the word ontological to understand the truly created human person by God; in other words, how we see our most true selves. Today we consider the truth revealed to us that the only way that we become ontologically our more true person is to receive the very revelation of God. For it is that revelat ..read more

In our Gospel reading from St. Luke 8, Jesus tells the Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Soils. In this parable, our Lord lists three reasons for the unhealthy soil in our soul in which the seed of our new life given through Him cannot grow. While we all have each type of unhealthy soil within our souls, today we focus on the first type that our Lord mentions; the hard and unyielding soil. Lent is a season in which we yoke ourselves to Christ so that the hard and fallow ground may be churned up. Underneath the hard ground, the rocks, and the thorns we discover that which is most natural to t ..read more