There are a lot of legends about Saint George, who is the patron saint of soldiers, as well as the patronal saint for England, Georgian republic, and numerous other places. Today is also the day on which farm fields are blessed, and in the Carpathian Mountain region where our Church has its origins, this is the day when herds are moved into the pastures after a long winter stuck in barns. George is seen as a protector of livestock and domestic animals. The icons show him as a soldier, and usually on horseback, killing a dragon while a princess looks on from a distance. What we can glean from ..read more

Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans 5: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.  God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.  The Catholic Church is born on the Cross. Catholic means universal, and Pilate had the famous inscription “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” written in ..read more

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Behold, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9 By the time Jesus enters the holy city, most people knew about the resurrection of Lazarus after four days in the grave. Not even the great prophet Elijah was able to achieve that. But even with that stupendous miracle, that challenged the teaching of the Sadducee party so much that they decide not to convert to faith in Jesus as the messiah, but rather to have him kill ..read more

 Matthew / Mark “He cried again with a loud voice/ scream and gave up his spirit.” Luke 23: 46 Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!" -- and the centurion said: This man was innocent, and the crowd went away, people beating their breasts" (a traditional sign of sorrow and penance). John 19:30 “Jesus had received the (vinegary) wine, and he said,  “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and gave up  his spirit. A better translation for this word is this: IT IS FULFILLED./ accomplished/ consummated. Now – He breathes his last ..read more

FIFTH WORD 5. After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfil the scripture), “I thirst.”  In all convents of Mother Teresa’s missionaries of Charity, there is a life-sized crucifix in the chapel next to the chapel with these two words painted on the wall under Jesus’ right arm. I thirst. John tells us that the soldiers stick a long branch of hyssop into a jug of sour wine, or the word vinegar, and so we often interpret that as a bad joke from these rough men – the prisoner thirsts, let’s give him vinegar. Actually, this was basically the Roman soldiers’ Gatorade whe ..read more

And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over  the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour     Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Elo-i, elo-i, lama     Sa-bach-tha-ni?” which means, “My God, my God, why hast thou   forsaken me?” Mark writes that there was darkness until the 9th hour, or 3 pm, which is marked by Jesus’ scream: not a crying out, but a scream. Matthew writes that from the 6th hour to 9th there was darkness, and then Jesus’ scream comes from the Cross. Luke says that around the 9th hour the sun eclips ..read more

     The first of the Seven Last Words is spoken when the soldiers are gambling for J’s clothing. But “they” includes not only those men, but the leadership of the Romans and Jews who have put Jesus on the cross. At the station where the weeping women meet Jesus, he ministered to them, and remarking about his own suffering, he said “If in the green wood, they do such things” he means the leadership. And thus, he encompasses both the soldiers and the leaders in this first word. No matter how much plotting, no matter how evil they were, they really did not appreciate ..read more

Today obviously is the Sunday of Icons, also known as Sunday of the true faith, or Sunday of Orthodoxy. It commemorates the final restoration of sacred images in the churches on the first Sunday of Lent in 843 in the Eastern Roman Empire. The procession recalls when the people, monks, and nuns carried icons that had been hidden during the persecutions and destruction of holy images into their parish churches to be used again in prayer. The heresy of iconoclasm, of breaking sacred images, was rooted in the denial of the incarnation, that God became Man, one of the central teachings in Islam. To ..read more

This Lenten season of 2024 I will be preaching on the Seven Last Words of Jesus from the Cross on Friday evenings at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, at 6 pm during the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. Bear in mind that the Gospels make clear that Christ is in complete control of His Passion, from the Agony in the Garden up to his death on the Cross. Since the 16th century these sayings have been widely used in the preaching on Good Friday; physicians and scientists who have studied the crucifixion concluded that the sayings had to be short because crucifixion causes asphyxia and shoc ..read more

Why 40 days? Forty always signified that something big was coming, a change. 40 days of the great flood – the human race started over. 40 days of Moses on Mount Sinai, alone with the Lord. 40 years of wandering in Sinai – the adults who left Egypt and doubted  God died and the new Israelite people entered the promised land. 40 days of Elijah traveling from the wrath of Jezebel to Mount Horeb to meet God. 40 days of fasting in the wilderness – Jesus began his public ministry. Forty was always a time for testing, for growing in faith, for trusting in God and His merciful providence in a new ..read more