Author: Hieromonk Gabriel

The Words of Our Mother

· Hieromonk Gabriel 3 Leave a Comment on %s
My brothers and sisters, we arrive today at one of the most joyful feasts of the entire Church year. Amidst the desert of Great Lent, the Annunciation comes as a true oasis for our parched and thirsty souls. As the troparion of the feast exultantly exclaims: “Today is the fountainhead of our salvation, and the revelation of the mystery which is before the ages!” And truly, the grace of God reveals today…

The Comfort of the Cross

· Hieromonk Gabriel 4 Leave a Comment on %s
My brothers and sisters, we have reached today the midpoint of the Fast. For three weeks we have each been struggling — according to our individual strength and circumstances — to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and… run with patience the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1). But our Mother the Church knows that the race is long; She knows also our…

The Fullness of Christ

· Hieromonk Gabriel 1 Leave a Comment on %s
Today, on the second Sunday of Great Lent, the Holy Church has appointed us to keep the feast of St. Gregory Palamas, the great 14th-century archbishop of Thessalonica. He is almost certainly the most famous of the Church Fathers who lived after the first millenium of Christianity. Although he was extremely well-educated in his youth under the patronage of the Emperor himself, nevertheless — like all true theologians — his real formation…

Finding the Father’s House

· Hieromonk Gabriel 3 Leave a Comment on %s
All of us are born into this world with a deep and insatiable longing for Paradise. Perhaps we are not even aware of it. Most of us bury it beneath the mire of our passions; we try to satisfy this pure and holy desire with the trinkets and amusements of this fallen world. We become as ships tossed to and fro, as wanderers amid the wasteland of this life, consumed by a…

Christmas in Exile

· Hieromonk Gabriel 6 Leave a Comment on %s
Today is the Feast of the Nativity, whereon we commemorate the Incarnation of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. So great is this feast-day that even centuries of unprecedented godlessness and apostasy have been unable to erase it from our culture’s remembrance, even when nearly all other trappings of our Christian faith and heritage have disappeared from our social landscape. And though our scholars now try to disguise it with…

A Good Beginning: On Repentance and New Year’s Resolutions

· Hieromonk Gabriel 1 Leave a Comment on %s
As we once again approach the beginning of a new year, it is good for us as Christians to take advantage of this opportunity for self-reflection, to prayerfully reexamine how we are living our lives and whether we are doing so in light of the Gospel of Christ. Indeed, just as we Orthodox Christians pray each evening in the words of St. John Chrysostom: “though I have done nothing good in Thy…

“Come and See”

· Hieromonk Gabriel 2 Leave a Comment on %s
Today we keep the feast of the Holy Apostle Philip, one of the very first of the Twelve Apostles whom Christ the Savior preeminently called to follow Him. Evidently St. Philip felt the evangelic nature of his apostleship quite keenly, for immediately upon hearing the most sweet voice of Christ calling out to him, he straightway went and “found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in…

The OCA and the Academy

· Hieromonk Gabriel 8 Leave a Comment on %s
Several months ago at their 20th All-American Council, in response to the request of the faithful the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America issued an encyclical entitled Statement on Same-sex Relationships and Sexual Identity. Within the historical context of the Christian faith, the only thing even remotely remarkable about this encyclical is the fact that anyone felt the need to issue it at all (sadly, however, such a need is…

We Exalt the Cross by Ascending It

· Hieromonk Gabriel 1 Leave a Comment on %s
My brothers and sisters, we celebrate today the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross of Christ, the feastday of our monastery and the second of the Twelve Great Feasts of the Church year. It is remarkable that at the outset of the Church new year, not a single day passes between the afterfeast of the Nativity of the Theotokos and the forefeast of the Exaltation of the Cross. This is by…

The Zeal of the Forerunner

· Hieromonk Gabriel 3 Leave a Comment on %s
Today we celebrate the Beheading of the Forerunner, one of only three great feasts of the Church year not dedicated either to the Lord or the Mother of God. And despite the sorrowful nature of this day’s events, nevertheless it remains a celebration — albeit one which we keep with great spiritual sobriety, observing a strict fast even when it falls (as it does this year) on a Sunday. Why do we…