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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“Such beauty has power,” Adelaida said hotly. “You can overturn the world with such beauty.” –The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky Perhaps the most famous phrase from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s quite voluminous body of writing is the statement that “beauty will save the world.” Much ink has been spilled concerning this phrase by all manner of critics and commentators, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike. And without doubt it is extremely important that we Orthodox…
