Tag: Lent

The Fullness of Christ

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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

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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…

Keeping the Sabbath

· Hieromonk Gabriel
Today is perhaps not the most auspicious day to publish any words. Having just served the Vesperal Divine Liturgy for Holy Saturday, wherein is sung the somber yet supremely beautiful hymn “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence,” I find myself in danger of falling under my own condemnation. So I will at least try to keep my words brief. In the center of the church the Lord, the life of all, lies…

What Kind of Triumph Do We Seek?

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We celebrate today the Great Feast of the Triumphal Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. Today Christ enters openly and boldly into the holy city, no longer in secret, no longer hiding Himself to forestall the fury of the Jews, for He knows that His hour to be glorified is now at hand. And so on this day He makes his entry into Jerusalem with glory — at least, in a certain…

“Our Fathers Have Told Us”

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By God’s grace we have reached the completion of the First Week of Great Lent, and have come now to the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Great Lent is the Season of Repentance par excellence, and in general the Sundays of Great Lent all reflect this theme: next week we will celebrate the great hesychast, St. Gregory Palamas; then we commemorate the Precious Cross of our Lord; next we honor St.…

Preparing for Lent in a Time of Pandemic

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It has now been a year since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, changing almost overnight nearly every aspect of our day-to-day lives in the modern world. Some of us have lost loved ones; the Church has bidden farewell to more than a few holy men and women whom the Lord chose this year to call home. The quarantine restrictions that have been in place more or less continuously throughout the world have also…

The Coronavirus and the Cross of Christ

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We have reached today the midpoint of the Fast. Half of the struggle is behind us, and the second half still lies ahead. And seeing our weakness, seeing our faintness of heart and the ease with which we can tire and grow despondent, on this Sunday our mother the Holy Church mercifully offers us hope and refreshment, comfort and consolation. But the form which this takes is not at all what “common…

Seeking to See Jesus

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Today, as we stand at the threshold of Great Lent, the Holy Church gives to us in the Gospel story of Zaccheus an icon of the Lenten journey which lies ahead. It is precisely an icon, because everything happens as it were in a flash, in one single image passing before our eyes. We hear nothing of Zaccheus’ past, and after these few short verses he never again appears on the pages…

On Holy Week and the Way of the Cross

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The Forty Days of the Great Fast have now ended. We have once again been given a foretaste of the approaching Paschal joy in the raising of Lazarus the Four Days Dead. We have once more exulted together at the Triumphal Entry of our Lord Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. And now we watch and wait (let all mortal flesh keep silence!) outside the Holy City, to behold the events of this Great…

The Long Road Home

· Hieromonk Gabriel
In the church hymns for this day we commemorate the expulsion of Adam from Paradise; he is vividly portrayed to us sitting outside the Garden of Eden, weeping for his great sin and for all that he has lost. But these hymns are often sung in the first person; for like Adam, all of us have sinned, all of us have been cast out by God, all of us weep for our lost homeland. But unlike Adam, we weep for what we have never known.