[The following is a homily I gave in 2002 for the feast of SS Peter and Paul.] Why do we celebrate Saints Peter and Paul with such elaborate Offices, why do the Byzantine Churches make this day a holy day of obligation? This is quite extraordinary, since no other saint, short of the Mother of [...]
[This is last Saturday’s homily, but I didn’t want to interrupt the 3-part post, so I’m publishing it now.] Today’s Gospel (Mt. 7:1-8) is the last of the Sermon on the Mount we’ll be hearing from in a while, and it’s an important one, so hopefully we won’t forget it until it comes around again [...]
The second half of chapter two is mainly about the mystery of God’s grace being manifested in the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s plan of salvation—which was certainly news to the Chosen People (though perhaps not good news in everyone’s opinion!). For us, the Jew/Gentile issue is not a burning one, for we have [...]
There are two things I’d like to examine here. One is being “sealed” with the Holy Spirit, and the other is the “guarantee” of our heavenly inheritance. To be sealed with the Holy Spirit (again, this is done in Christ: “In Him… you were sealed…”) is to be permanently designated or “marked” as belonging to [...]
[The following post begins a rather long article—so I’m presenting it in three parts—that I wrote a couple years ago for our newsletter. It’s basically a commentary and reflection on the first three chapters of St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.] The news in the papers and on TV is mostly bad these days. Therefore, [...]
Now that we have completed the octave of Pentecost, we have to start bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Today the Church tells us what she wants us to do: become saints! Every year, the Sunday after Pentecost is All Saints’ Day in the Byzantine tradition. It makes sense, because we can’t just leave [...]
Well, the Church didn’t wait too long to urge us to put into practice the grace of Pentecost. We’re about to conclude the octave of Pentecost, but we’ve been given readings from the Sermon on the Mount all week, which contains some of the clearest and most uncompromising teachings of Jesus found in the whole [...]
At the end of May, my friend Johanna died. I’ve known her for maybe 15-20 years. She was a mystic and a victim soul, and her intense and chronic sufferings wore her out by time she was 65. I hadn’t heard from her in some time, and my letters went unanswered, so I figured there [...]
The grace of the Holy Spirit overflows not only our hearts and the whole Church but also the liturgical calendar, since we extend our celebration of Pentecost with a feast day on the following day, and throughout this week as well. It’s somewhat curious, then, on this feast of the Holy Spirit, that the Gospel [...]
Today we conclude the continuous reading of the Gospel of St John that we began on Easter Sunday. Next week we’ll begin the time after Pentecost with the Gospel of St Matthew. So it is a fitting conclusion to read the conclusion of St John’s Gospel, the final post-resurrection appearance and the commissioning of St [...]
