Daily Meditations Archives

The Twenty-Seventh Day of Christmas Advent. The Word Became Flesh: The Inexpressible Mystery of Salvation

12/11/2025

Saint Symeon the New Theologian When God, the Son of God, entered the womb of All-Holy Virgin and took flesh from her, He was born a perfect person and perfect God, without confusion. When has anything more important ever happened for us? We all believe in this Son of God and Son of the ever-virgin Mother of God, Mary, which is why we confidently accept this information about Him and this event. If we confess

The Twenty-Sixth Day of Christmas Advent. On the Feast of the Nativity

12/10/2025

~Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2013 I don’t know if you knew Professor Jaroslav Pelikan. He was a wonderful historian, a theologian, a Lutheran who converted to Orthodoxy in the last part of his life. He was an amazing man. He said something that I’ve kept in my mind since I heard it: that “the problem with the church is that we have lost a sense of the cosmic

The Twenty-Fifth Day of Christmas Advent. The Conception by Righteous Anna of the Most Holy Mother of God (9 December)

12/09/2025

Saint Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary, was the youngest daughter of the priest Nathan from Bethlehem, descended from the tribe of Levi. She married Saint Joachim (September 9), who was a native of Galilee. For a long time, Saint Anna was childless, but after twenty years, through the fervent prayer of both spouses, an angel of the Lord announced to them that they would be the parents of a daughter, who would bring

The Twenty-Fourth Day of Christmas Advent. The Christmas When Everybody Was There

12/08/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, December 19, 2022 The soldiers were scattered across Europe with the loneliness of war. The world was caught up in a total struggle. Women had gone to the factories; children were collecting scrap metal. The “war effort” was universal. In many places, food was rationed. The madhouse of consumption belonged only to the war; everything else could wait. And there was Christmas. Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley were part of the

The Twenty-Second Day of Christmas Advent. Memory of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia (6 December)

12/06/2025

Saint Nicholas, the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia is famed as a great saint pleasing unto God. He was born in the city of Patara in the region of Lycia (on the south coast of the Asia Minor peninsula), and was the only son of pious parents Theophanes and Nonna, who had vowed to dedicate him to God. As the fruit of the prayer of his childless parents, the infant Nicholas from the very

The Twenty-First Day of Christmas Advent. Venerable Savvas the Sanctified

12/05/2025

Saint Savvas the Sanctified was born in the fifth century at Cappadocia of pious Christian parents, John and Sophia, and his father was a military commander. Journeying to Alexandria on military matters, John and Sophia left their five-year-old son Savva in the care of an uncle. When the boy was eight years old, he entered the nearby Monastery of Saint Flavian. The gifted child quickly learned to read and became an expert on the Holy

The Twentieth Day of Christmas Advent. Saint Barbara the Great Martyr

12/04/2025

Saint Barbara was from Heliopolis of Phoenicia and lived during the reign of Maximian. She was the daughter of a certain idolater named Dioscorus. When Barbara came of age, she was enlightened in her pure heart and secretly believed in the Holy Trinity. About this time Dioscorus began building a bath-house; before it was finished he was required to go away to attend to certain matters, and in his absence Barbara directed the workmen to

The Nineteenth Day of Christmas Advent. The Third Birth of Christ (Part II)

12/03/2025

Stergios Sakkos Our first encounter with Him is through faith. Faith opens the door of the soul, so that Christ can enter. Faith receives Him, subjects our hearts to Him and engenders within us a fervent interest and powerful desire to approach Him. This is the initial requirement for Christ to dwell in our hearts, as Saint Paul says (Eph. 3, 17). But it takes love in order for the Lord to stay with us

The Eighteenth Day of Christmas Advent. The Third Birth of Christ (Part I)

12/02/2025

Stergios Sakkos Rebirth The third birth of Christ is in the life of people who believe in Him and accept Him as their own, personal God. Because even though Christ became incarnate in order to save everyone, not everyone will be saved. Of course, the Lord “wants all people to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth”, (I Tim. 2, 4), and is certainly all-powerful. Nevertheless, He respects people’s freedom as well

The Seventeenth Day of Christmas Advent. A Virgin Gave Birth

12/01/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, December 28, 2022 I was browsing through some online material recently and came across a conversation between a non-believing sceptic and a Christian apologist. The question was asked (right off the top): “Why a virgin birth?” The apologist did a decent job of responding, giving a fairly common explanation of “why Christ had to be born of a virgin.” Something about it left me empty. Thinking about it – I believe