Daily Meditations Archives - Page 324 of 326

Synaxis in Honor of the Archangel Gabriel

03/26/2012

On the Leavetaking of the Feast of the Annunciation, the Church commemorates the Archangel Gabriel, who announced the great mystery of the Incarnation of Christ to the Virgin Mary. Mindful of the manifold appearances of the holy Archangel Gabriel and of his zealous fulfilling of God’s will and confessing his intercession for Christians before the Lord, the Orthodox Church calls upon its children to pray to the great Archangel with faith and love. The Synaxis

Forefeast of the Annunciation

03/24/2012

The Annunciation of the Theotokos On the twenty-fifth day of this month we celebrate the Annunciation of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary. Verses The Angel announced to the Virgin the Great Son of the Father’s great Counsel. The Angel said, “Rejoice”, to Mary on the twenty-fifth. Synaxarion God, Who is merciful and loves mankind, is ever solicitous about the race of men. When, as a loving Father, He saw the work of

Anthony of the Desert

03/23/2012

Around the year 270 C.E., while attending the liturgy, the twenty-year-old Anthony heard the words of Jesus: “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mark 10:21). The words struck the young man to the heart. He sold his inheritance and went off into the desert. First he locked himself up in an abandoned fort, cut off from all contact with the

The Reality of Love

03/22/2012

“TEACHER/’ THEY SAID, ” WE KNOW THAT YOU SPEAK AND TEACH RIGHTLY, AND SHOW NO PARTIALITY.” —LUKE 20:21 Look at your life and see how you have filled its emptiness with people. As a result they have a stranglehold on you. See how they control your behavior by their approval and disapproval. They hold the power to ease your loneliness with their company, to send your spirits soaring with their praise, to bring you down

According to Luke

03/21/2012

Luke’s Gospel is the most broad-minded and the most forgiving. Every chance he gets, Luke has Jesus forgiving people, right up to the good thief on the cross. Luke is quite ready to see God as generous, gratuitous, and merciful. Mercy and inclusivity—Jesus’ ministry to outcasts, to gentiles, to the poor—are emphasized a great deal in Luke. In this approach, Luke’s sacred text is also called the gospel of women. Far more than any other

Why Are We Free?

03/20/2012

In many ancient traditions, as still today in India, salvation is understood as dissolution into the vastness of the universe, re-absorption into an impersonal divinity; but the Fathers insist that humanity must ‘personalize’ the universe; not save itself by means of the universe, but save it by communicating grace to it. And all the while human beings must also humbly decipher the ‘Bible of the world’; they elevate themselves above all life in order to

Empathy, Flexibility, Compassion

03/19/2012

An Honest Being-With Being with a friend in great pain is not easy. It makes us uncomfortable. We do not know what to do or say, and we worry about how to respond to what we hear. Our temptation is to say things that come more out of our own fear than out of our care for the person in pain. Sometimes we say things like “Well, you’re doing a lot better than yesterday,” or

Saint Patrick, Enlightener of Ireland

03/17/2012

How did Orthodox Christianity come to this small green island off the shores of the European continent in the uttermost West? Unknown to many, Christianity in Ireland does have an Apostolic foundation.

On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology

03/16/2012

The ancient philosophers loved to stress the central place of Man in the universe. They said that Man is the only animal which stands upright, and so symbolizes the dimensions of space, first the high, or heavenly, and the low, or earthly. Other animals walk on all fours or crawl. Their space is purely earthly; it is only by Man that they are connected to the heavens. True, trees and rocks stand upright, symbolizing the

Hope Against Darkness; The Naked Now

03/15/2012

Picture yourself before the crucified Jesus and recognize that he became what we are all afraid of and what we all deny: nakedness, exposure, vulnerability and failure. He became “sin” to free us from sin (Romans 8:3), the Cosmic Scapegoat who reveals our worst and best souls to those who will gaze long enough (John 19:37).