Christmas Archives - Page 12 of 25

The Fifteenth Day of Christmas Advent. We are All Searching.

11/29/2018

WE ARE ALL SEARCHING, AND ULTIMATELY—whether we know it or not—we are searching for God. Ultimately, we are searching for the Ultimate, and the Ultimate is God. It is not easy, searching for God. Think about it. We can stretch our minds as high and deep and far as our minds can stretch, and at the point of the highest, deepest, farthest stretch of our minds, we have not “thought” God. There is always a

The Fourteenth Day of Christmas Advent. History of the Feast.

11/28/2018

History of the Feast WHEN SOMEONE WE LOVE COMES TO VISIT—when a child returns home for a holiday or an old friend from far away finally comes to town—we are full of anticipation and prepare to receive our guest with joy. We may even clean the house and polish the silver. So it is with Advent, the season set aside by the ancient Christian communities to prepare for the mystery we are about to celebrate

The Thirteenth Day of Christmas Advent. Birth.

11/27/2018

Birth, any birth, is our primary access to the creative work of God. And we birth much more than human babies. Our lives give birth to God’s kingdom every day—or, at least, they should. And Jesus’ virgin birth provides and maintains the focus that God himself is personally present and totally participant in creation; this is good news, indeed. Every birth is kerygmatic. The birth of Jesus, kept fresh in our imaginations and prayers in

The Sixth Day of Christmas Advent. Every Human Birth

11/20/2018

Birth, every human birth, is an occasion for local wonder. In Jesus’ birth the wonder is extrapolated across the screen of all creation and all history as a God-birth. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”—moved into the neighborhood, so to speak. And for thirty years or so, men and women saw God in speech and action in the entirely human person of Jesus as he was subject, along with them, to the common

The Fifth Day of Christmas Advent. BIRTH: WONDER . . . ASTONISHMENT . . . ADORATION

11/19/2018

BIRTH: WONDER . . . ASTONISHMENT . . . ADORATION. There can’t be very many of us for whom the sheer fact of existence hasn’t rocked us back on our heels. We take off our sandals before the burning bush. We catch our breath at the sight of a plummeting hawk. “Thank you, God.” We find ourselves in a lavish existence in which we feel a deep sense of kinship—we belong here; we say thanks

The Second Day of Christmas Advent. The Meaning of Christmas

11/16/2018

[My] journey began on Christmas morning, 1988, in Ottawa in a small Anglo-Catholic church called St. Barnabas. It was my first encounter with what my high church friends call “smells and bells.” Throughout that Christmas service a translucent ribbon of incense lingered just above eye level. Its constant presence provided a gentle introduction to the physical elements of the Christmas service that I had not experienced before—the Eucharist, the processions, the sights, sounds, and, yes,

The First Day of Christmas Advent: The Fast of Advent

11/15/2018

The Fast of Advent, by Father Leonidas Contos If there is one central idea in Paul, a kind of link that binds his theology to his ethics, that is his doctrinal theology and his moral theology; it is the idea of “newness of life.” Again and again he makes this emphasis: that when a person became a Christian, he literally renounced a former way of life and adopted a wholly new way. In baptism the

Live the Church Year

11/14/2018

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “LIVE THE CHURCH YEAR”? Our goal is to recover a more ancient way of looking at time and the mysterious relationship between the material and spiritual realms. The early Christians believed that the rhythm of the year gave us a perfect opportunity to re-enact the story of our salvation. In the holy days and seasons of the church year, the life of Christ and the entirety of human history are

The Fast of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin (Part I)

08/08/2018

By Father Leonidas Contos There are in the Orthodox tradition three principal periods of fasting during the ecclesiastical year; they are also the ones that are the least neglected. One is the forty-day period of Advent; the second is the forty-day period of Lent; the third is the fifteen-day fast which begins the first of August, and will end on the fifteenth with the commemoration of the Falling Asleep of the Theotokos. Among the three

The Mystery of Christ’s Baptism

01/06/2018

By Stephen Freeman This week, the Church moves from the feast of Christmas to the feast of Theophany – the celebration of the Baptism of Christ. The intent of this feast is not to celebrate a succession of historical events (the Baptism of Christ is at least 30 years later than His birth). Rather this feast takes us into the depths of the mystery of Christ and His salvation of the world. Many Christians, reading the gospel accounts of

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The Fifteenth Day of Christmas Advent. We are All Searching.

The Fourteenth Day of Christmas Advent. History of the Feast.

The Thirteenth Day of Christmas Advent. Birth.

The Sixth Day of Christmas Advent. Every Human Birth

The Fifth Day of Christmas Advent. BIRTH: WONDER . . . ASTONISHMENT . . . ADORATION

The Second Day of Christmas Advent. The Meaning of Christmas

The First Day of Christmas Advent: The Fast of Advent

Live the Church Year

The Fast of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin (Part I)

The Mystery of Christ’s Baptism

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