Bible Readings: Epistle: Titus 2:11-14.3:4-7 Gospel: St. Matthew 3:13-17 Liturgical Services: Christ is baptized! He comes up out of the water, and with Him He carries up the world. He sees the heavens opened that Adam had closed against himself and his posterity. The Spirit bears witness to His divinity, for He hastens toward His like. And a voice sounds from heaven, for it is from heaven that He has come down to those whom
Meditation: Why Did He Come? Christmas means that “the Word (the Eternal God) was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). In an attempt to capture the monumental humiliation God endured when He took on human flesh, C.S. Lewis likens it to our becoming a worm. Yet God did that for us in order to communicate His love to us. Christmas means that Emmanuel has come: God is not
Meditation: Why Did He Come? Jesus himself explains why He came: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5: 17). “I come not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt 9; 13). “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). “I have come as light into the world, that whoever
In Jesus, God achieved the perfect synthesis of the divine and the human. The incarnation of Jesus demonstrates that God meets us where we are as humans. God freely and fully overcomes the gap from God’s side. The problem of redemption is already resolved once and for all, long before its dramatic illustration on the cross. Bethlehem already revealed that it was good to be a human being. For the Christian, spiritual power is always
On the Great and Holy Feast of Pascha, Orthodox Christians celebrate the life-giving Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This feast of feasts is the most significant day in the life of the Church. It is a celebration of the defeat of death, as neither death itself nor the power of the grave could hold our Savior captive. In this victory that came through the Cross, Christ broke the bondage of sin, and
There is a darkness that we are all led into by our own stupidity, by our own selfishness, blindness, or by just living out of the false self. And there is a darkness that I believe God leads us through for our own enlightenment. In both cases, we have to walk through these dark periods by brutal honesty, confessions, surrenders, letting go, forgiveness, and often by some necessary restitution, apology or healing ritual. I still
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