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Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Sixth Tuesday of Pascha: Let God Arise!

By Father Daniel Kovalak “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). In God’s “strategic plan” for the life of the world and its salvation, He decisively intervened, in Person, “trampling down death by death.” In the radiant light of Jesus’ glorious resurrection, darkness is overcome, creation is renewed, disappointment and despair no longer have the final word, sorrow is turned to

Feast of the Annunciation of Our Most Holy Theotokos

INTRODUCTION The Feast of the Annunciation of Our Most Holy Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary is celebrated on March 25 each year. The Feast commemorates the announcement by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, would become incarnate and enter into this world through her womb. BIBLICAL STORY The biblical story of the Feast of the Annunciation is found in the first chapter of the Gospel

The Second Monday of Great Lent: What Happens in the Crossroads of the Spirit & A Mirror with which to See inside Ourselves

What Happens in the Crossroads of the Spirit It is the task of the hands to find food for the body’s necessities, and the task of the mouth to give service to the word. This particular organ is ours so that we can emit sounds, and we have another organ to receive them. The two activities are not muddled up, every organ carries out its own specific function without disturbing the one next to it.

Thirtieth Day of Christmas Advent, Meditation: You Shall Call His Name Jesus

Meditation: You Shall Call His Name Jesus The Gospel of Matthew begins with a long list of Hebrew names that give the family tree of Jesus on the human side. As we read these names some two thousand years of history pass in review. At the end of the list we find the name above every name, the name of Jesus. The procession passes through the centuries and comes to rest at Bethlehem. “Joseph, son

GALLERY OF LIGHT

This light itself is one, and all those who see it and love it are one. -St. Augustine The center of our soul is difficult to define. It’s hard enough just to believe in it. -St. Teresa of Avila Because it is not I who look but I who am being looked through, Gloria. -R. S. Thomas People visit the Academy in Florence mostly to see Michelangelo’s David. The postcards and the photographs in coffee-table

Dealing with Our Passions (Part VII)

Another thought may press us hard: getting out of our former life, our former profession, and doing something completely different. Often all the arguments are useless here. The thought just keeps coming back. Here too some of the sayings of the fathers show us a way. A father who had struggled for years against the thought of visiting a certain confrere concretely imagined going to him, greeting him, and speaking to him. He imagined the

Music and Mediation in St Gregory of Nyssa’s Commentary ‘On the Inscriptions of the Psalms’

By Father Matthew Baker In his On the Making of Man, St Gregory of Nyssa likened the human body to a kind of musical instrument, played upon by the mind of man. In the same work, he dismissed as pagan the idea of man as microcosm. Yet later, in his dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection, Gregory espoused precisely this notion of microcosm in order to express the mediatorial role of the human being between intelligible and

Nineteenth Day of Christmas Advent: Search the Scriptures (The Katavasias, Part III)

Rod of the Root of Jesse The fourth ode of the katavasias refers to one of the great prophecies predicting the coming of the Messiah: There shall come forth a rod from the root of Jesse, and a Bower shall grow out of his root. The Spirit of God shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and godliness. (Is. 11:1-2) Jesse was

The Second Thursday of Great Lent

The Soul’s Dizziness There are two different roads, one broad and easy, the other hard and narrow. And there are two guides vying with each other to attract the traveler’s attention. Now that we are grown to years of discretion we see that life is an amalgam of vice and virtue. The soul by casting its gaze first on one and then on the other can calculate the consequences of each. The life of the

REMEMBERING OUR VETERANS

By the Reverend Andrew J. Demotses   President Harry Truman was the object of an assassination attempt in which two secret service agents were killed while protecting him. In recounting the experience of that terrible day, Mr. Truman said, “You can’t imagine how a man feels when someone else dies for him.” The Old Testament recounts the story in which a similar feeling caused David to worship God. When he had expressed a longing to