Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, November 6, 2022 The woman with the issue of blood suffered with her ailment for 12 years. Jairus’ daughter died at the age of 12. That’s an interesting detail. Was it a deliberate move by the author or authors? Or a coincidence? Who knows? Whether one or the other the number twelve appears often in Holy Scripture signifying wholeness and the power and authority of God. Jesus,
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, May 17, 2020 One of my teachers in seminary once told us that all preaching should be about the kingdom of God. I suppose it was because that was what Jesus talked about most during his three-year public ministry. In Matthew’s Gospel the Lord mentions “the kingdom of heaven” 32 times. In Luke and Mark, the phrase kingdom of God is preferred. The Gospel of the Samaritan
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, August 23, 2020 Forgiveness, offered, isn’t always accepted or passed on. The unforgiving servant is the New Testament version of the narcissist. Receiving extravagant mercy from his master and caring only for himself, he refuses it to his fellow servant. “Why ask forgiveness when I’ve done nothing wrong,” the narcissist asks? For such a person there are rarely second thoughts and no effective arguments. It is vain
~ By Metropolitan Athanasios of Lemessos On the first Sunday of Lent [yesterday, Sunday], we celebrate[d] the Sunday of Orthodoxy, that is to say the feast of the restitution of the holy icons, as the Church once again, by the grace of God, vanquished the heresy of the iconoclasts and preserved with exactitude the faith and the tradition of the Holy Fathers of the Church, as it has been preserved throughout the ages. This faith
~By Archimandrite Varnavas Lambropoulos On the eve of our entry into Great Lent, everything in church speaks to us of repentance. The wonderful hymns ‘robe’ the message of repentance in a poetic manner; the Gospel reading gives us the keys to open the gates of repentance; and the Epistle reminds us of one of Saint Paul’s most pressing admonitions: to call us to repentance. In essence the leading apostle repeats, in his own, graphic manner,
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, March 7, 2021 When our Lord and Savior instructs us to love everyone without preference, we must never allow anyone to convince us otherwise. In the kingdom of God there can be neither apathy nor prejudice. Quoting Pope Francis speaking in the ancient city of Ur, “the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters.” Blasphemers, it goes without saying, cannot inherit
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, August 20, 2023 Jesus was not a theoretician. He was not all words and theories. His teaching had practical applications and consequences. His core message was about the presence of the kingdom of heaven within us and among us here and now using metaphors from daily life, fishing and farming, wedding feasts and banquets to anchor Christian spirituality in the real stuff of this world. Although many
By Fr. Steven Kostoff Within the Orthodox Church, the Sunday between December 11-17 is called, simply enough, the “Second Sunday Before the Nativity of the Lord,” and more specifically, the “Sunday of the Forefathers.” This liturgical preparation for the Feast of our Lord’s Nativity—something of a build-up—is a conscious echo of the lengthy time of preparation, determined by God and embodied in the history of Israel, before the sending of His only-begotten Son into the
The feast day of Saint Demetrios is a great feast for all of Orthodoxy, but especially Thessalonica, which is his birthplace. His church is a building dating from the ancient Christian era, built one hundred years after his holy martyrdom which was in 296 A.D. But after 300 years it burned down, and was rebuilt in the days of Leo the Wise. Saint Demetrios along with Saint George are the two brave young men of
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, December 14, 2015 A “better world” and “making a difference” are deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness. They seem to be obvious goals for the human life. My recent articles questioning this consciousness have touched a deep chord for many, some wondering that if such things are wrong, “why bother?” There are two thoughts I want to offer in this article. The first addresses the illusion of the better world and
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