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Miraculous Love

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, July 21, 2024 The Lord seems to have been very mindful of the people he met. Men, women, children, the rich and poor, the well-positioned and even more the lowly, oppressed, needy and foreigners. The Mosaic Law was the overshadowing context of Jewish life and, after all, Jesus was a Jew, but people were more important to him than the Law. Today he meets a Centurion, a

Love for Your Neighbor

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on November 13, 2019 Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia Love for your neighbor encourages love for God There’s one thing that’s required in this life, love and worship for Christ and love of our fellow human beings. We should all be one, with Christ as the head. This is the only way to acquire grace, heaven, eternal life. Love for your neighbor cultivates love for God. We’re happy when we love everyone else, mystically. Then

Love Lifts Me

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, May 18, 2025 Hafiz wrote:  I once asked a bird, how is it that you fly in this gravity of darkness. She responded, “Love lifts me.” The Samaritan Woman came to Jacob’s Well at noon when the day was hottest and the sun at its zenith, wrapped in a cloak of darkness. She did not want to be seen. And there she WAS seen by someone who we, in

Love and Being

~By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 21, 2025 Perhaps the most intriguing statement in the New Testament is St. John’s simple, “God is love.” As mysterious and awesome as the revelation of the Divine Name (“I am that I am”) to Moses might be, St. John’s statement gives a content that echoes and enfolds the death and resurrection of Christ itself. Indeed, any other statement about God runs the risk of obscuring this essential revelation. More

Serve with Love, Avoid Greed

Sermon preached by Dimitri Newman on Sunday, June 9, 2024 In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen! In today’s epistle we heard about a slave girl, who was possessed by a spirit, which had the power of divination, that is the spirit was able to tell the future. The people of Phillipi, where the apostles were, would apparently spend a great deal of money

Acquire the Spirit of Compassion & Co-Suffering Love

Sermon preached by Dn. James Wilcox on Sunday, August 18, 2024 1 Cor 1:10-7; Matt. 14:14-22 The reading we just heard should be familiar to most of us, as it recounts one of the “feeding of the five thousand” stories found in our Gospel texts. And I’m guessing that these “feeding” accounts, as I’m calling them here, are somewhat familiar to most of us. And in the event that they are, here are a few

A Scandal, Many Sins, and a Saint!

~Ioannis Panayiotopoulos, Lecturer at the Theological School, Athens University One of the most wonderful stories in the Lavsaïko [Lives of the Ascetics, by Bishop Palladius of Helenopolis, written for a chamberlain at the court of Emperor Theodosios II, a certain Lavsos, from whom the book takes its name] describes the life of a monk who abandoned his monastery and went to the port of Alexandria to work as a dock labourer. Given the fact that

Being Faithful in Small Things

~Sermon Preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, October 1, 2006 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ! “We cannot do great things,” said Mother Teresa of Calcutta, “but we can do small things with great love.” St. Francis came upon an almond tree in the dead of winter. He said to it, “Speak to me of God” and the

The Fourth Day of Christmas Advent. The Significance of the Birth of Christ for the Human Race

Every year, in an atmosphere of joy and delight, the Church celebrates the Birth of Christ, and sings wonderful hymns to God Who became incarnate and re-formed our degenerate human nature. Orthodox hymnography and theology emphasize the great anthropological significance of the divine incarnation: we have been saved from hopeless degradation and from the chaos of destructive hatred by the love of God, which took on flesh and bone within history through the person of

Love the Lord

~Sermon Preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, November 12, 2006 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen Glory to Jesus Christ! It is significant that when the lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to “inherit eternal life” he answers the question by removing the future emphasis. Life is to be lived now. Jesus says that if we want to live, that is,