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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,

Only Love Knows Anything

~Father Stephen Freeman, August 15, 2023 There’s a part of us that is wired to be careful. It senses danger and hunkers down. It looks for danger. It can easily become the dominant mode of our life. Anxiety and depression, are among the most common noises of this internal warning system. When it comes to dominate, we see the world through fear-colored glasses. In the classical language of the Church, we describe such an experience by the voices

What Do We Need? Love Amidst the Clutter

~By Stephen Freeman, September 18, 2023 I’ve been slowly making my way through the book, An Empire of Things. It’s subtitle, How We Became a World of Consumers from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Centuries, describes the fascinating journey outlined in the text. It tracks the gradual evolution of the modern world as seen in our acquisition of stuff. The average citizen in the 1400’s would have been lucky to have a change of clothes and the

What Do We Need? Love Amidst the Clutter

~By Father Stephen Freeman, September 18, 2023 I’ve been slowly making my way through the book, An Empire of Things. It’s subtitle, How We Became a World of Consumers from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Centuries, describes the fascinating journey outlined in the text. It tracks the gradual evolution of the modern world as seen in our acquisition of stuff. The average citizen in the 1400’s would have been lucky to have a change of clothes and

Love and Mourning in the Human Race (Saint Mary Magdalene, II)

Sister Parakliti, Holy Skete of Saint Mary Magdalene, in Liti Grief has its own stages. According to the psychological approach [1], we need to pass through them with care and support. We need time to begin to discover meaning in everything that’s happening to us. With Magdalene, it didn’t take much time. Christ appeared to her and told her about the resurrection. With this faith, she then continued her life, which had acquired a different