Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
On the Blessing of Homes On Theophany
The Orthodox Church teaches that we do not have two separate lives–a secular one and a spiritual one–but one human life, and that all of it must be holy. We must not be Christians for just a few hours on Saturday and Sunday, spending the rest of our life godlessly, that is to say, without God.
Jan 19, 2011, 02:22

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Baptism in Christ
Baptism, however, can only be realized in the life of a person insofar as he or she accepts to make that pilgrimage with a certain ascetic discipline that focuses on repentance. St Peter of Damascus (11th-12th c. ?), St Symeon the New Theologian and many others, make the point repeatedly that baptismal renewal demands asceticism, a gradual dying with Christ.
Jan 18, 2011, 07:11

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Metropolitan Hilarion: ‘We hold dear St. Seraphim of Sarov’s spirit of joy which the modern man is lacking so much’
Many of you go by metro. Look at people’s faces in a metro car and you will see no joy in them. Your will see all kinds of expression – concern, restlessness, irritation but you will see no joy. Some would say: And what is there to be delighted with in subway? But go to a restaurant and look at the faces of those who sit there. Will you see many joyful and enlightened faces? No.
Jan 15, 2011, 06:20

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Circumcision of Jesus Christ
Memory of St Basil the Great
Today we are celebrating a number of things, among them the Circumcision of Christ, which happened about eight days after His Birth. This feast-day was not celebrated in the early time of the Church, but came later. Today is also the feast of the departure to heaven of St Basil the Great, which was established before the feast of the Circumcision came into being.
Jan 14, 2011, 10:02

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The Circumcision of The Lord
But there is some danger in all this: in the consciousness of some people, especially those who got insufficient spiritual enlightenment, those who seldom read the World of God, patristic writings, those who don’t think over their faith, but simply got used to go to church, dangerous and incorrect attitude to the rites is being formed. They think that exact fulfilment of the rite saves a man and you needn’t do anything more.
Jan 14, 2011, 10:01

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Christmas Message of His Holiness Patriarch KIRILL of Moscow and All Russia
As we listen attentively to the powers of heaven, we realize that Christ’s Nativity is filled with an extra-temporal meaning and has a direct bearing upon the destiny of each human person. Even he who does not know of the Saviour’s feat may now acquire the knowledge of the Truth, become a son of God and inherit life eternal. Christ’s Nativity reveals to us the truth about ourselves and makes it possible for us to understand and assimilate this truth.


Jan 7, 2011, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The Nativity Epistle of His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad
We must accept this peace of Christ, so full of love, foreign to falsehood and the other lusts! It is essential that all of us Christians remember that the Lord was born to redeem the sins of all humanity, and for this reason we must love our neighbor, striving to show in deed that we are disciples of Christ! Abiding in the bosom of the Holy Church of Christ, we will learn to live as Christ God, Who is now born, has commanded us.


Jan 7, 2011, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Nativity of Christ
And what is the Incarnation about if it is not about the love of God? And it is revealed to us in a way in which all love can reveal itself to us: surrendered, frail, totally within our power to destroy and to hurt; this Babe of Bethlehem is the perfect image of love, given, but perhaps, received by the ones - and indeed, as we know, rejected by the others.


Jan 6, 2011, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Christmas x 2
For as far back as I can remember real icicles, angel hair ornaments and tacky silver tinsel, I got to celebrate Christmas twice each year: the first on December 25th with most of the Christian world, and the second on January 7th with other Orthodox families. I didn’t really care why I celebrated twice, but I was told we followed a different calendar.


Jan 5, 2011, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The Feast of Time
Since my ordination I begin every New Year with the words: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages.” This moment is always one of the most beautiful I ever experience.


Jan 1, 2011, 20:24

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
My New Year's Resolution
At this time of year, you may be thinking about making New Year’s resolutions. In the spirit of the season, therefore, I would like share my resolution with you. It is a simple one, but I hope that it makes a larger point. This coming year, I will try to observe the speed limit
Jan 1, 2011, 20:04

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
On New Year's Day
We and the Time
In these days, my beloved brethren, millions of men accept the first day of January as the beginning of the new year, regardless of religion, race, or language. They exchange cards with wishes for a long life and a happy new year. Of course, most of them perform this duty just as a custom, without any philosophical or metaphysical regard for the significance of the mystery which we call Time.
Dec 30, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Eternal life and New Year's Resolutions
The reason that we are not ever completely happy here is because we are not supposed to be! ( that is why there is never enough money, or fame, or drink or food, or success or fun.) Earth is not our final home; we were created for something so much better. Our next life, with our Lord is where we will be truly fulfilled. Truly joyful. Truly loved. Truly peaceful
Dec 29, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The God-Shaped Hole
That’s it. Christmas is over. We purchased our stuff in a frenzy of feverish activity, then wrapped carefully and placed them beneath the tree. But now, with wrappings strewn around like the victims of tornado, the stuff is, well, just more stuff to be added to the rest of the stuff we already possess.


Dec 25, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
“ONE OF US!”
Praising Christ with the Hymns of the Nativity
In case the title startled you a bit, you can relax: I’ve taken the liberty to quote from Joan Osbourne’s 1995 hit, “One of Us,” but “just a slob like one of us” is nowhere to be found among the hymns chanted in the Orthodox Church! Osborne’s song, nonetheless, is a beautiful piece of music, with intriguing lyrics.
Dec 22, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
A St. Nicholas Day Reflection
The Orthodox Church’s main hymn (troparion/apolytikion) for the feast of St. Nicholas of Myra is the general hymn for all of the Church’s holy bishops. As such, for example, it is sung the day after the feast of St. Nicholas for the celebration of St. Ambrose of Milan. This hymn tells us what a Christian bishop (and, by extension, also a presbyter) ought to be for his people.
Dec 18, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The Ambience of Christmas
When I heard “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” for the umpteenth time on the radio and I looked out through the windshield of my truck and saw the sun shining, people in shorts on bicycles, I thought to myself, “No, it’s not.” The images of snowflakes and tinsel (or icicles as we called them when I was young) and Christmas lights on palm trees seemed just incongruous…wrong.
Dec 7, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Having the Mind to Feast
It seems thousands of years removed from us, but it was not so very long ago that life was marked out by religious feasts. Although everyone went to church, not everyone, of course, knew the exact contents of each celebration. For many, perhaps even the majority, the feast was above all an opportunity to get a good sleep, eat well, drink and relax.
Dec 4, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Mercy, Not Sacrifice
The danger for us is that we can get so caught up in trying to do everything right that we can miss the real center of the Orthodox faith: to love God with the fullness of our being, and to love others as we love ourselves. If we remember to pray, but do not remember the poor, what god does praying do for us? If we remember the fast, but do not feed the hungry, does our fasting really benefit us?
Nov 29, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Christmas on a Tight Budget
Already this year, I’ve been a part of several conversations revolving around Christmas gift-giving anxiety. Many of us are much tighter than ever financially, which conflicts directly with the cultural conviction that gift-giving is somehow tied to how successful we are as a person or, worse, how much we love someone.
Nov 22, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Having a Thankful and Grateful Attitude
As we begin preparation for the Thanksgiving and Christmas season, I was reflecting on St. Paul’s words found in Thessalonians. He says, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” This is such a grand invitation and one that can change our lives when we live pouring forth a grateful attitude.
Nov 11, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos
This feast of the Protection of the Theotokos is neither one of the Twelve Great Feasts of the Church nor is it a commemoration of any events in the earthly lives of our Lord or His Mother. So why does the Orthodox Church—here in twenty-first-century North America—keep this feast?


Oct 14, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Homily on the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Just look at your life. You know that, as a Christian, you should forgive everyone; and yet when someone slights you, what is your first response? Just like the world: To be angry, to judge. Perhaps, with reaching some maturity in the way of the Cross, you wouldn’t reach out against this person, but still the thought is there.

Sep 27, 2010, 10:01

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
By This Sign Conquer
It is said that the Emperor Constantine, as he was preparing his troops for the battle that would make him the ruler of the western part of the Roman Empire, had a vision of a Cross of brilliant light superimposed upon the sun; and he heard a voice say to him, “By this sign you will conquer.”
Sep 27, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The Right Time
Does not the same happen in our lives, dear brethren? We often find ourselves in a state of spiritual barrenness: we are subjected to sorrows and hardships, and we pray to God without apparently receiving any comfort, or we ask for the fulfillment of some spiritually-beneficial wish - and it is not fulfilled. And so we begin to think that this is punishment for our sins - and we fall into despair, we begin to lose hope, we even begin to grumble against the Lord.


Sep 21, 2010, 04:55

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Happy New Year!
Like the beginning of the school year, September marks the beginning of the ecclesiastical (Church) new year. Unlike the secular world, the Church has always followed the pattern of agrarian life, from end of harvest to end of harvest. With all of summer’s bounty collected and stored, the people of antiquity, replenished and replete, would prepare themselves for the beginning of a new growing cycle.


Sep 14, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The Beginning of the Church New Year (Indiction) 2010
In many ways, the new year is just like the one that has passed, with perhaps a few new additions. But the same days will occur again: birthdays, anniversaries, fasting seasons, feasts, week days and weekends, and so forth. To some people, this may seem tedious, especially when it comes to Church celebrations.
Sep 13, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
On This Date: Repent! (John the Baptist)
Sin is sin, and to the extent that the church follows in John's footsteps, it is not called primarily to "speak truth to power" but to speak holiness to sin: to convict each person of sin and lead to repentance. This was not just true of John's ministry; in the Gospels, Jesus takes up where John leaves off, preaching the gospel with the word, "Repent!"
Sep 11, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
A Second Pascha
Homily for the Dormition of the Holy Theotokos
The great and wondrous summer holiday - the Dormition of the Holy Mother of God - from olden times has been regarded by Orthodox Christians in the light of a second Pascha.


Aug 28, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The Feast of the Dormition: Comparing an Assumption
Both Orthodox and Roman Catholics celebrate the mystery of Christ's taking His Mother, body and soul, into Heaven. Yet both have quite different ways of approaching this Feast that reflects their differing perspectives on the Mother of Christ our God. Their liturgical focus is different one from another as are the very terms by which they name this Feast. Let's take a closer look . . .
Aug 27, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Sermon on the Feast of the Finding of the Relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov
Well, I say that the meaning of spiritual life is in acquisition of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. That is, the goal of our lives is a relationship with God, a direct relationship, through prayer through the fulfillment of God’s will, through spiritual struggle, though good deeds, which are the means by which to obtain a status such that the Grace of God, the Holy Spirit, settles in our hearts, in our souls – and we will have a true relationship with God. This is the goal of our Christian life.”

Aug 1, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Russian Destinies
There are historians who consider that the martyred Tsar was a poor ruler; others consider him to have been one of the best of rulers. I do not wish to talk about this; my business is not politics, although I do know that Tsar Nicholas II was much slandered. Let us leave politics to academics. The last Russian Tsar and his family are not holy confessors, but holy martyrs. In other words, all the human errors and sins they committed in their lives (and Only One is without sin, Christ our God) were washed away by the blood of martyrdom.
Jul 17, 2010, 04:03

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Holy Leaders of the Apostles
Different as these two Apostles were, they are most often depicted embracing or holding a church between them. The love of Christ transcends personal preferences and varieties in character. Close reading of the lives of the saints reveals many (especially among the holy hierarchs and theologians) who simply did not get along with each other. As an old priest once said to me, “We are called to love each other, not like each other.”
Jul 12, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
"You are the Christ!"
How do we truly proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? Do our lives reveal Him through what we say and what we do, and what we do not say and do not do? Can He be seen in us, in who we are, in how we live? Or do we look just like everyone else, indistinguishable from all the rest of those in the world who do not say that Jesus is Lord and Savior? Brothers and sisters, this should not be!

Jul 12, 2010, 02:26

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Nativity of John the Baptist.
‘What is the purpose of life?’ John the Baptist who never married, who remained a virgin, who prophesied, tells us that the purpose of life is to be spiritually fruitful. This is his prophetic revelation to us. Whether we are called to marriage and having children or not, we are called to bring forth spiritual fruit, to improve the world and not to worsen it, to be fruitful, and not to be barren, as his parents had been.

Jul 7, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
All Saints of Russia
If we do not embrace the faith whole-heartedly, with that spiritual hunger and thirsting, as we hear in the Beatitudes, and live it out in our lives, there is no point in celebrating the feast today.
Jun 6, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
What Makes a Person a Saint?
This is part of the reason why we celebrate the feast of All Saints on the first Sunday following Pentecost: to remind each one of us of our high calling; to remind each one of us that we are saints – that is, we have been consecrated, set apart for the service of God: not the service of the world, or of our flesh, or of our passions.
May 30, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Those Kneeling Prayers!
This past Monday Eve -- that is, on Pentecost Sunday afternoon -- we prayed the Kneeling Prayers at the Vespers for Holy Spirit Day, on Monday. I love coming to each feast day, in its distinctiveness, and partake of some unique aspect of the Gospel of Jesus Christ communicated through that liturgical celebration. And Pentecost does not disappoint, with its annual Kneeling Prayers.

May 24, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
With or Without the Holy Spirit?
The Acts is great reading, but it is not there for us to say "how great those days must have been, how I wish I had lived through them". Rather the stories of conversions, preachings, missionary journeys and rapid church growth are there to inspire us - for we too have received the same Holy Spirit. The Church without the Holy Spirit is not the Church.
May 22, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Homily on the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord
The Lord’s path should be the path of each and every one of us. The Lord suffered for all of us equally; the Heavens are opened also to all of us equally. Thus, I ask each and every one of you: can we point to very many things in our lives and say that they were done, or not done, by us because we are predestined for Heaven; because, some day, we should be with our Lord in Heaven?
May 13, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Metropolitan Anthony on the Sunday of the Blind Man
Why did the Lord not content Himself with His all-mighty power, but rather tell the man born blind to go to the pool of Siloam and wash in order to recover his sight? The answer to that question is that the man born blind had to show his obedience to the Mysterious Interlocutor of Whom he knew only His Name, but not His Divine authority.
May 9, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The Healing of the Man Born Blind
Aren’t the spiritually blind of all times the same? Don’t they also drive Christ from their hearts and lives under the mask of piety, often not even bothering with a mask? Offering to us the Gospel story about blindness in this the last Sunday of Pascha, the Holy Church calls all who thirst for healing from spiritual blindness to turn to the source of light and to follow the wise faith of the one who was born blind.
May 9, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
On the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman
This is what the sacrament of Confession is all about; not just the listing of sins, but the uprooting of the causes of sin. As we progress in the spiritual life what we confess becomes more and more subtle, as we begin to work with the thoughts, emotions and conditioning that give rise to our sin. Denied the living water of God, we search for other sources of water we hope will quench our thirst, but they produce only more thirst.
May 2, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Pride and Prejudice
When each and every one of us are born, whether black, white, Greek, Turk- whoever, we are born with the image of God in all of us as it states in the Old Testament book of Genesis. This ‘seed’ that God has implanted in us all gives us the ability to love one another, it gives us the ability to see good in one another, it gives us the ability to see God within one another. It’s almost like carrying around a tiny icon of Christ in our hearts.
May 2, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Sunday of the Paralytic
Our life, yes, is transient and withering, like the grass under the hot summer sun. But the soul – a unique human personality created by God – its story in time and eternity is altogether different. If the soul is united with its Creator and God, then it becomes the most beautiful, the most precious of everything that is on earth.
Apr 25, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Do you want to be made well?
Just like the paralytic, all of humanity lay in paralysis, having been struck by the illness of the original sin. For long millennia, we tried to find a cure, but could not reach God on our own, nor was there anyone to help us. And yet, we did not lose hope, we kept waiting on God’s mercy and finally received the Divine visitation.


Apr 25, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
The Myrrhbearing Women and the Christian Women of Today
The younger girls and daughters can bring mirth to our Lord Jesus Christ their clean life, their virginity, prayer and obedience to thier parents. All (college) students and young women, who come to church regularly, can also bring to Christ our Saviour their mirth of good fragrance: the zeal for good deeds, mercy and charity towards those in suffering and obedience to their spiritual father.


Apr 18, 2010, 04:14

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Christ's Limitless Love
No doubt, in today’s society we are exposed to many messages about the meaning of love. Countless song titles speak on the subject - “What’s love got to do with it?” “Will you still love me tomorrow?” “All you need is love.” Amidst thousands of songs, movies, and book titles, our Lord’s Resurrection reminds us that it ‘is’ about God’s limitless and sacrificial love.


Apr 14, 2010, 10:00

Our Faith : Feasts. Calendar
Doubting Thomas
We live in a world of great oversimplification and therefore spiritual poverty. “Scientific” or “Unscientific.” People use words like these all the time as if they were self-evident and self-explanatory, and they use them because everyone else also uses them, without reflection, without debate. In fact, they themselves believe these reductions blindly and simplistically, and so any other approach appears to them as neither serious nor worthy of attention. The question is already decided. But is that really true?
Apr 11, 2010, 10:00