His Holiness Patriarch Ilia once explained how one of his hymns came to be written. He said: “There were days, months and years when the church was in a very difficult situation. I could not find the way anymore…
The Cross and Passion await at the end of Lent, but they also stand at the center of these Holy Forty Days. The Lenten season is an invitation to pick up our own cross and follow Christ…
Though St. Gregory is best known as a teacher and practitioner of hesychasm, the cultivation of holy silence, his life was in fact colorful and tumultuous: he was driven from his monastic…
During the sacred season of Great Lent, the Church calls us to sobriety and renewed stewardship. Through fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, we learn again that every aspect of our life—spiritual and material alike—is entrusted to us by God…
One of the unique liturgical features of this first Sunday of Lent, the celebration of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, is the proclamation of the anathemas. This rite is generally…
Today we commemorate the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise. On the one hand, this is a sorrowful occasion; it is not without reason that we recall Adam’s lament before…
In his epistle to the Romans, St. Paul speaks of “that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” The Last Judgment, which we remember today, is part…
When the father runs out to meet his prodigal younger son, the former has nothing to gain, no profit motive, no angle: he is simply overflowing with love for his child for…
Today’s feast is a feast of liminality. For one, it stands on the threshold between Christmastide and Lent. Christ still appears to us as a newborn Child, just as…
The Lenten Triodion begins today, and it begins with a weeklong period of feasting. This fact, coupled with today’s Gospel reading, warns us against pride and hypocrisy: the Lord desires, not…