It has been repeatedly stated that we are in an unprecedented situation. While parallels have been drawn to the Spanish Flu Pandemic, there is no living memory of those days and we must use the historical record as a guide. Naturally, there has been debate on how to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak.…
Retired Navy Chaplain Archpriest Jerome Cwiklinski, CPT CHC USN, is one of the longest-serving military chaplains in the Orthodox Church in America. In retirement Father Jerome, together with his wife Matushka Wendy, continue to serve the pastoral and spiritual needs of the Orthodox Marines at Camp Pendleton, CA. through…
As we find innovative and temporary ways to be the Church, including new ways to participate in worship, new ways to provide pastoral ministry, and new ways to keep community we must also find new ways of evangelizing, of sharing the Gospel, and of ministering to the larger communities in which…
This evening as we witness the betrayal, judgment, crucifixion, death and burial of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and listen to the hymns of Matins of Holy Friday and contemplate the meaning of these events for our life, we can’t help but think of the suffering that we see in the world now. To help us understand this suffering…
As we continue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in America, we also remember those saints, bishops, clergy, and laymen who worked so diligently and with immense faith to establish Christ’s Holy Church here in North America. In this reflection, Archpriest Andrew Morbey, Dean of the…
True leadership brings people where they need to be but don’t want to go.
No Christian worth their salt believes Christ went to His crucifixion subservient to the Jewish leaders and Roman state. Even though the Jewish high priest, Caiaphas, gave voice to the common plot to put Jesus to death when he said “it would be…
At the direction of our Archbishop Alexander, I served the Divine Liturgy Sunday with only four people present: the choir director, one singer, one altar server, and myself. I found it to be a very sad experience: what is usually a joyful gathering of the faithful now a handful.
In his letter Archbishop Alexander calls our…
“Rejoice in the Lord; rejoice in the Lord; rejoice in the Lord. May the Lord guard your soul and body and spirit from every evil, as well as from every opposition of the devil and every troubling imagination. The Lord will be your light, your protection, your way, your strength, your crown of gladness and eternal help.”…
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:34-35)
Our primary…
Church closed.
Community members scattered widely.
Weeks without normal daily and weekly routine, without spiritual instruction, without icons to venerate, without Sunday eucharist, without community agape meals.
This was the deliberate practice of the monastery of Abba Zosima in the sixth century Palestinian desert,…
We have completed the first week of the Great Fast! We began it one week ago by receiving the universal impetus gathered as the Church in worship to surrender our hearts to the direction given at the service of vespers, ‘to cleanse our soul as we cleanse our flesh,’ and ‘to abstain from passion as we abstain from food.’ We do this…
Most feast days celebrated in the Orthodox Church focus on the remembrance of Jesus Christ, the Mother of God, or other saintly persons. Celebrated as well are other feast days remembering specific miracle working icons of Christ or the Theotokos. The Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, known for generating the…
I am sure many of us experience what I have come to call the “post-Paschal funk.” We spend long hours in church during the Great Fast and Holy Week. We experience the intensity of the Lord’s final days in Jerusalem. We stand at the foot of the Cross and see Him laid in the tomb. We experience the palpable joy of…
The image of fire appears frequently in the Orthodox Church’s prayers and teachings concerning our eternal destiny as human beings. For example, on the Sunday of the Last Judgment (Meatfare Sunday) we sang in the kontakion, “When You, O God, shall come to earth with glory, all things shall tremble, and the river of…
On November 15, the Church entered the period of the Christian year known as the Nativity Fast (Advent). For forty days our attention will be directed toward the Nativity of Christ, both in the proper parts of the services and in the scriptural readings.
As part of the lenten effort several days in…
On Sunday, November 11, 2018, we will gather in our churches for the Divine Liturgy as our nation celebrates Veterans Day. This year marks the centenary observance of the end of World War I, the “war to end all wars,” as the armistice came into effect on the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour. Americans…
Then Jesus said to them, “These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer…
NOTE: Saturday, February 10, 2018 marked the 45th Anniversary of the Consecration of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Herman, Former Archbishop of Washington and New York, Metropolitan of All America and Canada, to the episcopacy. He had been elected by the Holy Synod of Bishops on October 19, 1972. He retired on…
We hear the song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” so often during this season that we may not think much about the words. But among the variety of things on the internet is the story of the song’s original lyrics, which are quite different from the ones we hear today.
Written for the movie Meet Me in St.…
As widely reported, this year—2017—marks the 100th Anniversary of the Election and Enthronement of Saint Tikhon as Patriarch of Moscow during the All-Russian Church Council. His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon and a delegation representing the Orthodox…