Reflections in Christ

Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen!

Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Pascha, and also the name of the period of fifty days between and encompassing these feasts. Hence, this mid-point of the festal period is Mid-Pentecost, the middle of the fifty. “In the middle of the feast,” we are reminded that Christ, the Wisdom of God, is constantly…

Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen!

In the early days of the Church, those who were seeking to be joined to Christ – the catechumens – often learned the faith solely through the study of the Old Testament. With the feast of Pascha, after some period of instruction (often yearslong), they were received through holy Baptism. Then, during the…

Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen!

The myrrh-bearing women are a constant presence in the hymns of the Resurrection, both during this bright Paschal season and on Sundays throughout the year. These holy women appear to us as those who receive the message of the Resurrection, both from angels (as in the hypakoe of Pascha) and from Christ himself…

The Lord’s Pascha, as the feast of feasts, cannot be celebrated just one day a year or in just one way. We regard all of Bright Week as one unending day of the Resurrection, and even as we close the royal doors after liturgy on Bright Saturday, we do not take our leave of Pascha until the very eve of Ascension. We continue to dedicate Sundays…

The Lord rises before the dawn, and he leaves behind his graveclothes and an empty tomb. There are no physical witnesses to his Rising (though there is much evidence and many who testify that he is risen). In some mysterious way, His Resurrection is not an event enclosed in space and time; it is a transhistorical reality that we can see still today…

The forty-day celebration of the Nativity concluded with the Meeting of the Lord in the Temple; the forty-day Great Fast concludes with his Entrance into Jerusalem. In both cases, the Lord comes to his people in a posture of sacrifice; in both cases, he is received with joy. Once he who is enthroned upon the cherubim was borne in the arms of the…

“By raising Lazarus from the dead before thy Passion, thou didst confirm the universal resurrection, O Christ God.” Today, by calling forth his friend Lazarus from the tomb, the Lord shows the power of his Resurrection will be not be limited by space or time. When Christ rises from the dead, he puts in action the resurrection of all the dead,…

According to her vita, written by Saint Sophronius, from her youth Saint Mary devoted her life to the pursuit of pleasures. Reading her life, as we did in church this past Thursday, we might be tempted to think of Mary as an outlier, an extreme. But, in fact, if we examine our conscience honestly and take a sincere look at the shape of our lives, we…

In the sacred tradition of the Holy Eastern Orthodox Church, the importance of the Akathist hymn to the Mother of God can scarcely be overstated. As the lives of many saints and ascetics amply demonstrate, this hymn is a boundless well from which we draw joy in sorrows, resolution in trials, and comfort in afflictions. The words of the Akathist have…

The end of Great Lent is in sight—the final day of the holy Forty Days is a week from tomorrow. Already we turn our eyes toward the Passion starting from next Monday, when we will begin to sing of Lazarus’s departure and the Lord’s Entrance. Before then, however, we take the final days of the fifth week of Lent to renew our focus upon our…

As we reach the fourth Sunday of the Fast, we may find ourselves already flagging, tiring of the Lenten effort. By sins of omission and commission, by failure in the outward fast (the fast from foods) and the inward fast (the fast from sins), we may have already failed in our Lenten goals, perhaps many times over. But St. John, calling down to us…

There is only one feast in the year that can match the grandeur of Pascha, and it is the Annunciation. No matter what day of the year it falls, Annunciation is celebrated. If it falls on Great Friday, there is a Vesperal Liturgy. If it falls on Pascha itself, then it is a Kyriopascha, and the hymns of the Lord’s Pascha are combined with the hymns…

In the middle of Great Lent we celebrate the Sunday of the Cross, and this reminds us that the entire Lenten effort, our whole Lenten struggle, is cruciform. The Great Fast is our via crucis, modeled on Christ’s way of the Cross. Therefore, let us today be reminded that, in our every effort—during the holy Forty Days and beyond—we should…

On this second Sunday of Great Lent, we celebrate the feast of St. Gregory Palamas and renew the triumph of Orthodoxy. How unbearable the pressure must have been, in the gloomy latter days of the Byzantine Empire, to compromise the faith in the name of expedience or personal comfort. Yet St. Gregory shows us, with his profound teachings on the…

Today we celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy—the veneration of the holy icons. And truly, the image is the triumph of the Prototype. Christ died not so that he could remain alone, but so that he could bear much fruit. In the midst of the material reality of this world, he desired to restore his image and perfect his likeness. The fruit of his…

Liturgically, today is known as the Expulsion of Adam; popularly, it is known as Forgiveness Sunday. This reminds us that, as soon as we sin, the Lord forgives us—provided that we truly repent. Part of repentance is giving up our grudges against others, since we are the greatest sinners of all. Part of repentance is an acknowledgement of the…

With this Sunday of the Last Judgment, we arrive at the end of the world. As we stand before the Lord at his dread tribunal, we realize that we have no righteousness, no standing, no excuse. Thankfully, now that we have reached the end, the Lord, in his mercy, allows us to return to the beginning. Next Sunday we leave paradise with our forefather,…

Today, we read the Gospel of the Prodigal Son, and hear how, when the lad “was still a great way off,” his father rushed to embrace him. At the beginning of the penitential season, this scene reminds us that, even as we take our first steps toward repentance, the Father of all is already close at hand, ready to receive us in his embrace. Indeed,…

Today, as we take leave of the Meeting of the Lord, we mark the beginning of the Lenten Triodion with the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. Thus, today is both the last day of the Nativity cycle and the first day of the Lenten-Paschal cycle. In fact, according to the vision found in our liturgical books, these two cycles always overlap. We…

Today, St. Simeon receives the long-awaited Messiah in his arms, and he sings, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!” As Orthodox Christians, we end each day with these same words, which are read or sung at the conclusion of Vespers every evening. Thus, we seal the days of our life, and our life as whole, with an expression of…