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The Fifteenth Day of Christmas Advent: Physical or Spiritual Blindness?

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on January 23, 2022 Protopresbyter Nikolaos Patsalos [It is the]14th Sunday of Saint Luke [this coming Sunday] and we’ve now entered the month of Christmas. Jesus enters Jericho and comes across a suffering person whose affliction is blindness. It’s a terrible cross for him not to enjoy the first and greatest of God’s goods: perceptible light. Apart from being blind, the unfortunate man in today’s Gospel reading is also a beggar. But it was

The Fourteenth Day of Christmas Advent: Embracing Indestructible Joy

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, December 13, 2020  The Parable of the Great Banquet is a call to joy. We are all invited to it. In fact, the Banquet can be seen as a metaphor for the Eucharist, the Great Thanksgiving. Of course, not everyone comes when invited. Still God invites. He calls even those he knows will reject him. The verse “many are called but few are chosen” can be confusing.

The Thirteenth Day of Christmas Advent: Thanksgiving Communion

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 29, 2020  Whom should I thank? The question is normally a matter of polite acknowledgement. A gift was given and received. Who gave it? Whom should I thank? It is inherently the nature of giving thanks that thanks must be given to someone. I cannot give thanks to nothing or no one. As such, the giving of thanks is an act of communion on one level or another. Fr. Alexander Schmemann, in

The Eleventh Day of Christmas Advent: St. Katherine of Alexandria, Virgin & Martyr

NOVEMBER 25, 2021 It could have been a Washington story: she was young and beautiful, from a wealthy and influential family. She had received the best education that money could buy and her suitors were the most eligible bachelors from other leading families. She lived in tense times when it was important to be on the right side of the issues; it could be dangerous to challenge the authorities. But the story of St. Katherine

The Tenth Day of Christmas Advent: Thanksgiving as Mystical Communion

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 24, 2021  “This is good. This is bad.” In one form or another, we divide the world into light and dark. It might take the form, “I like this. I do not like that.” What we find easy are the things we see as good and the things we like. If a day is filled with such things, we are likely to be happy. If the day is marked by

The Ninth Day of Christmas Advent: Happy Thanksgiving! Thoughts on Thanksgiving

By Michael Haldas, November 23, 2017 “The chief purpose of life, for any one of us is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.”  (J.R.R. Tolkien) “We must continually nurture the grace of gratitude in our hearts…A state of mind that sees God in everything is evidence of growth in grace and a thankful heart.” (Rev.

The Eighth Day of Christmas Advent: Detach and Follow

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, September 22, 2019 The Gospel is according to Luke 5:1-11 Notice the way that Christ begins to teach Simon, James, and John the fishermen about the narrow path of self-emptying. He meets their needs and tells them what to do to find the fish that had eluded them all night. It brings Simon (later Peter) to a moment of self-realization. “Depart from me for I am a

The Seventh Day of Christmas Advent: The Entrance into the Temple

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on November 21, 2021 Fr. Alexander Schmemann 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. And nevertheless, I think

The Sixth Day of Christmas Advent: I Will Go into the Altar of God

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 20, 2021  Most of my early Church memories center around Sunday School (I think that we did not “stay for preaching” very often). The small Baptist church that we attended was about a mile from our house and was conveniently connected by a railroad track, generally inactive on Sundays. My older brother and I often walked along the track on Sunday mornings when the weather was pleasant. The earliest Bible

The Third Day of Christmas Advent: The Magi and the Wise Men from the East Lead to Bethlehem

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on December 10, 2021 Sister Parakliti, Holy Skete of Saint Mary Magdalene, in Liti Once again we’ve been given the opportunity to devote a little time to the study of Christ’s Nativity in our life, as we approach Christmas, the great feast of the Lord. We’re given the opportunity to look at how we experience the personal advent of Christ, in our homes, in our monasteries, and wherever else we may be, but particularly