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The Fourteenth Day of Christmas Advent. Eternal God: A Little Child

By Fr John Breck, December 1, 2007 Thanksgiving is over and we are moving toward what one of our wise and dedicated priests refers to as “Getmas.” He is as frustrated and dismayed at what exuberant commercialism and American popular religion have done to Christmas as I am with the relentless efforts to transform our national feast of Thanksgiving into “Turkey Day.” These campaigns are insidious and they’ve been highly effective: God—the true God who

The Eleventh Day of Christmas Advent. Feast of the Holy Great Martyr and Most Wise Katherine of Alexandria

November 25 Katherine was the daughter of Cestus, a wealthy patrician of Alexandria, the capital of Egypt and metropolis of the arts and sciences. She was widely admired not only for her noble birth but also for the exceeding beauty and intelligence that God had given her. Taught by the best masters and most illustrious philosophers, she learnt while still a girl to follow complex lines of argument and obtained a perfect understanding of the

The Tenth Day of Christmas Advent: Thanksgiving

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 24, 2009 This year I will make the annual pilgrimage back to South Carolina to be with family for the (American) Thanksgiving holiday. Fewer of my children will be there – a mark of the maturing of their own families and the difficulty of travel at this time of year. The year is different as well for it will be the first Thanksgiving holiday without my mother’s presence (may her

The Ninth Day of Christmas Advent: Incarnate Love

By Fr John Breck, December 1, 2003 In this season of Christ’s Nativity, the title of Vigen Guroian’s fine collection of essays on ethical issues [Incarnate Love, University of Notre Dame Press, first ed. 1988] comes back to me with special poignancy. For the past several years I’ve spent a couple of weeks each spring in Romania, visiting theological faculties, monasteries and parish churches. I just returned from my first fall visit, with most of

The Eighth Day of Christmas Advent: The Elder of love, forgiveness and discernment

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, November 22, 2016 Elder Iakovos Tsalikis (5/11/1920-21/11/1991) By Alexandros Christodoulou Our age and today’s culture has, unfortunately moved away from the vision and pursuit of sanctity. The Orthodox faith is based on the presence of the saints. Without these, our Church is on the path towards secularization. Naturally, as we know from Scripture, God alone is holy, and sanctity derives from our relationship with Him, and therefore sanctity is theocentric rather

The Seventh Day of Christmas Advent: The Presentation of the Mother of God

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, November 21, 2016 Vladimir Lossky The Presentation or Entry (είσοδος) of the Mother of God in the Temple (November 21st) does not belong to the most ancient festivals of the Church. None the less, it must be earlier than the end of the VIIth century, since St. Andrew of Crete had known it at Jerusalem at this epoch. It seems that it was introduced at Constantinople a century later, under the

The Fourth Day of Christmas Advent: The Truth of Mary

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, September 7, 2016 It is a commonplace among Christians to say that “truth is a person.” Of course, this is rightly drawn from Christ’s statement, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). However, most Christians fail to comprehend what it is that they have just said. That truth is a person is more than a convenient debating point. It says something about the nature of truth and

The Second Day of Christmas Advent. Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist: Another Sinner Turned Saint

By Fr. Stavros Akrotirianakis, November 16, 2021 Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and He said to him, “Follow Me.” And he rose and followed Him. And as He sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they

The First Day of Christmas Advent: Caring for the Lonely

By Fr John Breck, December 2, 2008 A woman in the parish recently buried her husband after his long and losing battle with cancer. A thirteen-year old girl still cries herself to sleep each night several months after her parents’ bitter divorce. A man off the streets, recently chrismated into the Orthodox Church, is waging a tentative battle with alcoholism, trying with too little support to keep himself in recovery. The priest’s wife, determined to

The Thirty-Ninth Day of Christmas Advent. Let’s Celebrate: The 12 Days of Christmas

Melissa K. Tsongranis O Christ, what shall we offer You for Your coming on earth as a Man for our sake? Every creature that has its being from You give thanks to You: the angels offer hymns of praise, the heavens give a star: wise men present their gifts, and the shepherds, their wonder; the earth provides a cave and the desert a manger. As for us, we offer You a Mother, a Virgin Mother.