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Fifth Day of Christmas, 14,000 Innocent Children: Christmas Has a Cost

12/29/2015

By Andrew Estocin Christmas can be too comfortable sometimes.  As the Nativity Season unfolds, churches are celebrating the birth of Christ.   Gifts are being shared, kitchens are busy preparing traditional foods, and retreat speakers have returned home from their visits to parishes. While all these events may be well intentioned, they frequently point us in the direction of nostalgia rather than a living faith.  Nostalgia can often be unhealthy.   The more we focus solely on

Fourth Day of Christmas, The Wise Men

12/28/2015

Meditation: The Wise Men When the wise men learned of the plot of King Herod to kill the Christ Child, they did not come back to Jerusalem, but “went another way,” according to St. Matthew. What did Matthew mean when he wrote that the Wise Men “went back another way?” No doubt he meant that they took another route so as to frustrate Herod’s murderous intentions. But is there not more to the words than

Fortieth Day of Christmas Advent, For so has God Loved the World (Part II)

12/24/2015

But the road from Bethlehem to Zion is long, and is leading us through Gethsemane and Golgotha. Already in Bethlehem the newborn Godchild is presented with funeral offerings by the Wise Men from the East. “Today God leads the Wise Men to worship through the star, prefiguring His three-day burial in gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” The very doors of the Bethlehem cavern are nearly stained with the innocent blood of the children who were killed

Thirtieth Day of Christmas Advent, Meditation: You Shall Call His Name Jesus

12/14/2015

Meditation: You Shall Call His Name Jesus The Gospel of Matthew begins with a long list of Hebrew names that give the family tree of Jesus on the human side. As we read these names some two thousand years of history pass in review. At the end of the list we find the name above every name, the name of Jesus. The procession passes through the centuries and comes to rest at Bethlehem. “Joseph, son

Eighteenth Day of Christmas Advent, Journey to Bethlehem, Part III

12/02/2015

By Father John Parker The Angels are rejoicing and proclaiming the Good News.  The Magi, journeying from afar, bear their gifts foreshadowing the divinity, sovereignty, and humanity of Christ.  The shepherds, the first Jews to believe, explain what they have seen and heard, leading others, too, to wonder! As we make our way, as if in a spiral towards the center of Rublev’s Nativity, we are greeted by a strange pair.  A couple we wouldn’t

Sixth Day of Christmas Advent, Christmas is Already Easter

11/20/2015

In Jesus, God achieved the perfect synthesis of the divine and the human. The incarnation of Jesus demonstrates that God meets us where we are as humans. God freely and fully overcomes the gap from God’s side. The problem of redemption is already resolved once and for all, long before its dramatic illustration on the cross. Bethlehem already revealed that it was good to be a human being. For the Christian, spiritual power is always

The Ninth Day of Christmas: The Angel of Great Counsel and the Fiery Furnace

01/02/2015

As the God of peace and Father of mercies, You sent to us Your Angel, of Great Counsel, granting us peace. So are we guided to the light of divine knowledge, and keeping vigil from night till morning we glorify You, O Lover of mankind. (Fifth Ode of the Katavasia of the Nativity) THE PREINCARNATE CHRIST is usually referred to in the Old Testament as the Angel of the Lord or as the Angel of

Eighth Day of Christmas: Saint Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia

01/01/2015

Saint Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, “belongs not to the Church of Caesarea alone, nor merely to his own time, nor was he of benefit only to his own kinsmen, but rather to all lands and cities worldwide, and to all people he brought and still brings benefit, and for Christians he always was and will be a most salvific teacher.” Thus spoke St Basil’s contemporary, St Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium. St

The Seventh Day of Christmas: Recognizing God

12/31/2014

Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed time, as do the turtledove and the swallow of the field. The sparrows watch for the times of their coming. But my people do not know the judgments of the Lord. (Jeremiah 8:7) ANOTHER COMMON IMAGE in icons of the Nativity is that of the ox and the donkey. Where does the idea that there were animals at the Nativity come from? There is no mention

The Sixth Day of Christmas: The Star of Bethlehem

12/30/2014

Balaam laid before us precisely the meaning of the words he spoke in prophecy, when he said that a star would dawn, a star that quenches all prophecies and auguries; a star which resolves the parables of the wise, and their sayings and their riddles, a star far more brilliant than the star which, has appeared, for He is the Maker of all the stars, of whom it was written of old: “From Jacob there

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