Tuesday, January 14, 2025: Circumcision of Our Lord, St. Basil the Great
COLOSSIANS 2:8-12; HEBREWS 7:26-28, 8:1-2
LUKE 2:20-21, 40-52
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst. I bet sometimes you guys wish you could eat your dessert before dinner, don’t you? Yeah.
Sometimes, every once in a while, that’s okay. But you know what happens if you do that all the time? What happens if you eat your dessert before your dinner?
If you eat your dessert before your dinner, you get sick.
Yeah, if you eat your dessert before your dinner, you get sick. And why do you get sick, do you think? Why is that?
Because you usually want to eat the nutritious stuff first, and then eat the stuff that you can have after dinner.
Yeah, so if you’re eating the sweet stuff that isn’t nutritious, the stuff that you find really yummy, but it’s not good for you, if you eat all that first, you won’t have any room for the nutritious stuff, right? And if you don’t eat the nutritious stuff, eventually, you slowly, slowly will get sick. And you may not even realize it.
You may think you’re feeling great, you’re really healthy, but actually you’re getting sicker. Until one moment, it really hits you and you realize, “Oh boy, I can’t run, I can’t play, I can’t do, I can’t work, I can’t do the things I need to do because I’ve just been eating the sweet stuff all the time and none of the nutritious stuff.” Right? You see, everything has a time and a place, kids. Everything has order, right? And the problem is that sometimes, you know, we think we want order the way we want it, right?
And so, sometimes maybe, I know it’s none of you guys here, because you guys would never do this, but could you guys imagine some other kids who maybe would throw fits because they didn’t get what they want? None of you guys would do that, but some other kids.
They would give their parents attitude, be rude, be disobedient, not do what they’re supposed to do because they want their way. Could you imagine that? Can you picture that? Yeah, and so can you picture then parents just giving in to their kids every time they throw a little fit? “Okay, fine, you want the sweet stuff, go ahead. No vegetables for you, no meat for you. Oh, you want to drive my car? No problem. You can’t even read. Here’s my keys.”
Yeah, would that be good? No. I mean, Felix, you’re really smart, but I couldn’t imagine you driving a big old 4×4 out in the snow. That’d be pretty dangerous and silly, wouldn’t it? Yeah.
See, God has established that there’s order and time for things. You have your meat, then you have your pudding, right? You learn to read, you learn to be responsible, then you can drive, right?
And so Jesus today, when He, in the Gospel, He’s in the temple teaching. And when He’s teaching, the problem is that the Theotokos and Joseph, they didn’t know what time it was in regards of the life of Jesus.
They thought because He was a certain age in a worldly human sense, they were surprised. They would have never thought that He would have been in the temple teaching. But He was, because that was a particular time that Jesus needed to be there and to be doing that.
But do you notice, Jesus went back and he was obedient to the Mother of God. He was obedient to the Theotokos and to Joseph. Why? Because even though He was God and He needed to be in the synagogue teaching those rabbis there, those Pharisees something, He was still a young boy.
And so He had no problem submitting himself to that good order and doing things as they needed to be. Sometimes God does things in a way that does not make sense to us. And we can get very mad, we can get frustrated, we can throw our tantrums.
But the reality is that God puts things in order the way that He thinks they need to be in order, not us. And so even though the Mother of God, she was concerned and she was worried, ultimately, what did she do? It says that the Theotokos just kind of kept these things and she thought about them. And that’s what we need to do.
We find God doing things that we don’t understand in a way, in a timing that we don’t necessarily like. We shouldn’t throw tantrums. We should just be quiet and be like the Mother of God and wait and see, “Why, God? Why is this happening at the time it is?” And when we do that, you know what will happen? We too, like Jesus, will grow in wisdom and in stature.
Wisdom is only given to those who learn good order. And here’s this very important word: patience. Good order and patience.
We have to be patient. We have to do things in good order. And God will bless us with holy wisdom.
Through the prayers of St. Basil, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us.
Sunday, January 12, 2025: Sunday after Nativity, St. Anysia
GALATIANS 1:11-19
MATTHEW 2:13-23
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst. Christ is born.
Today we are remembering our forefathers in Christ. Remembering the Holy Prophet David. Remembering Joseph the Betrothed. Also remembering James, the older brother of the Lord, the child of St. Joseph.
And in this commemoration, I want to take time to, for some of you, for most of you, remind us of something. But for many of you people who are new to the church, something to understand. We have this phrase that we use, “Through the prayers of our holy fathers.”
We will often end services with this phrase,“Through the prayers of our holy fathers.” And that prayer is important. Because that prayer, it seals us, and it unites us to those who have gone before us in the faith.
And it’s so important for us to remember, that when we’re entering into the Orthodox Church, that we’re entering into a faith that’s been lived. A faith of experience of others who have experienced God, and who have wrestled, not just with themselves and their passions, but with the world, injustices of the world.
And they’ve wrestled and fought in such a way to attain God, to attain peace in this life. If we recall the prophet David, the forefather of our Lord, the son of Jesse. And even from his youth, you can see struggles not so unlike you might have.
David’s a runt. He’s the smallest of the litter of his brothers, all but forgotten. When the Prophet Samuel comes and is looking for the king to anoint, he goes to Jesse, and he says, Okay, the Lord has sent me here, where is the one whom to anoint? Jesse brings all his brothers, tall, strong, handsome.
And the Lord says, “This is not it.” And Samuel says, “Well, there must be one more.” And they’re like, “Oh, well, there’s David. David the small one, David the shepherd. David, the one who’s kind of doing all the things that we don’t want to do. There’s him.”
And so from his very beginning, David is forced to embrace his humility. David is forced to embrace, if you will, the shame of being the runt and being the youngest one. And from there, David’s life is this fantastic mix of tragedy and glory at the same time.
David, who stood up when every man in Israel was cowering against Goliath. And said, the Lord should not be blasphemed. And so out of this zeal, he killed Goliath. And he gained the fame and the adoration of the people of Israel. But very quickly, his fortunes turned. And David, in these moments of having good fortune and then finding himself in tragedy, this back and forth, David never blamed God.
In fact, David persevered and he went deep into prayer. And this is where the Psalter, so much of the Psalter is from these prayers of David. The prayers of our holy fathers.
Prayers are not magic spells. The prayers are not just things that we read to kind of get somewhere or to get something. The prayers of the church are the prayers of men and women who have suffered and labored and endured.
And that is the imprint, that is the treasury that they leave. And so when we open our prayer books and we pray the prayers of the church, what we’re praying is these prayers. We’re having our hearts and our minds formed in such a way by those who have already been formed through the sufferings of life.
David’s own son rebelled against him. Think of Joseph the Betrothed again. Joseph the Betrothed, taking upon himself a duty. Joseph was a widower, and the lot fell to him to care for the Virgin Mary. A duty, not a joy. This is what the Protestants, they don’t understand this. May God help them and enlighten them. Joseph took on the Virgin Mary as a duty. He wasn’t getting a young wife who’s going to please him and do these things. He took on a holy duty for the sake of God, for the sake of the nation of Israel. His older son, James, he took on that duty. James was with the family, the holy family, when they fled into Egypt.
Can you imagine? Your mother’s dead. Your father’s been chosen to take on this young girl who’s just about your age. And you have to flee? You have to become a refugee. Can you imagine being a refugee in that time?
Through the prayers of our holy fathers. When you read the book of James, and you read all that James says about the tongue, and about patience, and about faith, all these things, where did that come from? That came from his struggle. That came from him fleeing into Egypt with his father. That came from him seeing the persecution, and the shame, and the hatred that his own Brother, but also his Messiah, his God, suffered.
James saw firsthand the suffering of the Lord, the injustice that Jesus suffered. He saw the injustice that his father suffered. He saw the injustice and the frustration of the dear Theotokos.
The prayers of our holy fathers. The book of James is a book of prayer. The suffering that we must face. This is what the church – this is our inheritance. It gives us in our prayers. The books of prayer that the church has given us, they are a key to enter into life. And that life links us up to the source of life, which is Christ.
We begin to understand, minutely, small-ly, but nevertheless, begin to understand the work and the nature of Who Christ is. Because the suffering of our fathers becomes our suffering. And that suffering becomes our glory.
Because when we think of David, we don’t remember David’s folly and his sin. We remember David’s meekness. We remember David’s victory. We remember David’s faithfulness. We remember David’s love. When we think of Joseph, we don’t think of Joseph being delivered. We think of Joseph who is faithful. When we think of James, we think of James the triumphant apostle.
We need to put our heads high. And we need to glory, not in our own selves, but in the glory of our fathers. Our tradition. When we hold to this, when we allow our hearts to be formed by the prayers, and this is why, for those of you who are entering the church, it’s important that you take the time.
And yes, it’s fine for you to speak from your heart to God, but really, you need to learn the prayers of the church. You need to put time in the prayer book because the prayers of our fathers, they are the way to understanding the heart of God. So on this day, let us remember the struggles, the suffering of our fathers.
Let us also remember that if we join into their sufferings, we’re also going to be joined into their glory. Through the prayers of all these fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.
Monday, January 6, 2025: Eve of Nativity
HEBREWS 1:1-12
LUKE 2:1-20
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ!
The icon of the Nativity is an incredible icon. It’s filled and it reveals the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in our tradition.
The icon in and of itself has many actors; many things are moving at once. You have the shepherds receiving the glory, hearing of the triumphant decree from the angels. In many of the icons, if not most, you have the handmaidens washing the Lord after his birth.
Likewise, you also have Joseph, the betrothed, bewildered, pondering, being tempted by the devil, being goaded to doubt the sanctity of Mary and the providence of God. You have the three wise men, pagans, worshipers of the stars, and yet they’re giving truth, and they act upon that truth. They leave their worship of the stars and of fire, and they go to worship the True Star, the True Living Fire, the Flame of Christ.
We have, at the very center, the Christ child, His precious Holy Mother, our precious and Holy Mother, lying next to him, comforting him, warming him, loving him. There is so much happening in this icon, and seemingly at once. And so it is in our hearts this day.
There’s so many things that we could ponder. We could ponder all the different actors in our life. We could meditate on our loved ones, our family members, our brothers, our sisters. We could think about our community. We could even think about the times that we live in. There’s so many things, so many angels bringing news, so many shepherds watching and not watching.
There’s so much happening, but yet at the center of it all is Christ. At the center of it all is Christ the God-man, incredibly vulnerable. God himself, the Ancient of Days, the Maker of all things, Power Incarnate, Glory and Majesty, in the most absolutely vulnerable position any human being, any creature could be in as a child, in a manger, surrounded by animals, exposed to the cold.
What a mystery. What a mystery that the God of the universe Himself deemed it right and good to find Himself so vulnerable, so exposed, so uncomfortable. And yet we, my dear sons and daughters, my brothers and my sisters, by the slightest thing, we lose our peace.
By the slightest inconvenience or slight against our precious, pristine and pure egos, we lose the peace. We lose the vision of that precious, vulnerable Child. As you know, that manger, that cold place where animals feed and oftentimes drop their dung, is that not our hearts?
Did God not say, I dine with men and look to sup? May God continue to bless us with His mercy. May He see our feeble efforts to find repentance and may He bless us because without that blessing, who can stand? Without the star being shown to those pagans and fire worshippers, those wise men, they would have never found him. Without the angels being released and given the blessing to go speak to the shepherds, they would have never been heralds.
Without God and His mercy, Joseph would have abandoned Mary. All of these things are possible only by God’s mercy. And we enter into today only by God’s mercy. We have no strength. We have no wisdom. We have no righteousness apart from him, the Son of righteousness.
Should we not be merciful? Should we not lay aside all these things that don’t matter? Should we not seek the true peace? Should we not seek the King of Peace? Should we not do it on this day? Should we not remember how vulnerable He was? If we do that, then we won’t disdain the moments of our vulnerability. Instead, when we are vulnerable, when we are exposed, when we feel like we are being thrown to the wolves because someone gave us a side glance, God willing, we’ll be able to say, “Lord, this day, I look for You to be in my heart, that filthy, dung-filled manger.”
Glory to Jesus Christ.
Saturday, January 4, 2025: Baptismal Liturgy; St. Anastasia, St. Nikiforos
EPHESIANS 1:16-23, ROMANS 6:3-11
LUKE 16:10-15, MATTHEW 28:16-20
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst.
Can you hear it? Can you hear that alarm ringing? Calling all of us to salvation. Wake up, all you sleepers!
Truly, truly today is a gift and a wake-up call. The obvious gift is to the newly illumined, who they have been entrusted with something so precious. Something profoundly beautiful, and something unutterably worthy. Worthy of every awe, every concern, every effort. Being clothed, being baptized, being infused with Christ, there is no greater gift.
But today is an even greater gift to all of you, my brothers and my sisters who have already been baptized. Perhaps you have forgotten the great gift that was given to you. Perhaps you have forgotten the absolute joy and anticipation you had in your own baptism and chrismation. Perhaps you have forgotten your longing to be with Christ, and your clear understanding of what it meant to become Orthodox.
Today is truly a gift for all of us, that we can remember what has been given to us. And instead of allowing the great grace of our baptism and our chrismations to sit on the shelf, and to be something that we kind of look at nostalgically, but we can actually polish it up, take it off the shelf, clean it with our tears, put some elbow grease into the effort of repentance, to bring the luster back to our baptisms, to bring the luster back to our commitment to God, to remember that we cursed the devil, we spit on him, and that he is still and even more so active and desiring, because instead of working from within, he now works from without.
And once he has been cast out, he desires to come back in. So let us remember the gift that God gave us. By praying for the ones who are baptized, you will bring grace to yourselves. By praying and asking God to help them to stay faithful, to help them to remember their vow to God, to help them remember what God has done, God will then have mercy on you, and forgive you for putting your grace and your gift and your pearl on the shelf, to gather some dust, to be looked at nostalgically. Newly illumined, I want to give you a warning now, and I want to give you a personal gift as your spiritual father: Be careful of some of these old ones who think they’re wise.
Don’t let anybody tell you, “Well, it’ll die down.” I want you to invoke the spirit of St. Nicholas and slap them. “No.”
Your zeal doesn’t have to die down. In fact, it should increase. Zeal unto knowledge, zeal unto sobriety, zeal unto love. Don’t let anyone steal this from you. It’s the most precious thing, far better than gold.
Through the prayers of St. Morwenna, St. Philothea, Nathan, Nonna, Gregory, Marina, Porphyrios, St. Tamara, St. Peter, St. Matrona, Lord, we ask for you to preserve these new souls to grant them the grace that doesn’t die.
May they always lovingly and longingly remember their oath and remember what was given to them today.
Through the prayers of St. Mary of Egypt, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us. Amen.
Thursday, January 2, 2025: St. Ignatius the God-bearer and St. John of Kronstadt
TITUS 1:5-2:1, HEBREWS 4:14-5:6
MARK 10:17-27, MARK 9:33-41
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ!
In the first Gospel, we have, again, the account of a rich young ruler. And I love this word, “astonished.” It’s astonishing to see the love of God. This rich young man, he comes, presents himself to Christ, knowing that He’s a well-known teacher, knowing that His reputation has gotten around, and he seeks to present himself. He seeks to show off a bit, shall we say.
It’s astonishing because the Gospel says that Jesus looked on him and loved him. He loved him. And then He gives him a hard word. And that young man is counted as false, it says. It says because he had many possessions. And so it’s interesting because we see a correlation between the love of God and something difficult being put before us.
We see that, in fact, that the love of God can very often be the very thing that can cause our countenance to fall. Why is this? It’s because we put our trust in our possessions. It’s because we put our trust in these things which cannot save us. We put our trust in things which cannot bring us rest.
Today we’re commemorating St. Ignatius, the great hierarch. And St. Ignatius, as tradition holds in the second Gospel, when the disciples come and they’re asking Christ this and that, and He says, oh, you were on the road. You were on the road discussing who’s going to be great. Come here, my boys, sit down. And He grabs a child, embraces the child, and says, if you want to be great in the kingdom, unlike the gossiping that you’re doing on the road, if you want to be great in the kingdom, look, here, this little child.
Well, tradition holds that little child was St. Ignatius. That’s a good tradition. Because St. Ignatius, like St. John of Kronstadt, they had their eye on something.
In the Epistle today, it talks about entering into the rest of the Lord. But there’s an admonishment that St. Paul gives us in the Epistle of Hebrews, talking about who will enter into the rest of the Lord and who will not enter into the rest of the Lord. And St. Ignatius, like St. John of Kronstadt, they entered into the rest of the Lord.
How? Because they did not hold to their possessions above holding to eternal life. St. Ignatius famously begging the Christians of Antioch, “Do not stop me. Do not keep me from Christ, heading towards the lions.”
His famous icon being torn asunder by the lions, begging them, “Don’t stop me.” In essence, “Let me enter into my rest.”
St. John of Kronstadt, many people may not know this, but St. John of Kronstadt had a good handful of assassination attempts on him. St. John foresaw the great tragedy coming to Russia. But St. John, like St. Ignatius, he didn’t seek to flee from these things. He just trusted in God.
And this is the rest. The rest of God is God Himself. The rest of God is not some paradise with fruits and virgins and all these things. It’s not some worldly, fleshly thing. The very rest is Himself. How can you get to paradise? How can you even think about going to paradise if you don’t want to be with the one who is paradise? Paradise isn’t a place, per se. Yes, yes, yes, the fathers, I understand. Paradise isn’t a place, it’s a person. It’s Christ.
What good is it to being in a luscious garden with mangoes and talking fruits and whatever fantasies we want to think about paradise might be, but not being with God? What kind of paradise is that? How do we get to this paradise? We have to trust. Because both St. John of Kronstadt and St. Ignatius, this is what they had. They had trust in the right thing and the right One.
They trusted in the Lord. The rich young ruler trusted in his possessions. He trusted in his daddy’s inheritance that he got. He trusted in his education. He trusted that he was a good religious Jew, able to keep to the law. He trusted that he was handsome. He trusted that he was young. He trusted that he was healthy. He trusted in all those things, which probably in five years began to leave him.
He trusted in the wrong things, and so he had no rest. And he knew he had no rest, because when Christ loved him and spoke that word, his countenance fell. When Christ speaks that word to you, what do you do? This is a litmus, my sons and my daughters. What do you do?
If your countenance falls when Christ speaks to you, no problem. All it means is you have serious work to do. And here’s the thing, do your work. You can get to a place where God speaks to you, and instead of your countenance falling, you begin to experience joy.
Instead of fear and your knees knocking together because you’re worried about what you’re going to lose, or you’re worried about the pain you’re going to go through, you begin to grow in your trust in the Lord. You say, “Okay, Lord.” You almost wring your hands a little bit like it’s an adventure.
This can happen to you. But you have to be honest with yourself. You have to first acknowledge, “Yes, when the Lord speaks to me, when the Lord comes to me in love, I don’t like it. I’m still a child that doesn’t like my daddy wiping my bum. I’m still a child that when my daddy says, don’t play with that poisonous steak. Don’t go across the street or you’re going to get hurt. I get mad at him because I want to do what I want to do.”
Until you’re honest about this immature state you find yourself in, you will always be like that rich young ruler. And the love of God will always turn you sour.
It’s only until you become an adult that you begin to value the love of God. That the hard word is the good word because it sets you right. And it puts you in this place where you can begin to enter into His rest.
You begin to trust Him. You begin to realize the only thing that matters is that I’m going to be with Him. Through the prayers of St. Ignatius and St. John of Kronstadt Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.