Sunday, July 12, 2026, Ss. Peter & Paul
2 CORINTHIANS 11:21-12:9
MATTHEW 16:13-19
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Christ is in our midst! Well, thanks be to God, we have made it. We survived the Apostles’ Fast, and boy, what a trek this one was. It was a great fast. It was quite the journey, but we have arrived to the feast, the Feast of St. Peter and Paul. And it’s a good time to reflect, because after every major fast, and especially when there’s been a lot of progress, a lot of work being done by God in our lives, we should reflect on the fast. And in that same spirit, I would like to bring attention to this obvious, but perhaps insightful, little tidbit about the fast today, I mean the feast today, which is this: You know, when we celebrate St. Peter and Paul, the feast today, they encompass all the Apostles. And I’ve been speaking with everyone during the fast about the reality of our calling. We are inheritors of the Apostles being sent out, and the Apostles’ vocation and their work was also to be the friends of Christ. And this reality of being the friends of Christ and being sent by Christ, knowing God, being with God, there’s a process that happens.
And so I want to look at the names, because when we think of Peter, we can often forget that first, he was Simon. And when we think about Paul, we can often forget that he was first Saul. So you have Simon and Saul who become Peter and Paul. And in their being called by God and being brought to this place in which their true vocation, their true relation to God is revealed, we have to recognize that in between these moments is a series of small interactions that lead up to this one big transformation. And so we should always remember that as we are inheritors of this vocation of being friends with Christ, being sent by Christ, that it happens in the context of transformation. God brings us from a place of being one way, being known in one certain sense, but ending up being different. We end up functioning, existing in a different light.
Peter was the first to proclaim the deity of Christ. He proclaimed that he was the Messiah. And the word “Simon,” Simon means “to be prayed for.” And we see this because the Lord says, “Simon, I prayed for you. The enemy desires to sift you like wheat, but I’ve prayed for you.” And so the Lord is playing on the actual word, the meaning of the name Simon, but that is to lead him to this place where he is given this assurance of who he’s called to be, which is the rock, that he would be this place of stability and strength. And in a very similar way, we have Saul. And Saul being brought to this place of being called Paul. And Paul means “to be humbled.” And this is so fascinating because Saul and his zeal for the tradition of his fathers, Saul for his zeal of being a Jew’s Jew, the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day, taught by Gamaliel – he counts all that rubbish. And he realizes that in order for him to acquire the most powerful thing in the universe, the knowledge of God, he must be humbled. But that happened through a transformation also. You see, Peter, his transformation began in his denial. In that denial, he began to realize what it meant to be with Christ. He began to realize what it meant for him to have been walking with Him all those years. And with Saul, his transformation began with the end of his ministry or his work, if you will, as a Pharisee. He’s struck down at Damascus on the way to kill more Christians in his zeal. He’s blinded.
For both of them, these events of terror, being blinded, denying the one whom you love, these are the events that, these are the catalysts to their transformation. And that transformation for both of them brought about something profound. It brought a humility and a stability that allowed the church from that point on to be birthed. The stability of Peter and the humility of Paul. This is what we are called to inherit. This paradox of stability and humility, this paradox of weakness being revealed in strength, excuse me, strength being revealed in weakness, this paradox is the life that we live as Orthodox Christians.
And so on this feast day, I encourage all of you to reflect not just on the fast, but reflect on in what way has your transformation begun. Because for some of you, especially some of you younger ones, and not just younger in years, maybe even younger in the faith, you’ve still yet to come to this place of transformation. You’ve still yet to have that painful catalyst that’s gonna bring you to this place of being called, being sent. But it will come. Because at that place of transformation, that place of pain, you will get a new name. And you will find a new way forward. And your love for God will become the thing. Your friendship to Christ will become the thing. Your being sent to the world will become the thing. Through the prayers of St. Peter and Paul, Lord, help us in our transformation. Help us to be stable and to be humble. Amen.
Saturday, July 11, 2026: St. Sophrony of Essex
HEBREWS 4:14-5:10
JOHN 15:7-16
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst!
Today we are commemorating our Father among the saints, Saint Sophrony of Essex, the Theologian of Light, the bearer of the commandments of God in this modern day.
Saint Sophrony, he recalls at one point in time in his life on Athos that an elder monk had come and had approached him. And this monk had begun to share with him a time in which Christ appeared to him. Sophrony speaks that he was silent and he, as was the custom, he shows the monk respect, being his elder, and he just listens. And as he listens, this hermit who came out of the wilderness began to speak to him, shared with him how Christ had appeared to him at one point. And the monk began to lament to Christ about the state of the world, how the people lived in the world and how the people living in such worldly ways. And in fact, the monk was saying to Christ that the monks on Athos were not that far from the people in the world. So he began to lament and fret over the state of salvation for mankind, being so worldly, being so far from the commandments.
And Christ says to him, “All who have called on My Name, any man who calls on My Name, I will have mercy on him.” And at that moment, the monk, without speaking, began to think within himself. And Christ, being his creator, Christ being God, reads the monk’s mind. Without saying a word, the monk was despairing, if you will, thinking to himself, “Well, if any man who calls upon Your name You will have mercy on, then why am I here? Why are we here as monks on Athos? Why did we give up land and family? Why did we give up the good things of the world to come here?” And Christ, reading his thought, if you will, in a single moment like lightning, he says to him, “Yes, I will have mercy on all those who call on My Name, but those who have struggled, those who have labored, I will call them friends. They will be my friends.”
And then in that moment, Christ disappears. Sophrony begins to say that the man, and he’s not sure whether the man wondered if he had sinned by sharing such an intimate, profound experience with Sophrony, or Sophrony lamented that perhaps his stoic visage, his countenance perhaps made the monk think that he did not believe him. Nevertheless, Sophrony says the monk left him and never saw him again.
Now, “Those who have labored, I will call them friends.” I will call them friends. The Apostles were the friends of Christ. The Apostles were friends of Christ. They were sent out by God. They were with Him. But more than all this, He shared with them. He gave them His word. He gave them His commandments. They were His friends.
And as we are now at the end of the Apostles’ Fast, and as we are now here celebrating Father Sophrony, I encourage all of you to understand what it means to be a friend of Christ. How do you become a friend of Christ? And this, this word “friend” is important because this is the foundation of what it means to be a Christian. Our Father Abraham was a friend to God. And from that seed of faith, the whole Christian race was birthed.
All of us are called to be friends of God. Not just simply those who call on the name of God. Because to just simply call on the name of God, as so many in the world do, as was revealed to this monk, mercy is given. But mercy being given is not the same as being called friend by God. And when we give ourselves over to the world, we allow ourselves to be seduced by the things of the world, we lose that status. It’s not taken from us. We give it away. We reject it.
In Sophrony’s monastery in Essex, because he was a hesychast, it is very austere, but it’s beautiful. The services are simple, but they carry a type of sophistication. The windows are covered over in the old temple. They’re drawn in such a way that the prayer service is always dim, dark. Why? Because for a hesychast, the beauty of the icons, the beauty of the flowers, the beauty even of the sunlight dancing through, it’s not a rejection of that beauty, but rather, it’s a desire to go inward to an even greater degree, to hear the word of the Lord, to see the word of the Lord.
Now, we are not hesychasts, but we are called to hesychia. We are called to find these moments of stillness and of silence so that we can receive the light. You have to understand that the world that we live in is so inundated with sounds and color and our senses are just exploding from too much stimulation. Too much stimulation.
We cannot pray. We cannot pray. We cannot find that space in which God can speak to us because there’s too many words. There’s too much music. We are just drowning in stimulation. You have to understand that that stimulation, it doesn’t just stop in what your eyes see or what your mouth tastes or what your ears hear. It penetrates to your very nous. And this is why we find ourselves chasing after things in this cycle. This is why we find ourselves falling into sins of the body. This is why we find ourselves so exhausted and tired because we cannot find rest.
How are we to find rest? In His commandments. In communing with Him. The Beatitudes. Sophrony was a disciple of the Beatitudes because Sophrony, like all the great hesychasts, and like all the greats, he understood this thing: That the turning away of the world is not a hatred of the world, but a love of God. That the turning away from one’s flesh and one’s desires and quieting down the things that make life seemingly joyful are in fact the thing that keeps you from true joy, because true joy comes from turning away from the lesser for the sake of the greater. This is what asceticism is. And this is ultimately what hesychia is to do.
Hesychia is to bring us to this place and all of us are called to pursue it. Not all of us are hesychasts, but we’re all called to pursue this stillness at some point because that is the only place you will hear the voice of God. That’s it. That is the only place where you will find that sweet spot of being a friend of Christ.
We need to find stillness. The world is drowning out God. And so we must use this calling of being friends with God to pursue Him. And we pursue Him precisely by taking the time, silencing everything, so that we can hear Him loud and clear within us.
My sons and my daughters, it’s not going to stop. In fact, it’s going to get worse. The world is going to get louder. The world is going to fight for even more of your attention. You must use force. You must use force. The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. You must use force to find that stillness. You must use force. Because when you use force, you’re showing that you desire to be a friend of God. When you use force, you’re showing Christ that you are accepting and honoring that calling of being like one of the Apostles. When you use force and you seek that stillness, you will hear His voice. Through the prayers of Saint Sophrony, Lord Jesus Christ our God, help us, continue to grant us to be Your friends. Amen.
Friday, July 10, 2026: St. Sampson the Hospitable
1 CORINTHIANS 4:5-8
MATTHEW 13:44-54
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [Reading] The life of the monk Sampson the Hospitable. The monk Sampson, the Hospitable to Strangers, was the son of rich and illustrious Roman parents. In his youth, he received an excellent education. He studied the medical arts, and for free he doctored the sick. After the death of his parents, St. Sampson generously distributed alms and set free his slaves, preparing himself to go into the wilderness.
With this intent in mind, he soon journeyed from Rome to the East. But the Lord directed him onto a different path, that of service to neighbor. And so St. Sampson came to Constantinople. Settling into a small house, the saint began to take in the wandering homeless, the poor, the sick, and he attended to them zealously. The Lord blessed the efforts of St. Sampson and endowed him with the power of underworking. He healed the sick, not only through being a skilled physician, but also a bearer of the grace of God.
The news about St. Sampson spread widely. The patriarch, having summoned him, ordained him a presbyter. One time it was revealed to the grievously sick Emperor Justinian, that he could receive healing only through St. Sampson. In praying, the saint extended his hand in the direction of the sick Emperor, who then received relief, as soon recovered altogether. In gratitude, the Emperor wanted to reward his healer with silver and gold. But the saint refused, and instead asked Justinian to build a domicile for wanderers and the sick. The Emperor readily fulfilled his request.
All the rest of his life, St. Sampson devoted to serving his neighbor. He survived into old age, and after a short illness, he with joy, expired to the Lord. The saint was buried at the Church of the Holy Martyr Mocius, and much healing was effected at the grave of St. Sampson. His home for wanderers and the hospice remained open, and the saint did not cease to care for the suffering. He twice appeared to a neglectful worker of the hospice, and upbraided him for his laziness.
At the request of an admirer of St. Sampson, the vagrants’ home was transformed into a church, and alongside it was built a new edifice for taking in the homeless. During the time of a powerful conflagration at Constantinople, the flames did not touch the vagrants’ home of St. Sampson. And through his prayers, a strong rain poured down, which was quenched by fire.
This morning, we had the wonderful joy of the kiss, if you will, from St. Sampson. Here in Kansas City, we experienced quite the bit of rain. It’s interesting to me that these little moments in which the saints remind us that they’re with us, they remind us not simply that all of heaven is with us and watching – they remind us that we must continue the works that they did on this earth.
St. Sampson, in his desire to minister to the least of these, this is something that I pray to God we would never forget as a community. The reality of our connection to Christ is through holy ones like St. Sampson, who recognize the brokenness and the fallenness of this world as something that Christ has always desired to heal.
And so in that desire, we should always seek to be the hands and the feet of Christ, bringing peace, offering healing. We should be the eyes and the mouth of Christ, looking upon those who are unseen, speaking up for those who have no one to speak up for them, speaking words of love and mercy, hope and healing when in this world there’s only words of pain and loss, hatred. We are so blessed to have a heritage in which giving and sharing and ministering to those who are suffering and are the least of these has been part of this parish’s history. And I pray, through the prayers of St. Sampson, that it will continue until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through the prayers of St. Sampson, may the Lord have mercy on us and grant us His grace. Amen.
Monday, July 6, 2026: The Protecting Veil of the Mother of God
ROMANS 16:17-24; HEBREWS 9:1-7
MATTHEW 13:10-23; LUKE 10:38-42, 11:27-28
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ! This morning, we are gathered in the Liturgy surrounding Our Lady’s omophorion. The veil of Our Lady is in many ways this proof, if you will, this proof of what we have received. It is not so much that we need to prove the existence of the Mother of God, but rather we need to have this evidence, we need a relic of her protection.
You see, for us the temptation so often is to recede into our own individuality and to find ourselves, like the Gospel says today, a seed that finds itself in shallow ground. We find ourselves seeking to bear fruit, to yield fruit from within ourselves, but we can’t do it. We are shallow ground, and when we base our life on ourselves, it will take some root, and it will sprout up quickly, thinking that we’ve based our faith in the Lord. But we find that when we have seen the root taking and the yield coming up quickly, and we have that initial joy, the Lord says, but it’s quickly burned away.
Why? Because of tribulation. And then we realize we haven’t really been rooted in the Word that was received. We haven’t been really rooted in the Lord. We’ve been rooted in our own selves, our own individuality. And this is a problem. Too often times, this expression that we hear, “Doing something in your own strength,” we lose sight of what that means. And so time and time again, we find ourselves struggling. We find ourselves, if you will, chasing our tails. We find ourselves burning up under the heat of troubles.
And this is why Our Lady’s veil is so important. Because she reminds us that we’re not to take root in the shallowness of our own experience. We’re not to take root in the shallowness of our own individuality. We’re to take root in the larger picture, the bigger picture. We’re to take root in the fact that God has saved human nature. This is the great thing that has been revealed to us who are in the Ark.
She is the Ark. Our Lady is the Ark. She is where the rod that budded is stored. Human nature that is barren and unfertile now becomes life-giving. She is where the commandments are stored. She is where the law ceases to be simply a guide, a babysitter, a tutor. But the law becomes life-giving. She is human nature that’s been redeemed. Our personalities, our individuality, our own strength, our own accomplishments, our own failures, it is not enough to bear the weight of the fallen world, nor is it enough to take in and to hold all the greatness of God.
You and yourself, I and myself, cannot hold the riches of God. We don’t have the capacity. We don’t have the strength. But in her nature that we share with her, redeemed, it’s possible. When a person finds themselves in the natural world struggling alone, aware of their failures, truly they have failed, truly they are broken. When they realize this in the natural sense, all things being equal, this is when people turn to their family.
But what if you have no family? What if your family’s betrayed you? Then all the more you turn to the Mother of God, and you see in her a mother. And in your mother, you see who you can be; your nature redeemed. You can look to your brothers and sisters, the saints, those who struggled in mountains, in persecution, those who were slandered, betrayed, hated for righteousness’ sake. You can join yourself to them. You can join yourself to her, who endured the pain of seeing her Son murdered – her Son, Who has been the only innocent and pure human being to ever walk the earth.
There’s only ever been one, and it was her Son. She who saw Life put to death, and yet had nothing but love and mercy, and continues to have nothing but love and mercy for the very human beings that she shares a nature with. This miraculous ability to forgive, to heal, to love, to transcend, how are we to ever participate in it? Through her. Through honoring her as our mother, through loving her as our mother, through looking to her as a general, by hiding behind her omophorion, her veil. This is why her veil is so important to us. It isn’t so much that she existed, but that she still protects, that she still leads the way.
This is why she’s so important to us. The Mother of God and her protection is the greatest secret of the Orthodox. For we know, because we are a people that are crucified. To be Orthodox means to be crucified. It means to embrace your suffering for the sake of love. This is what it means to be Orthodox. And to be Orthodox means to have the Mother of God as your very mother. To have our Holy Lady, the God-bearer, the Theotokos, to be the one that you share a nature with. Our hope is not in our petty attempts. Our hope is in her.
Through the prayers of the Holy Mother of God, Lord Jesus Christ our God, accept our prayers. Amen.
Sunday, July 5, 2026: St. Alban, St. Eusebius
ROMANS 10:1-10
MATTHEW 8:28-9:1
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! Elder Ephraim, blessed Elder Ephraim, this great holy one among the saints, he speaks about how there was a time where he had gone and he was giving a retreat. And during this retreat, he was praying, and at a parish among the faithful, in the midst of this prayer, a woman began to manifest, began to scream, and a demon that had been within her left her. And everyone in the room was shocked, frightened, because they knew her. She was faithful. She was at church with them every Sunday. She was a part of the community. And yet, this holy one came, and it was revealed that she had a demon with her.
Now, this perplexed the mind. And it perplexes the mind because, in some respects, the mind is how the demon got there, you see. In the Epistle today, St. Paul speaks about the Jews and that they preferred their righteousness over the righteousness of God, and that their righteousness blinded them to the righteousness of God.
How is this? What is this? The demoniacs were Jews. Those Gergesines, those Gadarenes, they were Jews. They understood the law. They practiced the law. They did all that the law asked of them. And in fact, the problem is that the law became their God. You see, the law was supposed to serve in this way to show them their need for God, not to replace God. And so, this phenomenon of rules and, I dare say, tradition in these things taking the place of God is very important for us to understand.
Because what happened with Blessed Ephraim of Arizona was not that long ago. And it can happen today. You see, we’re seeing hundreds and thousands of people coming into the Orthodox Church all over the country and in other parts, South America and in Europe. And I’ve observed this myself. I’ve observed where people will confess. I observe where people will share with me their struggle, and I have to tell them,Y= yes, yes, yes, you did not do this correct. You didn’t do that correct. You broke the fast. You did this and that. But did you notice that you didn’t say one thing about God? You’re very keen in that you’re able to point out all the places in which you didn’t check the box, all the places where you didn’t come up to snuff, all the places where maybe you were able to measure how you came up short. But see, all that is still about you. And all that is still about how you see yourself. God is nowhere in that. Not at one point did you say, I abandoned God. I forgot God. I wasn’t caring about God, you see. And what it reveals is God is an abstraction.
But my dear sons and daughters, my brothers and my sisters, God is not an abstraction, and that is the whole point, because that is how that woman, even though she went to church faithfully, had a demon hiding right within her. This is how the Jews, who were the chosen people, were able to be the murderers of God eventually. Because they didn’t seek God. God is Person. God is not an abstraction. God is not the force. The Orthodox faith is not the place where you’re coming to be more based. It’s not the place where you’re coming to get all the right things in order. It’s not even the place, really, where you come to clean up your act.
It’s the place where you find love. It’s the place where you learn to be loved. And this is what the demons hate. They hate love. Because God is love.
You see, some of you are perplexed, and I want you to be perplexed, because you should understand this: The demons are legalists. And if you turn your Orthodoxy into legalism, the demon isn’t far behind you. And in fact, consider the demon is the one who is whispering to you to think that this is all about you keeping up rules versus being in love. Rules will not save you. The love of God will.
Do you notice that the friends of the demoniacs, they’re like, “Get out of here, Jesus. Get out of here.” He’s ruining their industry. He’s going to make them look bad in front of Herod. Who knows? Politically, economically, morally.
So now, I hope many of you are like, how do I make sure I don’t have a demon? It’s very simple. Don’t shoo Christ away. You see, the place of agitation, that’s where you start to see something is wrong. Do you avoid confession? Do you make your confessions in such a way that you’re able to just kind of hide behind, “I’m a sinner. I’m a sinner.” We’re all sinners, my dear. That doesn’t expose what’s happening.
We’re Orthodox Christians; we’re people who are meant to be uncomfortable. This is why I worry. Because with all the people coming in, what are you coming into? Are you coming into a comfortable place? That’s not Orthodoxy. That’s not what saves you. You have to struggle. You have to struggle. And it’s not just me saying it — look at all of our ancestors. All the time from the Bolshevik Revolution all the way to the earliest ages, it was always about struggling for love. It was always about being in that tension, being in the shadow of death. That’s what we’re made for. That’s who we’re supposed to be. And when we lose that, when we become people of the empire versus the people of the kingdom of God, we’ve lost something. This cannot become about the bigger empire.
We just celebrated our nation’s birthday last night, thanks be to God. God bless America. Let me remind all of you of a great saint, St. Alban, the proto-martyr of Britain, the first martyr of the British Isles. St. Alban was a soldier in the Roman Empire. And St. Alban, he encountered this fugitive priest, this priest who was running for his life. St. Alban, being a trained Roman soldier, thinking with his head, thinking with his hands, but more importantly, he thought and he saw with his heart. He recognized Christ in that priest. And in that moment, what does Alban do? St. Alban exchanges clothes with the priest so that the priest can go on and continue his ministry and he goes to his martyrdom.
That’s the heritage of the British people. That’s a heritage of the heart, not of the head. This is not about coming in and getting your dates right, getting your facts right, and getting theology, frankly, that you don’t understand, correct. It’s about getting your heart right.
You see, the Jews, they didn’t have their heart right. And the demons are glad to give you all kinds of morality and politics and facts and nationalism and everything else so that your heart is blinded by your head. That is how that woman had that demon, and that’s exactly how Elder Ephraim, Blessed Ephraim, uncovered it. Because of his love, his love for God, his willingness to stand in the light and in the truth. As the people of God, as the flock of God, our Master, your Shepherd, my Shepherd, He wants to make sure that His sheep are clean. The deal with the demoniac and the deal with demons in general, especially now, is not about people outside, my brothers and sisters, it’s about people inside.
When I disciplined my eight children as they were growing up, some of them still needing discipline, yes, I disciplined them because they were my children. I would tell some of them I wasn’t across the street spanking Sally or Jimmy. They’re not my kids, you see. We need to make sure that we don’t have any ticks and fleas on us as sheep.
Pay attention. Pay attention. Because the way that I speak to you, the way that I confess you, the way that I guide you is precisely, it’s uncomfortable, but it’s a reason for that. Because that uncomfortability is how you know there isn’t anything hiding underneath your religion, your tradition, your facts. Your heart must be open before Him.
And then, not in the Gospel of Matthew, but in the other Gospel, that same demoniac says, let me come with You, Master. That is how you know you’re clean. Because instead of telling Him to go away, because He’s interrupting your life, you tell Him, let me go with You. That is how you know you’re clean. Because that love — God is love — that love is there, and it bonds you to Him. It bonds you to Him.
Through the prayers of St. Alban, Lord Jesus Christ, grant us Your love and unite us to You. Amen.