Monday. August 24, 2026: Day of the Angels
2 CORINTHIANS 8:7-15
MARK 3:6-12
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! The very thing, or rather the very One, that the Pharisees themselves could not recognize. The Pharisees had been trained their whole lives, for generations. Their one job, if you will, would be to watch for the coming of the Messiah. And the one job they had, they failed at. That very same job, the demons were able to do.
Why? How is this possible? Moreover, and more troubling perhaps, how is it that the demons make the same confession that we do? And all the more quicker. Proclaiming Him to be the Son of God. What is the difference? The demons proclaim, “Behold, You are the Son of God.” Out of necessity, and out of unholy fear. Tinged with resentment. And tinged with this fear because there is no love in their proclamation. And as the Scripture says, perfect love casts out fear. And so their proclamation, although a fact, is devoid of the love of truth. But when we say, “Behold, You are the Son of God,” it should be with holy fear. The kind of fear that comes with reverence and love and respect.
But there’s something also very interesting here in this Gospel, in the Lord. He bids them, He commands them to exercise a measure of discretion. To not speak of Him. And it’s interesting because in the Gospel we hear of the throngs – so many people coming to Christ because He had healed them, because His fame was growing. So many coming that they feared that He would be crushed. That’s how many people were becoming aware. And so we say, “So many people are already aware. Why is He saying to the demons, ‘Don’t speak of Me’? What is this discretion He’s asking?” It’s strategy. And it’s timing. Because although, yes, there had already been a measure of His ministry being made known, there’s still more to come. The passion had not yet happened. And so the Lord needs a measure of timing. He needs a measure of strategy so that He can get to Golgotha. So He can make it to His passion. That the envy of the demons and the envy of the Pharisees would only be stoked so much, until there was time. Until their envy and their hatred rose perfectly like a loaf of bread. Until their envy and their hatred blossomed fully. And only then should it be fully known.
And this is important for us to recognize for two reasons. Number one, we always must be careful. Oftentimes we experience God’s grace, and I warn you and I encourage you: Be careful. Our tendency is to want to share and say this and do that. And, “Look what I’ve done, and look what God’s doing.” And all of these things. Be careful. Be careful. Because what God is doing, you don’t know quite yet. And in our excitability – and, to be frank, our vanity – you want to go tell everybody what we’re doing. And our culture has reinforced this – not by mistake, by the way. Social media. The vanity of showing everyone what you’re doing. What you don’t understand is you’re not just showing the people you’re trying to impress. You’re showing the ones who want to bring you down also. Envy. Communication. There are networks. Long before social networks, long before networks of electricity, there were networks of communication. And if you don’t have the wisdom and the discernment – and to be really frank, the self-control – then the thing that God is doing in your life could very quickly be sunk. The thing that God is doing in your life could very quickly be at least hindered.
You say, “How is this, Father? How can anything hinder what God is trying to do?” Let me tell you a story. Daniel is fasting at the river. Calling upon the Lord in great distress. And it took 21 days for his prayer to be heard. 21 days. Finally the Archangel Michael appears to him and he says, Lo, Daniel, your prayer was heard. But the prince of Persia withstood me. 21 days. But God has granted me victory and I’m here.
Michael, chief of the hosts. 21 days withheld. 21 days the prayers of Daniel withheld. The communication blocked. We don’t understand why. We don’t know God’s wisdom, but we do know this: That there is real opposition, and there is real need for discretion. And the discretion isn’t just simply about the envy of men, but it’s also about the envy and the undoing by the evil ones. And as St. Paul says, let us not be ignorant of the wiles of the devil. If the Lord Himself is exercising discretion and telling the demons to exercise discretion, how much more us? And how vain and how proud could we be to roll our eyes at this reality?
Be careful. If God is doing something, keep it. Hide it. Shelter it. Nurture it. And when it is in God’s good timing, all will be revealed. But if we don’t, we must be prepared. Let us call on the Lord for His wisdom. And let us learn from His example. Let us exercise the discretion that is so lacking in this day. Let us exercise the modesty that is so lacking in this day. Let us recognize that any good thing we have, if anything is good and perfect, it comes from the Lord. And so, let us work unto the Lord and not unto man. Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.
Sunday, August 23, 2026: Holy Martyr Laurence; Hieromartyr Sixtus, Pope of Rome
1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-11
MATTHEW 19:16-26
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! The Lord ends the Gospel today with quite the word. The Apostles are a bit dumbstruck. They say, “Who then can be saved?” And the Lord says, “With men these things are impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
So what is He speaking of? What is He speaking of? He’s speaking of doing this thing that is absolutely necessary to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. You see, this rich man who He was speaking with – who, as the Fathers say, he actually came not seeking to test Jesus, not seeking to trap Him, but genuinely was looking for an answer. And so Jesus genuinely and sincerely gave him the answer that he needed. Because this rich man, he had all that he needed to navigate this world. He had wealth, clearly he had position, he had upward mobility, he had everything that was necessary in this world. He had religious life, he had kept the commandments up from his youth, and so he had lived a perfect life in this world.
But Jesus loved him and He spoke the truth to him. And the truth was, all that he invested, although good, it was only good up until a point. And this man was seeking, he was seeking, “What does it take to have eternal life?” and so Christ told him the truth. And the truth was that all his investment would only go so far unless he put it all in. If he held any of it back, he would lose the very thing that he was looking for.
The currency in which he was dealing with – status, culture, religious clout – all these things are what the rich young man had. They aren’t worth anything in the Kingdom of Heaven. And so Jesus, not wanting him to be disappointed, spoke the truth to him, and the truth was difficult. And the truth was difficult also for the Apostles to hear. And so now we are left with this word, and for many generations and really up until the time that Christ uttered these words, we all are looking for someone to ease this word for us a little bit.
Because we all understand how trapped by this material world we are. We all understand how trapped we are by living in this world. And there’s a part of us that understands that in order to make it into the Kingdom of Heaven, we have to have an otherworldly desire. We have to desire the things of the other world, and it makes perfect sense because if you don’t desire the other world, if you don’t desire where eternal life is all that there is, then you’re not going to do what you need to do to get there. You’re not going to have that place in your heart where eternity lies, to be completely devoted to the One Who is Eternity.
And so Christ speaks very plainly and clearly. And so for us, we are so fortunate because although it is impossible with man, all things are possible with God, and so we have been given witnesses. And this is where this little, shall we say, insight I think becomes important. Do we know the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven? Do we know who they are? Do you commune with them? Do you have a relationship with the citizens of heaven? And if you’re paying attention, this will hearken to other Scriptures, other words of the Lord, which will at sometimes be puzzling, but now hopefully they’ll become clear.
Because it’s not always what you know, but who you know is how you get in. And so you see, this is why reading the lives of the saints are so important. Because in the lives of the saints, we see everything from emperors and kings to slaves and murderers entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. And what is the one thing they have in common? What is the one thing they have in common? The one thing they have in common was they exchanged everything that they had for the one thing that was necessary and good. Whether they were a great king who had a kingdom and had power and influence, or whether they were a great robber and a thief who had nothing but abundance of evil, sin, and wickedness, they both exchanged the very thing that they had. And they said, “I’m giving all of this to get the one thing.”
And interestingly enough, it’s the one thing that we can all give. No one here and no one who has ever heard the word of the Lord can say, “Well, I don’t have that. I can’t give that.” No, it’s the only thing that you can give. And it’s the only thing that’s going to guarantee you eternal life. You have to have a witness. You have to have someone to bear witness to your life being devoted. And you have to have a witness to watch, because we don’t know how to do it. Those of us who are wealthy – everyone here is wealthy, literally, not metaphorically. Everyone in this room is wealthy, literally.
What are we to do? We look to the saints. And each one of us has some saint in our life who we pray to, who we honor, who we venerate, and they can show us the way. But do we ask them? Or do we say, “Hey, Saint so-and-so, please help me get more stuff here. Hey, Saint so-and-so, please make me more comfortable here.” And that’s not what they’re trying to do, is to make us more comfortable here. They’re trying to get it to where we will exchange everything for the next world there.
You see, in the Epistle today, Saint Paul, he speaks of the witnesses that witnessed Christ, the 500 who saw Him, bodily resurrected. He speaks about the other Apostles, witnesses to the truth of Who Christ is. Those same witnesses laid their lives down to whatever degree because they saw that everything else was foolishness, was rubbish.
This is a difficult word because we may be pricked in our hearts right now as I speak to you. But very quickly, we’ll have some food. We’ll go outside. We’ll enjoy whatever the festivities or whatever the day has for us, and we will forget. And the next year – God willing, we make it – this Gospel comes around. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s right.”
But perhaps one thing that can change this year is maybe we can ask our Guardian Angels, and maybe we can ask those saints that we’re so devoted to, to maybe not make us comfortable in this life. We can start asking them to help us to be ready for the next.
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.
Wednesday, August 19, 2026: Transfiguration of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ
2 PETER 1:10-19
MATTHEW 17:1-9
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! In the Epistle today, St. Peter, he reiterates the need to be cautious. To remember to do all that is necessary, and to do all that he has taught. Making our election, our calling sure. He speaks as one who has authority. Not one that was necessarily bestowed authority arbitrarily, but one who has authority because he was an eyewitness. Because he saw with his own eyes, something that no man could concoct on his own. No man could dream up what he experienced.
I was just speaking with Father Nicholas, and I was commenting on how in this time that we live in, there’s a myriad of stories, science fiction, fantasy, and not one of them can hold a candle to the absolutely mind-boggling reality of the truth that Jesus Christ is God. On Mount Tabor, we witnessed something amazing. Everything is revealed. Everything comes together. And we can speculate, and people have said things about Moses and Elias appearing. They speak of what happened in the hearts of Peter, James, and John. But the one thing that we know for sure is that it was the light that revealed everything. That in that moment, the Uncreated Light was revealed and shone in the fullness of glory. And so we can simply understand this. Moses and Elijah, it’s not that they appeared, it’s that they were revealed. The fear, the dread, the awe, the wonder in the hearts of Peter, James, and John, it’s not that it appeared, it’s that it was revealed.
Christ as God, in all His full glory, He did not appear as such, He was revealed as such. The eschaton, the future age, it is a time of revelation. It is a time when light rules everything, and in light, nothing is hidden. And this is why St. Peter says, be careful, because you can hide nothing. He experiences himself, you can hide nothing, and nothing will be hidden. Time, space, motivations, secrets, fears, hopes, they’re all revealed. Everything is revealed in His light. Everything is revealed because He is light. Lord Jesus, grant us Your light as far as we can bear it. Amen.
Monday, August 17, 2026: Holy Seven Youths of Ephesus, St. George the Pilgrim
2 CORINTHIANS 5:10-15
MARK 1:9-15
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! We live in a wondrous time. We live in a wondrous time. Saint Seraphim Rose of Platina, he once asked Saint John Maximovitch about the coming of the end of the world. When will the Lord come to judge the world? He goes on to say that the seemingly, the precepts that have been needed to be met for that judgment have come. The Gospel has gone throughout all the world. He talked of how the Gospel had gone to the far reaches of places – Africa, East Asia, these places. Saint John Maximovich says to him, yes, but the Orthodox Gospel must first be preached.
And it’s a curious thing because we see in this time the proliferation of Orthodox doctrine, teaching, and history. And it’s an incredible and amazing thing to witness with our own eyes in these days. But something that might be even more important, it might even be more insightful perhaps: why the Orthodox Gospel? And why now?
In the Epistle today, St. Paul, he speaks of the Judgment. The Judgment that God is going to judge us of what we’ve done in the body. And St. Paul goes on to say, “being convinced of the terror of the Lord” – the terror of the Lord – “we seek to persuade men.”
The Orthodox Gospel is the fullness of truth, the revelation of the fullness of Christ, of the Father, of the Holy Spirit, the precepts, the holiness that God requires because God is holy. And this is why Orthodoxy has always been, but especially now in this time, is seen so clearly and so distinct from every other quote-unquote tradition, every other quote-unquote doctrine. Why is it the truth? Because it reveals not just, of course, the most important thing being the God-man, but it also reveals something very important of who we are as man. And that we, being this creation to bridge heaven and earth, this was our calling, being in the body, being incarnate… This mission, we have failed.
And the terror of the Lord that St. Paul speaks of is precisely this, especially for us in this day, the need for an ascetical Gospel. A Gospel that says the gift of the body and the gift of the world that was given was defiled. And as such, we will be judged.
What are we to do? Woe unto us. One of the many sayings the Fathers have given us these last times, they speak of the demon of fornication at the end of the age, rising above all the others, boasting on how that demon brought more souls to the bosom of hell than any other demon.
Woe unto us. What are we to do? You see, he says what was done in the body, and it’s terrible because the deception of so many quote-unquote teachings and doctrines and religions, and especially these quote-unquote Christian ones, that they would teach that your body is nothing. This Gnostic understanding which has creeped into everything, the New Age creeping into everything, that the body doesn’t matter. Hopes and wishes, this is what matters. Good intentions.
No. No, the body is what makes concrete what begins in thought. St. Paul is speaking as much. Therefore, the ascetic way of being is the way in which the redemption becomes complete. Orthodoxy is sacramental, Orthodoxy is ascetical, and therefore Orthodoxy is the only thing that can prepare and purify a human being for that terrible day, that Judgment. The sacramental life is a life in which you understand that the world is sacrament, that God has created this earth and this way of being to know Him, to encounter Him, and that that is through the body.
But because we sin, we begin to disregard not just the world around us, but the very temple itself, the body that God has given. And so the need to be ascetical is precisely the need to live sacramentally, to look upon simple things – oil, grain, wine, resins which make incense – to look upon these things as the very means by which you can encounter God once again. Because it’s those things, it’s those means that redeem the temple, the body.
So much fornication, so much impurity. And look how the devil gets us to forget these things. And perhaps one more reason why the Orthodox Gospel must be preached: monasticism. Monasticism. Orthodox monasticism as opposed to Western monasticism, Roman Catholicism, if you will. And Protestantism and other forms of quote-unquote Christianity have no concept, no experience of it. Monasticism is the backbone of this ascetical sacramental life. And it’s in asceticism that all those who are in the Body of Christ, monastic or not, see what God is calling us to. A redemption of the body.
St. Mary of Egypt, one of the greatest saints of the church, and one of the foulest women to ever live. That paradox, that’s Orthodoxy. That’s Orthodoxy. This woman, who lived unspeakably. Not just in the world, but even ascetically. Who can understand what she went through? And who can understand how great her thirst for Holy Communion was? Orthodoxy, ascetically, sacramentally.
And if you think my preaching is long, let me add one more thing to this. In the Gospel today, the very Creator of all things Himself fasted 40 days. How could we ever think that the servant would be above the Master? How could there be a saving faith and religion without asceticism? How? It’s shameful to even think of it. It’s shameful to think that people would think that they could approach God, who Himself created all things, and He Himself fasted 40 days.
May this world come to understand the terror of the Lord. May this world come to understand the need to understand the Judgment that will come for the things done in the temple, which is the body.
Through the prayers of Saint Mary of Egypt, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.
Sunday, August 16, 2026: Saints Isaacius, Dalmatus, and Faustus
1 CORINTHIANS 9:2-12
MATTHEW 18:23-35
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ! The Lord gave a warning to us that even now we are being sent out as sheep among the wolves. There are wolves today. My sons and my daughters, my brothers and my sisters, there are wolves today. There are men – some women – but young men in the public eye. They, under the banner of Orthodoxy or under the banner of traditional Christianity, they’re wolves. They say things like “Christ is King,” but they don’t obey the commandments of the King.
They’re wolves. And they lead lambs to the slaughter. As a priest, we sit in fear of our own judgment because the Lord tells us to feed His lambs, not slaughter them. And so be careful, because these voices that are seeking even political places, to seek political gain, offices and such, under the banner of Orthodoxy and traditional Christianity, they don’t know Christ. They look like lambs, but they speak like dragons.
You see, to know the King, you have to keep His commandments. And if there’s one commandment that you must keep without fail, it’s to forgive. It’s to understand how to forgive, and it’s to understand that the keeping of accounts is not for you to do. You are not the banker. You’re not the accountant. You don’t have the fortitude. You don’t have the wisdom to discern who owes what. You don’t have it. And so when you try to keep account on who owes what and who needs to get what and who’s going to get theirs, you start stepping into the place of the King and His servants.
And that’s called rebellion. That’s called mutiny. And that’s what Satan did, and that’s what Satan does. To not forgive is not only to deny the King His commandment, but it’s to really throw your lot in with the Confederates, with the rebellion, because Satan is the accuser and he’s the one who sows the seed of bitterness. He’s the one who sows the seed of keeping account and chewing and ruminating over all these ways that you’ve been wronged by this person and those people and that group over there. And even worse than just saying, “I can’t do what Christ says,” worse than this, you still try to claim Christ as your King, and all the while you’re practicing the works of the devil. It’s blasphemy. Wolves devouring. Wolves bringing lambs to the slaughter. Wolves bringing young men and young women to bitter fetid pools to drink from instead of clean water.
At the end of the Gospel today, the Master, He says, if you do not forgive from your heart, the Father will not forgive you. Forgiveness is not to forget. That’s an old adage which is not true. In fact, forgetfulness can oftentimes undermine forgiveness. No, to forgive is to release a debt and give it over to the ones who can keep account. Forgiveness is to say, “I’m not going to be bound by this debt. So therefore, I take this debt and I give it over to the one who can account for it. That’s Christ.”
It has been given to Christ by the Father to judge. Specifically to Christ. Not to the Holy Spirit. And the Father doesn’t hold that account. Christ does. Why? Because Christ is the One who endured all shame. Christ is the One who endured all offense. And He says, in the Spirit, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
If Christ can forgive you, you must forgive others. And be careful. Be careful. Because when we get high-mindedness about certain people and groups and things like this, it becomes so much easier to hold on to those little paper cut of offenses that you get from your family and from your brothers and your sisters. And you think you’re justified. It’s so easy for us to think we’re justified. It’s so easy for us to think about, “Well, she did this and because this and this and that. And he did this and because this and this and that.” And all the while, all the while, your debt is piling up to the sky.
No. These wolves are speaking about – one of the ways you know they’re wolves, they speak about Christendom without Christ. What is the point of morality if you’ve nowhere to go? What is the point of acting a certain way and having people think of you a certain way, but inwardly you’re rotting away? Because there’s no life in you. Because forgiveness has choked out any hope, any joy in you.
Forgiveness is not just a commandment, it’s a gift. And the bitterness that comes from holding a count, it is the beginning of hell. It is the beginning of hell. When you’re unable to look at someone because of the slight that they gave you, and you can’t think straight, and you can’t do what you need to do, just understand you stepped one foot into hell. And that’s something that unless you let go of it, it will follow you all of eternity.
The inverse is also true, however. When you begin to taste the likeness of forgiveness, when you begin to taste the joy that comes from being carefree and not keeping to a count, then you begin to step the other foot into the Kingdom of Heaven. And that likeness and that joy, that will follow you forever. But you must choose.
If you serve the King, if you say “Christ is King,” you must keep His commandments. But God help you, God help you if you utter such words as “Christ is King,” but you keep the words of the rebel and of the devil. If you cannot forgive, then at least have the wisdom to beg God to teach you how to forgive. It’s simply self-preservation. Because without it, you will not have eternal life. Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Friday, August 14, 2026: Procession of the Cross
1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-24; HEBREWS 11:33-12:2
JOHN 19:6-11; 13-20; 25-28; 30-35
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ! The cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. And it is foolishness because the giving of oneself, this is – we understand this idea of sacrifice. Even those who are not Christians, they understand the idea of sacrifice. They understand the ideal of the noble hero giving themselves up.
But what they just cannot wrap their mind around is the shame that is behind the cross. They can’t wrap their mind around it. And the reason for that is because the true enemy, the final boss, if you will, it really is ourselves. It really is this fallen portion of ourselves, this egotistic aspect of ourselves that separates us from Christ, that separates us from the Father, and that refuses the Holy Spirit. This is that aspect that cannot wrap the mind around the shame.
The cross is a weapon of peace. As we were in the altar during Matins, Father Nicholas looked over to me and he says – and you know the way Fr. Nicholas can be sometimes – he’s like, “You just want to take the cross and just bring it inside you.” And he’s right.
You know, there’s… you come to this place where beyond your own failings, beyond all the obstinacy and the sin and the nastiness, all the things that are inside of us, when you gaze upon the beauty of the cross, you just, those of us who are being saved, those of us who understand the beauty that’s found in the sacrifice of Christ, His accepting – despising the shame, but accepting it. Something begins to happen.
And your heart begins to open and you become enraptured with love. His beauty, the beauty of the Father’s wisdom, the beauty of the gentleness of the Spirit, the beauty of God offering Himself on the cross, this is why it is the weapon of peace, because it’s that beauty that undoes the stubbornness. It’s that beauty that undoes all the ugliness of misused freedom.
It’s that beauty that takes even the hatred and the anger and the animosity of the demons and turns all of that nastiness into love. The cross is the ultimate symbol of love. And when we see ourselves at odds with the cross that the Lord has given us, when we feel ourselves in that place of temptation and wrestling with our flesh, let’s call back to mind the beauty of our worship. Let’s call to mind the beauty and the joy that comes from adoring the cross and adoring the One Who laid upon the cross, because that adoration, that remembrance of beauty, that’s the true weapon. That weapon of peace, that weapon of love, that weapon of holiness, this is what undoes the final enemy and the big boss.
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, continue to rapture us with Your beauty. Amen.
Thursday, August 13, 2026: St. Joseph of Arimathea
2 CORINTHIANS 4:1-6
MATTHEW 24:13-28
Saint Paul, in the Epistle today, speaks of the blindness, the blindness that the god of this world gives unto those who would be peeled away, and those who would be hindered, if you would, to approach the true God. And this blinding takes a form in many ways, but the cheapest of them, meaning the one that is most prevalent, is the blinding of the self by the self. The blinding of the self by the self. You see, the inability to see God, primarily, is an inability to look beyond oneself. And this is an interesting conundrum. It’s a bit of a paradox in the sense that, if you’re to find God, you must find God within yourself. You must look to find God hidden in those recesses in your heart, because this is where God seeks to dwell. So what are we to do?
Well, in the Gospel today, we hear this word from the Master Himself. He speaks of, be careful of false prophets. Be careful of those who would tell you who God is and where you can find Him. He’s there in the upper rooms. He’s there in the wilderness. He’s there in the deserts. Sending you on a wild goose chase. And then He says, the coming of the Son of Man will be like lightning. From east to the west. Lightning as such, the phenomenon of it, when it strikes, everyone sees it. The flash isn’t so much about, in this context, it’s not so much about the explosion of light, which is powerful. That’s true. That is there. But it’s the fact that when lightning strikes, all see it. Everything is visible. And so when the Lord manifests Himself in that final and dread day, there will be no, “What was it? Who was it?” There will be no question.
But even for the person, the individual, this is still the case. This is still the case. Someone can be religious, they can go to church their whole life. Any church. They can be a part of any religion. They can be doing whatever they need to do, or what they think they need to do their whole life, and never actually find God. And the reason for that is because the light of their own intellect, the light of their own self-improvement, these are all the things that are distracting. And this is the kind of blinding that the godless world does. But when Christ reveals Himself to an individual, it’s not so different from how He’s going to reveal Himself to the whole world in that dread day. Because when Christ reveals Himself, there’s no mistaking it’s Him. The question becomes, however: will you then acknowledge, admit, and then submit yourself to that revelation? This is always the problem, because this is where the kind of private interpretation of twisting – this is why you get so many quote-unquote denominations, twisting, twisting the truth to what will fit them. This is why you get so many quote-unquote other religions, twisting the light to fit themselves, to fit themselves culturally, to fit themselves temperamentally, to fit themselves whatever way that they need, that they want the light to be bent, to shine themselves in a better light.
No. The light cannot be bent and adjusted and given angles to make you look better than you actually are. The light just reveals who you are as you are. Christ will reveal Himself as He is. At the end of the Gospel, there’s this interesting phrase. And it depends on the translation that you read. It gets even more interesting. In the translation we had this morning, it says, “And where the body is, there the eagles shall be.” But there’s also another phrase: “Where the carcass is, so shall be the vultures.” It’s interesting. Now, the gathering of the eagles, those who would soar high, those who would go to the heights, to the limits of oxygen, these are the ones who will be gathered around the body. Do we pursue the light? Do we pursue, do we honor the vision and revelation of God in such a way that we’re willing to go to the ultimate heights where the oxygen is thin, like an eagle? Eagles soar very high. Do we go to that length to get the true vision of God, the true vision of the true God? This is what’s important. Because when we are told, “No, God’s over here, do this. No, God’s over there, do that. No, God’s over here, this is what you need.” All of these things, these are the things that distract us.
And so to avoid that distraction, we must go where the oxygen is thin. We must soar to incredible heights. We must strive to be in that place to where we will receive the light. We will see Him as He is. It’s not a matter of if He’s willing to do it. It’s a matter of, are we willing to do what we need to do to be purified and not be distracted, so that when the revelation comes, we will see Him as He is? This needs to be our prayer. And this needs to be the way in which we live our lives daily. Because we know not the hour. But make no mistake, when that hour comes, everyone will know. Through the prayers of the righteous Joseph of Arimathea, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us.
Monday, August 10, 2026: Day of the Angels
2 CORINTHIANS 2:4-15
MATTHEW 23:13-22
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ! In the Gospel today, we hear of the hypocrisy and the blindness of those who are materialists. They see with the eye that will soon be the food for worms, but with the eye that will last forever, they are blinded.
The rationale behind the gold being the thing to swear by is that the gold can be measured, the gold you can see. The gold can be harvested and mined from the earth. It can be bent and shaped and fashioned by the hands and the arms of men, and it can be traded. It can be taken back and given for something of seemingly similar or greater value. And the hypocrisy here is that it’s all under a pretense: a pretense of spirituality, a pretense of knowing the true and living God. But for sure, the mistake here is to think that you can measure power, true power, that you can measure spirituality, that you can measure anything eternal by a material means.
The devil, in all his machinations, and as St. Paul says in the Epistle today, his wiles, banks on us falling into this trap. It’s an easy trap to fall into. In fact, in many ways, the devil himself has fallen into that trap. You see, the wiles of the devil are such that he will, and they do, subvert us. Seemingly, the love of God, they subvert by taking situations, manipulating the facts of a situation in such a way that it would seemingly undermine, take out the base of those who are the people of God.
We’ve all seen the destructive power of evil. Everyone’s seen it on the news, some sort of missile, some sort of war-torn country. Most of us see it here as we come into the neighborhood on the way, seeing women and their customers on the streets, the blight surrounding the neighborhood. Depending on where you live in the city, you hear the gunshots. All of these are the physical manifestations of evil and of power. And I’ve even seen things that are beyond what’s seemingly natural – seen how the devil can manipulate matter, giving the strength of a strong athlete to a small woman. Impossible things, and yet with your own physical eyes that will one day be worm food, you see these things and it causes us to doubt. But God in His wisdom, and more importantly, God in His love, He remains as He is. And the God by which the altar is truly made sacred stays and remains invisible. And for those who are seeking Him, they must learn the weapons of this warfare are not carnal.
St. Paul, he speaks to the Corinthians and he’s saying to them, speaking to them, if you will, showing them the secrets of the kingdom, the atom bomb, if you will, of the Lord. He says to them, and he speaks to them of a brother who had fallen away in grievous sin. And you notice the tenderness in which he says, forgive him as I’ve forgiven him, as I’ve gone before Christ himself to forgive him, restore him in patience and love. In doing so, in loving and forgiving, you undo the wiles of the devil.
Because the devil used a material means to cause that man to slip into sin. And again, it doesn’t matter. It could be the material means of carnal sexuality. It could be any means that is of this earth. The devil is always looking to sow division, bitterness, resentment, but God is looking to manifest Himself in an invisible way. And this is why that phrase, that term, “the fragrance of Christ,” is so important because you can’t see fragrance. You can’t see it. But the soul that’s filled with love and the soul that bears memories, it can remember. Have you ever been in a situation where just you catch the scent of something and it brings you back 10, 20, 30 years and you remember someone you love? You remember a time that you loved? That fragrance, you didn’t see it, you couldn’t see it, but you know it. It brings you to this deep place.
This is the type of power, this is the type of grace that God calls us to be like. Why? Because it transcends that material limitation. So oftentimes we are misunderstanding, we are misreading something with our physical eyes. But the eye that is invisible, it sees true. And so forgiveness and mercy and love, all these things that are eternal, that are seemingly invisible, this is the fragrance of Christ. This is what we become when we are broken and poured out.
And so the machinations of the devil are undone because what was meant to destroy that man and that church, destroy the man because he has fallen to sin – and more importantly to destroy that body of believers, because the devil tempted them to hold on to their self-righteousness, to hold on to their morality, to hold on to all these things that are of an earthly value. This is how the devil was seeking to destroy that community. And this is how he still seeks to destroy families and communities by leading them into bitterness of heart over material things.
And in doing that, causing fractures and divisions that if it would be possible, can never heal. God in His wisdom allows these things. Why? So that the greater thing can be revealed. And this is what happened in this case, the Corinthians. The greater thing was revealed. What the devil meant for evil, to cause division, God allowed and used to reveal them as a community that were truly bearing the fragrance of Christ.
They gave forgiveness. They were welcoming him back. They listened to and obeyed their spiritual father Paul. And in essence, they didn’t swear by the gold of the altar. They swore by Him who makes the altar sacred. Him who is invisible. Him who is so sweet in his mercy. Him who is so fragrant in his wisdom. Yes. Love, mercy, forgiveness. This is spirituality. This is power. This is grace. This is the way in which we encountered the One Who made heaven and earth. It boggles the mind, but it pleases the soul.
Through the prayers of the Holy Apostle Paul, Lord grant us to continue to be aware of the fragrance of forgiveness.
Tuesday, August 4, 2026: St. Mary Magdalene, St. Markella of Chios
1 CORINTHIANS 15:29-38; 9:2-12
MATTHEW 21:23-27; LUKE 8:1-3
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst. Mary Magdalene, who we commemorate today, was a woman who was profoundly in love with Christ. She loved Him because He loved her first. Mary Magdalene, when she first came to Christ, had been a woman who had, like many women, suffered many things. And these things that she suffered, these demons, they tormented her. She was haunted, and she was tormented. And as the Gospel says, seven demons were driven from her. And so she who had been given so much love, she in return loved fervently.
Being, even to the end of her life, an evangelist, speaking of the marvels of God. But the marvels of God, for her, were always, we have to assume, we can assume, they were not the type of marvels that mythology and tall tales are made of. But rather, for her, it was the marvels of love. She remembered her past. She remembered the terrible, terrible state that she was in and that Christ freed her and delivered her. And Mary Magdalene is so important in this day and age when, unfortunately still to this day, you know, too many women are haunted, shall we say. Too many women struggling with these pasts and these experiences that have brought them to a place of profound desperation.
Saint Markella of Chios is also one of these women who, unfortunately, suffered profound abuse from her father. But she too, like Mary Magdalene, although suffering profoundly, she, like Mary Magdalene, profoundly loved. And her love for Christ, even into the murder, her murder by the hands of her father, this is something that we should all take mind because for both Mary Magdalene and especially for Saint Markella and her case, we see that the words of Saint Paul were very true, that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
And there’s something that’s so powerful to me and so touching that in the midst of very terrible things – in the case of Saint Markella, even unto death; in the case of Saint Mary Magdalene, facing the very devils themselves and eventually going before a head of state, preaching Christ – that their experiences, they did not let their experiences leave them or bring them to this place of despair and stay there. In fact, their experiences are, if you will, the evidence of their profound love of Christ, their profound faith in Christ.
It was precisely because of the difficult things that they underwent, the persecutions by the hands of their father or the demons, this is what showed and revealed their love for Christ. And make no mistake, their love of Christ was birthed out of this reality that they first realized Christ’s love for them. I encourage all of you that when things are very difficult and when you are dealing with your own hauntings, reflect on the fact that Christ loved you first and that perhaps, like Saint Markella, the struggle in which you are under, the terrible thing that you are enduring, perhaps this is the very place in which the love of Christ and really your love for Christ can be revealed.
Through the prayers of Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Markella of Chios, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Amen.
Monday, August 3, 2026: Holy Prophet Ezekiel
1 CORINTHIANS 15:12-19
MATTHEW 21:18-22
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! The fig tree is withered by the Lord’s command. And the fig tree withering, and the mountain being cast to the ocean, these are figures in which the Lord is speaking to us. He’s speaking to us of what the fruit of the resurrection is. The fruit of the resurrection is to have resurrectional power.
Resurrectional power is not something by which ambition is driven. Resurrectional power is not something by which the individual is exalted above others. Rather, resurrectional power is to have this unity, this hope. What is this hope? What is this unity? It can be nothing else except for being in Christ. And it is the Father who raised Christ from the dead.
You see, if we don’t have this hope, if we don’t have this resurrectional power, if we don’t have evidence of this, then like the fig tree, we wither, we die. And the evidence of this power is when we’re able to look at the things in our life and we can call on our Heavenly Father in the Spirit through the power, and the love, and the obedience of the Son. We call upon the Father and we ask for these things, the seemingly impossible to be done. We ask for the mountain to be cast aside.
Mountains. In the Scriptures, we see mountains as this place where man must go to meet God. Moses ascends the mountain and sits there for 40 days fasting to meet God. Elijah ascends the mountain, goes to the cave, hides, he meets God. Mountain being this place, being symbolic of the need to make pilgrimage, if you will, to struggle, to ascend an arduous height. But in the power of the resurrection, that is put aside. We don’t need to struggle in the same way in the power of the resurrection.
God is closer than our very breath now. And so now, in the light of His resurrection, we don’t have to climb the heights in the same way. The fig tree, not in this particular Gospel, but in the other Gospels in which the Lord curses the fig tree.
Why? Because it did not bear fruit. It had leaves, but no fruit. Meaning it had all the signs of bearing fruit, but no fruit.
And in the resurrectional life, even this becomes a sign of power. Because when we see that we may have the external life, but no real change, no real ability to cross, to bridge the gap, no real ability to bring forth fruit, how are we to do it? We need resurrectional power. We need to call on the fact that Christ has risen from the dead.
And it’s in that space that faith is given to us, that belief comes to us. And then we realize nothing in this world should come between us and the next world. Nothing in this world should come between us and our God. Nothing in this world should come between us and the call of the Father and the power He bestows upon those who are in His Spirit looking to His Son. There’s no mountain to travel anymore. And there’s no need for having leaves, but no fruit.
And again, to have leaves and no fruit is to have the trappings of quote-unquote religious life. To look as if you have fruit, but not to truly have the fruit. Christ came to that fig tree, and He looked to eat something. It looked as if it was ready, but it wasn’t ready. This is why when St. Paul says in the Epistle today, and the resurrection isn’t the case, then we of all men are the worst off.
St. Symeon the Theologian, he’s so clear: If you do not have evidence of the resurrection of this life, you will not have it in the next. We need to look for the fruit here and now. We need to look for that power here and now. Not all of it, but we need to see that something is blossoming. We need to see that there will be something, if the Lord comes to us, there will be something for Him to eat. That we can do, because He’s promised us.
If we believe in Him, then yea, even the mountain can be cast into the sea. May we all have the help of our angels. May we all have the help of our patrons. May we hear the words of St. Paul. And may we fear, and may we have holy dread. May we hope and pray and remember that Christ is risen from the dead. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Sunday, August 2, 2026: Holy Prophet Elijah, St. Maria of Paris
JAMES 5:10-20
LUKE 4:22-30
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ! Well, today, we honor a Great Prophet, the Great Prophet Elijah. But we also honor another prophet – not a Great Prophet, but nevertheless, a prophet. She’s a prophet. We honor Saint Maria of Paris.
And this confuses people. Even this thought, like, what do you mean, Saint Maria of Paris, a prophet? The origin of this confusion, it comes from us not knowing what a prophet is, actually, or rather, what a prophet does. See, a prophet is not really about telling the future, being a soothsayer, and predicting when things are gonna happen. There’s an aspect to this, yes, but a prophet is one who speaks the word of God and particularly speaks a corrective word of God.
Let me share with you, remind you, this second part of the Epistle from James today that was read earlier. It says, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. And he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit. Brethren, if any among you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.
This is what it means to be a prophet. It means to speak the word of God to the correction of the hearer. Not to tell the future, not to have your own private crystal ball, but to speak truth and oftentimes to power. It’s a very difficult thing. And see, Saint Maria, she was one of them. She spoke truth. And I wanted to bring her up because she’s scandalous to many people. And the reason why she’s scandalous is because she broke all of the conventional politics and niceness that we church folk, we really like. She did these things.
Now, the thing with Saint Maria, is people, they love her, they support her because like, “Yeah, here’s a nun who’s smoking in Paris and drinking with intellectuals.” And that’s actually why they celebrate her. And when people lift that part up about Saint Maria, they actually dishonor her. They dishonor her. When they make it about like, “Yeah, she broke the rules,” that’s actually not the point. The point is that she loved God.
See, Saint Maria was a great sinner. She was a great sinner. She was a divorced woman and a communist and a revolutionary. And in her sin, God came to her and reminded her of the faith of her fathers and she repented. And in her repentance, she sought not to hide herself away for her sake, but she wanted to speak to those who also needed light. And this is why we honor her and this has made her a prophet. That she spoke truth to those who needed it, including at times, members and leaders in the church who had lost their way.
You have to remember something. The reason why a lot of people speak ill of Saint Maria now is because they’ve forgotten actually why God allowed the revolution in Russia. When people lose their way, when the people of God forget the love of neighbor and they forget what God asks of us, then He allows judgment to come as a chastisement. And so, because she’s a woman and because she had this checkered past, people don’t like her.
But guess what? She still spoke the truth, because Russia had fallen into sin and needed repentance. And if you don’t understand that and you don’t like it, then I would just point you to Saint John Maximovitch or Saint John Kronstadt. They said the same things. They warned Russia of the same things before it happened. And Saint Maria is speaking to it during and after the revolution, but nevertheless for the same reasons because the love of God had grown cold. And so she spoke prophetically.
But it speaks to another thing you have to think about. When we think about prophets, we have this idea that, again, everything’s perfect, everything’s neat, and it’s wrong and it’s false. You see, Elijah, one of the true Great Prophets, Elijah was also a man of weakness. See, when we think of Elijah, we think of Elijah being this bull, sticking it to the priests of Baal, putting his finger in the face of Jezebel, telling Ahab to repent. And that’s true. That’s true. Elijah did have this fire.
But Elijah also had fear. Elijah also had fear. Elijah is a man, was a man, with a similar nature like ours, would go hot and would go cold. Elijah, after he stuck his finger in the face of Jezebel, he finds himself cowering and hiding in a cave and essentially wishing that he was dead because he was depressed and he was sad and he was scared, you see. That’s the same Elijah who called down fire only a few days earlier.
Are we not all like this? Do we not all have the zeal for God, we pray to God, we’re gonna do our prayers and this and that, and then the next hour, maybe even, maybe the next day we find ourselves falling into the same sin. Yes, we are men that share a nature with Elijah, a fallen nature. This vocation of speaking truth, this vocation of having the courage to represent God, it’s a difficult one.
Even Moses, the great Lawgiver, he also stumbled. He struck the rock instead of speaking to it. My brothers and my sisters, my sons and my daughters, we are fickle. It’s very difficult for us to stay consistent and God knows it. And here’s the thing – this is why God sends us prophets. And the prophets themselves are the first to know of their own weakness. Do not let your weakness, do not let the fickleness of your nature keep you from saying and doing the right thing.
Because the biggest thing about the prophets, and this is key: from Saint Maria of Paris all the way down to Moses, the Lawgiver, the thing that keeps a prophet a prophet is they never fall into self-righteousness. That’s the key. Saint Maria’s quote unquote worldliness kept her humble. Elijah’s fear and even his audacity to say to God, “I’m the only one who hasn’t bowed my knee to Baal,” and God says to him, “I have 7,000 prophets who have not bowed their knee to Baal.” God humbled Elijah. See, the self-righteousness is what we must avoid. God knows you’re falling. God knows you go hot and go cold. But keep yourself from going lukewarm because in lukewarmness, this is where He spits you out.
How do we become lukewarm? By becoming self-righteous. A self-righteous man, a self-righteous woman is a lukewarm Christian. They rest in what they think is their own piety and morality, and they think they’re safe because they’re checking the boxes. Everyone looks at them, they know they’re good, that they’re doing okay. They’re neither hot nor cold, and so Christ will vomit them from His mouth. Self-righteousness is the thing that we must avoid.
Self-righteousness is what keeps you from speaking the truth. You won’t speak the truth because you say I’m a hypocrite. Yes, you are. You’re all hypocrites. So what do we need to do? We fix ourselves. We acknowledge what’s going on. We stay away from self-righteousness. We stay away from the things that keep us humble before God. Saint Maria of Paris, she ended her life simply holding to the truth and she defended those who were in essence the enemies of God.
You see, this is the thing also for a prophet. God gives them a word and they hold to it no matter what. And so for all of you, yes, avoid self-righteousness. Yes, avoid fear. Yes, avoid those things that keep you lukewarm but understand this: God will also give you a word. He’ll speak a word to your heart for you to hold to and no matter what, if you hold to that word that God gives you, you can withstand all things by His power and not your own. And that’s why the self-righteousness is so important to avoid, because self-righteousness keeps you from believing the prophetic word that God speaks to you first before you ever speak a prophetic word to anyone else.
Through the prayers of Saint Elijah, Saint Maria of Paris and of all the saints, the prophets, the holy ones with courage and the ones with a fallen nature like our own, keep us humble, Lord, and keep us far from self-righteousness. Amen.