AT EVERY DIVINE LITURGY during the Great Fast we read from the Holy Gospel according to Mark – except for today. Why is John 1:43-51 read on this Sunday, the Sunday of Orthodoxy? The brief answer is that both the Gospel reading and the triumph of Orthodoxy, which we...
AT EVERY DIVINE LITURGY on the weekends of the Great Fast portions of the Epistle to the Hebrews are read. Usually these readings follow the order of the epistle itself. On this first Sunday, however, the reading we hear is from chapter 11, chosen for a particular...
Until fairly recently it was popular in Christian circles to identify oneself as a “soldier of Christ.” There was biblical precedent for the image. St Paul, for instance, told Timothy that he “…must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Timothy 2:3)....
TODAY IS THE SUNDAY OF ORTHODOXY, which celebrates the restoration of the Orthodox use of icons in the Byzantine Empire. But what exactly is “Orthodoxy” and what does it have to do with icons? Literally the word means “rightly proclaiming” – those who glorify God in...
WE ARE ALL FAMILIAR WITH THE IMAGE of the eight-ounce glass containing four ounces of liquid. Is it half full or half empty? The way we see it reveals more about the viewers than about the glass. The Church numbers the Sundays during the Great Fast in successive...
