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Originally posted on Boston Pilgrim Tours:
June 7, 2014, Eve of the Feast of Pentecost: The Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Church A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune of visiting the site of John Eliot’s…
June 6, Birthday of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
It has happened to me twice now, so there is no denying its power. We travel today to the Moscow Pushkin Museum on the anniversary of A. S. Pushkin’s birthday Jun 6, 1799 for a concert of poetry and music performed by children of the age of my own. The show begins with a recitation of the great author’s poetry. Just like several years ago when I came for the same event for the first time, I understood not a word of it. But just like then, I still could not help but weep for the beauty of it. Continue reading
One of the big temptations in traveling to another land is to expect many of the familiar things there from your home country. Or if those things do not live natively in the host culture, the temptation is to somehow import them. Such a tradition for us is the great American church custom of coffee hour. Yes, that’s right, coffee hour is not a given at churches around the world but is a distinctively American custom for Christians to gather after a Sunday service for at least coffee and donuts and sometimes a whole lot more.
One of the churches we consider our home away from home in Moscow has long held the tradition of refreshments and social mingling after the Sunday Liturgy, but they don’t call it coffee hour and they don’t claim that the custom is borrowed from America. Continue reading
Arrived yesterday to Moscow for our family’s seventh time in the land of the Rus. Mama Friar and our brood of four preceded me by two weeks. It is a great place to vacation as we have established patterns that we easily settle into here. A young family such as ours needs routine even when we are attempting to be adventurous and break out into something new.
Our daily schedule while we are here in Moscow runs more or less as follows. Wake up to morning prayers followed by tea and kasha. After breakfast, the middle of the day is usually a museum or show that is reachable by public transportation (bus, trolley, or subway). We return late afternoon to our apartment for tea and refreshments. Kids go with a designated adult to one of several local (and colorful) playgrounds while the others prepare dinner. In the evening, we gather for the most relaxed meal of the day and the most likely time to receive guests: suppertime. Continue reading
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian… I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality [of the Lord] a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
—Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, Chapter 9 conclusion
Thus ends the reverently joyful tome of Orthodoxy that led me to the true Church. And thus begins my discovery of the best kept secret of the Church of Jesus Christ. It is not found in austerity or great sacrifice, deeds of great reknown:
For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;
You do not delight in burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.
And what could be more humbling than a grown man making a fool of himself, or rather a grown man revealing the wisdom of God through the foolishness of this world? Continue reading
Eve of Great and Holy Saturday, 2014
In the tomb with the body, in hell with the soul as God, in paradise with the thief and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, wast Thou O Christ, filling all things with Thyself. Bearing life and more fruitful than paradise, brighter than any royal chamber: Your tomb, O Christ, is the fountain of our resurrection.
–Priest’s words at the Great Entrance during the Divine Liturgy
Since Pascha is the Feast of all Feasts, it is easy to miss all of the rich liturgical portions offered by Mother Church directly before the Easter extravaganza and directly afterwards. For me, especially dear is the service which acts as a kind of proto-Pascha, the Vesperal Liturgy usually chanted on the morning of Great & Holy Saturday, a service similar in content and purpose to what in the West is called the Easter Vigil.
Continue reading
I ran this post last year around this time and was just listening to the audio plays again this morning as part of preparations for Holy Week. Our priest always challenges us to read the Gospels all the way through, if possible. But those who prefer to listen on an MP3 player or CD might find the following dramatic presentation a helpful bridge to the story of the Gospels.
Just before the beginning of Great Lent, I was thumbing through my library wondering again what would be the best thing to read in this season of the fast. It is a good and pious practice during the forty days of fasting not only to increase prayers and attendance to church services but to practice some form of media fast and engage instead in one good spiritual book that will help one reflect on the life of Christ and repent of sinful habits. It was then that I came across an article which highlighted the book or rather set of plays that C.S. Lewis frequently read during Lent. This and the name Dorothy Sayers both caught my attention. Sayers is popular for her saying that “the dogma is the drama”; i.e., contrary to popular opinion that learning right doctrine is for dull and doltish people who like dusty libraries and don’t know how to have a good time, the dogma of the Church, relating first and foremost to the identity and work of Jesus Christ as He reveals the worship of the All-Holy Trinity, is rather for those who wish to engage in the greatest of all dramas. Continue reading
He only said two words to me in his entire apostolic life, but they were the two most meaningful words I have ever heard a bishop utter. They were the same words he used to greet every wayward American pilgrim that had somehow found themselves at the doorstep of the ancient, apostolic Church. And they are the same words that we who love him the most now use to usher him in benediction on to his true and heavenly abode: WELCOME HOME. Continue reading
My boss has done it again with a rock solid sermon for Lent. Incidentally, he also shows us Orthodox what we should be doing with our own icons: exegesis of both text AND image. It’s absolutely stunning work from a man who is currently besieged with the difficulties of growing a lively suburban parish. Enjoy!
Sermon for Sunday, March 30, 2014
Lent 3A
“The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” — I Samuel 16:7
For this morning’ sermon, I’m going to let you in on one of the secrets of the priesthood. No, it’s not some “hocus pocus” about the Eucharist; nor is it a secret handshake we all learned in seminary; and neither is it some Dan Brown-style secret that each of us has been sworn to guard. The secret is at once more closely guarded than that and yet at the same time an “open” secret. The secret is this: most clergy feel – at least some of the time – inadequate and unworthy of our calling. This sense of inadequacy and unworthiness may appear for some of us as we are chairing a meeting. For others it may…
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For those who might not have been close to the concert we did in New York/New Jersey, the Boston Byzantine Choir is doing the same program right here in the Boston area, and for the first time, in a non-Orthodox Church! Please join us at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Dedham on Saturday, April 5 at 4pm in the afternoon for a time of spiritual enlightenment and refreshment.
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