Author Archives: Mendicant Monk

The Lord’s Resurrection, Not Evolution From the Tomb

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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

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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.

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The Life of the Lord for Holy Week

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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 →

Welcome Home, Syedna Philip

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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 →

God Calls the Least Worthy to His Service

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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!

office2790's avatarTrinity Newton Homilies

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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Lenten Music Concert in Boston

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3rdannualhymnfestival-posterFor 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.

The Spiritual Home of Ground Zero

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My children first heard about The Little Chapel that Stood in our homeschool study of the last 500 years. Beginning with the present century, Ground Zero and St. Paul’s Chapel stands as one of the most significant places of modern pilgrimage and remembrance. So when my girls heard that we were going to the New York City area for a concert trip, they begged me to visit the chapel they had read about which had captured their hearts.

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Healing the Trauma of Sin

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Love this post about the importance of healing from the trauma of sin written by my boss. It is a very Orthodox reflection emphasizing sin’s destructiveness to God’s likeness within us; how it isn’t just about disobeying the rules. Very good for Lent!

office2790's avatarTrinity Newton Homilies

Sermon for Sunday, March 9, 2014; First Sunday in Lent

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

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Romans 5:12-19

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Matthew 4:1-11

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Psalm 32

Listen here online:

This morning I’m not going to talk so much about sin as I am going to talk about talking about sin.   So often, sin is something we don’t talk about – at least not much – which is a loss because the “grammar” and “vocabulary” surrounding sin contain great capacity for healing.

But I don’t want to begin there.  First, I want to go back to November 11, last Veterans’ Day.  Last Veterans’ Day, NPR told the stories of several different veterans from several different wars.  Though all the stories moved me, the one that touched me most was the story of Coast Guard veteran Joe Williams, who was part of “Operation Tiger,” a dress rehearsal off the coast of England for the Normandy…

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Making Forgiveness a Ritual

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Forgiveness Sunday- The Beginning of Great Lent

Russian Forgiveness“O, sweety, there is nothing to forgive.” How many times has our attempt to make amends with another we have offended end in this kind of dismissive, shrugging off of responsibility which is supposed to help the offended party feel better? Yet, when any of us takes a deeper look at ourselves, what the twelve steppers call making a “searching and fearless moral inventory”, we find that not only are we filled with sinful thoughts, inclinations, motives and actions, but ignoring and sweeping them under the rug of forgetfulness will only make matters worse, not better. Those not practiced in the Christian art and divine gift of forgiveness may be tempted to dispense with it as a necessary step to restoring peace in human relationships, but this morning’s Gospel lesson makes it clear that it is a non-negotiable. Continue reading →

Byzantine Concert in New York

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bbc-concert-flyer-Mar-15-2014To all our readers in the New York area, please come to a free Byzantine Lenten music concert that our family will be singing in. The flyer is on the left for those who wish to promote it. Saturday, March 15, 2014 at St. Anthony’s Orthodox Church in Bergenfield, NJ. It’s our choir director’s home parish before he went off to school and became a famous choir director, so it is going to be a bit of a homecoming, featuring many pieces from our Lenten CD released just last year. Also, for those interested in a deeper look at Byzantine chant, a master class will be offered for a small fee. Hope to see you all there. Stay tuned for more information about a concert upcoming in April in the Boston area. It will be our first time ever singing in a non-Orthodox Church!

Sochi on the Mind

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Just getting ready to sit down as a family and watch the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony tonight in Sochi, Russia on the Black Sea. It is a long and often difficult road for any city to host a worldwide event like the Olympics, and we have personally traveled that road with Sochi. Went there several times as a family and blogged about it as well, for those interested in reading something else about this resort, seaside beauty besides Russia’s stance on homosexuality or difficulty with security. We can’t wait ourselves to see on TV how much they have built since we visited a few years ago.