Our Favorite Christmas Picture Book

Posted on Thursday, December 30, 2021 by Mendicant Monk

It never ceases to amaze us every Christmas season how many good picture books are out there. But there is one I wish to draw attention to as it gives due praise to our often overlooked first responder, the cop on the beat. Cop’s Night Before Christmas has delightful illustrations and continues the Santa Claus legend with a jolly St. Nick adapted to police officers, complete with, not a sleigh but a Christmas helicopter! Best of all, it was actually written by a police officer, Michael D. Harrison. So Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

A Man of Few Words But Many Deeds

Posted on Friday, December 24, 2021 by Mendicant Monk

Remembering today the passing of a great pillar and subdeacon of our local parish. He was a man like my own father who can not abide long to hear conversation when action is required. As the celebrant at his funeral remembered, he employed half the parish, especially men like yours truly who needed a few side hustles as we worked primarily for the church. He was not your average contractor, beginning all his projects with prayer and devoutly dedicating all of his labor to God. His love for serving in the holy altar spilled out fully into his worldly labor. He never artificially separated them into sacred and secular.

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Search for the Missing Jewel of Worship

Posted on Thursday, December 23, 2021 by Mendicant Monk

I recently heard a news story about the supposed revolutionary nature of the American Pilgrim’s form of worship. In Plymouth Colony, exactly 400 years ago (reason to celebrate this as news), they sang their worship to God with acapella, metered Psalms and besides these Psalms, all their other hymns came straight from Scripture. While I grant that their metered and rhyming Psalter was a bit of a novelty (and a good one as rhyme improves memory), to say that their worship was revolutionary because it came straight from Scripture belies an ignorance of the more ancient path of the Church’s worship.

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Live Theatre Once Again!

Posted on Friday, December 3, 2021 by Mendicant Monk

Ah, dear friends who are local to Boston, starting next Friday, December 10 in Groton, MA, four Friars (a family record!) will be performing live on stage and we would love to see you in the audience. A message lies below from the Messenger who hauntingly blesses Ebenezer Scrooge with a life-giving path of repentance. Please read it and accept our invitation to come. And a Merry Christmas to ye!

I wanted to let you know that New Life Fine Arts is again producing “Musical Theater That You Can Believe In”.

Coming this December 10 -19, 2021 we will be bringing the original adaptation of the Charles Dickens famous Christmas Classic, “Ebenezer Scrooge: A Christmas Carol” back to the stage in Groton, MA for 8 performances.

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Believe is a Transitive Verb

Posted on Sunday, November 28, 2021 by Mendicant Monk

Sunday, November 28, 2021
First Day of the Nativity Fast
Commencement of Advent in the Orthodox Church

Our family loves the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Whenever we return from our annual parish tradition of hosting the Eucharist, we always turn on the telly to see the bright and cheerful floats of popular children’s shows and books drifting larger than life down the streets of Manhattan.

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A Table in the Presence of My Enemies

Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2021 by Mendicant Monk

It is rare that I watch a film and have to run immediately to blog about it. But a newly released movie has completely enraptured me.

The very modestly named movie Pig carries with it a weight of relational content and mystery that few modern movies measure up to. Nicholas Cage plays a forest recluse whose love for the humblest of animals, a truffle-hunting pig, compels him to hunt down the thieves that take him. He comes out of his reclusion to reveal a world he left behind in the city of Portland, Oregon, a world of friends and family who have lost their first loves in search of fleeting worldly gain, earthly lusts, and extreme disconnection from humanity. But this recluse’s single-minded love and devotion for a simple creature gradually brings them all back around to what is real, holy, and worthy of love.

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Beyond Mere Appearance

Posted on Sunday, November 7, 2021 by Mendicant Monk

Sunday November 7, 2021; 20^th Sunday after Pentecost

Galatians 1:11-19
Luke 16:19-31

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever. A classic Danish film portrays the theme of this morning’s gospel in the person of a French maid. Babette’s Feast features a penniless woman cast out by circumstances in her home country to foreign land in the north. Like poor Lazarus, she arrives at the home of two unmarried sisters cold, alone, and in need of help. But if a person were to conclude that Babette’s outward circumstances defined her inward disposition, they would be wrong. For while she was poor in possessions, her artistic soul made her rich beyond the reach of mere circumstance. As the apostle says, “…being poor, yet making many rich“, she managed in the end to exhaust her entire bank account towards a feast for her friends.

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A Story that Never Grows Old

Posted on Friday, October 22, 2021 by Mendicant Monk

My friends at the Fellowship for the Performing Arts have taken their stage monologue play to the cinema! In less than two weeks, this fine theater company will premiere its first ever movie about the life of C.S. Lewis, The Most Reluctant Convert. It will be showing for one night only on Wednesday, November 3 in theaters across the country. Already here in Boston, one of the three theaters showing it has sold out!

Early reviews have promised a strong story from a great cast. For me, it has served as a consolation for not going to NYC for a while to see one of their excellent stage productions about the famous Christian apologist. Get your tickets now for a once in a lifetime event!

Great New Family Drama

Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2021 by Mendicant Monk

We are not the kind of family that watches very much TV. We are more of a movie family. But when I heard about the new ABC reboot of the classic Wonder Years, I knew we had to break our usual pattern of waiting until it came out in DVD and watch it live as it first broadcasts. The new Wonder Years runs every Wednesday night at 8:30pm EST and is now past the second episode, and so far it does not disappoint.

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Learning from Rest

Posted on Tuesday, September 7, 2021 by Mendicant Monk

Of the making of books there is no end and much study wearies the body.
Ecclesiastes 12:12

Another calm before the fall storm. My brilliant wife suggests squeezing at least one last trip to the beach in before the crazy fall schedule prohibits us. We go with the three youngest children and our baboushka (“little grandma” in Russian) to Old Silver Beach on Cape Cod, one of the few west facing beaches just over 1.5 hours from Boston. It’s like our back-to-school beach, as it works well to drive here on a mid-afternoon and stay until sundown. A last minute surplus from our local food pantry leaves us well supplied with road food and a picnic supper.

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