With Charity For All

Posted on Wednesday, November 6, 2024 by Mendicant Monk

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan–to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations. (Second Inaugural Address of President Abraham Lincoln)

I went today to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. It is a good place to visit the day after a contentious and hard fought presidential election, a reminder that however divided America may presently be, there was a time our divisions actually led to civil war. Today is the day that our current Vice President Kamala Harris chose to deliver her concession speech to President-Elect Donald Trump. I told my family who is visiting here with me not to underestimate this great tradition in our Democratic Republic.

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Returning to the Fathers

Posted on Sunday, October 13, 2024 by Mendicant Monk

“Not the God of the philosophers or the scholars, but the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.”

Blaise Pascal’s famous formula of return to more ancient forms of Christianity is coming true in our own times. I had been hearing too many reports from mainstream media decrying the Gen Z fleeing of faith at alarming rates. Meanwhile, at our local Orthodox Church, we are being inundated with mostly male inquirers who have just graduated or are about to graduate high school. How you might ask do they find us? They simply pull out their phones and ask for “Orthodox Church near me.”

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Offering the Gospel Free of Charge

Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 by Mendicant Monk

July 4/17, 2024
Holy Royal Martyrs of Russia: Tsar Nicholas II, Tsaritsa Alexandra, Crown Prince Alexis, and Grand-duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and those martyred with them

In the swing of summer at present, and I wish to give a shout out to all the fine institutions that make summer worthwhile for our family. This past weekend, I concluded a conference with the newly created New England Consortium of Classical Educators. It involved two glorious days of scholarly conversation around the theme of the knowability of Truth for the low, low price of only $50. Professors, tutors, and mentors from all walks of life took turns grappling with age-old questions and enjoying delicious meals around a common table. Strikes me as what colleges and universities used to be for until we turned them into educational factories for the mere acquisition of specialized skills. In any event, I kept pinching myself that I paid so little for so much.

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Dream Small

Posted on Friday, June 14, 2024 by Mendicant Monk

You ask, “Shouldn’t I be doing something?” Of course that is necessary. Do whatever falls to your hands, in your circle and in your situation—and believe that this is and will be your true work; nothing more from you is required. It is a great error to think that you must undertake important and great labors, whether for heaven, or, as the progressives think, in order to make one’s contribution to humanity. That is not necessary at all. It is necessary only to do everything in accordance with the Lord’s commandments. Just exactly what is to be done? Nothing in particular, just that which presents itself to each one according to the circumstances of his life, and which is demanded by the individual events with which each of us meets. That is all. God arranges the lot of each person, and the entire course of life of each one is also His all-good industry, as is each moment and each meeting.

— St. Theophan the Recluse from The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned to It

My oldest son graduated today from one of the finest institutions of learning I have ever known. It lives in the shadows of other better known institutions and is lesser known because of its small size and relatively short existence. Other institutions pride themselves on their acceptance rate for graduating seniors, their rejection rate of lessor mortals desiring admission, and their overall ability to graduate products of an educational system that are worthy of fame and fortune. My son’s institution (and now his alma mater), St. Herman of Alaska Christian School in Boston, MA does not graduate products but persons, persons made in the image and likeness of God. And the goal of their program is not mere intellectual excellence; they teach their students above all to love God and keep His commandments.

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Rising Up in the Resurrection

Posted on Sunday, May 26, 2024 by Mendicant Monk

Sunday of the Paralytic
4th Sunday of Pascha
Acts 9:32-42
John 5:1-15

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen. Beloved in the Lord, “This is the first of sabbaths, king and Lord of days. The feast of feasts, holy day of holy days, on this day we bless Christ forevermore.” Why can’t we just get enough of it and move on, already? As I heard from one of our catechumens, whose mother said in surprise, “Didn’t they already have Easter?” I had another conversation with a homeschool mother and evangelical Christian from Ukraine who was helping me to spell “Воистину воскресе” on my cell phone. She was excited to share this moment with another Christian who gets it, who understands the power and significance of the resurrection. Then I said, “We’re just getting this 40-day party started.” She admitted, “You know, there really is something to that idea of feast days. Some members of my church argue that there shouldn’t be special days of remembrance— that we should remember the resurrection all year long.” But in not making any particular day sacred, I responded, they only succeed in making them all the same. It is just another form of the Great Lie, the Great Cosmic cover-up that the resurrection was all a hoax, a mirage, a collective result of wishful thinking on the part of Jesus’ disciples. The Church knows otherwise. And She gives us this 40-day period to celebrate the resurrection, but also to ponder the truth of it, to be convinced by what the book of Acts calls “many convincing proofs that He is alive.” (Acts 1:3)

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The Riches of the Resurrection

Posted on Saturday, May 4, 2024 by Mendicant Monk

May 4, 2024
Great and Holy Saturday

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things… so that no one may boast before him.
(I Corinthians 1:26-29)

Brothers and sisters, I have no way to account for how the hick from the midwest who is writing to you could come to experience the great riches of the Resurrection that the Church will celebrate this evening. I keep having a recurring nightmare that someone more important will find me out, tap me on the shoulder and forcefully inform me, “We don’t serve your kind around here.” My imposter syndrome lingers even after I have been an Orthodox Christian for over three decades. But St. Paul’s epistle reminds me that the apostles themselves were imposters: unschooled, ordinary people whom the Lord called out of their feelings of inferiority and unworthiness.

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Rest for the Restless

Posted on Friday, May 3, 2024 by Mendicant Monk

May 3, 2024
Holy and Great Friday

Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.

Thus begins one of the greatest spiritual classics in Western literature, The Confessions of Blessed Augustine, forth century Bishop of Hippo in northern Africa. But it is more than a classic; it is a preeminent model for repentance. It is the working out of the plea of the Psalmist, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (139:23-24)

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Find Your True Home in Church!

Posted on Saturday, April 27, 2024 by Mendicant Monk

For those of you in my faithful readership who have yet to experience an Orthodox Christian Holy Week, now is your chance. At an Orthodox parish near you, begins a torrent of divine services next week unlike any you have experienced anywhere else on the planet. If you have always wondered what it would be like to live right now in the Kingdom of Heaven, this coming week might be the closest thing to it. Find your true home in the Church of Jesus Christ, Lord of Heaven and Earth, Victor over sin, death, and the grave.

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Building Institutions of Love

Posted on Saturday, April 20, 2024 by Mendicant Monk

“Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.”
Psalm 133

There is nothing quite like hearing a group of brothers sing a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to their common mother. Our weekend Lenten Clergy Govenie (retreat) at St. George Orthodox Church in Orlando, Florida concludes today with a bang: a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy with our Diocesan Metropolitan Dedo Vladika Joseph. But before the bang comes this solemn moment on Friday, the climax of our quiet contemplation, our heart-felt prayer, and our ascetic labor: the Akathist prayer service to the Most Holy, Ever Virgin and Birthgiver of God, the Virgin Mary. It is a moment in our retreat when all the counsel and reflection of the previous two days is applied to each one of us personally. The fathers from the Govenie all confess their sins to one another and travel back to the hotel to sleep peacefully in anticipation of the morning.

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Papa’s Lenten Pancakes

Posted on Saturday, March 23, 2024 by Mendicant Monk

Now that we have arrived at the first full week of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church and our Western brethren are approaching Holy Week, I thought I would share a tried and true recipe that our family shares at Sunday coffee hours throughout the year in either its fasting or feasting form (depending on the form of milk used). Blessed Lent or Happy Easter to you depending on which calendar you celebrate!