During the season of Christmas, we celebrated the Nativity in the flesh of the Savior. Born as truly one of us, He is the New Adam Who restores and fulfills us as living icons of God. During the season of Theophany, we celebrated the revelation of His divinity as a Person of the Holy Trinity at His baptism, where the voice of the Father identified Him as the Son and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove. Christ has appeared in the waters of the Jordan, blessing the entire creation, enabling all things to become radiant with the divine glory. When we put Him on like a garment in baptism, we participate in the sanctification that He has brought to the world as we regain the “robe of light” repudiated by our first parents.

Today is the Sunday before the Feast of Theophany (or Epiphany), when we celebrate Christ’s baptism in the river Jordan and the revelation that He is truly the Son of God. His divinity is made manifest and openly displayed at His baptism when the voice of the Father declares, “You are my beloved Son” and the Holy Spirit descends upon Him in the form of a dove. Theophany shows us that Jesus Christ, who was born in the flesh for our salvation at Christmas, is not merely a great religious teacher or moral example. He is truly God—a member of the Holy Trinity– and His salvation permeates His entire creation, including the water of the river Jordan. Through Christ’s and our baptism, we become participants in the holy mystery of our salvation, for He restores to us the robe of light which our first parents lost when they chose pride and self-centeredness over obedience and communion. He enters the Jordan to restore Adam and Eve, and all their children, to the dignity of those who bear the image and likeness of God.

As we conclude our preparation for celebrating the Lord’s Nativity, we must resist the temptation to corrupt this blessed season into an excuse for glorifying ourselves in any way. Instead, we must allow our hopes for whatever we want in this life to be called into question by the God-Man, Who was born in such strange circumstances to fulfill a kingdom not of this world that stands in prophetic judgment over all our agendas, preferences, and desires. We must learn at Christmas to hope only in Him.

When Jesus Christ was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath, he saw a woman who was bent over and could not straighten up. She had been that way for eighteen years. The Lord said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” When He laid hands on her, she was healed. When the woman stood up straight again, she glorified God. As was often the case when the Savior healed on the Sabbath day, there were religious leaders eager to criticize Him for working on the legally mandated day of rest. He responded by stating the obvious: People do what is necessary to take care of their animals on the Sabbath. “So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?” Then “all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by Him.” By restoring the woman in this way Christ showed that He is truly “Lord of the Sabbath” and that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28)

As we welcome Christ into our lives and world at His Nativity, we must remain focused. There is no shortage of distractions this time of year that appeal to our passions and threaten to convince us that there are matters more important than accepting His gracious invitation to enter fully into the joy of the banquet of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Savior calls us to embrace our true vocation not only during divine services or in the eschatological future, but in every moment of our lives.

On the last couple of Sundays, our gospel readings have reminded us what not to do if we want to prepare to welcome Christ into our lives and world at His Nativity. The rich fool was so focused on money and possessions that he completely neglected the state of his soul. The rich young ruler walked away in sadness when it became clear that he loved his wealth more than God and neighbor. The weeks before Christmas are the most commercialized time of the year when we are all bombarded with messages that the good life is primarily about having a lot of money and being able to buy whatever we want. Since the Lord warned so clearly of the folly of giving our hearts to the false god of riches, it is sadly ironic that the celebration of His Nativity so often occurs in ways that contradict the blessedness of His Kingdom.

As we continue to prepare to welcome Christ at His Nativity, we must keep our focus on becoming like those who first received Him with joy. That includes the Theotokos, whose Entrance into the Temple, where she prepared to become His Living Temple, we celebrated last week. That includes unlikely characters like the Persian astrologers or wise men, certainly Gentiles, who traveled such a long distance to worship Him. What better news could there have been than that the Prince of Peace was coming “to preach good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”? (Lk. 4:18-19) As we sing during these weeks of Advent, “Dance for joy, O earth, on hearing the gladsome tidings; with the Angels and the shepherds now glorify Him Who is willing to be gazed on as a young Child Who before the ages is God.”

It is worth asking what we want to achieve by practicing our faith. Why do we come to church, pray, fast, give to the needy, forgive our enemies, confess our sins, and otherwise struggle to reorient our lives toward God? Perhaps we do these things because we want to put God in our debt so that He will do our will. Maybe we want to become socially respectable, making ourselves look virtuous in our own eyes and in those of our neighbors. It could also be the case that we want to distinguish ourselves from our neighbors, especially those we do not like, presenting ourselves as more pious and moral than we think they are. Of course, these are all distortions of true Christian faith, but the real test of our faith is not simply in what we generally want from religion, but especially in how we relate to the Lord when we face deep challenges that break our hearts and threaten to lead us into despair.

It is terribly tragic when people fall into the delusion of thinking that they love God and neighbor, when in reality they are using religion to serve only themselves and the false gods of this world. One symptom of doing so is to narrow down the list of people who count as our neighbors to the point that we excuse ourselves from serving Christ in all who bear His image and likeness. When we do so, we disregard not only them, but our Lord Himself, the God-Man born for the salvation of all. Our actions then reveal that we are not truly united with Him because we seek to justify ourselves by serving nothing but our own vain imaginations.

There is perhaps no more powerful example of our need for Christ’s healing of our souls than that contained in today’s gospel reading. A rich man with the benefit of the great spiritual heritage of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets had become such a slave to gratifying his desires for indulgence in pleasure that he had become completely blind to his responsibility to show mercy to Lazarus, a miserable beggar who wanted only crumbs and whose only comfort was when dogs licked his open sores. The rich man’s life revolved around wearing the most expensive clothes and enjoying the finest food and drink, even as he surely stepped over or around Lazarus at the entrance to his home on a regular basis and never did anything at all to relieve his suffering.

St. Irenaeus wrote that “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of man consists in beholding God” (Adv. haer. 4.20.7).” To be a human person is to bear the image of God with the calling to become more like Him in holiness. The more we do so, the more we become our true selves. The God-Man Jesus Christ came to restore and fulfill us as living icons of God. He enables us to become truly human as we participate personally in Him as the Second Adam. As St. Paul wrote, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.” (2 Cor. 1:20)

In the midst of the ongoing tragedy unfolding in the Holy Land, we must attend to the wisdom of our father in Christ, His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch, who stated this week that “Peace does not come from the bodies of children, killed people, innocent people, and women. Peace comes when the decision-makers in this world realize that our people have dignity, as all the peoples of the world. We are not advocates of war, we reject violence and killing, and we are seekers of peace…” He writes that we pray “for peace in the entire world, for stability, and for the repose of the souls of those who have passed away. We pray that the wounds of the sick be soothed and they might recover, for the wounds of every hurting person, every bereaved mother, every brother, and every sister, for everyone’s wounds. We ask the Lord to protect us and grant us peace…”

I am sure that many people today reject or have no interest in the Christian faith because they have not seen in others the healing of the human person brought by Jesus Christ. Perhaps they have heard Christians speaking primarily about morality, politics, emotion, or a view of salvation that has nothing to do with the realities of life in the world as we know it. Or they may have seen many examples of hypocrisy on the part of those who identify themselves with the Lord, but who live their lives in opposition to His teachings even as they look for opportunities to condemn their neighbors. Regardless, many today have concluded that there is nothing in the Christian life worthy of their devotion.

Looking to the example of the great saints we commemorate today, as well as to the model of those holy fishermen, let us repudiate the superficial, self-centered tendencies celebrated by our culture and undertake the daily struggle of obedience to Christ. That means letting down our nets in obedience at every opportunity as we cry out for His merciful healing of our souls. That is the holy habit that we must all cultivate if we want to become worthy disciples of the Savior.

In order to take up our crosses, we must choose to embrace the struggle of dying to our vain illusions about ourselves and our world. Our hope is not in spiritual or moral perfection acquired merely by our own willpower, but in the gracious mercy of the One Who offered up Himself for our salvation purely out of love.

By faith in Christ, we have become the new tenants of the vineyard with an obligation to “give him the fruits in their seasons.” That, of course, is precisely what the original tenants refused to do. Instead of tending the vineyard and offering its fruit to their rightful owner, they wanted everything for themselves and even killed the son of the owner in order to take his inheritance. We must read this passage as a reminder that, in order to be good tenants of the Lord’s vineyard, we must offer ourselves in union with His great Self-Offering on the Cross for the salvation of the world.

St. Basil the Great, who gave away his great wealth to found philanthropic ministries for the sick and needy, taught that the Lord’s strict words to this man revealed his lack of love for his neighbors. Basil wrote that “Those who love their neighbors as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbor; yet surely, you seem to have great possessions! How else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of the many…For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.” The young ruler had laid up treasures for himself on earth and had given his heart to them. (Matt. 6: 19-21)

If we dare to call upon God’s forgiveness for our sins, we will condemn only ourselves as hypocrites when we refuse to forgive others.

Today we conclude our commemoration of the Lord’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, when the spiritual eyes of Peter, James, and John were opened to behold His divine glory and they heard the voice of the Father say, “This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” (Mk. 9:7)

We have all had the experience of suddenly perceiving a truth that we had previously not grasped. There are times when the fog lifts, the lights come on, and what was opaque or out of focus becomes clear. That is precisely what the apostles Peter, James, and John experienced on Mount Tabor when they were enabled to behold the divine glory of Jesus Christ, Who shone brightly with light as the voice of the Father identified Him as His beloved Son.

By miraculously satisfying so many with so little, Christ revealed what it means for us to live eucharistically as we offer ourselves and our resources for the fulfillment of His gracious purposes for the world and all its inhabitants.

Like the men in today’s gospel reading, we all need the healing of the Lord for our eyes, our mouths, and every aspect of who we are.

There is a temptation in pursuing the Christian life to think that we are more faithful than we actually are because we have confused lesser goals for our true calling. Then we can pat ourselves on the back for achieving far less than what the God-Man has made possible for us as “partakers of the divine nature.”

Though it was commonly overlooked at the time, God’s promises to Abraham were for the blessing of all the nations. They have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ such that all with faith in Him are now rightful heirs. (Gen. 22:18; Gal. 3:8-9)

The spiritual disciplines of the Apostles Fast provide us all with opportunities to clarify our spiritual vision and gain the strength to see all the blessings of this life as gifts to be offered to God.

Everyone who shares in the blessed life of the Savior does so through their participation in His grace, not merely as a reward for good behavior.

Today we celebrate the restoration of our true unity in God through the unifying power of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter sent by the risen and ascended Savior Who is seated at the right hand of the Father in heavenly glory.

Christ said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” No one else would have looked at Photini and seen a future saint who would shine with the light of holiness.

The plight of the paralyzed man shows us the common condition of fallen humanity. None of us took the initiative in bringing salvation to the world and this fellow did not ask Christ to help him or even know His name. The Lord graciously reached out to him, nonetheless, asking the seemingly obvious question, “Do you want to be healed?” The Savior’s words should challenge each of us because we often become so comfortable with our weaknesses, desires, and habits that we do not think that we need healing at all.

The devotion of the Myrrh-Bearers, Joseph, and Nicodemus shows us what true faith looks like, and it has nothing to do with figuring out how to use God to help us get what we want on our own terms in a pathetic attempt to distract ourselves from the fear of death.

In order to follow our Risen Lord into the joy of the resurrection, we must open our deepest personal struggles and wounds to Him for healing.

Holy Week is not a time for rational theological speculation and argument. It is, instead, a time for entering into the deep mystery of the love of our Lord, of the great “I AM” Who remains infinitely beyond our full comprehension.

Like St. Mary of Egypt, let us refuse to let anything keep us from confronting our personal brokenness with brutal honesty as we take up our own crosses in faithfulness to the Savior Who offered up Himself on the Cross for the salvation of the world. He alone is our hope and the Victor over death.

Through the many struggles of this season of Lent, we all have the opportunity to grow in the faith necessary to entrust ourselves more fully to Christ.

If we refuse to deny ourselves even in small ways this Lent, then we will become even more accustomed to serving ourselves instead of God and neighbor.

Lent does not call us merely to think or have feelings about our Lord’s Cross and resurrection. This season invites us to grow in our personal knowledge and experience of the Savior Who offered Himself on the Cross and rose in glory on the third day for our salvation.

The disciplines of this season give us all countless opportunities to do precisely that as we prepare for nothing less than to “see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”

May every step of the journey lead us further away from exile and closer to our true home, the Paradise that our Lord has opened to us through His glorious resurrection on the third day.

How we treat the hungry and thirsty, the stranger and the naked, the sick and the prisoner, manifests whether we serve a Kingdom not of this world in which the last shall be first or whether we have become conformed to corruption.

Now is the time to prepare for a spiritually beneficial Lent that will help us grow in the humility necessary to see ourselves and our neighbors clearly as we reorient our lives toward the great joy of Pascha.

Zacchaeus provides a wonderful example of repentance because he spontaneously and freely united himself to Christ as he took practical steps beyond any measure of justice.

If we want to share personally in Christ’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person in God’s image and likeness, we must cut off from our hearts and minds all that would separate us from embracing the great mystery of the One Who was circumcised in the flesh on the eighth day.

Even as the circumstances surrounding Christ's Nativity were not peaceful by conventional standards, welcoming the Prince of Peace into our lives requires embracing the inevitable tension of mindfully entrusting ourselves to Him as we come to share more fully in His fulfillment of human person in the image and likeness of God.

In the remaining days before Christmas, let us embrace the scandalous calling to hope in nothing and no one other than the God-Man Who is born to heal and fulfill all who bear the divine image and likeness.

Let us prepare for the banquet through fasting, prayer, generosity, confession, and repentance, so that we will have the spiritual clarity to accept the great invitation that is ours in Christ Jesus.

Most people today surely do not think of the weeks before Christmas as a time of preparation for being loosed from bondage to the corrupting forces of sin and death. More commonly, we use this time of year to strengthen our addiction to the love of money, possessions, food, drink, and other worldly pleasures.

Like the rich man, many want a spiritual pat on the pack for continuing down whatever passion-driven path they have followed so far.

Christ calls us all to become like the Good Samaritan, binding up the wounds of our neighbors and refusing to narrow down the list of those whom we must learn to love as ourselves. Like St. John Chrysostom, let us refuse to think that we can rightly worship the Lord by confining our piety only to what we do in liturgical services. Instead, we must make every dimension of our life a point of entrance to the Kingdom of our great High Priest.

There is simply no way around the truth that how we relate to other people reveals whether we are participating in the life of our Lord as we conform our character to His. What we do and refuse to do for neighbors who need our time, attention, and generosity in any form, we do or refuse to do for Him.

When the struggle is hard and we cannot imagine being set free, we must remember the difference between a person disintegrated by the power of evil and one gloriously restored as a living icon of God.

Like conscientious gardeners, we must doggedly tend the garden of our souls with prayer, fasting, almsgiving, confession, and repentance.

Let us look to the Savior’s raising of the son of the widow of Nain as a sign that we must entrust ourselves only to the One Who has conquered the grave, for slavery to the fear of death is the reason that it is so appealing to entrust ourselves to false gods as a distraction from facing the truth about ourselves and our world.

We must simply keep letting down our nets in obedience to Christ according to the particulars of our lives and circumstances.

Only we can unite ourselves to Christ in His Great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.

As members of Christ’s Body, the Church, we reap the blessings of the faithful obedience of Joachim and Anna and of their daughter the Theotokos. We must now use our freedom to take up our own crosses so that we may unite ourselves evermore fully to Christ in His great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.

Due to pride, we often crave words and actions from others that distract us from seeing ourselves clearly and instead fuel illusions of self-importance and self- righteousness. When doing so becomes a settled habit, we can easily find ourselves attempting to use religion to serve our egos instead of being focused on offering ourselves to the Lord.

When we truly know that we are the chief of sinners and recognize that our very existence is dependent upon the mercy of the Lord, then we will no longer be driven to condemn anyone else.

People think of religion in many different ways today, but usually not in a way that requires our hearts to be broken.

Let us take the Theotokos as our great example of how to receive and follow Christ every day, even as we ask for her prayers for the healing of our souls. That is the only way to celebrate the great feast of her Dormition with spiritual integrity.

The disciples offered to Christ what they had that day: five loaves of bread and two fish. He transfigured that tiny offering into a massive feast with far more leftover than what the hungry crowd could eat. This miracle shows that the key question is not what or how much we offer according to any conventional standard, but whether we offer all that we have for the Lord’s blessing. He will do the rest.

As we prepare for the Dormition Fast and look forward to the feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord, we must recognize how much we remain like the blind and mute men in our gospel reading.

To rise up, take up our beds, and walk home requires obedience to Christ’s commands, but not a legalistic obedience in the sense of following a code for its own sake. Instead, this obedience is like following the guidance of a physician or therapist who makes clear to us what we must do in order to regain health and function for our bodies.

By the grace of our Lord, we may become the light of the world as we do what the world does not prize: praying in secret; struggling to fast as we best we can; giving generously to the needy without drawing attention to ourselves; forgiving and praying for those who wrong us; mindfully rejecting the temptation to praise ourselves or to condemn anyone else; and confessing and repenting of our sins on a regular basis.

In today’s gospel reading, Christ teaches that the humble faith of the Roman centurion surpassed that of any of the Jews. Since the dominant expectation in Israel was for the Messiah to set them free from Roman rule by military victory, the Lord’s statement was surely perceived by many as terribly unpatriotic.

If we want to know Christ’s peace, which conquers even the fear of the grave, we must become radiant with His Light, which means that we must unite ourselves to Him in faith, hope, and love from the depths of our souls.

We have everything that we need to follow in the path of the apostles and saints in humbly obeying our Lord. That is how we can become radiant with the divine glory and obey the Savior’s calling: “Follow Me.”

In light of what such atrocities reveal about the human condition, it is obviously not enough to affirm religious beliefs, to perform certain acts of outward piety, or merely to identify ourselves as Orthodox Christians. Indeed, it is entirely possible to do all those things while remaining blind, embracing the darkness, and becoming all too comfortable with the forces of death and destruction.

Entering into the holy joy of Pascha is truly an eternal journey of sharing ever more fully in the healing mercy of Christ as we become more like Him in holiness. The only way to do that is to rise, take up our beds, and walk each day of our lives in obedience as best we can.

The devotion of the Myrrh-Bearers, Joseph and, Nicodemus shows us what true faith looks like, and we will never acquire it by looking for ways to fit God comfortably into our lives in order to help us achieve our goals in and for this world, regardless of how noble we think they are.

In order to follow our Risen Lord into the joy of the resurrection, we must also open our deepest personal struggles and wounds to Him for healing. Our bodies are not evil, but we have all distorted our relationship to them. Instead of pursuing a disembodied spirituality that ignores how God creates and saves us as whole persons, we must embrace the joy of His victory over death by living as those who are in a “one flesh” communion with the Risen Lord in every dimension of our existence.

Today we celebrate that the Lord is at hand, coming into Jerusalem as the Messiah, hailed by the crowds as their Savior. He enters Jerusalem on a humble beast of burden, carrying no weapons and having no army, political machine, or media campaign to flatter the powerful and play on the fears, resentments, and hopes of the masses.

Like St. Mary of Egypt, we must take up the cross of doing whatever it takes to find healing for our souls in the Lord Who offered up Himself for the salvation of the world. That was the path to holiness for St. Mary of Egypt, and it must be our path in the remaining days of this blessed season of Lent.

“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” These words from the brokenhearted father in today’s gospel lesson resonate with all of us who are honest about what the deep challenges of our lives reveal about our spiritual state.

We do not adore the Holy Cross today because it is useful for serving any personal, cultural, or political agenda. We do so because the Savior has brought eternal life to the world through His victory over the corrupting power of sin and death.

Whenever we pray, fast, and serve others with humility, we open ourselves to the healing light of the Lord and become more like Him. These practices are not reserved for those who have abandoned the world, but are necessary for all of us who remain weak before our passions with spiritual vision darkened by sin. The circumstances of our lives never excuse us from answering the call to become radiant with the divine energies of our Lord, but present their own opportunities to rise, take up our beds, and walk.

As we celebrate the restoration of icons today, let us become more beautiful living icons of our Lord’s salvation and gain the strength to treat every neighbor accordingly as we live and breathe in this world. Remember: They are His living icons also.

Lent calls us to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” We must do so in order to accept the great dignity of beloved sons and daughters called to return to Paradise through His Passion.

If we are ever tempted to think that the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are antiquated niceties for those removed from the cares of daily life, we must think again. They are absolute necessities for us to live faithfully in our world of corruption. They are not practices focused on individual spiritual gratification, but how we find the strength to offer ourselves for the blessing of our neighbors and the salvation of the world.

The coming Lenten season calls us all to come to ourselves as we gain a clearer recognition of the ways in which we have refused to live as the beloved sons and daughters of our Father. By humbly reorienting our lives toward Him and away from slavery to our passions, we will find restoration, blessing, and joy. Now is the time to leave behind the filth and misery of the pig pen and to enter by grace into the joy of a heavenly banquet that none of us deserves.

We must devote ourselves to prayer, fasting, almsgiving, forgiveness, and other forms of repentance in the weeks ahead if we are to open the depths of our brokenness to the healing of our Lord’s humble, suffering love. That is the only way to become like the tax collector in spiritual clarity, for he was aware only of his sin and need for God’s mercy. We must know the true state of our corruption and weakness as he did, if we are to enter into the joy of the Lord’s resurrection.

Let us follow the example of the Canaanite woman in persistently and boldly offering even our deepest pains and greatest weaknesses to Christ for healing.

Even as we recall the Three Hierarchs’ shining example of holiness, we remember today also someone whose life changed dramatically when he turned away from corruption in order to follow Christ. Luke’s gospel portrays the story of Zacchaeus in memorable and distinctive ways.

Let us not despair even when the darkness threatens to overwhelm us, but instead mindfully open our hearts to the light of Christ as we trust that He will minister to us at our point of greatest need and make us participants in His salvation.

Even as Jesus showed mercy by tangible actions such as healing a Samaritan from a dreaded and isolating disease, we must take the actions available to us, no matter how seemingly small or imperfect, to manifest His love to our neighbors, regardless of who they are. Find the book Syria Crucified at store.ancientfaith.com/syria-crucified.

We are baptized into Christ’s death in order to rise up with Him into a life of holiness in which we regain the robe of light rejected by our first parents. In every aspect of our lives, we must become radiant with the divine glory shared with us by the New Adam.

Those who have put on Christ in baptism and who receive the Communion of His Body and Blood must become epiphanies of His fulfillment of the human person in God’s image and likeness. As we prepare to celebrate Theophany, let us gain the spiritual clarity to behold the glory of Christ’s baptism by straightening the crooked areas of our lives.

Our fundamental vocation remains the same: to undergo a change of mind such that we offer ourselves without reservation in obedience to God. As with the Theotokos, Joseph the Betrothed, and James, there is no telling what that will mean for the course of our lives, but saying “yes” in free obedience as we take the steps we have the strength to take today remains the only way to participate personally in the healing of the human person made possible by the birth of Jesus Christ. Let us look to those we commemorate today as brilliant examples of how to do precisely that.

Thanks be to God, Our Lord’s Nativity is not a momentary escape from reality, but an invitation to enter into reality itself and find the healing of our humanity in Him.

In the remaining days before Christmas, let us embrace the radically disorienting calling to hope in nothing and no one other than the God-Man Who is born to heal and fulfill all who bear the divine image and likeness.

As “the poor and maimed and blind and lame,” we must prepare to accept the extraordinary invitation that is ours in Jesus Christ by gaining the strength to make our daily responsibilities points of entrance to the heavenly kingdom. They are not reasons to shut ourselves out of the heavenly banquet, but opportunities to unite ourselves ever more fully to Him in freedom.

As we pray, fast, give to the needy, and confess and repent of our sins this Advent, let us do so with the joyful hope of the woman who could finally stand up straight after eighteen years. For the Savior is born to deliver us from bondage in all its forms.

Unlike the rich man, we must not walk away in sadness when our weakness before our passions becomes apparent, especially when we realize how far short we have fallen of the holiness to which Christ calls us.

We must mindfully take the steps necessary to follow the Theotokos in becoming holy living temples of the Lord. That is the only way to celebrate this feast and to prepare to celebrate Christmas with integrity.

The Lord used the story of the Good Samaritan to show us who we must become if we are truly uniting ourselves to Him in faith. The more we share in His life, the more we will overcome the spiritual blindness that so easily tempts us to justify ourselves in thinking that any person or group is somehow not worthy of our care and compassion.

There is no point in pretending that all is well when it obviously is not; that was true for the bleeding woman and for Jairus, and it is also true for us. We must face the reality of our own brokenness with brutal honesty, if we are ever to acquire the humble faith necessary to enter into the joy of those who hear the Lord say, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace” and “Do not fear; only believe, and she shall be well.” The question is not whether the Savior wants to fulfill His gracious purposes for us, but whether we will open ourselves to receive His healing mercy.

There is simply no way around the truth that how we relate to other people reveals whether we participate in the life our Lord. What we do and refuse to do for neighbors who need our time, attention, and generosity in any form, we do or refuse to do for Him.

We must remember who we are and find our true selves in Him, if we want to avoid the inevitable disintegration of personality and character that comes from slavery to our passions. Then we too will be able to obey with joy the Lord’s command to the formerly demon-possessed man: “Return to your home, and declare all that God has done for you.”

Icons certainly beautify the church, but not simply in the conventional sense of being aesthetically pleasing. Instead, they manifest visually that the Son of God has called and enabled us to become His beautiful living icons. They show that the Savior has made us participants by grace in His deified humanity so that we may shine brightly with the divine glory.

Those who weep like the widow of Nain today should take heart. The Savior has conquered death and shares His great victory with those Who respond to Him with humble faith and repentance. He has made every day of our lives “the day of salvation.”

If we have received the Lord’s mercy, we must extend that mercy to our neighbors, especially those we are inclined to hate, condemn, or otherwise disregard.

If we want to know Christ as the beloved disciple did, then we must learn that our very life is in our brothers and sisters. Loving them and Christ in them is the only way to find liberation from fear in our world of corruption, for it is fear that separates us from one another and keeps us from becoming together the uniquely beautiful persons our Lord created us to become in His image and likeness.

Our songs, processions, and prostrations before our Lord’s Cross are the beginning, not the end, of our discipleship.

It is only by dying to the old ways of death that we may live as His “new creation.”

John the Baptist was unspotted from the world due to the spiritual strength he gained from a life of asceticism and prayer, and he called people to follow him in preparing the way of the Lord as they bore “fruits worthy of repentance” and treated other people with the care appropriate to the children of God.

The darkness roots deeply within us all, both personally and collectively, and nothing but the brilliant glory of the Lord can overcome it. Whether we know it or not, we inevitably sink like stones into the abyss whenever we make anything or anyone else the foundation of our lives.

The feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos calls us to live faithfully as those who have put on Christ like a garment in baptism, been filled with the Holy Spirit in chrismation, and become guests at the heavenly banquet in the Eucharist.

The Feast of Christ’s Transfiguration calls each of us to nothing less than to be transfigured in holiness and shine brilliantly by grace with the light of heaven.

Let us become transfigured in holiness as we pray, fast, repent, and give generously to our neighbors as we become living icons of the Savior’s fulfillment of the human person in the likeness of God.

Like the saints we remember today, let us turn away from such distractions and instead orient ourselves toward the blessedness of a Kingdom that remains not of this world. Let us offer all our blessings back to Him with gratitude, for that is the only way to live as those who know that the good things of this life are not ends in themselves, but points of entrance to eternal life.

We must live distinctive lives that draw others to share in the divine healing that our Lord has made available to all.

Let us live as those who have tasted the living water of the Holy Spirit and know that nothing can truly satisfy us—in this life or in that which is to come—other than uniting ourselves to Christ in holiness.

Today we celebrate the restoration of our true unity in God.

Christ has ascended. Let us go up together with Him as we find liberation from slavery to our passions and share more fully in the salvation that He has brought to the world.

The good news of our Lord’s resurrection extends to everyone and the entire world. The Church directs our attention during the Paschal season to how some very different people came to share in the life of our Lord, such as the disciple Thomas, the Myrrh-Bearing Women, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the paralyzed man. Today we focus on someone who was different from all of them by worldly standards, for they were Jews and she was a Samaritan. We know her in the Church as the Great Martyr Photini, but in that time and place she would have seemed a very unlikely candidate to become a great evangelist of Christ’s salvation.

The paralyzed man embodies our common human condition. Even as those enslaved to the fear of death did not somehow take the initiative in bringing salvation to the world, this fellow did not call out to Christ to help him or even know the Savior’s name. Instead, the Lord graciously reached out to him.

It is easy to assume that we have strong faith when it seems like everything is going our way. All too often, that means that we have come to trust in ourselves for following a religion that we imagine will give us what we want. When difficult struggles come, however, the truth about our weak souls is revealed. Then we come to see that real faith in God is not about serving or congratulating ourselves, but something entirely different.

The season of Pascha has only just begun. Because of His bodily resurrection, we must become holy in our bodies and treat our suffering neighbors accordingly. Let us continue to celebrate by participating as fully as possible in the joy of the empty tomb. Now nothing other than our own refusal can hold us back from becoming truly human, for “Christ is Risen!”

Today we celebrate that the Lord is at hand, for He is coming into Jerusalem as the Messiah, hailed by the crowds as their Savior. He does not come to usher in an earthly reign or to serve any nationalistic or political agenda. He enters Jerusalem on a donkey, a humble beast of burden, carrying no weapons and having no army. He had no well-oiled political machine to tell the powerful people what they wanted to hear or to manipulate the masses. His Kingdom was and is not of this world.

Through the Lord’s great Self-Offering, even the most wretched person may enter into the blessedness of the Kingdom through humble faith and repentance. Even the most notorious sinner may become a glorious saint and shine brightly with eternal glory.

If we are to complete our Lenten journey to our Lord’s Cross and glorious resurrection, we must learn to entrust ourselves to Him as honestly and fully as we possibly can.

The Cross is truly the Tree of Life through which we return to the blessedness of Paradise.

Christ did not offer Himself on the Cross and rise from the dead in order to make us well-adjusted citizens of this world, but to heal every dimension of our brokenness so that we will shine brilliantly with His divine glory.

There are many ways to view ourselves as human beings. All too often, we accept false definitions that we find appealing in light of our passions, weaknesses, and other forms of personal brokenness. When we do so, we set our sights too low, for the Savior became one of us in order to make us perfectly beautiful icons of His salvation.

During Great Lent, we will follow the path that leads back to Paradise.

The path to eternal life runs through our neighbors, especially those we are inclined to overlook, disregard, and even despise. How we treat the hungry and thirsty, the stranger and the naked, the sick and the prisoner reveals the true state of our souls. How we serve our suffering and inconvenient neighbors, whoever they are, is how we serve our Lord.

“The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” The key difference between the Pharisee and the Publican rooted in their hearts and was not simply a matter of their outward behavior or how they appeared to others. Even the despised traitor and thief remained in the image of God and was able to embrace divine mercy when he humbly confessed the truth about his personal brokenness. The Pharisee also bore God’s image, but was so blinded by his slavery to the primordial sin of pride that his spiritual practices lacked integrity and did his soul more harm than good.

Across the centuries, the Lord has raised up such unusual saints in order to shock us out of our complacency about the alleged harmony between the narrow way leading to the Kingdom and what passes for a conventionally respectable life in any time or place.

It is easy for people to fall prey to the passions of fear, worry, and anger in response to the great challenges that our nation and world face today, as well as to those we encounter in our families and in other areas of our lives. In such circumstances, we must not ignore the importance of one of the most basic virtues necessary for human flourishing, namely, gratitude.

As we continue to celebrate Theophany in a world that remains in “the region and shadow of death,” let us focus mindfully on living each day as those who have died to sin and risen with our Lord to a life of holiness. That is how we may wear a garment of light and become living epiphanies of the salvation of the world.

Theophany shows us that Jesus Christ is not merely a great religious teacher or moral example. He is truly God—a member of the Holy Trinity–and His salvation permeates His entire creation, including the water of the river Jordan. Through His and our baptism, we become participants in the holy mystery of our salvation.

Matthew’s description of the family tree prepares us for the kind of Savior we encounter in Jesus Christ. It does not hide that His ancestors sinned greatly, for He came to heal those who had corrupted and weakened themselves by their own disobedience. His family line even included Gentiles, foreshadowing that He would make all with faith in Him heirs to the promise to Abraham. That being the case, the fact that we are sinners does not make it impossible or pointless for us to become the Savior’s living temples. He came to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Mark 2:17). In the remaining days before Christmas, we must simply turn away from evil as we confess our sins and reorient our lives to the Savior, trusting that His healing will extend even to us.

As we prepare to receive the Lord in faith at Christmas, we must use our freedom to follow St. Paul’s instruction in today’s epistle reading: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

Today we commemorate a distinctive person who bore witness in his own life to the healing power of Christ. St. Nicholas lived in the 4th century in what is now Turkey and had a sizeable inheritance from his family, which he gave away in secret to the poor.

Joachim, Anna, and the Theotokos were the complete opposites of the rich man in today’s gospel reading. His only concern was to eat, drink, and enjoy himself because he had become so wealthy. He was addicted to earthly pleasure, power, and success, and saw the meaning and purpose of his life only in those terms. In stark contrast, the Theotokos followed the righteous example of her parents. She was prepared by a life of holiness to agree freely to become our Lord’s mother.

The Lord used the story of the Good Samaritan to show us who we must become if we are truly uniting ourselves to Him in faith.

Both the bleeding woman and Jairus were at the end of their rope. They faced circumstances so dark that they could not imagine how they would be delivered from them. The gravity of their challenges is reflected by how little these characters speak in their encounters with Christ. They did not use many words to show whatever level of faith they had in Him, perhaps because what was at stake was beyond their ability to name.

There is simply no way around the basic truth that how we relate to our neighbors reveals how we relate to our Lord. What we do for even the most miserable and difficult people we encounter in life, we do for Christ. And what we refuse to do for them, we refuse to do for our Savior. Our salvation is in becoming more like Him as we find the healing of our souls by cooperating with His grace. While we do not save ourselves any more than we can rise up by our own power from the grave, we must obey His commandments in order to open our souls to receive His healing mercy and participate in His eternal life.

Instead of obsessing over how we measure up, we should simply focus all our energies on finding healing for our passions as we reorient our disordered desires for fulfillment in God. If we persist in doing so and call out for the Lord’s mercy whenever we stumble and fall, we will come to know the joy of those liberated from the tomb, clothed in the divine glory, and finally in our right minds.

On this feast day of the Holy, Glorious, All-Laudable Apostle and Evangelist Luke, we have an opportunity to celebrate the great witness to the Lord made by the patron saint of our parish. Our small community is named in his honor and memory. We see his image on our iconostasis and regularly ask him to pray for us in the Divine Liturgy. Author of both a gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, as well as an iconographer and a physician, St. Luke died a martyr’s death at the age of 84.

The veneration of icons should prod us all to wrestle with the question of who we are and who we want to become. Too often, however, we think that iconography simply has to do with wood and paint, and we ignore the question of whether we are becoming more beautiful icons of Christ. The icons are not merely examples of religious art, but reminders that to become truly human is to become like Jesus Christ, for He has healed the corruption of the human person that began with the first Adam.

The love to which Christ calls us is not merely an emotion, but a true offering of ourselves for the sake of someone else. It is a self-less offering in which we put the needs and interests our neighbors before our own. It is a personal offering that builds communion with other people and unites us together as those who share a common life. Of course, the basis of such love is the great Self-Offering of Christ, Who enables us all to share in His eternal life as members together of His Body, the Church, as a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Our calling, like that of Peter and the first disciples, is simply to obey Christ’s command to follow Him. When we stumble in doing so, we must cultivate the humble recognition of Peter, who said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

We do not have to burn incense on the altar of a Roman god in order to show that we are ashamed of the Savior. All that we must do is to refuse to take up our crosses as we serve the false gods of this world. It does not take much spiritual insight to see that worshiping idols is quite common and easily done in our time and place.

As we celebrate the Exaltation of the Cross, let us examine ourselves to see if our lives appear foolish and scandalous by the standards of the world because of our faithfulness to Jesus Christ.

As much as we do not like to acknowledge it, Christ’s Kingdom is not about giving us religion or anything else on our own terms. He calls us to offer Him “the fruits [of our lives] in their seasons.”

In response to Christ’s statement about how hard it is for rich people to enter the Kingdom of God, the disciples were amazed and asked, “Who then can be saved?” The Lord responded, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” That is true not only for the wealthy, but for us all.

Growing in humility is the only way for us to find healing for our passions, for our disordered desires ultimately root in the pride of not accepting the truth about who we are before God.

We must never think that the vocation to holiness is reserved exclusively for some people, perhaps the clergy, the monastics, or only the great saints.

It is easy to think that we are spiritually strong and healthy when life is good and things are going our way. It is a very different matter, however, when things are falling apart and we find that we have no place to stand.

None of us has the power to fix today’s problems, but we all have the ability to offer ourselves in seemingly small ways to bless people by listening to them patiently, providing an encouraging word, and sharing our resources as we are able.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reminds us that our words reveal the state of our souls.

As odd as it will sound to many in our culture, Christ does not call us to become successful or powerful by earthly standards, including those of our own society. He calls us to shine with holiness such that His glory radiates through us and illumines a world darkened by sin and death. Doing so requires that we do not rest content with being good citizens or moral people, regardless of how those terms are defined.

The only true response to the challenges we face today is to believe in and confess Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world. If we cultivate the humility necessary to entrust ourselves to Him, then we will gain the spiritual strength not to fall into self-centeredness, fear, resentment, hatred, or other sinful states of soul that are such appealing distractions to facing the truth about ourselves.

People try to serve two masters because they lack the spiritual clarity to see that the good things of the creation are not God’s equals or rivals, but blessings to be offered back to Him for the salvation of the world.

The Lord said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” The only way to shine like a city on a hill or a lamp on a stand in a world darkened by sin is to live in a way that provides a beacon of hope for the fulfillment of the human person in God.

It may seem strange that Orthodox Christianity gives so much attention to martyrs and saints. To speak of those who die for their faith is to recall instances of murder. Why would a religion give so much attention to such an unpleasant subject?

At Pentecost, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit as a sign of the restoration of human persons, both individually and collectively, in the divine image and likeness.

By rising into heavenly glory as the God-Man, Christ has shown us what it means to become truly human in the divine image and likeness.

The man in our gospel reading whose sight the Lord restored had been blind from birth, having known only darkness throughout his life. He symbolizes us all, for until the light of the Savior’s resurrection, humanity had wandered in spiritual blindness and captivity.

St. Photini’s encounter with the Lord was truly transformative. He did not merely give her ideas about religion. He gave her the “Living Water” of the Holy Spirit which made her a participant in eternal life by grace.

The man in today’s gospel reading would never have found healing had he chosen to remain as he had been for thirty-eight years. Lying still for a long time makes us weak and unable to move on our own.

Whenever we give our time, resources, or attention to help anyone who is in need in any way, we embrace an opportunity to serve our Savior and participate more fully in His life.

Fr. Philip LeMasters shares about the reality of Christ's resurrection.

Our calling this week is to enter into the profound contrast between the ways of the world as we know them and the life of our crucified and risen Lord. Especially today, it is easy to focus on what is going wrong, on what we have lost already or may lose in the future.

The One Who trampled down death by death purely out of love for His suffering children will never abandon us. If He can make someone like St. Mary of Egypt radiant with the divine glory through the desert, then there is hope for us all.

“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” The father of the young man in today’s gospel lesson cried out these words with tears in response to the Lord’s statement that “all things are possible to him who believes.” The father in this passage provides a good example of how we should respond to the spiritual challenges posed by our current public health crisis.

Regardless of the particulars of our life circumstances, let us use the challenges posed by the global pandemic as reminders of the folly of making life in this world our false god.

On this second Sunday of Great Lent, we commemorate St. Gregory Palamas, who defended the experience of monks who, in the stillness of prayer from their hearts, saw the Uncreated Light of God.

Lenten practices are not instruments of punishment or legalism, but blessed tools for becoming more fully our true selves as living icons of God.

As we begin our Lenten journey, we remember today how Adam and Eve stripped themselves naked of the divine glory and were cast out of Paradise into a world enslaved by death. During Great Lent, we follow the path that leads back to Paradise.

If we want to approach Lent in a spiritually healthy way that will enable us to participate already in life eternal, we too must offer up ourselves.

In preparing for Great Lent this year, we must remain on guard against the temptation of self-exaltation in any form.

We celebrate the Presentation of Christ forty days after His birth, in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Theotokos and St. Joseph bring the young Savior there in compliance with the Old Testament law, making the offering of a poor family, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the old man St. Simeon proclaims that this Child is the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.” The aged prophetess St. Anna also recognizes Him as the fulfillment of God’s promises.

Given what we do know about the divine mercy we have received, gratitude must become an abiding characteristic of our lives. That means that we must become like the Samaritan leper in today’s gospel reading.

Let us get over our pride and become living epiphanies of the salvation of the One Who was baptized by St. John the Forerunner in the Jordan.

At Theophany, we celebrate that no dimension of our life or world is intrinsically profane or cut off from sharing in the holiness of God. All things, physical and spiritual, visible and invisible, are called to participate in the divine glory that our Lord has brought to the world, to become even now signs of the coming fullness of God’s Kingdom.

The Lord’s genealogy in St. Matthew’s gospel traces the Savior’s human ancestry back through many generations to Abraham. The story of the ancestors of Christ, who helped to prepare the way across the centuries for the incarnation of the God-Man, certainly does not read like a Facebook posting. The Old Testament presents them realistically as unlikely members of His family tree.

In today’s gospel lesson, there were people so used to focusing on their daily routines and worldly responsibilities that they had lost the ability to recognize something new and joyful. One owned real estate, another had animals, and a third was married. Even though these are commonplace conditions, they used them to justify their refusal to accept the invitation to the great party. No one forced them to do so; instead, they excused themselves. As a result, the master commanded his servant to “Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame.” Because there was still room, the master ordered him to go out even further to “the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.”

We are all bent over and crippled in profound ways in relation to the Lord, our neighbors, and even ourselves. The good news of Christmas is that the Savior is born to set us free from captivity to decay, corruption, and weakness.

Christ came to restore sight to the blind beggars of the world. Let us embrace the disciplines and spirit of the Nativity Fast in ways that will help us see that that is precisely who we are. Let us acquire the humility necessary to receive and share the peace that He was born to bring to the world. That is how we must all prepare to welcome Him into our hearts and lives at Christmas.

We have all had experiences in which we have learned uncomfortable truths about ourselves. When that happens, we have a choice about what to do next. It is possible to recognize a weakness or failing and then to do what we can to overcome it. Too often, however, we give up hope and fall into despair due to our hurt pride. That is precisely what the man in today’s gospel lesson did when Jesus Christ gave him a commandment that he lacked the strength to obey: “Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

Fr. Philip LeMasters shares about the rich, foolish farmer. "The barn of the rich fool was a pagan temple in which he worshiped only himself. If we live according to the standards of our world of corruption, we will become just like him by seeking to lay up treasures for ourselves to the point that we will shut ourselves out of the new life that Christ has brought to the world."

It is sobering how easily we can corrupt any good thing, including faith in Jesus Christ. Some people fall into the delusion of thinking that they love God and neighbor, when in reality they serve only themselves. One symptom of doing so is to narrow down the kind of people who count as our neighbors such that we excuse ourselves from seeing and serving Christ in all who bear His image and likeness. When we do so, we disregard not only them, but our Lord Himself. Our actions then reveal that we do not truly have faith in Him because we are only seeking to justify ourselves.

From the story of the healing of the Gadarene demoniac, Fr. Philip LeMasters shares about how we can become our true selves in Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reminds us to keep our attention on Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters shares the story of the raising of the son of the widow of Nain. The Savior has conquered death and shares His great victory with those who respond to Him with humble faith and repentance.

Fr. Philip LeMasters shares about the calling of the Apostles and the Conception of St. John the Forerunner.

Fr. Philip LeMasters speaks about the importance of the Cross.

Fr. Philip LeMasters speaks about our God-given purpose in life on the Feast Day of the Nativity of the Theotokos.

Fr. Philip LeMasters shares from Luke 4:16-22, reminding us that earthly distinctions between different groups of people have no significance in the Kingdom of God.

Fr. Philip LeMasters shares a homily based on this Sunday's Epistle and Gospel readings, reminding us to follow St. Paul's humble obedience to the way of Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters shares a homily based on this Sunday's Epistle and Gospel readings, reminding us to build our lives on the true foundation of Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters gives a homily on the Gospel reading on the feeding of the five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the Feasts of the Transfiguration of our Lord and the Dormition of the Theotokos.

Fr. Philip LeMasters recounts the life of Saint Kyriaki, powerful example of obedience to Jesus Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters shares the story of Saint Timon, and how his parish and the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America help participate in a Sister Diocese relationship with the venerable Archdiocese of Bosra-Hauran.

Fr. Philip LeMasters preaches on the example of the twelve holy apostles who sacrificed all for the sake of following Jesus.

Fr. Philip LeMasters shares the importance of becoming saints in the Orthodox Church.

Fr. Philip LeMasters preaches on the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects upon the significance of the ascension of Jesus into the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

Fr. Philip LeMasters preaches on the Gospel reading of the healing of the Blind Man.

Fr. Philip LeMasters explains the impact of the resurrection of Christ through the story of the Samaritan Woman.

Fr. Philip LeMasters preaches on the healing of paralytic.

Fr. Philip LeMasters preaches on the Gospel reading from Thomas Sunday.

Fr. Philip LeMasters invites us to embrace humility, as did St. Mary of Egypt who became a model of sanctity through the healing of her soul.

Fr. Philip LeMasters describes the way in which we can be blind to Jesus, the Messiah, because he is not what we are looking for.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on faith and doubt and our need for spiritual clarity regarding our own unbelief, on the Fourth Sunday of Lent.

Fr. Philip LeMasters explains how we can become fully alive through taking up our cross and following Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters preaches on the Gospel reading of the healing of the paralytic.

Fr. Philip LeMasters introduces the significance of the Sunday of Orthodoxy and the restoration of the Holy Icons.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reminds us of the purpose of the Great Fast on the Sunday of Forgiveness.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reminds us that the path to the Kingdom of God is through our suffering neighbors.

Fr. Philip LeMasters draws our attention to the estrangement of the prodigal son by his self-centered desire, and the love of the Father upon his return.

Fr. Philip LeMasters considers how the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee relates to our lives today.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the gospel reading from the Sunday of the Canaanite Woman and the persistent humble faith that she exhibited.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to offer our lives in service of the Kingdom of God.

Fr. Philip LeMasters asks, "Can physical things, including our bodies, become holy?"

Fr. Philip LeMasters describes the way that the early Christians, like Zacchaeus, were transformed by their encounter with Jesus Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the important role that Joseph the Betrothed played in the Nativity of Jesus Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters recounts the Christmas story that is for all humanity.

Fr. Philip LeMasters explains our connection with the ancestors of Jesus.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to reflect upon the fulfillment of the promises to the descendants of Abraham in Jesus Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reminds us that our true enemies are the corrupt spiritual powers that tempt us to sin, and our own need to put on the spiritual armor of God.

Fr. Philip LeMasters helps us apply the meaning of the parable of The Rich Fool as we enter the Nativity Fast.

Fr. Philip LeMasters addresses the violence in our world today by reflecting on the call to love our neighbor in the story of Lazarus.

Fr. Philip LeMasters helps us to understand the deeper meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan so that we too can live the Gospel with our Neighbor.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the struggle to believe when the circumstances we face seem overwhelming, growing in faith into the image of Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters teaches us how to gain the spiritual clarity that we need to bear good fruit.

Fr. Philip LeMasters recounts the story of the healing of the widow of Nain, and calls all of us turn to the Lord for the healing of our souls.

Fr. Philip LeMasters shares the story of the conception of St. John the Baptist, and how the troubles of our lives provide us with an additional opportunity to walk by faith.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to take up our cross and walk the way of the cross of Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos.

Fr. Philip LeMasters explains the parable of the Wedding Feast which shows us that Christ came to save the entire world through union with him.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to a life of humility, that goes beyond a prideful legalism, leading to the healing of our souls.

Fr. Philip LeMasters explains the meaning of the parable of the Vineyard and its significance for us today as the new tenants of the vineyard.

Fr. Philip LeMasters draws together the meaning of the Transfiguration of Christ and the Dormition of the Theotokos for our participation in the healing of our corrupt humanity.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to keep our faith firmly fixed in Jesus Christ on St Timon Sunday.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to live as the reflection of the One who is 'Light of the World.'

Fr. Philip LeMasters reminds us that the saints are living reminders that there is hope for healing for each one of us in Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters addresses the healing of our souls in light of the Saints like Sts. Cosmas and Damian the Holy Unmercenaries.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the nativity of St. John the Baptist and it's meaning for us today.

Fr. Philip LeMasters addresses our need to see our challenges in life in light of the Kingdom of God rather than through the lens of anxiety, worry and fear.

Fr. Philip LeMasters explains the significance of the sending of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church.

Fr. Philip LeMasters describes the way in which the Holy Ascension of our Lord provides the way for us to be raised up from the tomb and into heavenly glory.

Fr. Philip LeMasters encourages us to follow the example of St. Photini who repented of her sin without excuse in order to find healing.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to embrace the Good News of our Savior's resurrection over all the corrupting power of sin.

Fr. Philip LeMasters invites us to experience the deep truth of Holy Week as we abide with Christ in His passion.

Fr. Philip LeMasters encourages us to live faithfully before the Lord, as did the Theotokos.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to offer ourselves to the Christ who offered Himself for the life of the world.

Fr. Philip LeMasters explains why Orthodox Christians adore the cross of Jesus Christ.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the opportunity that we are given to become fully human through the transforming grace of God.

Fr. Philip LeMasters explains how the Sunday of Orthodoxy calls us to become living icons of the risen Savior.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to live in a life of genuine forgiveness that is empowered by the divine energy of God.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to enter the fast of Great Lent in order to find the fulfillment of our deep desires in God!

Fr. Philip LeMasters invites us to embrace the courageous humility of the Prodigal Son as we prepare to enter Great Lent.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to open our lives to the Holy God in humility, following the example of the Publican.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus during his baptism and upon His followers as beautiful epiphanies in the world.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the baptism of Christ by the Holy Prophet and Forerunner, John the Baptist.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the genealogy of Jesus, and healing work of redemption that comes through Christ.

Responding to the call to come to the heavenly banquet requires us to leave behind those things to which we are enslaved.

The point of the Christian life is a participation in the healing of the human person, struggling against the forces of evil in our own souls.

As we prepare for the coming nativity of Jesus, we need to follow the example of Blind Bartimaeus who opened his life to the Light of Christ in humility.

Approaching God's requirements as a simple checklist for eternal life will leave us, like the Rich Young Ruler, outside of the great joy of Christmas.

When we become distracted by the indulgence of our passions, we will be like the rich fool who was blind to the ultimate purpose of his life before God.

"Loving our neighbors as ourselves foreshadows the blessedness of the Kingdom where there are no hated foreigners."

Are we so spiritually blind that we are unable to see the resurrected Christ and to offer ourselves to others in sacrificial love?

The woman suffering from a physical ailment that made her ceremonially unclean is an example for us in how to approach Jesus in humility and faith.

Our favorite sins drive us into the isolation of the wilderness, away from the healing power of Jesus. Once healed, the best witness to the transforming power of Christ is the personal story of those set free.

What is the point of our lives according to Jesus?

Who do you think you are? Is it leading you more and more into the likeness of Jesus?

Jesus calls all to take up our cross and follow him for our entire life.

Each one of us are invited into new life in Christ. However, we must be willing to die to those things which hold us back if we are to become a 'new creation' in Christ like the Theotokos.

Self-centeredness is an act of idolatry, addressed by giving of ourselves and our desires to meet the needs of others.

Are you willing to look at what your life truly is like? It is the grace of God that moves us more and more into the life of Christ, crucifying our shame and despair.

Pride is one of the primary hinderances to our life in Christ. Instead, humility accepts the will of God in our lives, like the Theotokos, even if it makes look like fools to the world.

Observing the Feast of the Transfiguration means that we enter into our own change into the likeness of Jesus Christ through the many opportunities provided to us by the Church.

We must open the eyes of our souls to the truth of where we stand before Christ. And then, when we know our own inadequacy, it will be possible to offer ourselves truthfully to Him.

Fr. Philip explains how the hatred and rejection of other people in the name of Godliness leads to the hatred and rejection of our Lord Himself. He also discusses St. Timon and the plight of the people in Syria.

Jesus called his followers to become the light of the world by becoming holy, united through the healing and transforming grace of the One who is the Light of the World.

Being set free from those things which possess us is just the beginning of the process of salvation.

All disciples of Jesus are called to follow Him, in the power of the Holy Spirit, into a new life of holiness.

Christ calls us to ascend with Him into the Kingdom of Heaven, becoming like Him in His holiness even now in the Church.

Each of us are in need of the healing and illumination of our risen Lord, opening the eyes of our souls to himself.

How do you decided whether you measure up or not? Does shame or blame keep us from opening our souls to the new life offered by our Lord?

Along with the paralytic man, Jesus asks us, "Do you want to be healed?" Or have we become so accustomed to our illnesses that we no longer feel the need for healing and transformation?

The Myrrh-Bearers lived a life of service for the flourishing of the Church, much like the early Deacons, modeling the kind of life that all Christians are called to live.

We are called to bear witness of the resurrected Lord, along with St. Thomas, who sought to know Christ through a personal experience with Him.

Why did Jesus come as one of us, entering on the foal of a donkey on his way to the cross?

Entering the final week of Lent, we are reminded once again of our own weakness and failings and our needs for the mercy of God.

During the season of Lent, we are called to crucify our passions and turn from sin so that we can gain the strength to respond like the Theotokos in simple, trusting obedience.

Is the cross a symbol of death or life, victory or defeat? This Lent we are called once again to take up our cross and follow our Savior, setting us free from the fear of death.

How do we break free from the paralysis of our own sin and brokenness? The disciplines of Lent are tools given to us to help us move towards our own salvation.

How can we find joy and healing for our souls as image bearers of God?

Are you prepared to enter the Kingdom of God? If not, the Church calls us to enter through forgiveness into the journey of repentance of Great Lent.

Are we truly becoming partakers of the divine nature? Our actions reveal what is true our about lives, and will be revealed at the last judgment.

Is pride derailing your spiritual life? The season of Great Lent helps us see our need for repentance and humility.

During the coming Lenten season, spiritual disciplines like prayer are intended to help us humble ourselves before the Lord and make us aware how far we are away from God. Pride threatens to weigh us down, while humility lifts us up to God.

The Savior came to heal, bless and sanctify all who bear his image and likeness. Are we living into that healing and blessing?

Does everyone walk the same path of repentance into the Kingdom of God?

We are called to become living epiphanies of God's salvation by offering every dimension of our lives to Christ.

The circumcision of Jesus is a sign that He fulfilled the requirements of the Law, and an invitation for us to receive the circumcision of our own hearts.

Who exactly belongs in the story of Jesus - the perfect as well as the imperfect, the sinner as well as the saint? Perhaps the true meaning of Christmas is more shocking than we first imagined.

Are you prepared to receive the great blessing of the coming of Christ?

What is keeping you "stooped over," hindering you from becoming more like Jesus?

Does your approach to this Advent season reflect an attitude of self-sufficiency, or does it reveal your reliance on the mercy and grace of God in Christ Jesus?

Like the Theotokos, we are called to welcome Christ into our own lives and become the Temple of God.

Does worshipping God in beautiful liturgical services distract us from serving those in need in the world around us? Do we need to pick one over the other?

Are we coming to Christ with a humble and sincere faith? If so, then we too will experience the gracious mercy which Jesus gives to all who reach out to Him in faith.

Jesus Christ gives us back our true identities, making us into faithful witnesses of His redeeming work.

In the story of Jesus raising to life the son of the widow of Nain, we see the author of life entering into the painful realities of our world. We too are called to extend the compassion of Christ to the world around us as living icons of His great mercy and salvation.

Jesus called the Apostles to leave everything to follow Him and become fishers of men. And He calls all of us to take up our cross and follow Him right in the midst of our daily lives, making those places of weakness and failure become occasions of beauty and blessing.

Are we participating in the new creation that Christ offers to us through his life, death and resurrection?

How quickly are we to forgive those who have wronged us in some way?

Are you keeping your eyes on Jesus when the stormy seas of life stir up the fear of death?

The dormition of the Theotokos is an icon of our hope for eternal life.

Are you stumbling around in spiritual darkness? Prayer is how we open the darkness of our soul to the brilliant light of Christ, presenting ourselves in faith for His healing.

Fr. Philip calls us to actively engage in the journey towards the Kingdom of God through the Dormition Fast.

Fr. Philip encourages us to be the light of the world by serving Christ in our immediate circumstances.

Fr. Philip calls us to become vessels of the shocking love of God that is the salvation of the world.

Fr. Philip calls us to endure suffering in striving for the salvation of our souls as modeled by St. Joseph of Damascus.

Fr. Philip calls us to engage in the practices of prayer, fasting and generosity - the basic building blocks of Christian faithfulness.

Like the Saints, our path to holiness will be through the daily struggle to be faithful in small ways that few will notice or celebrate.

Fr. Philip reminds us of the significance of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church.

Are we ascending in holiness with Christ through the pains and challenges of this world?

Are you experiencing healing from the blinding power of sin and death through the resurrection of Jesus?

Do you understand the Gospel as being good news for all, even for those whom you hate?

Fr. Philip challenges us to respond in humble obedience to the resurrected Christ, following the example of the Myrrhbearers.

On Thomas Sunday, we are reminded that Christ rose victoriously with his wounds and that we too may bring our bodily limitations and challenges into the redeeming light of the risen Christ.

Fr. Philip invites us to follow Jesus through his passion, bringing victory through the cross.

Fr. Philip calls us to a life of repentance like St Mary of Egypt.

On this Sunday of "The Ladder of Divine Ascent," by St. John Climacus, we are called to ever greater heights of union with God by lowering ourselves through humble repentance.

Fr. Philip encourages us at this midpoint of Great Lent to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

Fr. Philip remembers St. Gregory Palamas by calling us to bring our whole personhood - body, soul and spirit - into our relationship with God.

Fr. Philip encourages us to find ourselves in the story of the Prodigal Son, and to come home to the Father who is ready to forgive.

Fr. Philip calls us to begin the journey into Great Lent with the mindset of the Publican rather than the self-righteousness of the Pharisee.

Fr. Philip calls us to open our eyes to those areas of our own lives which need to change, as we become children of light.

Fr. Philip challenges the foolishness of pursuing wealth, power and politics in place of the true salvation of our lives.

The story of the Good Samaritan calls us to treat everyone as our neighbor through the love of God for the whole world.

We must accept a kind of death in order to become our true selves—one that includes a rejection of legalism and self-justification.

Fr. Philip explores the significance of St. Luke, the patron saint of his parish.

We must tend or care for the seeds and the growing plants of our souls if they are to have any realistic hope of producing a good crop.

Becoming a blessing to others is the way to be blessed ourselves.

Have you lost your sense of wonder at God's presence in your life?

To be Christ's disciple requires taking up a cross, denying oneself, and losing one's life in the world.

To believe in the power of Christ's Cross is to bet our lives on His sacrificial offering.

Our baptismal garment gives a profound responsibility throughout our lives to live in a way that shines with the divine glory—that radiates the light of Christ to a world so filled with darkness, death, and despair.

Many times in the Bible, cultivated land is a sign of our relationship with God.

It is a mistake to approach the life in Christ as a list of chores to be checked off.

The Feast of the Dormition calls us to embrace the fullness of life—the deepest reality of what it means to be a human being in the world as we know it.

Contrary to many contemporary Christians, Jesus and the Apostles did not seek a happy or successful life.

Christ does not ask us to fix our own personal problems, much less to end wars or feed thousands. All that he asks us to do is offer what little we can to Him for blessing with the faith that He will do with it what is best.

In order to accomplish anything, we have to accept who we are, stay focused, and faithfully fulfill the duties that our particular calling gives us. Otherwise, we will likely fail in what we set out to do.

Jesus Christ calls his followers to something much more profound than being friendly, decent, or thoughtful.

In the name of freedom, we easily enslave ourselves to our own desires and passions in ways that make it very hard to set things right once again.

Fr. Philip reflects on the lives and witness of the early Christian martyrs and saints in Rome.