Archive for March 2019

When you think of Great Lent, you should think about your spiritual health. When we are not healthy, we call our doctor. After the doctor examines our condition, he offers his opinion on what we must do to get better. He may even write a prescription for our benefit. At that point, it is up…

Great Lent is almost half-way over, and by now you are “feeling the pain” of the Fast, even  if only in your stomach. One of the blessings of Great Lent, any fast really, is that it helps us to learn an important lesson about struggle. No matter what we are struggling with, the struggle never…

If you are a parent, then you know the feeling of watching your children, wondering if they will need you to come to their rescue. Whether they are swimming for the first time, riding a bike for the second time, or just living life as a child, you know that at any moment, you children…

It doesn’t matter what life throws your way, God is always looking out for us. At difficult times in our life, it may not be noticeable that God is watching over us, but indeed He is. Most often we realize this through the rearview mirror of life, when we realize that God had never left…

Yesterday was the Feast of the Annunciation of the Theotokos by the Archangel Gabriel. Being one of the Twelve Great Feasts, and a Feast of the Lord, Great Lent (sort of) took a day off yesterday. From the way we ate to the what Scriptures we read and how we celebrated Divine Liturgy, it was…

In the Gospel reading for the Second Sunday of Great Lent, the Church draws our attention to the benefit of Church in our struggle to reach Christ. Contrary to what we might think, we need the Church in order to reach Christ, just as the paralytic man needed his friends in order to reach Christ.…

This week we have been discussing the ways in which we can experience the energies of God. Since our ancestors were removed from the Garden, humanity has experienced the energy of God not as love, but as punishment. I have often compared it to how children experience the love of their parents trying to keep…

I hear it too often. “You don’t have to be in Church to pray to God.” “You can find God in the beauty of His creation.” “God doesn’t care whether we say the right prayers. He just wants us to be nice to other people.” These catch phrases are common coming from those who, simply…

When it comes to Great Lent, while our attention is sometimes overly focused on fasting, we tend to forget that fasting is supposed to lead to righteousness, not just a diet. As we pause mid-week in this second week of Great Lent, to attend Presanctified Liturgy and receive Holy Communion, we are faced with a…

Today we begin the second week of Great Lent, and I invite you to reflect on how last week ended up? Did it end up like my week because you fell short of your goals? Did last week finish with you being thankful you made it through by the skin of your teeth? Either way,…