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To celebrate the great Pascha of the Lord is to accept the life freely bestowed upon us, and to extend its light into our lives day by day. For Christ is truly risen. This defines the value of existence in a world given the calling to strive to belong to God alone. One characteristic of ...
Read moreThis paralytic man is a third narrative among the stories of the Paschal Sundays. We have already gone through two stories in the first two Sundays: the story of Thomas and that of the Myrrh-Bearers, and we are left with two stories, the Samaritan Woman and the Blind Man. A paralytic without any hope in ...
Read moreWe gathered to discuss the event of Jesus' appearance to His disciples and to Thomas (John 20:19-31). The brother whose turn it was to speak to us, led us with words that revive the heart. What struck him first was that the disciples, after Jesus appeared to them and commissioned them with what God the ...
Read moreThe forty-day lenten fast existed to put our inner house in order; our house, meaning our hearts and lives in Christ, in all their details and intricacies. The fast, now concluded, was founded upon three things: asceticism, Word, and offerings. These are our provisions after the feast; rather, they are our "Noah's Ark" in this ...
Read moreTwo days ago, I asked about what remains for us of Lent after we reach Pascha. My answer was that the spirit of Lent is our life which we spend with the power of Pascha. Christianity encompasses two dimensions of commitment, one communal and one individual. One does not cancel the other out, and the ...
Read moreLent was a journey to the Light. After today, what remains of it for us? To carry with us what He had graciously bestowed upon us, meaning to live our entire lives with Pascha set before us. The Holy Fathers have depicted, with definite eloquence, that, during Great Lent, we are journeying to Pascha with ...
Read moreThe forty-day fast practically ends on this day. Tomorrow, after we follow Jesus in His entry into Jerusalem, the Church will call us to join another fast, the "Great Week Fast", which used to be, in ancient times, the preparatory fast for Pascha. The convergence of the two fasts, the forty-day fast and the Great ...
Read moreThe forty-day fast served to heighten awareness that “the will of God is our sanctification”. When the Church presented Jesus calling His disciples on the first Sunday of Lent, she revealed the inception of this saving will. On the second Sunday, she brought into view the second step that follows the disciples' call. Jesus was ...
Read moreLent is described in tradition as a battlefield for spiritual warfares. It serves as a ground to expose darkness and repent of it. It is both a battlefield and a weapon. The darkness that besieges us in our days, is summoned by Lent to its tribunal for scrutiny. Weariness, sloth, anger, and doubt through which ...
Read moreIt has become an annual tradition for me to read, on days like these, Father Alexander Schmemann's book "The Great Lent". The book is of paramount importance, whether in terms of knowledge, as it pertains to the "Triodion period," or the author's ability to delve into our depths, in order to provide us with the ...
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