Sermons & Homilies
Meditation on the most beautiful life (κάλλιστος βίος) and care of the soul render men good and God-loving. For he who seeks God finds Him by overcoming desire in all things, not shrinking from prayer. Such a man does not fear demons.
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I’m struck every year at how different Theophany is from the feast of Nativity. These two feast used to be one, and the services for both share many structural similarities, yet for all that, the spiritual character, the flavor, the personality of each is completely different.
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Christ is born! Let us fall down and weep before Him Who has created us! Let us beg for a new beginning! For He receives the humble, He receives the repentant, He receives those who are sick and bound and sinful, in need of a Healer!
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The favor of God is evident towards those born into the Jewish nation and especially into the direct lineage of Christ; however, the means through which one draws near to God has never changed despite one’s birth into a particular race or nation. Nor should one conclude that he finds favor with the Lord due to wealth, one’s station in life, or assume that he has found favor as evidenced by prolonged health.
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Today we celebrate the memory of the Venerable Herman of Alaska, the patron saint of North America. There is so much that is praiseworthy in the life of this man of God that one hardly knows where to begin. He was an ascetic who dwelt as an anchorite in the forests from the time of his early childhood. He was a zealous missionary who, like the righteous Abraham, left his home and his fatherland for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, not for himself only but for all of us who have received the precious gift of Orthodoxy on this continent. Though a hermit and a lover of solitude, he nevertheless joyfully took care of his orphans and fearlessly defended the native Aleuts from exploitation by his own people. He was a monk who, out of his deep humility, refused ordination to the priesthood, and so was sent an angel from heaven on the day of the Lord’s Theophany to bless holy water for him. He was a man who lived so wholly in the Kingdom of Heaven even during this earthly life that, when asked whether he ever grew lonely living by himself in his island hermitage, he could not even comprehend how such a thing could be possible, surrounded as he was by such a countless host of angels.
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