On March 3, Fr. James was invited to deliver a homily at a Community Lenten Service at St. William’s Catholic Church. The text he was asked to speak from was Matthew 20:17-28. What follows is that homily. Many thanks to St. William’s and its pastor, Fr. George Kloster, for their gracious invitation [...]
We are at the midpoint, more or less, of a deeply festive season. We have welcomed the Infant Jesus into the world, in the cold silence of a Bethlehem night. We have joined the shepherds and the angels, the Magi and the beasts of the field, in adoration of God made flesh. In the joy [...]
The last Divine Liturgy celebrated by Fr. Alexander Schmemann was on the morning of Thanksgiving in 1983. He fell asleep in the Lord not long after, on December 13. That his final liturgy should occur on Thanksgiving Day was particularly appropriate since Father Alexander had devoted his whole life to teaching, writing and [...]
Here in the church there is the one thing needful: Here is a refuge from the vanity and the storms of life. Here is the calm harbor for souls seeking after salvation. Here is incorruptible food and drink for the soul. Here is the light that enlightens all men existing upon earth. Here is the [...]
To believe that God exists is one thing, to know God another. — St. Silouan the Athonite
The same field shown in our header photograph
A slightly different perspective
The pasture where we walk the dogs
The Lord dwelleth in the flood, yea, the Lord shall sit as king forever. — Psalm 28 (LXX)
Well, it wasn’t on a par with the great Atlanta flood of several weeks ago, but I left the house this morning to discover that places that I haven’t seen flooded in years and years were, in fact, [...]
Yesterday was the Feast Day for St. Nectarios, a wonderful saint of the 20th century. He was one of that astonishing group of modern day saints with which Greece was blessed over the last century. I can think of a half dozen or so, and my memory is famously deficient. I love [...]
Archangels, and a suffering woman, Part 2
The icon of the Archangel Michael stands at the front of the church. He is strong, very clearly a force to be reckoned with. Angels are the messengers of God, but that does not make them cute and cuddly. One has to wonder if they ever get tired of [...]
Archangels, and a suffering woman
Today is the day that we commemorated the Archangel Michael and the other bodiless Powers of Heaven, so at Liturgy this morning we had two Gospel readings. One concerned the Angels (Luke 10:16-21), while the other was the story of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the issue of blood (Luke [...]