Sermons & Homilies
The parable of the Prodigal Son is the most touching and poignant image of the Christian life of repentance. That is why the Fathers chose this parable to frame the service of monastic tonsure. Because monastic life is the Christian life of repentance in its fulness and perfection. For those of us whom God has vouchsafed the mystery of monastic tonsure, it is impossible to hear the troparion for this day without a feeling of deep compunction.
Christ is risen! My brothers and sisters, what a blessed and glorious thing is the gift of light! At the beginning of the creation of the world, the very first words spoken by the Lord God were precisely: “Let there...
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We have just finished the super-abundant festivities of Bright Week, where every day is Pascha and now, while it is still Paschatide for another month, we turn the dial down a little bit. Thomas Sunday is a good time to reflect on the nature of faith and doubt because all of us at one point or another in our life will run up against doubts.
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My brothers and sisters, today we have already reached the final Sunday of Great Lent. In only a few short days, we will once again see Christ resurrecting Lazarus the Four Days Dead; we will once again follow Him as He makes His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; we will once again become witnesses to the great and fearsome events of Holy Week; and finally, we will once again share together in the incomparable joy and exultation of Pascha night. But today, on this last Sunday of the Fast, the Holy Church sets before our eyes that which is the spiritual crown of the entire Lenten season: the life of our Holy Mother Mary of Egypt.
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For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). Beloved, we have spent the first couple weeks of the new year celebrating the beginning of Christ’s march against the devil and his works. The Church offers us these bright feasts now to start the new year off in triumph.
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