Friends, I am convinced that we - all of us: men, women, and children - need to read the Scriptures more than we do. To that end I am suggesting a one-year reading plan for 2018 which I will attach with the bulletin this week. To emphasize the importance of this endeavor I am beginning the year with this good word from St John Chrysostom. -Fr John I also always entreat you, and do not cease entreating you, not only to pay attention here to what I say, but also when you are a

Since these things [humanity’s fallen condition; JW] required a greater help, they also obtained something greater. It was the Word of God himself, the one who is before the ages, the invisible, the ungraspable, the incorporeal, the Principle from the Principle, the light from the light, the source of life and immortality, the imprint of the archetypal beauty, the immutable seal, the undistorted image, the definition and explanation of his Father. He approaches his own image

The above is a translation of the kontakion of the Nativity/Christmas composed by St Romanos the Melodist in the late 5th or early 6th century. Originally this kontakion was one stanza of a much larger work which might best be described as a sung homily. As Archimandrite Ephrem Lash, the translator of many of St Romanos’ kontakia describes it, “The main body of a kontakion was chanted from the pulpit by the preacher after the reading of the gospel, while a choir, or even the

The first kontakion of St Romanos the Melodist on the Nativity is well known and much loved. His lesser known second kontakion on the Nativity, however, is also worthy of attention. This dramatic sung-homily opens with the Mother of God singing praises to the newborn child in her arms whom she acknowledges as the “immutable Word that became flesh.” Eve, in Hades, hears the song of praise and rouses Adam from his sleep to tell him the good news. Initially hesitant because he h

from The Roots of Christian Mysticism by Olivier Clement The ancient Greeks, to symbolize a true meeting, used to use a split ring whose two separate halves were joined together again. In Christ the world is joined together again in symbol, in a profusion of symbols. The invisible part appears in the visible: the visible draws its meaning from the invisible. Each symbolizes the other in the 'house of the world', of which God is the 'eccentric centre', being radically transcen