This Sunday, the third of Great Lent, is the Sunday of the Cross. On Saturday evening the Cross, decorated with flowers, is brought from the Holy Altar into the center of the church where it will be venerated by the faithful throughout the fourth week of the Fast. Hymns to the Cross are scattered throughout the various services of the Orthodox Church. There are hymns daily at the Ninth Hour because at that hour our Lord through the Cross opened the way to Paradise. There are

Love God as he commanded you to love Him, and not as self-deluded daydreamers think they love Him. Do not fabricate raptures for yourself, do not excite your nerves, do not inflame yourself with a material fire, with the fire of your blood. The sacrifice pleasing to God is humility of heart, contrition of spirit. With wrath does God turn away from sacrifices offered with self-confident presumption, with a proud opinion of oneself, though the sacrifice be a whole burnt offerin

This Sunday, the first of Great Lent, is the Sunday of Orthodoxy, otherwise known as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. The celebration of this Sunday as a feast goes back to the year 843 and the final victory of the veneration of icons over the those who had destroyed icons and persecuted, imprisoned, and killed those who venerated them. A traditional part of the services for this feast is the procession with icons and, in churches where a bishop serves, the solemn proclamation of th

Great Lent is before us! Sunday afternoon we will serve Forgiveness Vespers and Monday begins the Great Fast. The Church has always understood this season as a spiritual springtime, a season when our cold hearts are thawed and the new life of Christ begins to bloom within us. For this to happen, though, it is essential for us to expose ourselves to the warmth and light that the Lenten season brings us. Fasting is an important component of this, but mere dietary restrictions a

It is, I believe, most fitting that the Church, in preparing us for Great Lent, follows the Sunday of the Prodigal Son immediately with the Sunday of the Last Judgment. Fitting because, like a diptych, it causes us to see the two parables together, in relation to one another, a seeing that should, perhaps, create within us a certain tension. We don’t like tension that much. And in the American (meaning primarily Protestant) context, theologically speaking, I think it is fair