The Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos (August 15)
In August the Church celebrates the end of Mary’s earthly life, her death, known as her Falling Asleep or Dormition, a word in which dream, blessedness, peace, calm, and joy are all united.
We know nothing of the circumstances surrounding the death of Mary, Jesus Christ’s mother. Various…
June 30: Synaxis of the Twelve Holy Apostles: Peter, Andrew, James & John the sons ofZebedee, Phillip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Judethe brother of James, Simon & Matthias
Apolytikion in the Third Tone
O Holy Apostles, intercede to our merciful God, that He may grant our souls forgiveness of sins.
Kontakion in the Second Tone
O…
THE FEAST OF PENTECOST
In the Church’s annual liturgical cycle, Pentecost is “the last and great day.” It is the celebration by the Church of the coming of the Holy Spirit as the end – the achievement and fulfillment – of the entire history of salvation. For the same reason, however, it is also the celebration of…
Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women
Listening to the account of Christ's crucifixion and death during Holy Week, I am invariably struck by one detail in the story: the loyalty to the very end of a handful of people, mostly women, about whom the gospels tell us almost nothing else. What we do know is that…
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT OF DEATH
“He suffered and was buried. And He rose again...” After the Cross, after the descent into death there is the Resurrection from the dead — that principal, fundamental and decisive confirmation of the Symbol of Faith, a confirmation from the very heart of Christianity. Indeed “if Christ is not risen, then your faith is…
GREAT AND HOLY SATURDAY
This is the Blessed Sabbath
The "Great and Holy Sabbath" is the day which connects Good Friday, the commemoration of the Cross with the Day of His Resurrection. To many, the real nature and the meaning of this "connection," the very necessity of this "middle day" remains obscure. For a good majority of…
GREAT AND HOLY FRIDAY
Friday: The Cross
From the light of Holy Thursday we enter into the darkness of Friday, the day Christ's Passion, Death and Burial. In the early Church this day was called "Pascha of Cross," for it is indeed the beginning of that Passover or Passage whose whole meaning will be gradually revealed to…
Palm Sunday: The Entrance
The Saturday of Lazarus from the liturgical point of view is the pre-feast of Palm Sunday - the Entrance of Our Lord into Jerusalem. Both feasts have a common theme; triumph and victory. Saturday reveals the Enemy, which is Death. Palm Sunday announces the meaning of victory as the triumph of…
Saint Mary of Egypt
While we don’t know about the very early years of her life, we do know that she lost her virginity at age twelve and ran away from home. For the next seventeen years she was a slave to her insatiable appetite for sexual perversions, including sexual encounters with “young men,” even…
THE FEAST OF THE ANNUNCIATION TO THE MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS
The Feast of the Annunciation is one of the earliest Christian feasts, and was already being celebrated in the fourth century. There is a painting of the Annunciation in the catacomb of Priscilla in Rome dating from the second century. The Council of Toledo in 656…