Category: Liturgical Seasons

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Reflections on the Second Sunday in Advent

[I am indebted to Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon for many of the remarks on the Revelation to John from his new book Revelation – a Liturgical Prophecy]

In Advent we look to the first and second comings of our Lord simultaneously.  We look at past and future to shape our present – to fashion our way of life.

Our daily office readings reflect this perspective, as we read Genesis to look at our distant past, I Kings to reflect on the later monarchical history of Israel, Mark’s Gospel to focus on our Lord’s first coming to us, and the Revelation to John which looks both at his present and ahead to the end of the ages.  In our Gospel for today, Jesus points to the future in the sort of language we associate with the Revelation – apocalyptic – unveiling.

Continue reading “Reflections on the Second Sunday in Advent”
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Reflections on the Season of Advent

Advent has challenges for us, which seem to increase every year.  I remember over 40 years ago one of my first “children’s sermons” at the first church I served in Arkansas.  I wasn’t too savvy about such things, and began the sermon on 1 Advent with a question: “Who can tell me what season this is?” A young nimrod raised his hand, and offered “It’s duck season, Father!”  Well, I couldn’t argue with that, but I never appreciated the practice of getting up before dawn to sit in the cold waiting for a duck to pass within reach of your shotgun.  It always seemed just an excuse to try to keep yourself warm by imbibing other “spirits”.

I later realized he had given a spiritual answer after all – Advent really is “duck” season. Continue reading “Reflections on the Season of Advent”

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Reflections on the Sunday Next Before Advent

On this transition Sunday between Trinitytide and Advent, we have a Gospel which is also from mid-Lent: St. John’s account of the feeding of the 5,000.  It is used today for its closing words: “this is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.”  They refer to a passage from Dt. 18:18-19.

These words of Moses were plainly Messianic, for only one would fulfil this announcement of his successor.  St. Peter in Acts 3:22 and St. Stephen in Acts 7:37 recognize the fulfillment of Moses’ words.  It is expounded as well in Hebrews 3:2-6.  This was clearly part of the Apostolic preaching and teaching, which shows the importance of Moses’ prophecy. Continue reading “Reflections on the Sunday Next Before Advent”

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Reflections on the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity

On the final Sundays of the Trinity Season, the Church has traditionally looked at the coming new liturgical year as an annual time of repentance; and hence the theme of our Collect:

O Lord, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offences: that through thy bountiful goodness we may all be delivered from the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ‘s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour: who liveth and reigneth with thee, and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end.  Amen. Continue reading “Reflections on the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity”

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Reflections on the Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity

We have been focused on our walk during these weeks of Trinity season – on the believer’s pattern of life, how he conducts himself.  The pattern for our life is not contained in a written code of precepts & rules covering every possible contingency of life, but in a walk.  It is a walk patterned on the life of the Lord Jesus, and, as St. Paul states here, on the lives of His Saints: those who embody the sanctity of life which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit: “BRETHREN: Be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an example.” Continue reading “Reflections on the Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity”

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Reflections on the Tenth Sunday after Trinity

We’ve all heard of the pace-setting mega-churches, with coffee bars, food courts, gift shops, athletic programs, day care, auto repair and convenience banking, in buildings that look like shopping malls; with “worship” that consists of soft rock praise choruses, ‘special music’, videos, and upbeat, entertaining ‘messages’ that pander to the felt needs of those who have come. Continue reading “Reflections on the Tenth Sunday after Trinity”

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Reflections on the Eighth Sunday after Trinity

“We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”

We, who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, owe nothing any longer to the flesh. 

The flesh, from the Greek, sarx, is synonymous in the Biblical and Patristic literature with the “world”, not the created cosmos, but the life of the passions – the world opposed to God. Continue reading “Reflections on the Eighth Sunday after Trinity”

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Reflections on the Seventh Sunday after Trinity

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Our Orthodox Faith commits us to an Apostolic and Patristic form of Christianity.  We are committed to Holy Scripture as the ultimate source of our authority for faith and life, and to the catholic consensus of the interpretation of the Scriptures of the Apostles the Fathers and the Bishops of the Church. Part of the Patristic mind has to do with the understanding of sin. For most modern Christians, sin is a matter of doing bad things, which creates a debt to God, and which somebody has to pay off.  They believe that Jesus paid the debt for our sins on the Cross – paid the Father, that is, so we would no longer bear the penalty.

The Fathers of the church have a rather different understanding of Christ’s saving work.  Continue reading “Reflections on the Seventh Sunday after Trinity”

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Reflections on the Sixth Sunday after Trinity

BRETHREN:  So many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection… Continue reading “Reflections on the Sixth Sunday after Trinity”