The words of Jesus often strike us as paradoxical: To be free, you must be a slave, to live you have to die, to be great, you must be humble! Hundreds of books have been written trying to understand the paradox of Jesus and His influence on humanity. The...
"We have an eye witness." Well, that got his attention. You see I was helping with an investigation with a recent spate of home burglaries in the area and we had caught a suspect in one of the neighborhoods where this was happening. This young man had been very...
Telly Savalas was one of my favorite actors as a kid. I loved his "Who loves ya, baby" catchphrase when he played detective Kojak on his TV show! Wait, you don't know who Telly Savalas is? Well, I am an old man, so perhaps he was before your time! What isn't...
Sin is boring! It really is. Because of my ordination and the blessing of the bishop, I am blessed to hear confessions from the faithful. Hearing confessions, I confess, is one of the most wonderful, challenging, and rewarding part of my priesthood. And the reason is I get invited into...
"Do you pray to Zeus?" What? Yep, the lady was serious when she found out I was a Greek Orthodox priest, she wondered if we prayed to Zeus! Holy Moly! "No, ma'am" I said. "We are lovers of Jesus Christ, and actually we are the first Christians." She was...
"Being precedes doing!" I heard the phrase and thought to myself "I'm not sure I understand what that is suppose to mean?" And, as I listened to the speaker longer, my confusion just grew. I think what the professor was trying to say was our actions flow from who we...
Welcome to the second day of the Dormition Fast! The wisdom of the fasting disciplines of the Church are meant to reinforce the reality that unless the faith is holistically practiced, that is it affects every aspect of your person, the real danger of compartmentalization exists! I know this...
Everybody else was squirming. They were obviously having a hard time with the information and seemed to rather have been elsewhere. But I was at peace. It just made sense to me, I guess. Some of you know the story of how I entered the Orthodox Church. I was a...
“Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?” You can almost hear the sneer in this question to Jesus in the passage for today! And, frankly, it’s a good question. You see, as a Church, we Orthodox place a great deal of confidence in the consistent witness...
I know it is a bit “old-fashioned” and it may be hard for those of this generation to understand, but the timeless message of the Faith is that we are called to battle and tame the passions SO THAT they are our servants and never our masters! So what...
