Fr. James Guirguis
Rating: 10|Votes: 2
In today's gospel we are witnesses to another encounter of Jesus with a family that has suffered. A father has just brought his son to the Lord Jesus because he is an epileptic who “suffers terribly”. This father has to bring his son to Jesus Christ because the Lord's disciples had failed to heal the boy. After the Lord has healed the boy, the disciples are curious as to why He was able to heal when they were unable to do so. Jesus' answer to them is also an answer to many of our problems “because you have no faith.”
Archpriest Artemy Vladimirov
Such was the humility more honorable than the seraphim and more glorious beyond compare than the cherubim of her whose purity exceeds that of the angels and astonished the heavenly moral perfections. Such was her humility, her modest self-esteem, that she supplicated the Creator to ban the fallen spirits from access to her all-chaste soul. The Queen of Heaven knew that the ascent from earth to heaven is the final exam and trial which you and I shall invariably undergo—one sooner, another later, but we are all behooved once to die and then to appear at the judgment seat of Christ. This is why the feast of the Dormition is so important for every one of us.
Fr. Ted Bobosh
The recent Holy And Great Orthodox Council in Crete inspired me to read about another Orthodox council, The Moscow Council (1917-1918) from a book written by Hyacinthe Destivelle. This Council was held in the midst of most interesting and tumultuous times as Russia was in the spasms of its revolution which would overthrow the dominant social order of their empire. The Church leaders and membership at times resisted the changes, at times prompted the changes and at times was pushed and carried along by the changes.
Jesse Dominick
Rating: 7,3|Votes: 15
The theology of creation and salvation in Orthodox Christianity upholds the centrality and kingship of mankind while simultaneously embracing a cosmological vision that is largely absent in western Christendom. A common characteristic of all creation is corruption and death, and yet we are told that God is not the author of death, and that all of creation awaits its redemption through the revealing of the saints, when all of heaven and earth will be united to God. Within this framework, St. Maximus the Confessor is recognized as a theological and spiritual giant by the Orthodox Church. In his two troparia he is hailed as an “enlightener of the universe” and a “herald of the faith.”
St. Tikhon of Zadonsk
Rating: 8,4|Votes: 8
He who hearkens to the word of God does not hearken to man, but to God Himself; and he who does not hear the word of God and does not live according to the word of God, the same man God, Who speaks through His Word, does not hear. Let us listen to the Son of God, as the Heavenly Father exhorts us, and having laid aside all earthly cares, may every one take up his cross which will be given by Him, and follow after Him that He may guide us to His Heavenly Father.