December 29, 2014

What images are conjured up in your mind when you think of someone who may be a prostitute? What if we talk about “teen or child prostitution?” In our over-sexed society, it’s incredible about how some people try to soften the images and perceptions we may have of prostitution by talking about “sex workers” or “erotic escorts and dancers.” Read more »

December 22, 2014

No matter how materially successful we become, no matter what high position we attain, no matter how famous we are or think we are, there comes a day of reckoning. And that time came for Zacchaeus! He came face to face with Christ, and the contrast between the two couldn’t have been more stark. Read more »

December 15, 2014

Today on Godparents and Grandparents Sunday, I want each of us to reflect upon the legacy or inheritance we are leaving our children, grandchildren and godchildren. Don't think only how you will divide up your financial portfolio, but how will you pass on our Orthodox Christian faith! Read more »

December 07, 2014

Last Sunday, we witnessed a beautiful expression of this desire for unity when Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Francis came together to celebrate the feast of St. Andrew at the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople/Istanbul. Read more »

November 30, 2014

Do we have modern day apostles? Who are those who leave their homelands to live in foreign cultures around the world, offering a witness of love and hope to those in need? Read more »

November 23, 2014

Being “Rich Towards God.” What does that mean? Are you, or am I, “Rich Towards God?” Read more »

November 16, 2014

Do you know that of all the themes that Jesus preached and taught about, he talked more about riches and treasures and money than he did about other such themes as prayer and fasting? You see, the topic of money, and specifically good stewardship of all we have, is a spiritual topic, because Christ understood well that where our treasure is, our heart will be also! Read more »

November 09, 2014

What does your Christian Faith, and the Orthodox Church herself, mean to you? Think about that for a moment? How would you value your faith and the Church? In other words, where do you place your relationship with Jesus Christ in your life? What have you received from Christ Himself, and how have you been blessed by His Church? Read more »

November 02, 2014

Do we notice the “Other,” those who are different than ourselves? Or when we notice that they are different than us, how do we look upon them? How do we treat them? Read more »

October 19, 2014

Twenty years ago yesterday, on the feast of my patron Saint Luke the Evangelist, I was ordained to the priesthood in Tirana, Albania by His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios. Faith and I began our ministry in Albania, and served there for 10 and a half years. We are now approaching 10 years of service here in Webster. Read more »

October 13, 2014

Lent is a season when the Church challenges us to live up to our Christian faith. That which we profess with our mouths on Sunday, we are asked to live out in our lives throughout the week – within our families, among our friends and even strangers, in the workplace, during our hobbies and entertainment, everywhere. Of course, we’re supposed to live out our faith each and every day throughout our lives, but we all realize how hard that is to do. And sometimes we need a special reason, a little “push,” an added incentive, to get us back on track in our spiritual journey. Read more »

October 06, 2014

Our God is a God of wonders and miracles. He is not bound by the very laws of nature which He Himself has established. Sometimes in our contemporary, secular and materialistic world we try to insist that science and reason are the only source of truth. Yet we know that the Creator of all stands above all. The miracle of the Kardiotisa icon is just one small example of the unfathomable mysteries of life and of the Creator of Life, God Himself! Read more »

September 29, 2014

JUST LIVE IT! Just WALK It. Just TALK It. Just TEACH It. Just PRAY it. Just GIVE It. Just SHARE It. Just LOVE It. “Be Doers of the Word, and not just Hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” Read more »

September 22, 2014

When we ask God for something, how do we do it? Do we demand? Do we plead? Do we try to bargain? Or compromise? With what attitude do we typically approach God? Read more »

September 15, 2014

How strong is your faith? Have you thought about how your faith has changed over the years? Have you nourished it and has it grown over, say, the last 10 years, or has it weakened and withered and become more uncertain? Read more »

September 08, 2014

One day 50 years ago, after suffering many years in the work camps of Siberia, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, the famous Russian intellectual and dissident, had fallen into despair. Like other prisoners, he had worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His days were filled with backbreaking labor and slow starvation. On this particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much. Read more »

August 31, 2014

“What does it profit a person if he gains the entire world, and loses his own soul?” May we pause and reflect for a moment upon our own lives, and the direction and spirit in which we live our lives. We live in such a “here and now” society, one which too often focuses on our own egocentric desires and pleasures and one which tempts us to try and fulfill these passions immediately. So easily we can lose sight of life’s essential purpose. Read more »

August 25, 2014

“To give thanks in all circumstances, you need to remember all the things in life for which we can be grateful, and then continuously thank God for them. I never focus on what I don’t have, or on how unfair life is, but I thank God for what I do have, and for the blessings He gives me each and every day. Such an attitude of gratitude radically changed my perspective on life.” Read more »

August 18, 2014

"Unless we look at a person and see the beauty there is in this person, we can contribute nothing to him. One does not help a person by discerning what is wrong, what is ugly, what is distorted. Christ looked at everyone he met, at the prostitute or the thief, and saw the beauty hidden there. Perhaps it was distorted, perhaps damaged, but it was beauty none the less, and what he did was to call out this beauty." Read more »

August 11, 2014

Light and life to all He brings, Risen with healing in His wings… Born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth. Here is the “good news of great joy” which Christmas proclaims! Read more »

August 04, 2014

Why do we come to Church each week? What are we seeking from our Christian faith? Or maybe we need to ask, are we consciously and seriously seeking anything from our faith? Ultimately, what is our goal as Orthodox Christians in this brief life here on planet earth? Read more »

July 27, 2014

One friend asked me WHY I would go to Mexico to build a home for some poor family I don’t even know. He obviously didn’t understand our call as Christians to reach out to those in need, to help others less fortunate than ourselves, and to share God’s love in concrete ways, even with those who live in other countries far away. Read more »

June 22, 2014

Christ’s invitation presents a dilemma not only for his first disciples, but to all future generations, including each one of us. Are we willing to trust Jesus and follow Him, leaving the ways of the world? Are we willing to follow Him and leave behind our world of fear, hatred and violence? Are we willing to follow Him and seek something more than the superficial pursuits and pleasures of many of us? Are we willing to follow Him and set aside our destructive habits and sinful ways, even casting aside our lives of guilt and regret? Read more »

June 15, 2014

Today in our Church we celebrate three very special occasions: 1) In our church calendar we honor and remember all the saints, known and unknown, who have lived before us; 2) In our secular calendar we honor and remember our fathers on this Father’s Day; 3) And in our church family, we celebrate and welcome the entrance of Jared Quill into full communion of our Church Family through the Sacrament of Holy Chrismation. Read more »

June 09, 2014

How many of you have ever had a conversation about your Orthodox Christian faith with a friend? How about with a co-worker, or even a stranger? Have any of you ever had the experience of talking about your faith, and someone looks perplexed at what Orthodoxy is, and they ask, “Are you Jewish?” Read more »

June 02, 2014

The secret to a life of contentment – “God’s grace is sufficient for us, for God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness.” Trusting and believing in God’s grace, remembering that God is always with us and will never abandon us, realizing that in the midst of any challenge or struggle or tragedy, God is not only present, He not only suffers with us in the midst of our challenge, but He is ready to walk with us in any darkness and show us the way out! He will help us conquer any evil we face in our lives, and lead us back into His brilliant light! Read more »

May 26, 2014

As we remember and celebrate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem today, on this Palm Sunday, we are challenged to think about how we will respond to Christ’s teaching and life. Like the crowds 2000 years ago, millions of Christians worldwide will enter the churches in praise and worship today and throughout Holy Week. How many will celebrate the joy of Pascha a week from today. And yet, we have to ask ourselves, will we make the commitment to not only worship Jesus, but to follow the path of life that He has given to us? Read more »

May 19, 2014

How many of us wish to be great in the eyes of God? I would hope that any serious believer would make this a central goal in life – to be considered great in the eyes of God. And yet, how should we understand such spiritual greatness? What makes someone great? Read more »

May 11, 2014

The writer Emerson once said 'People are what their mothers make them.' Abraham Lincoln confessed, “I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother." Someone once said, “Give me a generation of Christian mothers, and I can shape the world!” Read more »

May 04, 2014

So the key is not to turn Jesus into someone who is like us, someone who will make us comfortable with the way we are now. No, instead let us allow Christ to make us take a good and honest look at ourselves and to see how distant we are presently from the divine potential that God has given us. Read more »

April 28, 2014

Our Christian faith is all about LOVE - love for God and love for our neighbor. And if we are trying to live lives of love, we have to realize that if we expand gambling and casinos in Massachusetts, we are not thinking about the welfare of our neighbor. Read more »

April 21, 2014

“Learning How to Exert Self-Control.” This was the title of an interesting article in the NY Times last week which talked about Dr. Walter Mischel, a professor at Columbia, who is known as the “Marshmallow Man." Read more »

April 14, 2014

Dr. Johnson once shared a story with my class about meeting a man from India who had lived in the United States for 40 years. As he entered into a discussion with the man, he learned that this Hindu person had never been invited into the home of any American Christian during his entire 40 years in this country! Four decades and no Christian took the initiative to invite him into their home! Read more »

April 07, 2014

Christians in the first century had a strange custom. When one of their fellow Christians would die, they would march in procession to the graveyards, singing joyous hymns, and then they would place laurel wreaths on the graves, the same wreaths that the Greeks would use to crown the victors of athletic contests. Why did they do this? Because they believed that through Christ Jesus, all his followers have received victory over the power of death! Read more »

March 31, 2014

Tonight, our challenge is whether we will open up our hearts in a manner we’ve never done before, and allow Jesus Christ to be born anew within us? Will we allow the Christ Child to live in us and guide us each day in the New Year and throughout our lives? Will we give reign to Him to direct our lives and rule in the center of our very beings? This is the central question we should all meditate upon this Christmas! Read more »

March 17, 2014

When we come to God, asking Him to heal us, we must prepare ourselves beforehand for healing. To be healed does not mean to become whole only in order to go back to the same kind of life that we lived before; it means to be whole in order to begin a new life, as if we realized that we died in the healing action of God. Read more »

March 03, 2014

As follows of Jesus Christ, we understand that love isn't the absence of bad, but it is the presence of good. We must consciously and actively display love to others; Christians live out the fulfillment of their faith by DOING good to others, just as we want others to do good to us. Read more »

February 24, 2014

“The criminal in your community may be less guilty for his crime than you, his Christian neighbor. For you could have been a light to the evil doer, yet you were not, for the man remained beside you in darkness. Had you been the kind of example you ought to have been and allowed your light to shine on that lost man’s path, perhaps he might not have stumbled into his crime. If you had loved your neighbor as yourself and lavished upon him some of the care you generously lavish upon yourself, shared some of the warmth God has privileged you to possess, that criminal might have changed in time.” Read more »

February 23, 2014

A sick man turned to his doctor, as he was preparing to leave the examination room and said, "Doctor, I am afraid to die. Tell me what lies on the other side." Read more »

February 17, 2014

“A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere. Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, fine nets and schemes. God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.” Read more »

February 10, 2014

In 1750, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Poor Richard’s Almanac that “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond and to know one’s self.” Read more »

January 05, 2014

What a great promise of hope to carry with us throughout this new year and throughout our entire lives. Jesus promises, “Whoever follows me, will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Read more »