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Dormition of the Mother of God. Icon. 15th century, Novgorod. Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.Both love and duty today fashion my homily for your charity. It is not only that I wish, because of my love for you, and because I am obliged by the sacred canons, to bring to your God-loving ears a saving word and thus to nourish your souls, but if there be any among those things that bind by obligation and love and can be narrated with praise for the Church, it is the great deed of the Ever-Virgin Mother of God. The desire is double,...

The Dormition of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary: After the Ascension of the Lord, the Mother of God remained in the care of the Apostle John the Theologian, and during his journeys She lived at the home of his parents, near the Mount of Olives. She was a source of consolation and edification both for the Apostles and for all the believers. Conversing with them, She told them about miraculous events: the Annunciation, the seedless and undefiled Conception of Christ born of Her, about His early childhood, and about His earthly life. Like the Apostles, She helped...

August 15, 2015 Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Mass during the Day Reading 1 Rv 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab God’s temple in heaven was opened,and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple. A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun,with the moon under her feet,and on her head a crown of twelve stars.She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth.Then another sign appeared in the sky;it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns,and on its...

Leading up to the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Catholic Churches in France have been placed under police protection and have been strongly advised to increase security in fear of a potential Islamist terror attack. In a joint message to Catholic dioceses Tuesday, France's Interior Ministry and bishops' conference warned that "every religious gathering, whatever its magnitude … is vulnerable today to acts of malevolence, which may extend to terrorism." "Observing simple rules may allow you, without excessive distrust, to ensure your security and that of your community, while preserving the calm (and) sharing openness to...

“‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’” (Matthew 6:21). The believer is to have a single-minded devotion to God. British pastor Martyn Lloyd-Jones told the story of a farmer who one day went happily to his wife and family to report that their best cow had given birth to twin calves, one brown and one white. The farmer said, “I suddenly had an impulse that we must dedicate one of these calves to the Lord. We will sell one and keep the proceeds; the other we will also sell, but give the proceeds to the Lord’s work.”...

"Love is kind" (1 Cor. 13:4). Kindness repays evil with good. Two men going opposite directions on a narrow mountain trail met each other head on. With a steep cliff on one side and sheer rock on the other, they were unable to pass. The harder they tried to squeeze past one another the more frustrated they became. The situation seemed hopeless until one of them, without saying a word, simply laid down on the trail, allowing the other man to walk over him. That illustrates kindness, which doesn't mind getting walked on if it benefits someone else. The Greek...

Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk, Bishop of Voronezh (in the world Timothy), was born in the year 1724 in the village of Korotsk in the Novgorod diocese, into the family of the cantor Sabellius Kirillov. (A new family name, Sokolov, was given him afterwards by the head of the Novgorod seminary). His father died when Timothy was a young child, leaving the family in such poverty that his mother was barely able to make ends meet. She wanted to give him to be raised by a neighbor, a coachman, since there was nothing with which to feed the family, but his...

August 14, 2015   Memorial of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr Reading 1 Jos 24:1-13 Joshua gathered together all the tribes of Israel at Shechem,summoning their elders, their leaders,their judges and their officers.When they stood in ranks before God, Joshua addressed all the people: “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: In times past your fathers, down to Terah,father of Abraham and Nahor,dwelt beyond the River and served other gods.But I brought your father Abraham from the region beyond the Riverand led him through the entire land of Canaan.I made his descendants numerous, and gave him Isaac.To...

“A sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God.” - Ecclesiastes 8:12–13 Waiting for justice to be done is one of the hardest aspects of life in our fallen world. So often, we see the righteous trodden underfoot and the enemies of our Lord ascendant, and this might tempt us to wonder if things will...

August 13, 2015   Thursday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Jos 3:7-10a, 11, 13-17 The LORD said to Joshua,“Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel,that they may know I am with you, as I was with Moses.Now command the priests carrying the ark of the covenantto come to a halt in the Jordanwhen you reach the edge of the waters.” So Joshua said to the children of Israel,“Come here and listen to the words of the LORD, your God.This is how you will know that there is a living...

Text Walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. Ephesians 5:2 Bible Reading Ephesians 5:1–7 Devotional Have you ever come across something that was decomposing? It does not smell very pleasant, to say the least. Death never smells nice. The fall into sin brought death on all of humanity. “The wages of sin is death.” (Rom 6:23) In the Old Dispensation, the sacrifices that took place taught the people of God about the need for atonement. The death of goats and bulls and...

Refrain: Rejoice, O Unwedded Bride! O Virgin pure, immaculate/ O Lady Theotokos O Virgin Mother, Queen of all/ and fleece which is all dewy More radiant than the rays of sun/ and higher than the heavens Delight of virgin choruses/ superior to Angels. Much brighter than the firmament/ and purer than the sun's light More holy than the multitude/ of all the heav'nly armies. Rejoice, O Unwedded Bride! O Ever Virgin Mary/ of all the world, the Lady O bride all pure, immaculate/ O Lady Panagia O Mary bride and Queen of all/ our cause of jubilation Majestic maiden, Queen...

“Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.” - Ecclesiastes 8:10–11 “Justice delayed is justice denied.” This famous phrase encapsulates the idea that the ability of a legal system to produce justice is only as good as its ability to move people through the courts as quickly as possible. Until the...

“‘Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal’” (Matthew 6:19). Heaven is the only safe place for treasure. In the Orient during biblical times, wealth was basically preserved in three ways. There was no paper, there were no bank books, there was nothing to match the kind of system we have. Wealth was identified in literal commodities: garments, grain, and gold or precious metals. Garments in the Bible were always an expression of wealth. In Judges 14:12 Samson told the Philistines that if they could answer his...

"Love is patient . . . kind . . . not jealous . . . does not brag . . . is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly . . . does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Cor. 13:4-7). Love is difficult to define, but it can be described by the behavior it produces. Paul painted a portrait of the kind of love Jesus wants to produce...

August 12, 2015   Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Dt 34:1-12 Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo,the headland of Pisgah which faces Jericho,and the LORD showed him all the land—Gilead, and as far as Dan, all Naphtali,the land of Ephraim and Manasseh,all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea,the Negeb, the circuit of the Jordanwith the lowlands at Jericho, city of palms,and as far as Zoar.The LORD then said to him, “This is the landwhich I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacobthat I would give to...

According to ancient tradition, the wonderworking icon of Tikhvin is one of several painted by St Luke the Evangelist. The icon was taken from Jerusalem to Constantinople in the fifth century, where it was enshrined in the Church of Blachernae, which was built especially for this purpose.In 1383, seventy years before the fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Turks, fishermen on Lake Ladoga in the principality of Novgorod the Great witnessed the icon miraculously hovering over the lake’s waters amidst a radiant light. According to an early sixteenth century Russian manuscript, “The Tale of Miracles of the...

Do you have doubts about the faith? “No,” you say, “I’ve been a Christian for years.” You don’t understand. I didn’t ask if you were a Christian or not. I asked if you had some doubts, perhaps a nagging question in the back of your mind, “Is this stuff really true?” It’s okay to ask that question. In fact, it’s normal. For both the doubting Christian and the searching skeptic, let’s look at some prerequisites for faith as seen in the life of “doubting Thomas” (John 20:24-31). What was it about Thomas that caused Jesus to deal with his doubts?...

“‘Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth’” (Matthew 6:19). The believer is to use his possessions unselfishly. Some years ago I happened to have contact with two quite wealthy men during the same week. One was a former professor at a major university who through a series of investments made possibly a hundred million dollars. In the process, however, he lost his family, his happiness, and his peace of mind and had aged far beyond his years. The other man, a pastor, also made some investments and acquired great wealth but was not preoccupied with his investments. Because...

"If I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing" (1 Cor. 13:3). Wrong motives rob even the greatest sacrifice of its spiritual benefit. So far in his denunciation of loveless ministries, Paul has addressed what we say, what we know, what we believe, and how we give. Now he comes to the apex of his argument: how we die. Many Christians have made the ultimate sacrifice of martyrdom, but even that is useless without love. In Paul's time, many slaves were branded with a hot iron to identify them as belonging to...