Christ did not offer Himself on the Cross and rise from the dead in order to make us well-adjusted citizens of this world, but to heal every dimension of our brokenness so that we will shine brilliantly with His divine glory.

The season of Pascha has only just begun. Because of His bodily resurrection, we must become holy in our bodies and treat our suffering neighbors accordingly. Let us continue to celebrate by participating as fully as possible in the joy of the empty tomb. Now nothing other than our own refusal can hold us back from becoming truly human, for “Christ is Risen!”

The good news of our Lord’s resurrection extends to everyone and the entire world. The Church directs our attention during the Paschal season to how some very different people came to share in the life of our Lord, such as the disciple Thomas, the Myrrh-Bearing Women, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the paralyzed man. Today we focus on someone who was different from all of them by worldly standards, for they were Jews and she was a Samaritan. We know her in the Church as the Great Martyr Photini, but in that time and place she would have seemed a very unlikely candidate to become a great evangelist of Christ’s salvation.

Let us become transfigured in holiness as we pray, fast, repent, and give generously to our neighbors as we become living icons of the Savior’s fulfillment of the human person in the likeness of God.

The Feast of Christ’s Transfiguration calls each of us to nothing less than to be transfigured in holiness and shine brilliantly by grace with the light of heaven.

The feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos calls us to live faithfully as those who have put on Christ like a garment in baptism, been filled with the Holy Spirit in chrismation, and become guests at the heavenly banquet in the Eucharist.

If we want to know Christ as the beloved disciple did, then we must learn that our very life is in our brothers and sisters. Loving them and Christ in them is the only way to find liberation from fear in our world of corruption, for it is fear that separates us from one another and keeps us from becoming together the uniquely beautiful persons our Lord created us to become in His image and likeness.

As “the poor and maimed and blind and lame,” we must prepare to accept the extraordinary invitation that is ours in Jesus Christ by gaining the strength to make our daily responsibilities points of entrance to the heavenly kingdom. They are not reasons to shut ourselves out of the heavenly banquet, but opportunities to unite ourselves ever more fully to Him in freedom.

We are baptized into Christ’s death in order to rise up with Him into a life of holiness in which we regain the robe of light rejected by our first parents. In every aspect of our lives, we must become radiant with the divine glory shared with us by the New Adam.

Even as Jesus showed mercy by tangible actions such as healing a Samaritan from a dreaded and isolating disease, we must take the actions available to us, no matter how seemingly small or imperfect, to manifest His love to our neighbors, regardless of who they are. Find the book Syria Crucified at store.ancientfaith.com/syria-crucified.

The coming Lenten season calls us all to come to ourselves as we gain a clearer recognition of the ways in which we have refused to live as the beloved sons and daughters of our Father. By humbly reorienting our lives toward Him and away from slavery to our passions, we will find restoration, blessing, and joy. Now is the time to leave behind the filth and misery of the pig pen and to enter by grace into the joy of a heavenly banquet that none of us deserves.

As we celebrate the restoration of icons today, let us become more beautiful living icons of our Lord’s salvation and gain the strength to treat every neighbor accordingly as we live and breathe in this world. Remember: They are His living icons also.

If we want to know Christ’s peace, which conquers even the fear of the grave, we must become radiant with His Light, which means that we must unite ourselves to Him in faith, hope, and love from the depths of our souls.

As we prepare for the Dormition Fast and look forward to the feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord, we must recognize how much we remain like the blind and mute men in our gospel reading.

To rise up, take up our beds, and walk home requires obedience to Christ’s commands, but not a legalistic obedience in the sense of following a code for its own sake. Instead, this obedience is like following the guidance of a physician or therapist who makes clear to us what we must do in order to regain health and function for our bodies.

The disciples offered to Christ what they had that day: five loaves of bread and two fish. He transfigured that tiny offering into a massive feast with far more leftover than what the hungry crowd could eat. This miracle shows that the key question is not what or how much we offer according to any conventional standard, but whether we offer all that we have for the Lord’s blessing. He will do the rest.

Let us take the Theotokos as our great example of how to receive and follow Christ every day, even as we ask for her prayers for the healing of our souls. That is the only way to celebrate the great feast of her Dormition with spiritual integrity.

Due to pride, we often crave words and actions from others that distract us from seeing ourselves clearly and instead fuel illusions of self-importance and self- righteousness. When doing so becomes a settled habit, we can easily find ourselves attempting to use religion to serve our egos instead of being focused on offering ourselves to the Lord.

Most people today surely do not think of the weeks before Christmas as a time of preparation for being loosed from bondage to the corrupting forces of sin and death. More commonly, we use this time of year to strengthen our addiction to the love of money, possessions, food, drink, and other worldly pleasures.

In the remaining days before Christmas, let us embrace the scandalous calling to hope in nothing and no one other than the God-Man Who is born to heal and fulfill all who bear the divine image and likeness.

Through the many struggles of this season of Lent, we all have the opportunity to grow in the faith necessary to entrust ourselves more fully to Christ.

Today we celebrate the restoration of our true unity in God through the unifying power of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter sent by the risen and ascended Savior Who is seated at the right hand of the Father in heavenly glory.

The spiritual disciplines of the Apostles Fast provide us all with opportunities to clarify our spiritual vision and gain the strength to see all the blessings of this life as gifts to be offered to God.

Like the men in today’s gospel reading, we all need the healing of the Lord for our eyes, our mouths, and every aspect of who we are.

Today we conclude our commemoration of the Lord’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, when the spiritual eyes of Peter, James, and John were opened to behold His divine glory and they heard the voice of the Father say, “This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” (Mk. 9:7)

I am sure that many people today reject or have no interest in the Christian faith because they have not seen in others the healing of the human person brought by Jesus Christ. Perhaps they have heard Christians speaking primarily about morality, politics, emotion, or a view of salvation that has nothing to do with the realities of life in the world as we know it. Or they may have seen many examples of hypocrisy on the part of those who identify themselves with the Lord, but who live their lives in opposition to His teachings even as they look for opportunities to condemn their neighbors. Regardless, many today have concluded that there is nothing in the Christian life worthy of their devotion.

It is terribly tragic when people fall into the delusion of thinking that they love God and neighbor, when in reality they are using religion to serve only themselves and the false gods of this world. One symptom of doing so is to narrow down the list of people who count as our neighbors to the point that we excuse ourselves from serving Christ in all who bear His image and likeness. When we do so, we disregard not only them, but our Lord Himself, the God-Man born for the salvation of all. Our actions then reveal that we are not truly united with Him because we seek to justify ourselves by serving nothing but our own vain imaginations.

During the season of Christmas, we celebrated the Nativity in the flesh of the Savior. Born as truly one of us, He is the New Adam Who restores and fulfills us as living icons of God. During the season of Theophany, we celebrated the revelation of His divinity as a Person of the Holy Trinity at His baptism, where the voice of the Father identified Him as the Son and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove. Christ has appeared in the waters of the Jordan, blessing the entire creation, enabling all things to become radiant with the divine glory. When we put Him on like a garment in baptism, we participate in the sanctification that He has brought to the world as we regain the “robe of light” repudiated by our first parents.

Today we continue to celebrate the Presentation of Christ, forty days after His birth, in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Theotokos and St. Joseph bring the young Savior there in compliance with the Old Testament law, making the offering of a poor family, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the old man St. Simeon proclaims that this Child is the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.” The aged prophetess St. Anna also recognizes Him as the fulfillment of God’s promises.

Today we continue to celebrate the Presentation of Christ, forty days after His birth, in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Theotokos and St. Joseph bring the young Savior there in compliance with the Old Testament law, making the offering of a poor family, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the old man St. Simeon proclaims that this Child is the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.” The aged prophetess St. Anna also recognizes Him as the fulfillment of God’s promises.

Unless we are very careful, it is easy to fall prey to the temptation of defining holiness in ways that serve our preconceived notions, which may have very little to do with finding the healing of our souls by sharing more fully in the life of the Savior by grace. We often see righteousness through the lens of our own sensibilities about worldly divisions and disputes in ways that have more to do with serving our own passions than with serving the Lord. Today’s Scripture readings challenge us to wake up from such delusions and to see ourselves clearly before His infinite holiness.

Forty days after His resurrection, our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ ascended in glory into heaven and sat at the right hand of God the Father. He did so as One Who is fully divine and fully human, One Person with two natures. He ascended with His glorified, resurrected body, which still bore the wounds of His crucifixion. Our Lord’s Ascension reveals that we may participate by grace in the eternal life of the Holy Trinity and share in His fulfillment of the human person in God’s image and likeness. We may experience such blessedness even now by uniting ourselves to Christ even as we live and breathe in this world with our feet on the ground.

It is easy to fall into despair before our own personal problems, the challenges faced by loved ones, and the brokenness of our society and world. It is tempting to refuse to accept that we remain responsible for offering ourselves to Christ as best we can for healing and transformation in holiness, regardless of what is going on in our lives, families, or world

Fr. John explains how the Church cultivated a higher level of sexual dignity and explores how Christendom served to elevate women in Roman society.

Fr. John discusses the case of Caesaropapism and the symphony when it was actually achieved.

Fr. John discusses the life and activities of St. Pulcheria, as well as how the Trisagion came into Orthodox worship.

Fr. John looks at traditional Christianity's eucharistic rites in order to see how they served to reorient the world toward the kingdom of heaven.

Fr. John discusses the design, history, and importance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Fr. John tells the story of when St. Macarius journeyed from the desert to the city to meet two laywomen who were superior to him in their spirituality.

Fr. John explores the triumph of Orthodoxy in the year 843 and the way in which it enables the art of Christendom to express the deepest conviction about man's relationship with God and the possibility of communion with Him.

Fr. John looks at some of the actual texts of early Christian hymns and the way in which they gave expression to the vision of early Christendom.

Fr. John looks at the development that took place within the Frankish lands themselves, especially those concerning the liturgy.

Fr. John examines the tendency toward eucharistic piety in Frankish Christendom.

Fr. John discusses the spiritual decline of the Church in the West and the attempt to reform this degradation.

Fr. John continues his exploration of the pivotal reign of Pope Leo IX and the way in which its reforms led toward a confrontation with the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1054.

In this conclusion to his account of the Great Schism, Fr. John reviews the leading controversies that aggravated relations between Rome and Constantinople during Pope Leo IX's military confinement, and how they resulted in the latter's posthumous act of excommunicating Patriarch Michael Cerularius in 1054.

In the anecdotal introduction to a new reflection, Fr. John tells the story of the fall of Constantinople to the western crusaders in 1204, showing how this event, inspired in part by new claims of papal supremacy, resulted in the permanent separation of eastern and western Christendom.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses the immediate aftermath of the mutual excommunications of 1054 and the ways in which papal supremacy emerged as the main point of continued division between the east and the west.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses the coming of the crusades and the decisive role played by Pope Gregory VII.

In this final episode of Reflection 15, Fr. John discusses the thirteenth-century popes Innocent III and Gregory IX, showing the close connection between their efforts to advance papal supremacy on the one hand and direct crusades against the Orthodox on the other. He concludes the reflection by noting the recent meeting of Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew and placing it within the context of centuries of cultural division between east and west.