Zacchaeus provides a wonderful example of repentance because he spontaneously and freely united himself to Christ as he took practical steps beyond any measure of justice.

The disciplines of this season give us all countless opportunities to do precisely that as we prepare for nothing less than to “see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”

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.

By miraculously satisfying so many with so little, Christ revealed what it means for us to live eucharistically as we offer ourselves and our resources for the fulfillment of His gracious purposes for the world and all its inhabitants.

We have all had the experience of suddenly perceiving a truth that we had previously not grasped. There are times when the fog lifts, the lights come on, and what was opaque or out of focus becomes clear. That is precisely what the apostles Peter, James, and John experienced on Mount Tabor when they were enabled to behold the divine glory of Jesus Christ, Who shone brightly with light as the voice of the Father identified Him as His beloved Son.

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)

If we dare to call upon God’s forgiveness for our sins, we will condemn only ourselves as hypocrites when we refuse to forgive others.

In the midst of the ongoing tragedy unfolding in the Holy Land, we must attend to the wisdom of our father in Christ, His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch, who stated this week that “Peace does not come from the bodies of children, killed people, innocent people, and women. Peace comes when the decision-makers in this world realize that our people have dignity, as all the peoples of the world. We are not advocates of war, we reject violence and killing, and we are seekers of peace…” He writes that we pray “for peace in the entire world, for stability, and for the repose of the souls of those who have passed away. We pray that the wounds of the sick be soothed and they might recover, for the wounds of every hurting person, every bereaved mother, every brother, and every sister, for everyone’s wounds. We ask the Lord to protect us and grant us peace…”

St. Irenaeus wrote that “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of man consists in beholding God” (Adv. haer. 4.20.7).” To be a human person is to bear the image of God with the calling to become more like Him in holiness. The more we do so, the more we become our true selves. The God-Man Jesus Christ came to restore and fulfill us as living icons of God. He enables us to become truly human as we participate personally in Him as the Second Adam. As St. Paul wrote, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.” (2 Cor. 1:20)

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.

As we continue to prepare to welcome Christ at His Nativity, we must keep our focus on becoming like those who first received Him with joy. That includes the Theotokos, whose Entrance into the Temple, where she prepared to become His Living Temple, we celebrated last week. That includes unlikely characters like the Persian astrologers or wise men, certainly Gentiles, who traveled such a long distance to worship Him. What better news could there have been than that the Prince of Peace was coming “to preach good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”? (Lk. 4:18-19) As we sing during these weeks of Advent, “Dance for joy, O earth, on hearing the gladsome tidings; with the Angels and the shepherds now glorify Him Who is willing to be gazed on as a young Child Who before the ages is God.”

On the last couple of Sundays, our gospel readings have reminded us what not to do if we want to prepare to welcome Christ into our lives and world at His Nativity. The rich fool was so focused on money and possessions that he completely neglected the state of his soul. The rich young ruler walked away in sadness when it became clear that he loved his wealth more than God and neighbor. The weeks before Christmas are the most commercialized time of the year when we are all bombarded with messages that the good life is primarily about having a lot of money and being able to buy whatever we want. Since the Lord warned so clearly of the folly of giving our hearts to the false god of riches, it is sadly ironic that the celebration of His Nativity so often occurs in ways that contradict the blessedness of His Kingdom.

As we conclude our preparation for celebrating the Lord’s Nativity, we must resist the temptation to corrupt this blessed season into an excuse for glorifying ourselves in any way. Instead, we must allow our hopes for whatever we want in this life to be called into question by the God-Man, Who was born in such strange circumstances to fulfill a kingdom not of this world that stands in prophetic judgment over all our agendas, preferences, and desires. We must learn at Christmas to hope only in Him.

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.

We remain in a period of preparation to behold Christ at His appearing. The One born at Christmas and baptized at Theophany is brought by the Theotokos and St. Joseph the Betrothed to the Temple in Jerusalem as a 40-day old Infant in fulfillment of the Old Testament law, which we will celebrate later this week at the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. 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 speaks openly of Him as the Savior. At the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, we celebrate the appearance of the Lord Who fulfills the ancient promises to Abraham and extends them to all with faith in Him. By His appearance, He has enlightened the whole creation. Christ is “the true light which gives light to everyone coming into the world.” (Jn. 1:9)

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.

It is easy to overlook how often the Lord used money and possessions to convey a spiritual message. Perhaps that is because almost everyone struggles with being overly attached to material things, for they can meet our basic physical needs and provide comfort and a sense of security. Due to our self-centered desires, however, they so easily become false gods as we make them the measure of our lives. As Christ taught, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also….You cannot serve both God and mammon.” (Matt. 6: 21, 24)

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.

We are certainly in a spiritually rich time of year in the life of the Church. Having begun the fast in preparation for the Dormition of the Theotokos, we are now also anticipating the Transfiguration of the Lord, when Peter, James, and John beheld His divine glory on Mount Tabor. As with all the feasts of the Church, the point is not simply to remember what happened long ago, but instead to participate personally in the eternal truth made manifest in these celebrations. And that means nothing less than being transfigured ourselves by our Lord’s gracious divine energies as we come to share more fully in His restoration and fulfillment of the human person as a living icon of God.

If you are like me, there are times when you become worried or upset over matters of very little importance. It often does not take much to punch our buttons because we base our sense of self and wellbeing, as well as our hopes for the future, on illusions that cannot fulfill them. Due to our darkened spiritual vision, we do not see ourselves, our relationships with other people, or where we stand before the Lord very clearly. When the inevitable challenges of life cause us to catch even a small glimpse of these uncomfortable truths, we usually do not like it and can easily start to sink into the churning sea of our passions.

Fr. John addresses the uncertainty in Byzantium following the death of Constantine and then the consolidation of Christianity shortly after that.

Fr. John discusses the importance of worship to Byzantium, the immense degree to which its culture was influenced by liturgy, and the significance of "facing East."

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 ways in which iconography was defined and produced in Byzantine Christendom.

Fr. John introduces the principle of heavenly orientation and then explores actual forms of art, beginning with iconography.

After a transition to his new parish assignment, Father John returns to the podcast with a discussion of the atmosphere of catastrophe that hung over the old Christendom of the east as the Muslim Turks advanced on Byzantium, while a defender of traditional Christianity, Saint Mark of Ephesus, prepared to depart for the unionist Council of Florence in the west.

Fr. John draws attention to a feature of Byzantine statecraft in which the Emperor persecuted and manipulated the leadership of the Church.

In this final episode of Reflection 17, Fr. John relates the final catastrophe to befall eastern Christendom during the period, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.

Having related the fall of Byzantium to the Turks, Fr. John now begins a reflection on the only remaining Orthodox state in eastern Christendom, Muscovite Russia. In this introductory anecdote he tells of an event in the history of this "Third Rome" that signaled the coming decline of ecclesio-political symphony, and with it the experience of paradise.

In this final episode of his reflection on Muscovite Russia, Fr. John describes the Old Believer Schism as a crisis in the formerly optimistic cosmology of eastern Christendom, leading to its decline on the eve of modern times.

In this final episode of Part 2 of the podcast, Fr. John discusses the catastrophic wars that broke out in western Christendom during the Reformation age. These wars, along with other forces unleashed by developments in the Reformation and earlier, would ultimately result in the loss of Christianity's legitimacy, leading to the rise of a modern, secularized form of Christendom centered upon the experience of utopia.

In this special video episode (the first of two parts), Father John discusses the background to the revolution in art during the Italian Renaissance. Though it produced some of the most stunning and innovative works ever, secular humanism represented a radical departure from the heavenly orientation of traditional Christian art.

This is part 2 to last week's special video episode, on the revolution of art during the Italian Renaissance.

In this reflection on an emerging post-Christian Christendom, Fr. John Strickland discusses two ways in which eighteenth-century philosophes—from Voltaire to Thomas Jefferson—worked to subvert the paradisiacal culture of the old Christendom. He explores their use of photic imagery such as "enlightenment" and their introduction of the tripartite utopian model of history consisting of ancient, medieval, and modern periods. He concludes with a brief description of Edward Gibbon's famous and influential work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

In this long-delayed episode (due to work on The Age of Nihilism, available at store.ancientfaith.com/the-age-of-nihilism-christendom-from-the-great-war-to-the-culture-wars), Father John presents the historical origins of liberalism as a modern secular ideology. Atheistic philosophers like Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill provided the philosophical basis for hope in a secular "kingdom of posterity."

Fr. John Strickland continues his account of the rise of secular ideology with a presentation on the Russian intelligentsia and the case of Karl Marx.

Fr. John Strickland concludes his account of the origins of modern political ideology with the rise of nationalism, a force that not only proved to be a counterfeit to traditional Christianity, but the cause of one of utopian Christendom's greatest tragedies.

In this final episode of part three of the podcast, Fr. John Strickland traces the outcome of secular humanism in the case of the Russian Revolution. Though numerous Orthodox Christians warned of the impending disaster facing a post-Christian Christendom, Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks took advantage of discontent caused by the First World War to plunge violently into a project of counterfeit transcendence they called "building socialism."

Fr. John Strickland gives an overview of his latest book, The Age of Nihilism, available at Ancient Faith Store: https://store.ancientfaith.com/the-age-of-nihilism-christendom-from-the-great-war-to-the-culture-wars

In this summary of the second chapter of his book, The Age of Nihilism, Fr. John discusses the early life and faith and incarceration of Russia's great novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. Unlike his contemporaries--particularly Nietzsche--the novelist found in traditional Christianity the only hope for a Christendom living under the terrible specter of nihilism.

Returning to a literary career after a decade of exile, Fyodor Dostoevsky confronted one of the great delusions of secular humanism: that man is ultimately a rational being whose happiness depends on the exercise of self-interest. Characters in his novels The Idiot and Demons were designed to demonstrate that nihilistic self-destruction is the only outcome of such convictions. Father John concludes the episode by showing how nihilism played itself out in the fictional moral collapse of Dostoevsky's protagonist Raskolnikov and the real-life moral collapse of Friedrich Nietzsche.

In a world which feasts and frenzies on the bad news and misfortunes of others, Fr. John Parker encourages us to keep ever before us the truly and eternal Good News: that Jesus Christ became man and took on flesh for the salvation of the world.

Fr John reflects on Dr. Peter Bouteneff’s podcast concerning “Post-Episcopalian Stress Disorder,” and suggests a course-correction.

Today Fr. John Parker reads a letter from a lady he met who was effectively using cyber technology to evangelize.

In this episode, Fr John Parker address same-sex marriage and homosexuality, in response to the frenzy of discussion on these topics today in the public sphere.

Fr. John leads a discussion at a Diocese of the South (OCA) luncheon where attendees share their experiences.

In this episode, Fr. John Parker interviews Fr. Robert Miclean, pastor of Holy Archangels Mission in Annapolis, MD. Fr Robert is the founding pastor of this new mission, and the founder of Annapolis College Ministry, which is an intentional, discipleship-driven, missionary outreach to three Maryland colleges: the US Naval Academy, St John’s College, and Anne Arundel Community College.

In this episode, Fr John Parker discusses the difference between ‘worship evangelism’ and ‘worship as evangelism’, and encourages us to offer to God the most beautiful worship of which we are capable, and to ‘get out of the way’ for visitors—so that they can encounter God.

In this episode, Fr. John interviews Fr. Sergius Halvorsen, professor of Homiletics and Rhetoric at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. Fr. Sergius discusses the vital link between solid preaching and evangelization.

On this holy day when we celebrate the Annunciation of the Mother of God, Fr. John Parker reflects on the evangelistic meaning of the feast.