Our favorite sins drive us into the isolation of the wilderness, away from the healing power of Jesus. Once healed, the best witness to the transforming power of Christ is the personal story of those set free.

From the story of the healing of the Gadarene demoniac, Fr. Philip LeMasters shares about how we can become our true selves in Christ.

Let us get over our pride and become living epiphanies of the salvation of the One Who was baptized by St. John the Forerunner in the Jordan.

Given what we do know about the divine mercy we have received, gratitude must become an abiding characteristic of our lives. That means that we must become like the Samaritan leper in today’s gospel reading.

On this second Sunday of Great Lent, we commemorate St. Gregory Palamas, who defended the experience of monks who, in the stillness of prayer from their hearts, saw the Uncreated Light of God.

Regardless of the particulars of our life circumstances, let us use the challenges posed by the global pandemic as reminders of the folly of making life in this world our false god.

The One Who trampled down death by death purely out of love for His suffering children will never abandon us. If He can make someone like St. Mary of Egypt radiant with the divine glory through the desert, then there is hope for us all.

Whenever we give our time, resources, or attention to help anyone who is in need in any way, we embrace an opportunity to serve our Savior and participate more fully in His life.

None of us has the power to fix today’s problems, but we all have the ability to offer ourselves in seemingly small ways to bless people by listening to them patiently, providing an encouraging word, and sharing our resources as we are able.

The love to which Christ calls us is not merely an emotion, but a true offering of ourselves for the sake of someone else. It is a self-less offering in which we put the needs and interests our neighbors before our own. It is a personal offering that builds communion with other people and unites us together as those who share a common life. Of course, the basis of such love is the great Self-Offering of Christ, Who enables us all to share in His eternal life as members together of His Body, the Church, as a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven.

As we continue to celebrate Theophany in a world that remains in “the region and shadow of death,” let us focus mindfully on living each day as those who have died to sin and risen with our Lord to a life of holiness. That is how we may wear a garment of light and become living epiphanies of the salvation of the world.

It is easy for people to fall prey to the passions of fear, worry, and anger in response to the great challenges that our nation and world face today, as well as to those we encounter in our families and in other areas of our lives. In such circumstances, we must not ignore the importance of one of the most basic virtues necessary for human flourishing, namely, gratitude.

Today we celebrate that the Lord is at hand, for He is coming into Jerusalem as the Messiah, hailed by the crowds as their Savior. He does not come to usher in an earthly reign or to serve any nationalistic or political agenda. He enters Jerusalem on a donkey, a humble beast of burden, carrying no weapons and having no army. He had no well-oiled political machine to tell the powerful people what they wanted to hear or to manipulate the masses. His Kingdom was and is not of this world.

It is easy to assume that we have strong faith when it seems like everything is going our way. All too often, that means that we have come to trust in ourselves for following a religion that we imagine will give us what we want. When difficult struggles come, however, the truth about our weak souls is revealed. Then we come to see that real faith in God is not about serving or congratulating ourselves, but something entirely different.

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.

Today we celebrate that the Lord is at hand, coming into Jerusalem as the Messiah, hailed by the crowds as their Savior. He enters Jerusalem on a humble beast of burden, carrying no weapons and having no army, political machine, or media campaign to flatter the powerful and play on the fears, resentments, and hopes of the masses.

In light of what such atrocities reveal about the human condition, it is obviously not enough to affirm religious beliefs, to perform certain acts of outward piety, or merely to identify ourselves as Orthodox Christians. Indeed, it is entirely possible to do all those things while remaining blind, embracing the darkness, and becoming all too comfortable with the forces of death and destruction.

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.

Let us look to the Savior’s raising of the son of the widow of Nain as a sign that we must entrust ourselves only to the One Who has conquered the grave, for slavery to the fear of death is the reason that it is so appealing to entrust ourselves to false gods as a distraction from facing the truth about ourselves and our world.

Lent does not call us merely to think or have feelings about our Lord’s Cross and resurrection. This season invites us to grow in our personal knowledge and experience of the Savior Who offered Himself on the Cross and rose in glory on the third day for our salvation.

In order to follow our Risen Lord into the joy of the resurrection, we must open our deepest personal struggles and wounds to Him for healing.

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.

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.

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.

As we continue to celebrate our Lord’s glorious resurrection on the third day and victory over Hades and the tomb, we have to admit that all too often we live as though death still reigned. We do so especially when we obsess about how weak, broken, and vulnerable we are, especially in light of the grave.

Fr. John discusses the ways in which iconography was defined and produced in Byzantine Christendom.

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 episode the "father of humanism," Francesco Petrarch, broods over his sense of guilt and despair, seeking a new path for Western Christendom known as the saeculum, or "secular."

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.

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

Fr. John interviews Fr. John Dunlop, Dean of St. Herman’s Seminary, Kodiak, Alaska, about the seminary, the incredible Archives (which include the handwritten documents of St. Innocent as well as the journals of St. Iakov Netsvyetov), and his own missionary work in the villages.

Fr. John reflects on the apostle/missionary—the Gaderene demoniac—as an image of the Resurrection.

Fr. John encourages us to reflect on death and preparation for life eternal.

Fr. John Parker shares insight on some of his visits to Death Row.

2 Timothy 2:20-26; Luke 20:27-44.

2 Timothy 3:16-4:4; Luke 21:12-19.

2 Timothy 4:9-22; Luke 21:5-7, 10-11, 20-24.

Hebrews 3:5-11, 17-19; Mark 8:11-21.

Hebrews 4:1-13; Mark 8:22-26.

Hebrews 5:11-6:8; Mark 8:30-34.

Hebrews 7:1-6; Mark 9:10-16.

Hebrews 7:18-25; Mark 9:33-41.

Hebrews 8:7-13; Mark 9:42-10:1.

Hebrews 9:8-10, 15-23; Mark 10:2-12.

Hebrews 10:1-18; Mark 10:11-16.