Everyone presumably acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with children dressing up as fairies, Disney characters, Marvel superheroes, and (my own favourite when I was a child) black cats in order to go door to door with their friends after dark to collect candy. The argument against Halloween is that it also glorifies violence, gore, and death, so that it is unsuitable for Christians to participate in Halloween. Collecting candy is fine; it is the frightening stuff that comes afterward that is the problem. Halloween trades in things like graveyards and corpses and ugly witches on broomsticks and bats and cobwebs and Frankenstein monsters. So, the question arises: why do people delight in such scary stuff?

G. K. Chesterton wrote that he once left fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery and hadn’t found any books so sensible since (from his Orthodoxy, “The Ethics of Elfland”). I suggest that Christianity is one such fairy tale, and also that it is a myth. But it is a fairy tale come true, and a myth that became a fact.

I sometimes tell inquirers at St. Herman’s when they ask that I began my Christian life in earnest as a Jesus People—which usually results in blank stares, since most of them are too young to have heard of the cultural phenomenon known as the Jesus People Movement. The movement has recently come up again for notice in a film called “Jesus Revolution”, based on the true events of the founding of Calvary Chapel in California under Pastor Chuck Smith (d. 2013) and his long-haired hippie protégé Lonnie Frisbee. The film, a well done and positive presentation of the events, stars Kelsey Grammer and features the role of Greg Laurie (played by Joel Courtney) as a new convert to Christ at Smith’s Calvary Chapel, and as someone who would go on to found Harvest Christian Fellowship Church, with campuses in California and Hawaii. Harvest Ministries is the group which released the film.

I forget, in the course of my long life as a Christian, how many times I have heard people assure me that “God will never give you more than you can handle”. By this they seemed to mean that God knows my emotional limits and capabilities, and will make sure that no disaster befalls me that will tax me emotionally beyond my present strength. Sometimes they affix a Bible verse from 1 Corinthians 10:13 to it to make their case: “No temptation has overtaken you but such is common to man, and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it”. I must report however, on the basis of my long life as a Christian, that the assuring notion that God will never give anyone more than they can handle is nonsense.

I have just finished reading Crisis of Confidence: Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity, by my friend Carl R. Trueman. Dr. Trueman is professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College, and a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (which, despite the title, has no connection with our own Eastern Orthodox Church).

Protestant critics of Orthodoxy fault us for many things, but one of the foremost of their objections is our devotion to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Hostility to Roman Catholicism is built into Protestant DNA, so anything in Orthodoxy that resembles something in Roman Catholicism will be subject to criticism, including such more or less innocuous things like clergy wearing cassocks and calling themselves “Father”. Our Orthodox devotion to Mary (whom we call “the Theotokos”) often heads the list of Protestant objections, since it features so prominently in Roman Catholicism.

A story is told of the final temptation of Christ. Satan had been trying to tempt Jesus to sin, to compromise, to abandon His divine mission (see Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13), and according to this story, Satan tried one last time to deflect Jesus from His goal. Jesus had been arrested, interrogated, condemned by the Sanhedrin, brought before Pilate, again condemned, mocked and flogged. He carried His cross along the way from the Roman praetorium to the place of execution and was nailed to the cross. His adversaries continued to mock Him, even unto the end: “He saved others, He cannot save Himself! He is the King of Israel; let Him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in Him!” (Matthew 27:42). And it was then, the story goes, that Satan whispered into His ear the words of the final temptation, intended to convince Jesus to give it all up and indeed come down from the cross. Satan said to Him, “They’re not worth it, Lord”.

Fr. Apostolos reminds us this Halloween season of the absolute and exclusive claims laid upon us by Jesus Christ.

Fr. Apostolos talks about the difference that Christ's resurrection makes in our lives.

Fr. Apostolos Hill delivers a homily about the belief that leads to salvation as opposed to a nominal "belief" that does not.

Fr. Apostolos Hill delivers a homily that is focused on the Epistle reading from Colossians. The newness of the year should remind us that we serve a loving and merciful God, whose mercies are new every day.

Sermon on the Sunday of the Blind Man (John 9:1-38)

Holy Myrrhbearers - Third Sunday of Pascha

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

On the feast of the Annunciation to the Mother of God, we celebrate the good news that Jesus takes on human flesh from the womb of the Virgin Mary. In Mary's faithfulness, she becomes the icon of all believers who strive to live life in total obedience to God.

Though we have the revelation of the one God in Christ, people the world over are free to believe in the god of their choosing, or no god at all. Fr Tom reminds us that as Orthodox Christians, though we firmly believe in the right to religious freedom, we must always assert to everyone the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ, because what we believe about God matters. (Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council)

In Christ's encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, we find the Master Teacher deftly bringing her to faith in Him. Fr Thomas relates this gospel message to the imperative of sharing our own story of faith in Christ with those who are thirsting for God.

Fr Thomas uses the stories of two different healings by Jesus (Mt 9:27-35) to demonstrate the importance of developing an interior life. After the sermon (at 20:00) Fr Thomas talks with three nuns from the Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration in Ellwood City, PA, about cultivating the interior life and the challenges and blessings of monasticism.

At the approach of the new year, the Church presents the example of Joseph and Mary taking the young child, Jesus, to Egypt, to protect Him and keep the promise they made to God. Fr Thomas encourages us also, to imitate their tenacious faith in keeping the promises of our baptism, no matter what challenge we face.

"God is Love" has become one of the most abused verses of Scripture. It's used today to justify every sin and excuse every condition. Fr Thomas urges us to look at the entirety of the Gospel message to truly understand the implications of being a creature of God Who is Love.

The saying goes, "actions speak louder than words." Christ Himself condemned the Jewish religious leaders for saying one thing but doing another. Fr Thomas teaches us that, as Orthodox Christians, our actions are important because they have to align with what we claim about God and ourselves. In fact, our eternal judgment is at stake.

Fr Thomas teaches us that a Triumph of Orthodoxy is when we persevere in practicing the fullness of the Faith.

Will we live as believers or unbelievers? The line of demarcation can be thin! Fr. Tom argues from the Scriptures and the lives of the saints that we must constantly choose to live out our baptism as the holy and set apart people of God.

As we inch closer and closer to the Great Fast, Fr. Tom harkens us back to the basics - that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, even those of us like Zacchaeus.

Unpacking the Sunday epistle reading, Fr. Tom helps us to enter into the cosmic mystery that is Christ and the New Covenant. The Divine Liturgy is not a dead work; it is a provision to allow us to enter into the eternal sacrifice of God every time we gather.

Listen as Fr. Tom shows from the Scriptures how the only response to the truth is to be crucified to the world.

In the third of his Holiness Month series, Fr Thomas encourages us to not only spread the good news of Jesus Christ but to live out the law of Christ. (Matthew 4:18-23) All Saints of North America Sunday, June 18, 2023.

Father Gregory speaks about the significance of water in his homily for the Feast of Theophany.

Fr. Gregory says that we don't need a New Year's resolution but rather a New Year's revolution.

This is the fulfilment of our divine vocation on earth ... to be the people of the covenant, ever relating to the trustworthy God with loving faith and to all people with that very self-same love with which He both loves us and loves all.

The Theotokos stands for the whole biblical way of looking at the relationship between God and His creation as a mystery of LOVE.

Subdeacon Emmanuel gives the homily on the belief of the Centurion.

The nature of Christ’s return will be within me and within you. We are now ready to put on Christ within ourselves in how we live as baptised Orthodox Christians.

Fr. Gregory helps us understand the harmony of faith and works.

Fr. Christopher is the homilist and he reminds us that the Incarnation of Christ means that physical things are used by God to bless us.

Fr. Christopher preaches on the Sunday of the Paralytic.

People who are not Orthodox are surprised when they are told that we only have two doctrines concerning the Blessed Mary in spite of the prominence she is given in our worship.

Fr. Dn. Emmanuel Kahn gives the sermon on Forgiveness.

There is no place where the resurrection of Christ has not touched. All things are “under his feet” – his victorious feet! Pascha is everywhere and nothing is the same.

Fr. Gregory says that St. Peter in Lydda should have taken the trouble to visit Joppa to raise Dorcas from the dead shows the importance that the early Church gave to the plight of widows.