There is simply no way around the truth that how we relate to other people reveals whether we participate in the life our Lord. What we do and refuse to do for neighbors who need our time, attention, and generosity in any form, we do or refuse to do for Him.

We must mindfully take the steps necessary to follow the Theotokos in becoming holy living temples of the Lord. That is the only way to celebrate this feast and to prepare to celebrate Christmas with integrity.

Let us not despair even when the darkness threatens to overwhelm us, but instead mindfully open our hearts to the light of Christ as we trust that He will minister to us at our point of greatest need and make us participants in His salvation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Holy Week is not a time for rational theological speculation and argument. It is, instead, a time for entering into the deep mystery of the love of our Lord, of the great “I AM” Who remains infinitely beyond our full comprehension.

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.

By faith in Christ, we have become the new tenants of the vineyard with an obligation to “give him the fruits in their seasons.” That, of course, is precisely what the original tenants refused to do. Instead of tending the vineyard and offering its fruit to their rightful owner, they wanted everything for themselves and even killed the son of the owner in order to take his inheritance. We must read this passage as a reminder that, in order to be good tenants of the Lord’s vineyard, we must offer ourselves in union with His great Self-Offering on the Cross for the salvation of the world.

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.

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.

One of the great challenges that many of us face is learning to see that being an Orthodox Christians may not be reduced to confessing certain beliefs about God, no matter how true those beliefs are. Our faith may not be reduced to conscientious participation in the worship of the Church or keeping our own rule of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, or other spiritual disciplines. Our faith may not be reduced to following a code of moral behavior or distinguishing clearly between actions that are good or evil. These endeavors are all virtuous in and of themselves and we must not neglect or diminish them in any way, but our calling is much higher, for it is nothing less than to embody the mercy of God from the very depths of our being.

Fr. John explores what could be called the catacomb culture of the Church in relation to the Roman Empire.

Fr. John evaluates the impact that the Christianization of Rome had on the state's conception of sacrifice.

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

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

Fr. John explores specific examples of icons and the way in which they manifested early Christendom's experience of the kingdom of heaven.

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.

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.

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

In this episode, Fr. John discusses Pope Urban II's calling of the First Crusade and the impact it and the crusades of the twelfth century had upon relations between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics.

Fr. John discusses the rise of the Franks in Western Christianity.

In this anecdotal introduction to the final reflection of Part 2 of the podcast, Father John relates the extraordinary story of a Reformation-era town that declared itself the kingdom of Christ on earth, a "New Jerusalem." Expressing a profound absence of God in the world, however, the story of Reformation Muenster was in fact a sign of the fall of a Christendom centered upon the experience of paradise.

Fr. John concludes his account of the influence of the Franks by returning to the question of the filioque and how the papacy's resistance to its insertion in the Creed finally came to an end on the eve of the Great Schism.

Fr. John delineates the various ways in which Constantine contributed to the Christianization of the Roman state.

Fr. John discusses the ways in which the Church tries to create a sanctified topography in Christendom.

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 explores a Barna Group study on the state of Christianity in North America and asks how the observations impact us as Orthodox Christians. The study can be found HERE.

Fr. John Parker today reflects on what the ever-memorable Archbishop Dmitri taught him in the nine years during which Fr. John served His Eminence—lessons about love, economia, stewardship, and above all, Christ crucified and raised from the dead. His Eminence fell asleep in the Lord one year ago.

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. Josiah Trenham speaks about the connection between church building consecration and people consecration at a clergy retreat for the Carolina Deanery of the Orthodox Church in America.

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

Fr. John reflects on a few experiences at Costco, and then about Clemson and Christianity.

Recorded on March 17, Fr. John remembers Fr. Thomas Hopko who reposed on March 18, 2015. May his memory be eternal. These links were referenced: Fr. John's reflection soon after Fr. Tom's repose Fr. Tom's lecture on Understanding the Cross Funeral homily by Fr. John Behr

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

Fr. John begins to discuss his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and how it is important to visit the locations talked about in the New Testament.

Fr. John continues to share from Jerusalem, and he talks about the Church of St. James.

Fr. John talks about the history of the church in Jerusalem, and the holiness of the tomb of Christ.

Fr. John comments about the amount of faith in Jerusalem and urges us to pray fervently.

Fr. John shares some reflections on the death of Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko.

Fr John reflects on Liturgy at the Tomb of the Lord in Jerusalem

Fr John discusses a visit to the remarkable church built on the site of the baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch--a church recently discovered and under excavation in near Bethlehem. The church contains one of the largest baptismal fonts found in Israel.