We 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.

Theophany shows us that Jesus Christ is not merely a great religious teacher or moral example. He is truly God—a member of the Holy Trinity–and His salvation permeates His entire creation, including the water of the river Jordan. Through His and our baptism, we become participants in the holy mystery of our salvation.

John the Baptist was unspotted from the world due to the spiritual strength he gained from a life of asceticism and prayer, and he called people to follow him in preparing the way of the Lord as they bore “fruits worthy of repentance” and treated other people with the care appropriate to the children of God.

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.

In the remaining days before Christmas, let us embrace the radically disorienting 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.

Those who have put on Christ in baptism and who receive the Communion of His Body and Blood must become epiphanies of His fulfillment of the human person in God’s image and likeness. As we prepare to celebrate Theophany, let us gain the spiritual clarity to behold the glory of Christ’s baptism by straightening the crooked areas of our lives.

Even as we recall the Three Hierarchs’ shining example of holiness, we remember today also someone whose life changed dramatically when he turned away from corruption in order to follow Christ. Luke’s gospel portrays the story of Zacchaeus in memorable and distinctive ways.

If we are ever tempted to think that the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are antiquated niceties for those removed from the cares of daily life, we must think again. They are absolute necessities for us to live faithfully in our world of corruption. They are not practices focused on individual spiritual gratification, but how we find the strength to offer ourselves for the blessing of our neighbors and the salvation of the world.

Like St. Mary of Egypt, we must take up the cross of doing whatever it takes to find healing for our souls in the Lord Who offered up Himself for the salvation of the world. That was the path to holiness for St. Mary of Egypt, and it must be our path in the remaining days of this blessed season of Lent.

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.

Like the rich man, many want a spiritual pat on the pack for continuing down whatever passion-driven path they have followed so far.

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.

Let us prepare for the banquet through fasting, prayer, generosity, confession, and repentance, so that we will have the spiritual clarity to accept the great invitation that is ours in Christ Jesus.

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.

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.

In this episode Fr. John Strickland discusses various ways in which Christendom's leadership rejected the reformational Christianity that had provoked the wars of Western religion and replaced it with science, philosophy, pietistic Christianity, and a new religion known as deism.

Fr. John Parker has just returned from his trip to both Albania and Istanbul and files several reports and interviews. In this first report from Istanbul, he describes his surroundings and first impressions.

In his second report from Istanbul, Fr. John is sitting on the roof of his hotel reflecting on the Muslim call to prayer which is heard five times daily. He wonders about our own devotion to prayer in comparison.

In this brief episode, Fr. John is reporting from inside the Hagia Sophia, remembering the visit from the Russian emissaries who "knew not if we were in heaven or on earth."

In his last report from Istanbul, Fr. John reflects on how hidden Christianity is in this country which once was the center of Christianity.

Fr. John shares an update from the Department of Evangelization with the 18th All-American Council of the Orthodox Church in America, July 2015.

This week, as we approach Great Lent, Dr. Edith Humphrey helps us prepare our minds by focusing upon godly humility, as seen in Job, in the model laid out for Timothy by St. Paul, and in the well-known parable of the Publican and the Pharisee.

We reflect back upon the Psalm “By the Waters of Babylon,” heard by many of us in the past three weeks, as a preparation for Great Lent. Its troublesome final verse is read with the help of other portions of Scripture, St. John Chrysostom, Cassiodorus and others, so that we can understand why the psalm retains a valuable place in our worship together.

Prepare, O Bethlehem: The Feast of the Nativity, illustrated for children by Niko Chocheli (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2000)

Prepare, O Bethlehem!: The Feast of the Nativity Illustrated for Children by Niko Chocheli (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press (2000)

33. Book 1: Prepare, O Bethlehem!: The Feast of the Nativity illustrated for Children by Niko Chocheli (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2000) Book 2: Halloween Town by Dennis Eugene Engleman (Regina Orthodox Press) part three and conclusion

Prepare, O Bethlehem: The Feast of the Nativity, illustrated for children by Niko Chocheli (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2000)

128. Prepare, O Bethlehem: The Feast of the Nativity, illustrated for children by Niko Chocheli (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2000)

Prepare, O Bethlehem: The Feast of the Nativity, illustrated for children by Niko Chocheli (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2000)

It is very, very dangerous to commune without the proper preparation.

Jesus said “Everyone who practices sin is the slave of sin!” (Jn. 8:34). But we know so long as we live, we live only through God’s dynamic, life-sustaining power active in us. Read the transcript HERE.

In this podcast, the Chancellor of the Seminary, Fr. Chad Hatfield talks about the year just completed, the financial picture and some myths that need to be dispelled.

Well-known theologian, composer, and author Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, Chairman of the Department of External Relations for the Moscow Patriarchate, delivered an academic address at St. Vlad's on November 8, 2014, on the topic of primacy in preparation for the 2016 Great and Holy Council. He was also given an honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree.

The Very Rev. Fr. Dr. John Behr, the Dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, Dr. Bishop Anba Suriel of the Coptic Diocese of Melbourne, Dean of St. Athanasius Coptic Orthodox Theological College, Australia, and the Very Rev. Fr. Dr. Athanasius K. Farag, Dean of Pope Shenouda III Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary, speak at the book launch of the new SVS Press book by Pope Shenouda The Life of Repentance and Purity.

On February 27–28, 2017, Priest David Mezynski, associate dean for Student Affairs at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, presented four lenten reflections during the two days of intensive liturgical services that annually mark the beginning of Great Lent for the seminary community. Using a story-telling format and employing a variety of sayings from the desert monastics, Father David focused on the theme of gratitude as the fruit of repentance, and especially pinpointed two main obstacles to true repentance: 1) feeling no awareness of sin, with a consequent refusal to change; and 2) possessing a despairing attitude, with a consequent inability to receive forgiveness.

On February 27–28, 2017, Priest David Mezynski, associate dean for Student Affairs at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, presented four lenten reflections during the two days of intensive liturgical services that annually mark the beginning of Great Lent for the seminary community. Using a story-telling format and employing a variety of sayings from the desert monastics, Father David focused on the theme of gratitude as the fruit of repentance, and especially pinpointed two main obstacles to true repentance: 1) feeling no awareness of sin, with a consequent refusal to change; and 2) possessing a despairing attitude, with a consequent inability to receive forgiveness.

On February 27–28, 2017, Priest David Mezynski, associate dean for Student Affairs at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, presented four lenten reflections during the two days of intensive liturgical services that annually mark the beginning of Great Lent for the seminary community. Using a story-telling format and employing a variety of sayings from the desert monastics, Father David focused on the theme of gratitude as the fruit of repentance, and especially pinpointed two main obstacles to true repentance: 1) feeling no awareness of sin, with a consequent refusal to change; and 2) possessing a despairing attitude, with a consequent inability to receive forgiveness.

On February 27–28, 2017, Priest David Mezynski, associate dean for Student Affairs at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, presented four lenten reflections during the two days of intensive liturgical services that annually mark the beginning of Great Lent for the seminary community. Using a story-telling format and employing a variety of sayings from the desert monastics, Father David focused on the theme of gratitude as the fruit of repentance, and especially pinpointed two main obstacles to true repentance: 1) feeling no awareness of sin, with a consequent refusal to change; and 2) possessing a despairing attitude, with a consequent inability to receive forgiveness.

Addressing members of the Orthodox Inter-Seminary Movement (OISM), St. Vladimir's Seminary President Fr. Chad Hatfield offer some thoughts for future ordained and lay leaders who will be serving in an "aggresively anti-Christian" world. His insights and suggestions for further reading will be of interest to the seminarian and non-seminarian alike.

Domingo 16 de Febrero Pd. Nicolás predico sobre el arrepentimiento sin desesperación. No es bastante a conocer sus pecados pero cada uno tiene que tener esperanza en la misericordia del Señor. Lucas 15:11-32 Sunday February 16 Fr. Nicholas preached about repentance without despair. It is not enough to know your sins but everyone has to have hope in the mercy of the Lord. Luke 15:11-32

Padre Nicolás predicó sobre debemos prepararnos para un cielo que va a estar más fantástico y grande que podemos imaginar. (1 Corintios 1:10-18) Fr. Nicholas preached about how we should prepare ourselves for a heaven that will be more fantastic and amazing than we can fathom. (1 Corinthians 1:10-18)

Padre Nicholas predice que nos debemos prepararnos para el reino, para el rey, y para el cielo. Galatas 2;16-20 Fr. Nicholas preaches that we must prepare ourselves for the kingdom, for the King, and for heaven. Galatians 2:16-20

Padre Nicolás predicó sobre la oración en momentos difíciles clamando a Dios sin desesperarnos. (Hechos 16:16-34) Fr. Nicholas preached about prayer in the difficult times calling on God without losing hoping. (Acts 16:16-34)

El Padre Nicolás predicó cómo debemos prepararnos para recibir a Cristo resucitado en nuestras vidas. Father Nicolás preached how we should prepare to receive the risen Christ in our lives.

Molly suggests there is something very much related to the physical side of being spiritual.

Dn. Mark enumerates the things you'll need to have ready to prepare a body for burial and explains what to expect when you encounter a dead body.

Dn. Mark explains exactly what needs to be done when preparing a body for burial.

research and short essays about cultural loss and the critical importance of preservation and access #

Fr. Apostolos speaks about repentance as healing from the cancer of sin. Sin is that foreign substance in us which, if left untreated, will produce in us spiritual death, and God provides the treatment.