Elissa discusses how the parish and Sunday school can help support the family throughout Lent.

As we prepare with God’s help to enter the arena of the Great Fast, let’s not mistake the means for the end. Let’s use the tools the Church gives us wisely. Let’s push ourselves. Let’s deny ourselves that we may know ourselves. Let’s pray with the Publican, the Harlot and the Thief. And let’s together long for the Glorious Resurrection of our Lord and God, Jesus Christ.

There are some in the Orthodox Tradition who have said that married couples should abstain from sexual relations during lenten periods. Some have gone so far as to say that this is the teaching of the Church. I am not an expert on such things, so I will not venture an opinion on whether or not it is the teaching of the Church or whether or not it is merely pious opinion. However, since someone has asked me about it, I will share some of my thoughts about it. Follow the blog at blogs.ancientfaith.com/prayingintherain/2016/03/marriage-sex-lent

I feel a little crazy sometimes, like an idiot—not a godly, holy idiot, just a plain, old-fashioned idiot: the kind that boasts of humility and speaks about the virtue of silence.

Fr. Michael addresses what the word "talent" means (and doesn't mean) in Christ's Parable of the Talents.

Fr. Michael Gillis reminds us, "Like the prodigal and the harlot and the publican, we bring nothing except failure and a strong sense that we are not worthy to be received. But we come nonetheless. We come because the greatness of our Father’s love extends to the lowest hell of our misery. We come expecting nothing, but asking our merciful God for mercy. We come knowing that we are a compete mess, but that we are God’s nonetheless. We are God’s, mess and all."

This week, the guys watched Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade. They discuss what it’s like to not be the intended audience for a work of art, listening to experiences we don’t share, the human need to make sense of tragic events, and the album's struggle through infidelity and pain. They end with their Top 5 Music Videos.

The guys watched Martin Scorcese’s newest film, Silence, and it left them feeling…conflicted. Join Steve and Christian as they discuss immanent expressions of faith, the gruesome (and hopeful) reality of martyrdom, the pain of the dark night of the soul, and the depth of the Lenten struggle. They close with their Top 5 Conflicted Characters of All Time.

Fr. Philip encourages us at this midpoint of Great Lent to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

On this Sunday of "The Ladder of Divine Ascent," by St. John Climacus, we are called to ever greater heights of union with God by lowering ourselves through humble repentance.

Fr. Philip LeMasters addresses the violence in our world today by reflecting on the call to love our neighbor in the story of Lazarus.

Fr. Philip LeMasters calls us to offer our lives in service of the Kingdom of God.

If we want to approach Lent in a spiritually healthy way that will enable us to participate already in life eternal, we too must offer up ourselves.

In preparing for Great Lent this year, we must remain on guard against the temptation of self-exaltation in any form.

As we begin our Lenten journey, we remember today how Adam and Eve stripped themselves naked of the divine glory and were cast out of Paradise into a world enslaved by death. During Great Lent, we follow the path that leads back to Paradise.

Lenten practices are not instruments of punishment or legalism, but blessed tools for becoming more fully our true selves as living icons 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.

“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” The father of the young man in today’s gospel lesson cried out these words with tears in response to the Lord’s statement that “all things are possible to him who believes.” The father in this passage provides a good example of how we should respond to the spiritual challenges posed by our current public health crisis.

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.

Our calling this week is to enter into the profound contrast between the ways of the world as we know them and the life of our crucified and risen Lord. Especially today, it is easy to focus on what is going wrong, on what we have lost already or may lose in the future.

“The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” The key difference between the Pharisee and the Publican rooted in their hearts and was not simply a matter of their outward behavior or how they appeared to others. Even the despised traitor and thief remained in the image of God and was able to embrace divine mercy when he humbly confessed the truth about his personal brokenness. The Pharisee also bore God’s image, but was so blinded by his slavery to the primordial sin of pride that his spiritual practices lacked integrity and did his soul more harm than good.

During Great Lent, we will follow the path that leads back to Paradise.

We must devote ourselves to prayer, fasting, almsgiving, forgiveness, and other forms of repentance in the weeks ahead if we are to open the depths of our brokenness to the healing of our Lord’s humble, suffering love. That is the only way to become like the tax collector in spiritual clarity, for he was aware only of his sin and need for God’s mercy. We must know the true state of our corruption and weakness as he did, if we are to enter into the joy of the Lord’s resurrection.

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.

Now is the time to prepare for a spiritually beneficial Lent that will help us grow in the humility necessary to see ourselves and our neighbors clearly as we reorient our lives toward the great joy of Pascha.

May every step of the journey lead us further away from exile and closer to our true home, the Paradise that our Lord has opened to us through His glorious resurrection on the third day.

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.

Through the many struggles of this season of Lent, we all have the opportunity to grow in the faith necessary to entrust ourselves more fully to Christ.

On this first Sunday of Great Lent, we commemorate the restoration of icons centuries ago in the Byzantine Empire. They were banned due to a misguided fear of idolatry, but restored as a proclamation of how Christ calls us to participate in His salvation in every dimension of our existence.

We will misunderstand these blessed weeks of Lent if we assume that they are about helping us to have clearer ideas or deeper feelings about our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection. We will be even more confused if we think that our intensified prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and repentance somehow earn God’s forgiveness or make us better than other people. Quite the contrary, Lenten disciples are simply opportunities to open our souls to the gracious healing of our Lord so that we may share more fully in His life. That is another way of saying that the point of Lent is to grow in our knowledge of God through true spiritual experience and encounter.

If we have embraced the spiritual practices of Lent with any level of integrity for the last few weeks, the weakness of our faith has surely become apparent to us.

Fr. John looks at some of the actual texts of early Christian hymns and the way in which they gave expression to the vision of early Christendom.

Fr. John discusses the spiritual transformation of time by Christianity.

Nathan Hoppe, Orthodox Christian Mission Center missionary to Albania, shares about the Incarnation and missions.

Nathan Hoppe, Orthodox Christian Mission Center missionary to Albania, shares practical ways about getting involved in missions.

As the Lenten season begins, Fr. John Parker reads a brief sermon that he had penned, formerly read by Fr. Thomas Hopko, that is written in the style and tradition of St. John Chrysostom's well known and loved Paschal Homily.

We read Hebrews 1:10-2:3 and Mark 2:1-12 shows how the arrival of God the Son in our midst was wholly unanticipated, something completely new, helped by hints in Psalm 101 (102 MT) and Daniel 7.

This Friday, July 22nd, Eastern and Western Christians honor St. Mary Magdalene, Equal-to-the-Apostles. We consider, by reference to Old and New Testament texts, what her particular role in the Church can teach us about communion with each other, and with the LORD.

Today, on what has unfortunately become a merely “secular” festival, we recover a deeper Valentine’s message by considering what our faith has to say about romance and true love. We look at the life of the third century St. Valentine, and consider Hebrews 13:4, Genesis 1 and 2, Ephesians 5; and the book of Tobit (especially 8:4-8).

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.

This week, we consider the strange figure of Melchizedek in Hebrews 4:14-5:10, and read it in the light of Mark 8:27-9:1, Genesis 14, Isaiah 53 and Psalm 44/45. Why is this figure compared with our Lord, and how must we go beyond this comparison to embrace the cross?

This week we read the epistle through the lenses of St. John Chrysostom, St. John Climacus, the book of Genesis and Isaiah’s portrait of the Suffering Servant. Here we are given the hope to continue following our great forerunner Jesus. The gospel reading adds to this the importance of faith, prayer and fasting, as we set our faces towards the cross.

This coming Sunday, we read Hebrews 9:11-14, which speaks about how Jesus our Lord has cleansed our consciences. We understand these verses with the help of St. John Chrysostom, Leviticus 16, and Jeremiah 31:33.

We encounter the silence of heaven and the difficult warnings of the first four trumpets in Rev. 8, with the help of passages from Exodus, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Zechariah. In the presence of mystery, we wait for God to fulfill His promises, knowing that His will is for all to turn to Him.

We read the difficult chapter of Revelation 9, looking to Job, Ezekiel 9:3-8, the words of Jesus (Luke 21:18), and the wisdom of some early commentators in order to help us consider the problem of evil, placed alongside our omnipotent and loving God.

76. Book 1: "The Birth of John" from The Bible for Young People by Zoe Kanavas (Narthex Press, 2005) (5.28 mins) Book 2: The Life of Saint Constantine and his Mother, Saint Helena by Euphemia Briere part two and conclusion (St. Nectarios Press, 2003) (17.06 mins)

"Saint Constantine," "Saint Helen," and "Saint Nina" from Saints: Lives and Illuminations, written and illustrated by Ruth Sanderson, read with permission by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2007.

"The Parable of the Talents" from The Parables of Christ by Spiritual Fragrance Publishing (2012)

"Saint Mary Magdelene," from The Co-Workers for the Gospel, Illustrated Biographies, Book 5, by Spiritual Fragrance Publishing (2012)

Great Lent Unplugged: The Funny, Terrible, Wonderful Journey to Pascha, Preface, by Jean Hoefling (Regina Orthodox Press, 2007) Available on Amazon.