Acknowledging the ugliness in our heart is like taking out the garbage. When we pretend it’s not there, it doesn’t go away. It just festers. But when we confess our sin by acknowledging before God the ugliness of our heart, a ray of light shines there and we take a step toward healing.

Observing the Feast of the Transfiguration means that we enter into our own change into the likeness of Jesus Christ through the many opportunities provided to us by the Church.

Fr. Philip LeMasters draws together the meaning of the Transfiguration of Christ and the Dormition of the Theotokos for our participation in the healing of our corrupt humanity.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reflects on the Feasts of the Transfiguration of our Lord and the Dormition of the Theotokos.

We are all bent over and crippled in profound ways in relation to the Lord, our neighbors, and even ourselves. The good news of Christmas is that the Savior is born to set us free from captivity to decay, corruption, and weakness.

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.

Today we conclude our commemoration of the Lord’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, when the spiritual eyes of Peter, James, and John were opened to behold His divine glory and they heard the voice of the Father say, “This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” (Mk. 9:7)

We do not have to look very closely at dominant trends in our culture today for signs that many people are offering their lives for the service of false gods, regardless of how they identify themselves religiously. The evidence of their idolatry is not primarily in where they congregate to worship, but in how they seek first the things of this world, such as possessions, power, and pleasure, and in how they hate and condemn those whom they perceive to stand in the way of their acquiring them.

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.

Returning to a literary career after a decade of exile, Fyodor Dostoevsky confronted one of the great delusions of secular humanism: that man is ultimately a rational being whose happiness depends on the exercise of self-interest. Characters in his novels The Idiot and Demons were designed to demonstrate that nihilistic self-destruction is the only outcome of such convictions. Father John concludes the episode by showing how nihilism played itself out in the fictional moral collapse of Dostoevsky's protagonist Raskolnikov and the real-life moral collapse of Friedrich Nietzsche.

As we approach the Sunday of the Adoration of the Cross during Great Lent, Dr. Humphrey reviews the scriptural passages which will be read and reflects on the obedience of Christ and our own obedience.

We consider the physicality of Matthew 17:1-13, 2 Corinthians 4:6 and 2 Peter 1:19-21 in the light of the experiences of Moses (Exodus 24 and 34), Elijah (1 Kings 19) Daniel (Dan 10:5-10) and the prophecy of Malachi 4. The transformation which comes in seeing and hearing God affects the whole of who we are!

This Sunday, the fourteenth of Luke, we also commemorate the prophet Zephaniah, whose tiny book in the OT speaks eloquently both of the dark state of God’s people, and his aim to bring them into the light (Zephaniah 1:14-17; 3:9-20). Those themes help us to think more concretely, and as a community, concerning the gospel and epistle for today (Ephesians 5:8-19; Luke 18:35-43), where spiritual blindness and sight is also addressed.

Special Agents of Christ: A Prayer Book for Young Orthodox Saints by Annalisa Boyd (Conciliar Press, 2012). Operation 1: Daily Prayer.

Special Agents of Christ: A Prayer Book for Young Orthodox Saints by Annalisa Boyd (Conciliar Press, 2012). Operation 2: Prayers in Time of Trouble.

Special Agents of Christ: A Prayer Book for Young Orthodox Saints by Annalisa Boyd (Conciliar Press, 2012). Operation 3: Prayers of Thanks.

Special Agents of Christ: A Prayer Book for Young Orthodox Saints by Annalisa Boyd (Conciliar Press, 2012). Operation 4: Prayers for Family, Friends, and Enemies.

Special Agents of Christ: A Prayer Book for Young Orthodox Saints by Annalisa Boyd (Conciliar Press, 2012). Operation 5: Prayers for the Dead

Special Agents of Christ: A Prayer Book for Young Orthodox Saints by Annalisa Boyd (Conciliar Press, 2012). Operation 6: Preparation for Confession.

Special Agents of Christ: A Prayer Book for Young Orthodox Saints by Annalisa Boyd (Conciliar Press, 2012). Operation 7: Praying with the Saints and Angels .

Special Agents of Christ: A Prayer Book for Young Orthodox Saints by Annalisa Boyd (Conciliar Press, 2012). Operation 8: Pray like a King.

"The Transfiguration of the Lord," from Feasts of Christ and the Theotokos and Miracles of the Lord by Spiritual Fragrance Publishing (2012)

16. Book 1: The Transfiguration of Our Lord from The Twelve Great Feasts for Children by Mother Melania (Conciliar Press, 2004) Book 2: Basil's Search for Miracles part 14 (chapters 28-29) by Heather Zydek (Conciliar Press, 2007)

"The Transfiguration of Jesus" from The Bible for Young People by Zoe Kanavas (Narthex Press, 2005)

109. The Transfiguration of Our Lord from The Twelve Great Feasts for Children by Sister Elaine (Conciliar Press, 2004)

Fr. Ted speaks at the Biennial Clergy-Laity Conference for the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Canada in Vancouver.

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

Today we're going to be talking about the veneration of Mary and the Saints in the Holy Tradition. This topic is often misunderstood and can be a stumbling block for inquirers. Our guest is Father Patrick Henry Reardon, Pastor of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, Sr. Editor of Touchstone Magazine and author of Christ in the Saints.

The holy icon defines for us what an image should be. But pornography is an anti-icon because it breaks the link between the image and the archetype and replaces it with a link between image and fantasy. Read the transcript HERE.

A Study of the Paralytic in Mark Chapter 2 Sometimes the world appears to be so divided and its people so alienated from one another, that it seems like it would take a miracle to fix it and bring us all together again! And yet, this is exactly what Christ came to do. Likewise, the purpose of the Church, which is His body, is to re-unite in itself the world, which has been pulled apart by sin. Drawing on the healing narratives of the Gospels, the sayings of early Church Father, St. John Chrysostom, and contemporary Orthodox thinker Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Steve and Bill examine the causes of division, and discuss how we are healed, and the fragmented cosmos is put back together again in the person of Christ.

Fr. Chad discusses The Manhattan Declaration, "a call of Christian conscience" that he helped produce, and defends Orthodox participation in such cultural manifestos.

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.

After a brief meditation on the Feast of the Transfiguration, Fr. Evan takes calls and answers email questions from listeners.

We celebrate the 200th episode of Orthodoxy Live with call-ins from Dr. Jeannie Constantinou, Fr. Thomas Soroka, Bill Marianes, Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, and Fr. Evan's wife, among others.

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.

Father Nicolae writes about how both the blind man in the Gospel reading, and Angela (a member of the community) have been changed by Christ to such an extent that they are nearly unrecognizable. This gives all of us hope of restoration through Christ.

Recently I have come across an anti-Orthodox polemic which rejects our veneration of icons on the grounds that venerating an image painted on a board of Christ, His Mother, or His saints is contrary to the practice of the apostles and of the earliest Church. The objection is stated with some sophistication, and is not the usual fundamentalist reference to the Mosaic Law’s proscription of carved statues used in worship (e.g. Exodus 20:4f). This more sophisticated objection acknowledges that there were indeed images of Christ, His Mother, and His saints used in the early Church such as can be found in the funerary art of the catacombs and on the walls of churches (such as that of Dura Europos). But, it points out, there is no evidence that these images functioned as anything more than mere decoration. That is, the people did not come up to the wall to kiss the wall art or venerate the images.

Fr. Apostolos encourages us that it is possible to change. May we approach the Feast of the Transfiguration "with a sense of humility and anticipation that we too might be radically changed into that same image from glory to glory."

Fr. Apostolos Hill speaks about the importance of being transfigured in Jesus Christ.

Third Sunday of the Great Fast

The Nativity is a present reality for us Orthodox Christians. It’s not just that we celebrate a past event now; there’s more to it than that. Christ is eternally born for all generations in the same way that he is both referred to in the Scriptures as “slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8] and also eternally risen and alive in the Cosmos.

Fr. Gregory Hallam brings the homily on the Feast of the Transfiguration.

Fr. Dn. Emmanuel gives the sermon about the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord.

In the Epistle for today from the closing verses of Chapter 6 of the Second Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul gives us a challenge and a promise. He challenges us to change how we are living; and he promises us that if we separate ourselves from idols, God will be loving and gentle and care for us with great mercy.

Deacon Emmanuel Kahn gives the sermon on the Feast of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple.

Today on this third Sunday in Lent, we venerate the cross of Christ—that is, we show profound respect and awe for what Jesus Christ achieved in the Crucifixion, as well as how the Crucifixion led to the Resurrection.

After coming home from a visit with Matushka Juliana Schmemann, Dr. Rossi reflects on aging and the preparation for the next life.

Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick posts a picture of the incorrupt hand of St. Katherine of Alexandria every year on Facebook. And every year, people freak out. But why?