Rorate Coeli – Fourth Sunday of Advent 2024
Rust ruins metal. Stomach acid burns through your esophagus. Vices do the same to your soul.
Vices are not simply bad habits. Vices signify a state of mind….
Read MoreTrinity 20, 2024
Last Sunday we heard about nakedness and clothing. There is the nakedness of man’s sin and shame, and the clothing of Christ’s righteousness, given in Holy Baptism. What we have at the end of today’s parable is a man who rejects that clothing. He refuses the wedding garment, he refuses Christ’s righteousness. He wants life, he wants the kingdom on his own terms.
The same thing is going on at the beginning of the parable. What is a parable? It’s a story with you in it. And in the Bible, it’s a story with Christ in it. If you get those wrong—if you mistake yourself for Christ—you’ll end up with a different kind of religion altogether….
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Ready to Leave This Strange Country
Pascha (Passover) characterizes the life of the disciples of Jesus. St. John Chrysostom:
Let not any one of them that eat this Passover look towards Egypt, but towards Heaven, towards “Jerusalem that is above.” (Gal. 4:26.) On this account thou eatest with thy loins girded, on this account thou eatest with shoes on thy feet, that thou mayest know, that from the moment thou first beginnest to eat the Passover, thou oughtest to set out, and to be upon thy journey. And this implies two things, both that we must depart out of Egypt, and that, whilst we stay, we must stay henceforth as in a strange country; “for our citizenship,” saith he, “is in Heaven” (Phil. 3:20); and that all our life long we should ever be prepared, so that when we are called we may not put it off, but say, “My heart is fixed.” (Ps. 108:1.)
(NPNF 1:13, p165)
The Marriage of Stephanie Hammond & Eric Buus
St. John Chrysostom said that in marriage, husband and wife become companions on a journey. He says there are two kinds of marriages: those that bring great blessings to the husband and wife, their family, and their neighbors; but there are other marriages which seem to bring few blessings to anyone. The difference between the two, he says, is in the spirit of the bond in which the marriage is formed….
Read MoreThe Vigil of Christmas 2023
Joseph is in agony. He’s spent the very first season of Advent contemplating divorce. Joseph is betrothed to Mary. Some Bible translations render it “engaged,” but it’s much more than that. Betrothal is a legally binding marriage that is not yet consummated. Today, you can break an engagement without any consequence except the down payment on the reception venue. But Joseph and Mary are not engaged, they are betrothed, and the only way out of that is divorce….
Read MoreEighth Sunday after Trinity
The Speaker of the House visited Taiwan last week. Her visit threatened to disrupt America’s official policy on Taiwan: strategic ambiguity. I think that’s what we have going on in our own lives, especially as Christianity intersects desire: strategic ambiguity. We’re partially but not fully committed to being disciples of Jesus. Christianity is good, but let’s not take it too far.
But God demands an end to our ambiguity. “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” [James 4.4]….
Read MoreThe Pride of Dominion
Here's a great passage from St. John Chrysostom on the Parable of the Unrighteous Steward that shaped my thinking in preparing yesterday's sermon:
You are an administrator of things that are another's ... Upon you has been bestowed but the right of their brief and passing use. Cast then from your soul the pride of dominion, and put on instead the modesty and humility of a steward.
Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, vol. III, p321