St. Mary Orthodox Church

Listening is not as easy as it seems! If we think we know what the other needs and try to impose our own agenda, we will never actually hear what the other says. What is revealed in such misguided attempts is not the needs of the other but the needs of the teacher, priest, or therapist. Read more »

 

It is important to spend time looking within. We need to know what is going on under our own noses. Too much emphasis in religion is placed on externals which are important, of course, but what goes on within is far more important. Read more »

 

It is now less than a year before we host the Archdiocese Convention (July 19-26). Excitement across the Archdiocese is high. In the parish our committees have been hard at work doing the preparatory work to make this a truly wonderful event. Read more »

 

I was hiking through the Great Smokey mountains on the Appalachian Trail during my high school days with several of my friends. The way you know you are on the trial is that every so often you will see a red mark on a tree. After a while I noticed that there were no red marks! We were lost. Read more »

 

The celebration of Pascha is over and the Resurrection is not. Nor has it ever been. Not in yours or my memory. We celebrate the feast with intensity and when we are done we return to our ordinary lives. The thrill and excitement associated with the Feast of Feasts ends. The kingdom does not. Read more »

 

The death of our Father in Christ, Metropolitan PHILIP has come as a shock to us and also as a reminder. We are shocked because we respected and loved him. Sometimes we took delight in him, sometimes we disagreed with him, and yet this is what families are like - like waves of the sea, now calm and the next moment troubled. Read more »

 

Christ is in our midst! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. The Least of the Brethren is Me. The Holy Spirit is in all places, filling all things. All of this, we believe, is true, so why then do we not see? Perhaps we suffer from a fundamental form of blindness that causes us to create realities with our hopes, dreams and desires that do not actually exist. We see what we want to see and so we miss all those things we don't. Read more »

 

Christmas comes. Epiphany comes. The Feast of the Presentation follows. All celebrations of Light in the darkest season, revelations of the glory of God piercing the veil. Each one an apocalypse in the truest sense. Read more »

 

The celebration of God's birth in the flesh and his baptism, the revelation of the Most Holy Trinity, points us to the truth that the spiritual life is not about ethics and morals, it is about mystery. Read more »

 

The highest values, those that ennoble both ourselves and our neighbors are our values. The seeds of aggression born of fear and ignorance do not rank among them. Long ago Aristides wrote to the emperor Hadrian about Christians Read more »

 

The question has been asked (in a curious way) what am I for? I will tell you. I am pro Holy Trinity. I am pro Incarnation. I am pro Gospel of Jesus. I am pro Orthodox Church and rejoice when she actually lives up to her high calling. I am pro image of God in every man, woman and child I meet. Read more »

 

The question has been asked (in a curious way) what am I for? I will tell you. I am pro Holy Trinity. I am pro Incarnation. I am pro Gospel of Jesus. I am pro Orthodox Church and rejoice when she actually lives up to her high calling. Read more »

 

It is so simple. The Kingdom of heaven which is to come is embedded in the creation here and now. If we look deeply into everything we discover it. We find Him who has not made a secret of this, but who waits for us to open our hearts and minds to show us. Read more »

 

I want to welcome everyone back from vacation and I hope it was a restful and exciting summer. We are back to our regular schedule of services, Sunday School will begin shortly with our new superintendent, Barbara Shoop, and a fresh crop of teachers ready to educate our children, Bob Kowalik's Catechism Class will start up soon, and life at St. Mary's (which never seems to slow down anymore) will rev up again for another liturgical cycle beginning on Sept. 1. Read more »

 

The summer is hot...and humid this year. There are some of us who love this kind of weather. I am not one of them, but, as in everything, there is hope. The weather eventually will change. Everything changes. All the time. Read more »

 

One of the very first books I ever read (that I enjoyed) was THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES by Ray Bradbury. I found it in my father's personal collection on the bookshelf he made from planks and cinder blocks painted black in the sun room of our house on Elm Street. This was the first time I paid attention to what was on that shelf. There were other treasures there that I picked up later, but this was the book I never forgot. Read more »

 

The Marathon bombing touched all of us. Members of our parish were runners and spectators near the finish line at Copley Square. We are grateful they were not hurt. A number of our young people and their parents knew the surviving suspect from school. They are heartbroken. One of the fatalities was a young woman from my home town of Medford. Read more »

 

The Paschal celebrations are always glorious and each year we experience something new. Perhaps new insights break through that bring us unexpected joys and challenges. Read more »

 

Do you think if Jesus were to appear at the door of our church today he would come in grand Byzantine vestments, mitre and all? I do not believe it. I seriously doubt we would recognize him. Since we already think we know him he would have to look like we think he would look before we would recognize him. Since we already think we know what he would do and say, then he would have to do and say what we think he should in order for us to receive him. What if he didn't? Read more »

 

On the Sunday after the Feast of Theophany we read from St. Matthew's Gospel about how the people 'who sat in darkness have seen a great light, specifically those who dwelt in the land of Zebulon and Naphtali, the Galilee of the Gentiles. Read more »