Everything is limited
Except God,
Except now God too
Has limited Himself.
Today the transcendent One
Is ultimately dependent, in His humanity
For food, for warmth, for shelter
Upon His mother.
As God, He continues to sustain the universe;
As one of us, He waits.
Hungry, He waits upon His mother
To awake.
Helpless, He waits upon His body
To mature.
Human, He waits upon His disciples
To be one,
That we, growing up into Him,
Knit together in love,
United by His Spirit,
May accomplish the work
That He waits to achieve in us, through us
His body.
And so He lies, waiting,
Hungry for the first time,
In a manger.
Embodied for all time
In us,
That we might be
His hands, His feet,
His glory.
Translating the Tradition: About Family
On this Sunday of the Forefathers, a few thoughts about family and the feast
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Translating the Tradition: Whom Will You Bear?
Wordsworth and the fast remind us of the importance of persisting in holiness, like the Theotokos
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Translating the Tradition: Plagiarizing Chrysostom on the Rich Man and Lazarus
In which I plagiarize my favourite of St. John Chrystostom’s sermons on “The Rich Man and Lazarus”, which focuses on the leveling effect of an earthquake (no pun intended) and how the Christian perspective, seeing disasters as literal “acts of God”, can actually help us in our pursuit of holiness by prompting self-examination and repentance – and by revealing our roles in this life for the transitory contingencies that they really are. I touch in this sermon on my own experience of an earthquake, which I have documented on my own personal blog (here and here), for anyone interested.
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The Power – and Powerlessness – of Evil
However much power we give evil, it is powerless in the presence of Christ.
Warning: As with almost all of my homilies, much of this sermon is based on what I have encountered and struggled with during the week. Given that, this one touches on suicide. If this is a sensitive topic for you, you may want to skip this one. Also, given that suicide is not the primary focus of the sermon, it does not attempt any sort of systematic, authoritative, or well-rounded treatment of the subject; if you are looking for that, I recommend the 2007 SCOBA Pastoral Letter on Suicide, available here: https://goo.gl/Se7FQE
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