OrthoAnalytika
In this episode, Fr. Anthony examines the nature of ultimate reality—God, gods, and the arche’—through Scripture and the Fathers. With insights from Journey to Reality, he shows how God transcends all categories and draws us into worship and transformation. Enjoy the show! ------ Ultimate Reality: God, gods, arche’ Fr. Anthony Perkins; 10 September 2025 Text: Zachery Porcu, PhD. 2025. “Chapter 2 – Ultimate Reality” in Journey to Reality; Sacramental Life in a Secular Age. Ancient Faith Publishing. Verses to Frame the Discussion Exodus 24:10. And they saw the God of...
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Today we started our Fall Wednesday evening education series, during which we are working our way through Zachery Porcu's "Journey to Reality" from Ancient Faith Publishing. Today, after framing our discussion with the "trees walking" account of the healing of the blind man from the Gospel according to St. Mark (8:22-38 - see below), we cover the main topics in chapter one. Enjoy the show! ------ Trees Walking: the Problem of Discerning the Gospel Fr. Anthony Perkins; 03 September 2025 Text: Zachery Porcu, PhD. 2025. “Chapter 1 – What is Christianity” in Journey to Reality;...
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St. Matthew 19:16-26 (Rich Young Man) Hebrews 9:1-7 In this homily, Father Anthony reflects on the Gospel of the rich young man, reminding us that salvation is more than meeting a minimum standard—it is a lifelong journey toward holiness. He shows how Christ gently leads us beyond comfort, calling us to surrender our attachments, whether wealth, time, opinions, or fears, in order to live in love and trust before God. Through the practice of kenosis, or self-emptying, we learn to soften our hearts, grow in grace, and allow Christ to transform us into His likeness. NOTE: The prayer that Fr....
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St. Matthew 18:23-35 (The Unforgiving Servant) I Corinthians 9:2-12 In this homily, Father Anthony explores the calling of Christians not only to pursue personal holiness, but also to help cultivate a culture of holiness that shapes the life of the parish and the wider world. Using the Divine Liturgy as our pattern, he explains how intentional practices—such as the placement of prayers, offerings, and the way we relate to one another—form habits that naturally move us toward mercy, patience, and love. Reflecting on the parable of the unforgiving servant and St. Paul’s guidance to the...
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I Corinthians 4:9-16 St. Matthew 17:14-23 Fr. Anthony reflects on St. Paul’s call to imitation, teaching that we are shaped by those around us and must guard our hearts and minds against sin while cultivating holiness. He explains the spiritual power of the Antiochian pre-communion prayers, showing how their repetition trains our minds, transforms our souls, and unites the faithful as one body in Christ. Enjoy the show! --- Here is the Antiochian Orthodox Pre-Communion Prayer for the Divine Liturgy: I stand before the doors of thy temple, and yet I refrain not from my terrible...
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In this homily, we reflect on Christ’s miraculous feeding of the five thousand as a revelation of His abundant love and the Church’s calling to hospitality. Fr. Anthony explores how, through grace, even our limited offerings are multiplied to nourish the world, revealing a Kingdom where scarcity has no place. Enjoy the show! ------ MATTHEW 14:14-22 At that time, Jesus saw a great throng; and he had compassion on them, and healed their sick. This is what he does. He sees our suffering and heals us. What a blessing to have such a compassionate and capable God. When it...
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This recording of the Divine Liturgy (Christ the Saviour, Anderson SC) starts with the Great Doxology. The homily and reception of communion were cut from the recording. The sound quality isn't great - it was done with a phone sitting on an analoy off to the side. Of course, worship is always better in person; join us when you can!
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Title: Seeing Suffering Brightly: Faith, Discipline, and the Light of Christ Matthew 7:27-35; The Two Blind Men In this homily, Fr. Anthony shares Metropolitan Saba's teaching from the 2025 Convention that true spiritual vision begins not in denial of suffering, but in faithful endurance of it, transforming evil through thanksgiving and trust in God. Drawing on real martyrdom and lived faith in places like Damascus, he challenges us to see God’s love even in discipline and to witness to Christ with joy, courage, and unwavering hope. For a complete text of His Eminence, Metropolitan Saba's...
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Everything is Awesome! James 5:10-20; St. Matthew 9:1-8 (Riffing on St. Peter Chrysologus) Over the last few homilies, I have tried to share an approach to living that looks for the good, and the beautiful, and the true in all things so that we might have joy in them and nurture them towards greater glory. Today, I am going to continue this lesson by applying it to scripture. Of course, in this case we are not nurturing scripture to greater glory, but we always grow in our appreciation of its goodness, beauty, and truth so that those virtues might grow within us. Let’s go...
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The Sunday for the Fourth Ecumenical Council Titus 3:8-15; Matthew 5:14-19 Note: the recording includes a few seconds when Fr. Anthony's mind went apophatic and he forgot a critical detail. Real life is like that sometimes! First Council: Nicea in 325 (vs. Arius) "And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made: Who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of...
info_outlineTrust, Magic, and the Meltdown on Aisle Three
Homily on St. Thomas Sunday
Fr. Anthony Perkins
One of the themes in today's Gospel reading is belief. We live in a world where it is hard to know what to believe. It's no longer just a matter of media spin, we cannot even agree on the facts themselves (example of gas attack). It threatens to drag us down into the hell of the man whom we heard declare last week; “what is truth?” (Pilate in John 18:38) Perhaps this is nowhere more true than when we are talking about belief in God.
Dealing with belief is hard; it has a lot of psychological baggage associated with it. Today I would like to deal with it in its purest form; not as a measurement of a person's relationship to a set of propositions, but as trust in a specific person.
Let's get even more specific and start with an example we can relate to, the example of a marriage and the trust between a husband and a wife. Even if we have never been married, we have experience with this. We know how good things are when it is there and we know how terrible – how bent, crooked, rough, and dry – things are when it is missing.
What does it mean when a husband believes in his wife? Does it mean he understands her? No. (As if!) It means that he trusts her. He knows that she is committed to her marriage and her family, that all of her decisions and actions are devoted to its health and protection, that she loves and sacrifices for it, and that they are part of the same team.
Again, it does not require that he understands her. There is always more to learn, and learning and the good listening and communication that contribute to it is important, but the main thing is trust. Without that, there is no relationship. [Recorder ran out of tape here, BTW] No peace. No real cooperation. No unity. Just, perhaps, coordinated loneliness. They are not an icon of the fulfillment of God's desire that we “all be one as He and His Father are one” (John 17), but an icon of the world's brokenness, its bentness, its roughness, and its dryness.
Similarly, we can look at the relationship of children with their parents and see the value of trust.
How wonderful is the relationship between mother and child! Love and sacrifice on the one side, and faith and obedience on the other. Has a child any other path to happiness than that of faith [trust] in its mother and obedience to her? Is there anything more monstrous than a child that has no faith [trust] in its mother, and does not obey her?
[Faith is the purest path to knowledge. Anyone who turns from this path becomes shameful and impure. Faith is the quickest path to knowledge. Anyone who turns from this path will lag on his way. Where there is faith there is counsel; where there is no faith, counsel is of no help. Where there is faith, there is dialogue; where faith is lacking, dialogue is also lacking; then doubt and temptation take the place of dialogue...
Oh what a sorry sight it is when two mortal men meet, both creatures of Him who also created the seraphim, and one speaks to the other to tempt him, and the one listens to the other with doubt! There is only one sorrier sight than this, and that is when a created man listens to the words of his Creator in the Gospel, and doubts them.]
p. 213-214, “Homily on the First Sunday after Easter” of Homilies by [St.]Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic”
What do good parents want for their children? A common answer is that parents want their children to be happy. We should be dubious about this: it is a trap. A better goal – and the one that our Father desires for us is that we be good [as He is good]. This is not about following rules, but about goodness, about sacrificing for what is right. About the development of virtue.
The parent may offer happiness as a reward for doing good. But happiness on it's own? No. That does not create trustworthy adults that are willing to sacrifice for their beloved – it creates selfish and superficial people who judge every transaction on the amount of happiness it brings them.
Come at concept sideways: magic. Magic involves is the manipulation of supernatural forces. The magician is the one who attempts to cajole, flatter, bind or bargain with them to get them to do what they want, often on behalf of a client. Magic, magicians, and their familiar spirits are all judged based on whether they deliver. It's transactional and selfish.
This is NOT the way the world is meant to work. The deeper magic is about relationships enjoyed NOT for what they deliver but for the enjoyment of love itself. It's about shared lives, grounded in mutual sacrifice and the development and exercise of virtue. It most certainly is NOT about manipulation.
To go back to the point about trust and belief, God is not judged by whether we can manipulate Him into giving us what we want or even what we believe is best for the world and its suffering people.
We cannot be like the tyrannical child that throws a fit in the grocery store because he is hungry; but rather like the good child that trusts that when the parents say a meal is waiting at home – it is there.
Let us enter now into the preparatory feast of our good Father.