OrthoAnalytika
In this homily, Fr Anthony challenges us to reflect on our own expectations of God. Like the Jews, we often approach God with our own predefined ideas of what He should do for us. When our problems persist or even worsen, we are faced with a choice: either we try to control God and limit His power by confining Him to our expectations, or we allow Him to transform our lives in unexpected ways, leading us to a deeper relationship with Him. Enjoy the show!
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Today, Fr. Anthony continues to keep it real while talking about the great challenge of loving our enemies. Love your enemies. Matthew 5:43-48 1 Corinthians 13: 1 John 13:34 Romans 15:1a St. John Chrysostom: [St. Paul] adorns love not only for what it has but also for what it has not. Love both elicits virtue and expels vice, not permitting it to spring up at all. St John Chrysostom: For neither did Christ simply command to love but to pray. Do you see how many steps he has ascended and how he has set us on the very summit of virtue? Mark it, numbering from the...
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Fr. Anthony concludes his prestantation on beauty at the 2025 UOL Lenten retreat by connecting music with love. Music taps into and draws from something that is primal, foundational, and rational (word – bearing); so does love. Music requires mastery of certain skills and concepts that require repetition to master; so does love. Music improves when there are different voices represented; so does love. Music works with dissonance to move us towards deeper truths; so does love. Music often requires periods of silence for listening, anticipation, and appreciation; so...
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Fr. Roman Marchyshak is the priest at Holy Trinity Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Trenton, NJ and teaches liturgical music at St. Sophia Ukrainian Orthodox Seminary. In this presentation, he talks about the role music plays in the worship of the Orthodox Church, reminding us that it is not an adornment, but an essential element. He had some of the seminarians from St. Sophia's sing selected pieces to illustrate his main points. Enjoy the show!
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This is the audio for the first part of the 2025 Ukrainian Orthodox League Lenten Retreat held on Saturday April 5th in Philadelphia. Beauty helps us understand Orthodox (INCARNATIONAL!) theology better and thus live more graceful lives. It is also one of the best ways to do Orthodox Evangelism. People come to us for many reasons, but an encounter with God is what they really long for. Beauty is a special charisma of the Church – secular beauty is a pale imitation (or perversion) of that true beauty. Beauty resonates with the built-in beauty receptors of our senses,...
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On the Sunday of St. John of the Ladder, Fr. Anthony delivers a homily that encourages us to take our pursuit of joy, peace, and freedom from anxiety seriously. He begins by asking whether we truly want these things or if we expect them to come without effort, likening it to people desiring health or success without being willing to make the necessary sacrifices. He emphasized that true peace and joy require commitment, not idle desire, and must be pursued through effort, prayer, and fasting. Fr. Anthony critiqued the common temptation of chasing material security and success, such as the...
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Fr. Anthony leads a discussion with the men of Christ the Savior's parish on the basics of leading a Christian home. Enjoy the show!
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Still trying to “keep it real,” Fr. Anthony leads a class on the challenges that come when we try to love our neighbor. Enjoy the show!
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Mark: 8:34-9:1. In this homily, Fr. Anthony discusses the true meaning of taking up one's cross in Christian life. He emphasizes that Christ's cross was not just a symbol of pain but of sacrificial love, where Jesus Christ gave Himself for the salvation of others. The act of following Christ involves denying personal desires to serve others, even when it's difficult or misunderstood. By sacrificing our time and efforts for others' well-being, we emulate Christ's example, aligning our actions with His purpose for eternal life. The homily highlights that true sacrifice is motivated by love and...
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In this lesson, Fr. Anthony talks about how necessary a prayer rule and proper worship are to knowing and loving God. Enjoy the show!
info_outlineHomily: Holiness Changes Everything (Sunday after Theophany)
Ephesians 4: 7-13
St. Matthew 4: 12-17
Review/Introduction.
Ontology of Beauty. Designed to provide a deeper appreciation for our faith and to demonstrate the blindness of materialism (to include the “new atheists”). When materialists describe our appreciation for beauty, they either try to show how an appreciation for beauty somehow increased evolutionary fitness, or, in a more sophisticated way, say that it is a happy coincidence. We know that there is more to beauty than these explanations allow. God is beautiful, and His infinite beauty continually flows into creation as naturally as do logic, life, and love. Beauty draws us into a growing relationship with something Good beyond ourselves, while at the same time resonating with and nourishing the spark of beauty within; it is not only real, but it is perfecting. It’s ontology is sacramental.
Today we are continuing the feast of Theophany; the celebration of God’s revelation to us of His Triune (Three in One; One in Three) nature at Christ’s Baptism. God the Father (the First Person of the Trinity) is revealed through His voice, which acknowledges Jesus as His Son (the Second Person of the Trinity), while the Holy Spirit (the Third Person of the Trinity) descends on Him and confirms this great truth. This is an important thing for us to know, and we thank God for this revelation. Among other things, the prayerful contemplation of the Trinity tells us much about how we, though separate persons, can and should be united; that the Church is more than a collection of like-minded individuals, and that the thing that they share is the thing that best defines them. It describes how we can, as the Liturgy says, have “one mind” yet maintain our own identities, thoughts, and charismas.
Theophany as an Introduction to Holiness.
But it is not this mysterious truth that the Church, through the hymns and scripture of the feast, would have us focus on. No, the poetry and prophecy of the feast of Theophany is on the reaction of creation to the presence of the Messiah, the Christ, the God-man Jesus; and in so doing it brings up another reality that – along with the reality of beauty that we discussed last week – “confounds the Greeks” (i.e. the new atheists and all materialists). This reality is the ontology of holiness and its effect on creation.
Holiness I: a source and reflection of spiritual light, warmth, and power.
Holiness is a quality that blessed things have; things that have been sanctified through their dedication to and proximity to the absolute source of spiritual light, warmth, and power. This source exists outside of creation, but creation is designed to thrive under its influence; and having thrived, to become holy itself. You get a sense of holiness when you perceive that something is “good”; and by good, I do not mean useful or pleasing. These are the selfish perversions of “goodness”. I mean when you can just tell that something is wholesome and right; when it just seems to radiate spiritual light, warmth, and power.
Holiness II: Eden as the Cultivation of Holiness.
As the race created in the “Image of God”, humans had a special blessing to be cultivators of a holy creation. The rest of creation, in turn, was created to respond to us. But when we forsake holiness in favor of profanity, our special relationship with creation changed; we became as much of a curse to creation as anything else. We, along with everything else, were created “good”, but we have forsaken this goodness and the result is a world that yields weeds and thistles along with fruits and vegetables.
Holiness III: But God desires the restoration of creation with us as its cultivator.
Old Adam – that is to say, old humanity – forsook holiness and lost its special relationship with the rest of creation. Adam fell, and scripture tells us that creation groaned in agony as a result. But here scripture is simply affirming something we already know: we are at odds with the world – some would say we are at war with it, and our attempts to subdue it through sheer force and technology have been met with, as God describes “thorns and thistles”. The response of the best environmentalists can only mitigate the affects of this sundered relationship; and the desires of the purist secular and pagan ecologists, while well intended, cannot be realized through good will alone. It seems that we are destined to wrestle with the world until either it or us are destroyed.
But into this mess comes new hope: the New Adam; the one who never forsook holiness; the one who is, in fact, the pre-eternal source of holiness who chose to join the race of fallen Adam so that through Him it might be restored. Spiritual warmth, light, and power radiated from His flesh. He was holy and creation responded to Him. The waters of the Jordan were transformed by His contact with it; water became the source, the mechanism, of the perfection of humankind. All the wickedness that had come to dwell within the Jordan were “turned back” due to the presence of the messiah, the God-man Jesus. Wickedness cannot abide the presence of holiness. It is forced to either fight it or flee. And this influence of Christ on creation did not stop at the Jordan. The world could not be still at His presence: the good responded to Him as it was intended; the wicked either repented and joined Him in holiness or doubled down in its profanity.
Conclusion: the mission of the Church.
The marvelous thing is that through Him all of creation is being renewed. His ministry on earth was just the start, the seed. When it was planted in the earth at His death, it immediately sprang out of the earth with greater power and purpose. Through Him, by embracing His holiness – now risen as the Holy Orthodox Church with Him as its root and head – we can bring holiness to the world. In the saints, this took very tangible form; but I know that you have seen it operate in your own life. You respond to holiness and you have seen others do the same. Some recoil in shock and revulsion; others reflect it back so that the mutual glow is increased.
Am I being too abstract? Try this. The materialists say there is no proof of what I am saying: let’s show how wrong they are. Repay profanity with holiness. When someone is being mean and spiteful, meet it with patience and kindness. See what the reaction is. If you are pure in your intent, there will be one of two reactions: either the spite will dissipate or it will attack. In either case, do not stop the experiment: watch how your friends and enemies alike respond to the holiness you bring into their lives. Watch how its presence in others affects you.
Not only will this confound the new atheists in our midst, it will bring joy back into this troubled world. And that is the real point of the Theophany of Our Lord.