Homily - Palm Sunday
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!
info_outline
Lenten Lesson - Loving Our Enemies
OrthoAnalytika
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...
info_outline
Retreat on Beauty - Putting It All Together
OrthoAnalytika
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...
info_outline
Retreat on Beauty - Fr. Roman Marchyshak on Music in Worship
OrthoAnalytika
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!
info_outline
Retreat on Beauty - Introduction
OrthoAnalytika
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,...
info_outline
Homily - St. John of the Ladder on the Hard Work of Salvation
OrthoAnalytika
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...
info_outline
Men’s Talk - Building a Safe, Healthy, and Holy Home
OrthoAnalytika
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!
info_outline
Lenten Lesson - Loving Your Neighbor
OrthoAnalytika
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!
info_outline
Homily - Your Cross Needs Love
OrthoAnalytika
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...
info_outline
Lenten Lesson - Loving God through Prayer and Worship
OrthoAnalytika
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_outlineRevelation Class 13 – The Woman and the Beasts
05 February 2025
Revelation, Chapter Twelve - Fourteen
Patrick Henry Reardon, Revelation: A Liturgical Prophecy (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018), 70–78.
Chapter Twelve
… Nonetheless, this is not simply a description of the Lord’s nativity. The Woman in the vision is the mother of Jesus, but she is more; she is also the Church, which gives birth to Christ in the world. The sufferings and persecution of the Church are described as birth pangs (cf. Jn 16:21–22).
The serpent, of course, is the ancient dragon that is the enemy of our race, the one who seduced the first woman in the garden. …
Chapter Thirteen
Up till now we have seen two beasts, one of them from the underworld (Chapter 11) and the other from the heavens (Chapters 12). Two more beasts will appear in the present chapter, one of them from the sea (verse 1), who also has seven heads and ten horns (cf. 12:3), and one from the land (verse 11). …
Far more than ourselves, one fears, the early Christians were aware of the power of evil in the world. They spoke of it frequently in personified forms that are difficult to interpret literally. And the Christians described their relationship to this evil as one of warfare. …
Now we come to the beast arising out of the earth, a parody of Christ in the sense that he faintly resembles a lamb (verse 11). Performing great signs and bringing fire down from heaven (verse 13), he is also a parody of the two witnesses in Chapter 11; in this respect he resembles the magicians of Egypt. The Gospels, we recall, have several warnings against false christs and false prophets, who will work wonders. …
Interpreters of the sacred text, however, have been most partial to the Hebrew form of the name, “Nero Caesar,” which does, in fact, add up to exactly the number six hundred and sixty-six. There are other possibilities, but this explanation seems the most compelling. The number was thus a reference to Nero, the first Roman emperor who ever undertook the persecution of the Christian Church.
Chapter Fourteen
… On the image of harvest as judgment, see Joel 4:13–14 (3:9–14). The Son of Man on the cloud is, of course, from the Book of Daniel, an image that Jesus interprets of Himself in each of the Synoptic Gospels.
The rising pool of blood becomes a kind of Red Sea. Indeed, the following chapter will be full of imagery from the Book of Exodus. plagues, the cloud of the divine presence, the tent of testimony, Moses, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the destruction of the pursuers.