Homily - Repent, Transcend Boredom, and Change the World
OrthoAnalytika
Homily – Repent… and Change the World (Embrace Boredom) Sunday before Theophany 2 Timothy 4:5–8; St. Mark 1:1–8 This is the Sunday before Theophany, when the Church sets before us St. John the Baptist and his ministry of repentance—how he prepared the world to receive the God-man, Jesus Christ. John was the son of the priest Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth, the cousin of the Mother of God. When Mary visited Elizabeth during her pregnancy, John leapt in his mother’s womb. But what we sometimes forget is what followed. While Zachariah was serving in the Temple, the angel...
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Homily - Our Herodic Responses to Christ
OrthoAnalytika
Homily for the Sunday after Nativity The Child Christ in the World—and in Our Hearts Gospel: St. Matthew 2:13–23 [Retelling the Lesson] God humbles Himself to save mankind. He leaves His rightful inheritance as God and becomes man, born as a child in Bethlehem. And how does the world receive Him? Is He born in a temple? In a palace? Places that might seem fitting for the Ruler of the Ages? No—He is laid in a manger, in a stable. And even that is not the worst of it. When the leaders of the day learn of His birth, do they submit to Him? Do they nurture and protect Him so that He may...
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Homily - The Name of Jesus
OrthoAnalytika
St. Matthew 1:1-25 Why was the Son of God commanded to be named Jesus—the New Joshua? In this Advent reflection, Fr. Anthony shows how Christ fulfills Israel’s story by conquering sin and death, and calls us to repentance so that we may enter the victory He has already won. --- Homily on the Name of Jesus Sunday before the Nativity In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “They named Him Jesus, because He would deliver His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21) Names matter in Scripture. They are never accidental. A name reveals identity, vocation,...
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Homily - The Pilgrimage to Peace
OrthoAnalytika
Fr. Anthony preaches on three types of pilgrimage and how they work towards our salvation.
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Homily - Do You Want to Be Healed? Letting God Rewrite the Story
OrthoAnalytika
Do You Want to Be Healed? Letting God Rewrite the Story Ephesians 8:5-19 Today, Fr. Anthony reflects on how the deepest obstacles to healing are often the stories we tell ourselves to justify, protect, and control our lives. Drawing on the Prophet Isaiah, the Gospel parables of the banquet, and the power of silence before God, he explores how true healing begins when we let go of our fallen narratives and allow Christ to reconstruct our story through humility, prayer, and repentance. The path of peace is not found in domination or self-justification, but in stillness at the feet of the Lord...
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Homily: Recovering Apostolic Virtue in an Age of Contempt
OrthoAnalytika
I Corinthians 4:9-16 St. John 1:35-51 In this homily for the Feast of St. Andrew, Fr. Anthony contrasts the world’s definition of success with the apostolic witness of sacrifice, humility, and courageous love. Drawing on St. Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians, he calls Christians to recover the reverence due to bishops and spiritual fathers, to reject the corrosive logic of social media, and to return to the ascetical path that forms us for theosis. St. Andrew and St. Paul's lives reveals that true honor is found not in comfort or acclaim but in following Christ wherever He leads —...
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Homily - Unity As the Deeper Magic of God’s Kingdom
OrthoAnalytika
Ephesians 2:14-22 and St. Luke 12:16-21 In this homily, Fr. Anthony reflects on St. Paul’s proclamation that the unity of the Church is not an ideal but a profound reality accomplished in the flesh of Christ. Drawing on Scripture, the Fathers, and even C.S. Lewis’ “deeper magic,” he shows how humanity’s divisions are not healed by sameness, compromise, or civility, but by becoming a new creation through the Cross. True Christian unity demands the death of ego, the resurrection of a new humanity, and a mutual commitment to bear one another’s burdens with patience, repentance, and...
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Homily - Mercy, Not Sacrifice: Christ's Pastoral Method in the Calling of Matthew
OrthoAnalytika
In this episode, Fr. Anthony reflects on Christ’s call of St. Matthew as a revelation of the Lord’s pastoral wisdom, patience, and mercy. Drawing on St. John Chrysostom, he shows how Christ approaches each person at the moment they are most able to receive Him, gently leading sinners to repentance while shielding the weak from the self-righteous. The homily invites us to imitate this divine pedagogy—offering mercy before rebuke, healing before judgment, and a way of life that draws others to the knowledge of God. +++ Mercy, Not Sacrifice: Christ’s Pastoral Method in the Calling of...
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Class on Journey to Reality - Chapter Ten on Prayer, Work, and Becoming Human
OrthoAnalytika
In this episode, Fr. Anthony reframes prayer not as a spiritual transaction but as a lifelong conversation with God that restores our capacity to see, experience, and share His beauty, light, and love. Drawing on themes of theosis, maturation, and Zachary Porcu’s vision of becoming human, he explores how prayer transforms our distorted desires, heals our blindness, and trains us to do the work God made us to do. The saints reveal that repentance and prayer are not a response to crises but a way of life — a steady ascent into clarity, freedom, and real communion with God and creation.
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Homily - Live in Grace (The Raising of Jairus' Daughter)
OrthoAnalytika
St. Luke 8: 41-56 Drawing on St. Nikolai Velimirović’s image of divine grace as electricity, this homily on the raising of Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8:41–56) invites us to become living conduits through whom God’s uncreated energy continually flows. Christ’s tender command, “Talitha koum,” reveals the greater reality that in Him even death is but sleep, for the fire of His love transforms all who see with eyes full of light into partakers of His eternal life. Homily on Jairus’ Daughter St. Luke 8:41–56 Glory to Jesus Christ! It is a blessing to be with you this...
info_outlineHomily on Sowing
St. John 4:5-42
The metaphor of agriculture.
1 (Introduction). You have to reap when the crop is ready. If it's ready and you don't reap it – what happens?
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Something – or someone – else will reap it (e.g. birds w/ blueberries)
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It spoils.
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It does not make it to the reaping floor where it can be transformed into its greatest and intended use/purpose
2. (The Word) The Samaritans were a crop that was ready for the harvest.
St. Cyril of Alexandria
The spiritual sowing indicates those who tilled beforehand by the voice of the prophets. The multitude of spiritual ears is those brought to the faith that is shown through Christ. But the harvest is white, in other words, already ripe for faith, and confirmed toward a godly life. But the sickle of the reaper is the glittering and sharp word of the apostle, cutting away the hearers from the worship according to the law and transferring them to the floor, that is, to the church of God. There, they are bruised and pressed by good works and shall be set forth as pure wheat worthy of the divine harvest.
It is important to realize that if Christ and the apostles did not reap the harvest, then these people – and their souls - would be lost
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Someone else will reap and gather them.
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They will spoil (internal pride and imagination)
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They will not be transformed from something transient and vulnerable into something greater (living bread?)
3. (Conclusion – the Application) The world is the field of the Lord; the Church is the place where the transformation of wheat into the Living Bread occurs.
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To speak less metaphorically,
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The world is full of people who were made for something better. They are finite and vulnerable; and in need of something real and truly good;
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But they were made to be immortal and powerful; and constantly sustained and strengthened by the unending source of everything good and true and real.
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They are ready to be transformed from children of the fallen world into the immortal sons and daughters of the perfect God.
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Their stories are all different. They are not monotheistic Samaritans as were those in today's Gospel or pagan Hellenists like those in today's epistle. When it comes to their world-view, some are atheists, some are agnostics, but they are full of the potential, the yearning, and the readiness to changed into something better.
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[It should noted that not all of them are ready for the transformation: they still need tending. And there are fields that have not been sown at all. Some sow, some tend, and some reap.]
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In today's Gospel, the Lord shows how this work is done. It is work we are called to. If we don't do it – if we as a parish and we as believers – don't give our time connecting with the Samaritans and Hellenists of our time – then they will be lost. And us? We will have failed in the One Thing the Lord commanded us to do and we will be worse than lost.
Let us now commit ourselves to the transformation of ourselves into the children of God so that we may become the evangelists of that transformation – the ones that plant, tend, and gather - and this parish into the place where the gathered souls are themselves transformed.