Class - The Architectural Beauty of Eden
OrthoAnalytika
From Eden to the ChurchBeauty, Architecture, and the Space Where God Dwells Christian architecture is not primarily about style or preference. It is about ordering space so that human beings learn how to dwell with God. The Church building is Eden remembered and anticipated—a place where heaven and earth meet, so that God’s people can be formed and then sent back into the world. Key Biblical Insights 1. Eden Was God’s Dwelling Place Eden is first described not as humanity’s home, but as God’s planted garden—a place of divine presence, beauty, and order. Genesis...
info_outline
Homily - The Green Hand of Hell
OrthoAnalytika
Luke 17:12-19; The Grateful Leper I've included my notes, but I didn't follow them, choosing instead to offer a meditation on the "go show yourself to the priest" part of the Levitical command and noting how we do the same - and will all do the same one day at the Great Judgment. Homily: Healing, Vision, and the Mercy of God Onee of the things that sometimes gives people pause—especially when they encounter it for the first time—comes from the Book of Needs, in the prayers the priest offers for those who are sick. If you have ever been present for these prayers, you may have...
info_outline
Class: The Beauty of Creation and the Shape of Reality
OrthoAnalytika
Beauty in Orthodoxy: Architecture I The Beauty of Creation and the Shape of Reality In this class, the first in a series on "Orthodox Beauty in Architecture," Father Anthony explores beauty not as decoration or subjective taste, but as a theological category that reveals God, shapes human perception, and defines humanity’s priestly vocation within creation. Drawing extensively on Archbishop Job of Telmessos’ work on creation as icon, he traces a single arc from Genesis through Christ to Eucharist and sacred space, showing how the Fall begins with distorted vision and how repentance...
info_outline
Homily - Repent and Burn (in a good way)
OrthoAnalytika
Homily: The Sunday after Theophany Hebrews 13:7–16; Matthew 4:12–17 This homily explores repentance as the doorway from darkness into light, and from spiritual novelty into mature faithfulness. Rooted in Hebrews and the Gospel proclamation after Theophany, it calls Christians to become not sparks of passing enthusiasm, but enduring flames shaped by grace, sacrifice, and hope in the coming Kingdom. ---- Today’s Scripture readings give us three interrelated truths—three movements in the life of salvation and theosis. First: darkness and light. Second: repentance as the way from...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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,...
info_outline
Homily - The Pilgrimage to Peace
OrthoAnalytika
Fr. Anthony preaches on three types of pilgrimage and how they work towards our salvation.
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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 —...
info_outlineHomily on St. Luke 18:18-30.
Notes.
When one first become a soldier, they take away everything: hair, clothes, identification, money. Relationships. Why?
So that The Mission will become our mission.
Can't you just add the mission to what was already there? No. Mercenaries are always unreliable. Their loyalty is based on a calculation. The soldier's is instinctive.
Think of marriage; what happens if the new life as “shared flesh” starts with all the baggage of the old life?
The training of a soldier and the building of a new life in marriage are great metaphors for how to live in Christ. It's not enough to just add the mission of God – virtuous life, evangelism, sacrifice – on top of our old selves. You end up trying to balance these things against everything else. Doing good becomes a calculation rather than a way of life.
As Christ God puts it in St. Matthew (6:24) “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
We empty ourselves of everything we have; this is what allows us to receive everything good He has prepared for us.
This includes our cares:
1 Peter 5:6-7. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you. Cast all your cares and concerns on him, for he cares about you.
Psalm 55:22. Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.
But that's not all: creating a new life in Christ is not like playing Go Fish. “I don't want these – you take them.” It's everything. Otherwise our loyalty remains divided. Giving up our cares will make us feel better for a while, but being reborn as a little “g” god – and this is the God's intent – feels better forever. So we can't stop with giving up our anxiety.
It includes our family. Christ's words about this are found in Luke 14:26 and Matthew 10:37. We have to be willing to give up our family.
It includes our money. Today's lesson.
Our very lives. Christ in John 12:25 points out that this need for sacrifice includes our very own lives.
The interpretation of this radical sense of sacrifice; of giving things up; of starting fresh and new is confirmed in our baptismal service in which put do death the old man (in the water) and rise up as a new one in Christ. We have given up our life; but the life we get back – one comprised of the very same skin, bones, heart, and brain – is a better one. It is one that is remade in Christ and pledged to service of God, His children, and His world.
- Family done poorly... family done well...
- Money done poorly... money done well...
- Attention and caring done poorly... attention done well...
The yoke of the world (slavery to the world) that is oppressive, hard to bear, and leads to death. So we give it up! Give it all up! And then take up the yoke of virtue and righteousness – we take up the yoke of the Lord. And pledged to him and the carrying out of his will, we are no longer slaves or mercenaries whose joy lasts only as long as circumstances allow, but sons and daughters of the living god, deified and divinized through his grace.
This new way is, to quote Christ God “easy and light.”
Matthew 11:29-30. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
So let's not be like the rich man who went away sad. Let's lay everything, our cares and concerns, our family, our riches, even our life itself, at the foot of God.
Those things that are holy and true will be part of our new life in Christ (as He showed us at our baptism); and they will be part of our strength rather than things that potential divide us from God and the carrying out of His will that all become saved. They will become a blessing because they will take on their proper function.