Homily - Transforming the Absurd Theater of our Mind into a Temple of God
Release Date: 03/17/2019
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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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 —...
info_outlineTurning the Absurd Theater of our Mind into a Temple of God
Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy
Triumph of Orthodoxy. Yay Church (back from oppression)! Yay Theology (protected from heresy)! It's good, but to what end? They allow us to experience the love of God – and through it the salvation of our souls – in its purest form. Undiluted by lies and corruption.
We don't accept lies when it comes to the food we eat or the medicine we take. If a company put a good label on bad food or medicine, we would be outraged; whether they did it out of greed or ignorance. Why? Because we value our health AND because we value the truth. Everything breaks down once everyone gets to have their own version of truth. The wrong labels get put on things and we lose sight that there is even a reality to be known. When this happens, we cannot tell good from bad, right from wrong, healthy from disease, food from rubbish, medicine from snake oil. We fall prey to the chaos of our divisions.
The Irish poet Yeats nailed it when he wrote in his poem “The Second Coming”; “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,”
The Sunday of Orthodoxy is a celebration of the bulwark against that anarchy: there is a Truth; there is a Unity, there is sanity and goodness in the world. We celebrate the victory of the Church because it is there to restore the pattern of love and unity; we celebrate the victory of Orthodox theology because it describes that pattern – it tells us The Way that the source of all goodness and health and power can work within our lives to bring healing and salvation.
The Truth is one as God is One; The Truth is One as He desires us to be One. This Truth has a label. That label is the Gospel. That label is Holy Orthodoxy.
But what does that all mean for us? We can mouth the words of perfect theology, we can surround ourselves with the images of perfect iconography, but how does that help us to live? How does it help us work out our salvation with fear and trembling? (Philippians 2:12) How does it help us to love God and our neighbor as ourselves? How does it help our bodies and souls become temples of the Living God, with His grace perfecting and enlivening us?
It comes down to love – for without that, even the best theology and best iconography is noise and corruption, but in order to love, there is some work to be done. Today I want to continue on the theme of discernment, using today's theme of iconography to help us.
The Absurd Theater of our Mind.
The relationship between what goes on in our minds and the actual state of the world is a bit dodgy.
This is true when it comes to the puppets of our neighbors that populate the theater of our mind. Think about how we create the images of people. Get data. Add data. But we don't do it well. It's always filtered and shaped by the story we are telling ourselves.
Over time, the play that goes on in our mind ends up bearing little resemblance to what is really going on. We end up hating and loving images, not the people they are supposed to represent. This is true even of the people that are closest to us. It's like in the art world: we often learn more about the artist than we do about the thing being portrayed. But it isn't even a good way to understand the artist, because the image he has of himself – that is shaping the image he is painting – is also distorted.
We cannot love others if we cannot know them. We cannot love ourselves if we do not know ourselves.
The practice of iconography: everything in the light of Christ. We have icons of Christ because God became human and we can paint him as the perfect human. We have icons of saints because they have been transformed in Christ. Love became man in Jesus Christ; and now love becomes in incarnate in all the saints.
We restore Truth and sanity to the theater of our mind when we paint the icons of our neighbor using the light of love. This requires charity. It requires patience. It requires continually adjusting the lines and the colors through forgiveness and humility.
When we retouch the image of ourselves so that they better match reality – and through this participate in our transformation from broken creatures into sons and daughters of God - we call it repentance. We repaint repainting the image of ourselves in our mind and the way we project ourselves in the world so that the reality, light, and love of Christ shines through us.
Matthew 6:22-23. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, our whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
When we continually improve the images in our minds according to the light of Christ and away from the chaos of our pride and brokenness, we transform our minds from a theater of the absurd into a temple of God, adorned with icons of His beloved children rather than puppets of our own madness.
The celebration of the triumph of Orthodoxy is a celebration of just this thing. And this is something we can all proclaim with gladness.