Author: admin
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The Stripping of the Divine Office
By Mark Meador The eve of the Sacred Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday) brings us to one of my favorite times in the liturgical year. Certainly the Masses for these three days are extremely moving and powerful in their own rights, but I am particularly captured by the changes in the Divine…
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“The Power of Prayer” By Serge Bolshakoff
In Paris, in a narrow and rather noisy street near the Vaugirard Metro station, there is a humble-looking house, 26 rue d’Alleray. This simple house, however, receives many visitors. People come to it from all over Paris and elsewhere for healing by prayer. They are sent by the clergy as well as by specialists when…
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Metropolitan Joseph Presides at 2018 Western Rite Conference
Metropolitan Joseph, assisted by Bishop John, presided over the Western Rite Vicariate conference August 7-10 at St Peter Orthodox Church in Fort Worth. This was an historic moment for the Antiochian Western Rite since it was the first time a Metropolitan had presided over the biennial conference. Both in his presence and in his words,…
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Reflections on the Third Sunday in Lent
I suspect that most people would likely consider St. Antony to be a little crazy, selling all that he had, giving it to the poor, and deciding to live by himself in the Egyptian desert, struggling there to find out what it took to live out the teachings of the Gospel in thought, word, and…
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Reflections on “Pererinion”
We are now into our Lenten pilgrimage as brothers and sisters in the communion of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. As such, I thought it a good time to answer a question that has come to me about this blog. First, the title. Pererinion, as noted, means Pilgrimage in Welsh. Why Welsh? Two…
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Reflections on the First Sunday in Lent
We begin Lent with the reading of the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, uniting our meager fast to His own. But as we look more closely at the two accounts in St. Matthew and St. Luke, some interesting points are revealed. It should be obvious that this account had to have come from…
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Reflections on Ash Wednesday
Metanoia, the word generally translated “repentance” is both temporary and, in its final stage, permanent. Temporarily, it can happen at any moment of the day or night, when we correctly discriminate in that moment between the back-to-front truth of the world, which sees us being and doing, and the gospel truth, which recognizes that Being…
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Reflections on Quinquagesima
On our final Sunday before we begin the Lenten pilgrimage, we have an Epistle about divine Charity and a Gospel which contrasts the new sight of a formerly blind man and the lack of spiritual insight of the disciples who “understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them.” Lent is given…
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Reflections on Sexagesima
Jesus explains to His disciples why He teaches in parables. It is so that those who are merely curious and not real seekers after the truth, who have denied the hunger for God within themselves, would only hear stories, not discerning the spiritual content and truth in them. The disciples, and the spiritually hungry would…
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Reflections on Septuagesima
The owner of the vineyard came to the marketplace, the appropriate place to hire workers. He came there early in the morning, in the middle of the morning and at noon. He came again in mid-afternoon and even in the late afternoon to hire anyone who was still there. He combed through that place again…