Category Archives: Blog

The Phillip’s Fast began Monday, Nov. 15th.  This 40-day fast in preparation for Christmas, like the others (The Great Fast etc.), involves prayer (our communication with God takes on a tone of anticipation), fasting (denying ourselves certain earthly goods so that we are yearning for Christ’s coming with our body as much as we are […]

The 40-day fasting period that prepares our minds, souls, and bodies for the Nativity of Our Lord begins Monday, Nov. 15th. I’ll be sending out my own thoughts on the fast in an email to the parish, but here are some reflections from Bishop Kurt that I found helpful. Why do we fast? There are three […]

Acquiring Spiritual Friendships: St. John tells us, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them” (1 John 2:15). So many of our friendships are with the world. St. Teresa of Avila offers the following guidelines for spiritual friendships, or friendships […]

Unable to intimidate Bishop Romzha, the Soviets decided to liquidate him, and staged a highway accident. A military truck rammed the horse drawn carriage in which the Bishop was returning home from the rededication of the parish church of Lavki, near Mukachevo. Bishop Romzha was badly injured, but survived; and passersby took him to the […]

A special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of absolutely every person, and of actively helping him when he comes across our path, whether he be an old person abandoned by all, a foreign laborer unjustly looked upon, a refugee, a child born of an unlawful union and wrongly suffering from a sin […]

I’m currently in Albuquerque, NM, the city in which I grew up. I’m here for my childhood pastor’s 40th anniversary of ordination. At this event, I’ve naturally done some reflecting on the beginnings of my Byzantine Catholic faith, what it means to be a priest, and thanked God for this good man and priest in […]

From our Book Club reading, Everywhere Present, Chapter 6, we read, “The shape of the universe in the classical Christian understanding encompasses a world in which everything is capable of referring beyond itself and outside of itself. Everything becomes a doorway and a window, a means in the participation in the depths of reality…St. Anthony the […]

From our book club text, Everywhere Present and Filling all Things, Chapter 5, we read, “’Practical  Atheism,” meaning by it that, although a person may espouse a belief in God, it is quite possible for that belief to be so far removed from everyday life that God’s nonexistence would make little difference.” Have you thought about […]

From our Book Club, Everywhere Present, Chapter 4, “The God Who is Not There”, we read, “We do not know or experience anything in general –only in particular.” God is everywhere present and filling all things, but this is not how we experience him. We experience him in the present and filling only one place at […]

From our Book Club text, Everywhere Present, chapter two, “we live in an altar,” we read, “On the one hand, we say that ‘God dwells in heaven.’ But the church also says that He is ‘everywhere present and filling all things.” Metropolitan Kalistos Ware goes so far as to say Christianity is panentheistic. This is the […]