Category: Holy Week
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The Strange Case of Lazarus
St. John’s Gospel records the story of Christ’s raising Lazarus from the dead as the last action of Christ before His entry into Jerusalem. That setting has given rise to the feast of Lazarus Saturday in the Orthodox Church – a small Pascha before Holy Week. The three synoptic gospels make no mention of these…
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His Appearing in the Liturgy
Standing in the Church, listening to the choir or chanter sing while priest censes the icons, words swirl with the rising smoke and connections and associations multiply as words evoke images and images evoke thoughts: participation, coinherence, incarnation, mystery, timeless form and formless time, fullness and emptiness, fulfillment and… And then the thought comes, full-formed…
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The Mystery of Holy Week
As we journey through the Great and Holy Week… For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have…
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Today Is Suspended – The 15th Antiphon
At the Matins service of Holy Friday the following hymn is sung: Today is suspended on a tree He who suspended the earth upon the waters. The King of the angels is decked with a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery. He who freed…
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The Mystery of Holy Week
For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the…
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Therapeutic Substitutionary Atonement
For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures… (1 Cor. 15:3-4) No statement is more central to the Christian faith than St. Paul’s…
Forgive me, Father, but I don’t quite understand what America has got to do with modernity, nor do I understand…