Eastern Christian Insights

Today we celebrate the restoration of our true unity in God.

Christ has ascended. Let us go up together with Him as we find liberation from slavery to our passions and share more fully in the salvation that He has brought to the world.

The good news of our Lord’s resurrection extends to everyone and the entire world. The Church directs our attention during the Paschal season to how some very different people came to share in the life of our Lord, such as the disciple Thomas, the Myrrh-Bearing Women, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the paralyzed man. Today we focus on someone who was different from all of them by worldly stan...

The paralyzed man embodies our common human condition. Even as those enslaved to the fear of death did not somehow take the initiative in bringing salvation to the world, this fellow did not call out to Christ to help him or even know the Savior’s name. Instead, the Lord graciously reached out to him.

It is easy to assume that we have strong faith when it seems like everything is going our way. All too often, that means that we have come to trust in ourselves for following a religion that we imagine will give us what we want. When difficult struggles come, however, the truth about our weak souls is revealed. Then we come to see that real faith in God is not about serving or congratulating ourse...

The season of Pascha has only just begun. Because of His bodily resurrection, we must become holy in our bodies and treat our suffering neighbors accordingly. Let us continue to celebrate by participating as fully as possible in the joy of the empty tomb. Now nothing other than our own refusal can hold us back from becoming truly human, for “Christ is Risen!”

Today we celebrate that the Lord is at hand, for He is coming into Jerusalem as the Messiah, hailed by the crowds as their Savior. He does not come to usher in an earthly reign or to serve any nationalistic or political agenda. He enters Jerusalem on a donkey, a humble beast of burden, carrying no weapons and having no army. He had no well-oiled political machine to tell the powerful people what t...

Through the Lord’s great Self-Offering, even the most wretched person may enter into the blessedness of the Kingdom through humble faith and repentance. Even the most notorious sinner may become a glorious saint and shine brightly with eternal glory.

If we are to complete our Lenten journey to our Lord’s Cross and glorious resurrection, we must learn to entrust ourselves to Him as honestly and fully as we possibly can.

The Cross is truly the Tree of Life through which we return to the blessedness of Paradise.

Christ did not offer Himself on the Cross and rise from the dead in order to make us well-adjusted citizens of this world, but to heal every dimension of our brokenness so that we will shine brilliantly with His divine glory.

There are many ways to view ourselves as human beings. All too often, we accept false definitions that we find appealing in light of our passions, weaknesses, and other forms of personal brokenness. When we do so, we set our sights too low, for the Savior became one of us in order to make us perfectly beautiful icons of His salvation.

During Great Lent, we will follow the path that leads back to Paradise.

The path to eternal life runs through our neighbors, especially those we are inclined to overlook, disregard, and even despise. How we treat the hungry and thirsty, the stranger and the naked, the sick and the prisoner reveals the true state of our souls. How we serve our suffering and inconvenient neighbors, whoever they are, is how we serve our Lord.

Today we commemorate a distinctive person who bore witness in his own life to the healing power of Christ. St. Nicholas lived in the 4th century in what is now Turkey and had a sizeable inheritance from his family, which he gave away in secret to the poor.

“The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” The key difference between the Pharisee and the Publican rooted in their hearts and was not simply a matter of their outward behavior or how they appeared to others. Even the despised traitor and thief remained in the image of God and was able to embrace divine mercy when he humbly confessed the truth about his personal...

Across the centuries, the Lord has raised up such unusual saints in order to shock us out of our complacency about the alleged harmony between the narrow way leading to the Kingdom and what passes for a conventionally respectable life in any time or place.

It is easy for people to fall prey to the passions of fear, worry, and anger in response to the great challenges that our nation and world face today, as well as to those we encounter in our families and in other areas of our lives. In such circumstances, we must not ignore the importance of one of the most basic virtues necessary for human flourishing, namely, gratitude.

As we continue to celebrate Theophany in a world that remains in “the region and shadow of death,” let us focus mindfully on living each day as those who have died to sin and risen with our Lord to a life of holiness. That is how we may wear a garment of light and become living epiphanies of the salvation of the world.

Theophany shows us that Jesus Christ is not merely a great religious teacher or moral example. He is truly God—a member of the Holy Trinity–and His salvation permeates His entire creation, including the water of the river Jordan. Through His and our baptism, we become participants in the holy mystery of our salvation.

Matthew’s description of the family tree prepares us for the kind of Savior we encounter in Jesus Christ. It does not hide that His ancestors sinned greatly, for He came to heal those who had corrupted and weakened themselves by their own disobedience. His family line even included Gentiles, foreshadowing that He would make all with faith in Him heirs to the promise to Abraham. That being the case...

As we prepare to receive the Lord in faith at Christmas, we must use our freedom to follow St. Paul’s instruction in today’s epistle reading: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

Joachim, Anna, and the Theotokos were the complete opposites of the rich man in today’s gospel reading. His only concern was to eat, drink, and enjoy himself because he had become so wealthy. He was addicted to earthly pleasure, power, and success, and saw the meaning and purpose of his life only in those terms. In stark contrast, the Theotokos followed the righteous example of her parents. She wa...

The Lord used the story of the Good Samaritan to show us who we must become if we are truly uniting ourselves to Him in faith.

Both the bleeding woman and Jairus were at the end of their rope. They faced circumstances so dark that they could not imagine how they would be delivered from them. The gravity of their challenges is reflected by how little these characters speak in their encounters with Christ. They did not use many words to show whatever level of faith they had in Him, perhaps because what was at stake was beyo...