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Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary
April 5, 2026
Philippians 4:4–9; John 12:1–18
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Today the grace of the Holy Spirit has gathered us together, and we all take up thy Cross and say: Blessed is he that comes in the Name of the Lord; Hosanna in the…
Joyous feast!
In the troparion for this two-day Feast of Palms, we sing: “By raising Lazarus from the dead before thy Passion, thou didst confirm the universal resurrection, O Christ. Like the children with the palms of victory, we therefore cry to thee, O Vanquisher of death.” Even as Christ goes to his Passion, we children of the Church…
Today is the fifth and final Sunday of Great Lent: though our fasting continues, the Forty Days end this coming Friday, to be followed by the brief but liturgically distinct two-day Feast of Palms, which in turn gives way to Holy Week.
It is during these final days of the Great Fast – the fifth Thursday and the fifth Sunday, especially – that…
Just a few days ago, we celebrated the Annunciation to the most holy Theotokos; now, we dedicate a whole liturgical day to her akathist hymn. This akathist is truly one of the great treasures of the Orthodox Christian tradition. At many services, we hear these words: “It is truly meet to bless thee, O Theotokos.” The akathist hymn is a school in…
The creation of the world began with God’s fiat, his “let there be” (Gen. 1:3). Today, the recreation of the world begins with the fiat of the most holy Theotokos, her “let it be” (Lk. 1:38). St. Gregory Palamas in not exaggerating for rhetorical effect or using Byzantine hyperbole when he says that the Theotokos “made the human race…
Our venerable father John, whose memory we keep this day, instructs us thus: “Blessed dispassion lifts the mind that is poor from earth to heaven, and raises the beggar from the dunghill of the passions. But love, whose praise is above all, makes him sit with the princes, with the holy angels, and with the princes of the people of God” (The…
Holy Trinity Cathedral
Tbilisi, Georgia
March 21, 2026
Your Holiness,
Your Beatitudes,
Your Eminence Metropolitan Shio and members of the Holy Synod
Your Eminences and Your Graces,
Your Excellencies, Mr. President and Mr. Prime Minister
Venerable clergy, monastics, and faithful of the Church of Georgia,
Distinguished guest,
His Holiness Patriarch…
The Cross and Passion await at the end of Lent, but they also stand at the center of these Holy Forty Days. The Lenten season is an invitation to pick up our own cross and follow Christ to Golgotha. At the same time, as we stumble under the weight of our cross, we are reminded that we are sustained in our Lenten podvig solely by the grace of God…
Though St. Gregory is best known as a teacher and practitioner of hesychasm, the cultivation of holy silence, his life was in fact colorful and tumultuous: he was driven from his monastic home on the Holy Mountain because of the Turkish threat, imprisoned on multiple occasions, captured by pirates, and initially rejected by the people when he tried…
To the clergy, monastics, and faithful of the Orthodox Church in America, beloved children in the Lord:
Glory to Jesus Christ!
During the sacred season of Great Lent, the Church calls us to sobriety and renewed stewardship. Through fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, we learn again that every aspect of our life—spiritual and material alike—is…
One of the unique liturgical features of this first Sunday of Lent, the celebration of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, is the proclamation of the anathemas. This rite is generally performed only with the bishop presiding and entails a solemn condemnation of various heretics and their errors.
What is the purpose of these anathemas? The anathemas are not…
Today we commemorate the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise. On the one hand, this is a sorrowful occasion; it is not without reason that we recall Adam’s lament before the holy gates of his lost homeland. However, on a deeper level, the casting out of paradise was not so much a punishment as a mercy: God’s punishment of Adam ensured that…
In his epistle to the Romans, St. Paul speaks of “that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” The Last Judgment, which we remember today, is part of the Gospel, part of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Why? As St. Romanus the Melodist says in his kontakion for St. Elijah, the name of God’s justice is…
When the father runs out to meet his prodigal younger son, the former has nothing to gain, no profit motive, no angle: he is simply overflowing with love for his child for no other reason than the latter is his child. Likewise, our heavenly Father needs nothing from us, and he does not love us because of what we do; he loves us for who we are, not…
Joyous feast!
Today’s feast is a feast of liminality. For one, it stands on the threshold between Christmastide and Lent. Christ still appears to us as a newborn Child, just as he did at his Nativity, but the lingering joy of the holy birth is blended with tragic foreboding as Simeon, having pronounced his canticle of light and peace, follows it…
The Lenten Triodion begins today, and it begins with a weeklong period of feasting. This fact, coupled with today’s Gospel reading, warns us against pride and hypocrisy: the Lord desires, not that we become puffed up because of our pious works, but that we repent in our hearts and in our lives. Fasting is a means, not an end.
Moreover, by…
Joyous feast!
Today we celebrate three of the great fathers and teachers of the Church: St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom. The works of these three saints have inspired, formed, and guided Christians for over a millennium and a half. This feast thus serves to remind us that the Fathers are not merely to be…
Though the Sunday of Zacchaeus is sometimes understood to be the first pre-Lenten Sunday, it is in fact the final Sunday of the season after Pentecost. Nevertheless, it is certainly a foreshadowing of the penitential season to come. The example of Zacchaeus – his pledge to restore fourfold everything he wrongly took – reminds us that repentance…
Christ is born! Glorify him!
As we celebrate the midwinter feast of the Lord’s saving Nativity in the flesh, in some parts of North America, snow lies thick across the ground, blanketing the whole landscape in white. Many of us who live in other parts of the country are merely dreaming of such a white Christmas. But whether the snow is real or…
In this cold and dark season before the Nativity, we celebrate the memory of one of our great northern saints: the monk who went to Valaam seeking the tradition of the holy Fathers, the missionary who went to Alaska seeking souls for Christ. As we prepare to welcome our Lord and God and Savior into the cold cave of Bethlehem – and, indeed, into…