Saint Spyridon's
Orthodox Mission
Nampa, Idaho

In this morning’s gospel, our Lord told a parable about a marriage feast. In its context within the gospel according to Saint Matthew, it is a parable about Jews and Gentiles, about God inviting all of humanity to the wedding feast, our communion with the risen Lord. But the parable, alongside the reading from Saint Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, tell us a few things about correcting others, specifically who should be correcting others, who they should correct, and

On the Feast of Transfiguration, we bless first-fruits. As a child this was one of my favorite things. It was the day that we got to eat grapes in Church! This custom is tied to the Feast of Tabernacles in the Old Testament. When God delivered the land of Canaan into the hands of the Israelites and they took possession of it, they ended their 40 years in the wilderness. God told them that once they settled in the land, they would begin to forget. When their land yielded an ab

In the gospel this morning, our Lord told a parable about a vineyard. This parable drew on common imagery from the Old Testament which would have made its message immediately recognizable to the people. In Isaiah 5, we find words very similar to the ones Christ spoke, “Now I will sing to My Beloved a song of My Beloved regarding My vineyard: There was a vineyard for My Beloved on a fertile hill. He built a hedge around it removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest

Saint Herman of Alaska was once invited aboard a ship by a well-educated naval captain who was a convert to the Orthodox Faith. He sat at table with twenty-five of the most elite officers in the fleet -- all Orthodox Christians. He was completely out of place, a small, uneducated, simple monk in worn-out clothing among finely-dressed intelligentsia; and yet in his wisdom, he asked them questions that they struggled to answer. The captain said later, “We had no answers, we wer

There has been a recent deluge of new people showing up at Orthodox Churches seeking the truth. This wonderful blessing comes with certain difficulties. One of those difficulties arises from people seeking a place that aligns with seemingly “traditionalist” views that they have absorbed from outside the Orthodox Church. In particular, I want to address men who are looking for a church that lets them be manly, and keeps women in their place. As we approach the Feast of the Do

In the gospel this morning, a demoniac was brought to the Lord. The demon that the Lord drove out by His word had withstood the efforts of His disciples to cast him out. The Lord shows His exasperation with the faithless and perverse generation, and the unbelief of His own disciples. “If you have faith as a mustard seed, [which presumably they didn’t] you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However,

On this day, the Church remembers the Holy Prophet Elijah who lived roughly 900 years before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ at a time when the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel were being led astray from the worship of the true God by King Ahab and his foreign wife, Jezebel. Saint Epiphanios of Cyprus described the birth of Elijah in this way: "When Elias was born, his father Sobach saw in a vision that handsome men greeted him, they swaddled him in fire and fed th

Saint Nektarios of Aegina, a wonderful Saint who reposed just over a century ago and who was persecuted for the dedication that he showed to his flock, said: “The Priesthood is a mystery... because through it the earthly are adorned as if in heaven and thus raised up to heaven, while heaven inclines itself somewhat toward the earth.” Right about now, the Divine Liturgy is beginning at Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco. During this Liturgy, heaven will incline itself to e

We live in such a way that we are always trying to please ourselves. Every desire that we have is something that we are encouraged to indulge, and to indulge it immediately. We don’t limit ourselves to what is necessary, we don’t delay gratification to see if we will still want something later. We rush to acquire whatever we want so that we may be happy in this moment. To even suggest that we should deny ourselves things or delay the gratification of our desires if we have th

Today we celebrate the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, a day which commemorates the crucifixion of Saint Peter and the beheading of Saint Paul. These two men are held up as the foremost of the Apostles for their roles in the early Church. Saint Peter was a fisherman who was called by the Lord and together with his brother Andrew left his father’s boat and followed Christ. It is hard to imagine all of the things that he must have witnessed, from the preaching of Christ to the

In the epistle this morning we heard: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” This verse has been used by many to suggest that if you want to go to heaven and not hell, all you need to do is believe in and confess Christ; but is this really what this verse means? To begin to answer that question, consider the gospel reading we heard this morning, in which our Lord entered into the c

To put this morning’s gospel reading in the context of the gospel according to Saint Matthew, the gospel has already recounted Jesus’ birth, His baptism, His being tempted in the Wilderness, a number of healings all at once which were related to His growing fame, and His Sermon on the Mount in which He teaches how we ought to live. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Saint Matthew tells us that “the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having

The image in the epistle reading this morning is of mankind at war with its creator. We are at enmity with God, in open rebellion. Simply put, we are His enemy. Earlier in the epistle we read about the state of both the gentiles and the jews. The gentiles despite having some knowledge of God through creation were given over to the fulfillment of their lusts and desires that they might see the futility of such a life. The Jewish people were given the law, and even at times cla

In these weeks following Pentecost, there is a liturgical movement from recognizing the universal gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church on the day of Pentecost to the feast of All Saints in which we celebrate what the Holy Spirit has accomplished throughout the world in making Saints of the faithful, to what the Holy Spirit has accomplished in the local church. So today we celebrate the Saints of North America. This feast is important for perspective. The Church recognizes mi

Today we celebrate the memory of all the Saints. Every day of the year there are Saints that are celebrated. In some cases we celebrate their births although birthdays are less common. Most often we celebrate their deaths as the day when they entered into their rest and into the presence of the Lord. We hear the prokeimenon “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints.” He calls them to Himself, and He glorifies them with Himself. Sometimes we celebrate great

In the book of Genesis, directly before the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the Twelve Patriarchs, we are presented with the account of the Tower of Babel. The people of the whole earth, united in one language, decided to build a tower whose top was in the heavens. It would be wrong to think about this like the building of the Empire State building. They were not building a skyscraper or a monument of some sort, they were building a temple. This was not a temple in which

On this sixth Sunday of Pascha, we are given the healing of the man born blind from the ninth chapter of the gospel according to Saint John to contemplate. But we are also given a number of other examples of sight, of vision, and of blindness to contemplate in the scripture readings. To begin with, let’s examine the kind of vision that our Lord exhibits. He sees the man born blind and focuses His attention on the man. At that time, anyone with a severe infirmity would depend

In the beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry, as Christ began to build a following among the people. Some of the Jewish authorities became concerned about his popularity. They went and spoke to Saint John the Forerunner who replied, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” This was not the answer that they were looking for. Many regarded John as a prophet, and for him to say that Christ was greater than himself was to encourage the people to follow Christ. It was as His popu

Three weeks ago, we celebrated the Feast of Feasts, Great and Holy Pascha. We celebrated not just Christ’s resurrection from the dead, but through His resurrection we celebrate our deliverance from slavery to the enemy. Two weeks ago, on Saint Thomas Sunday, we heard about our Lord appearing in the midst of His Disciples bodily after the resurrection, offering them His peace, and revealing to them the things needed to bolster and strengthen their faith, and said to them “Re

To care for the departed, for the dead seems such a normal human thing to do. When we love someone it seems natural for us to care for them because our love does not die with them. Throughout the time of the Old Testament Patriarchs, we see that it mattered where their loved ones were laid to rest. But what about those who we don’t love, or who we don’t know? In the book of Tobit, we are given Tobit as an example of a charitable man. In the second chapter as Tobit sits down t