Episode 194 - Baptism Saves You

Pentecost VI 2023

In your baptism something truly miraculous and powerful took place in your person, something wrought by the Holy Spirit which changed you indelibly. The old sinful man died, and it is completely unnatural for you to continue to behave like you are still that old man. Unnatural but possible. What happened does not function like gravity, it does not impersonally override our will and cooperation, this powerful gift must be embraced daily.

Episode 193 - You Can't Be Righteous Without Keeping The Rules

Pentecost V 2023

True religion is to offer the sacrifice of worship, to fast, pray, give tithes, care for the needy, abstain for sexual impurity, to conform to the family rules in mutual submission and to do it all with the right interior disposition, with true faith, humility, and love.

If you do all the stuff without the right interior disposition, you have false religion. If you try to have the right interior disposition without obedience, you have no religion, and end up with the subjective god of self.

Episode 192 - Parallelisms in Luke's Gospel

Feast of the Visitation of the BVM 2023

John was the greatest born of Woman, the greatest born of Eve who had become barren and cast into the wilderness because of her sin. After a long line of Adams toiling in the wilderness and the pain of childbirth- in the fullness of time, at the watershed of history, the last and greatest descendent of the old Adam was conceived of a barren woman and lived in the desert. And this man John also happened to be the cousin of the New Man Jesus Christ. These two meet today.

Episode 191 - Christ's Parables Tell Us What God Is Like

Pentecost III 2023

We so often read the gospels as moral admonitions. Which is fine, and good, but that is secondary. The gospels are about God, about Jesus Christ, revealing Him to us so that we can know and love Him as He is. The Scriptures are Christological, they reveal Jesus Christ. Take the Good Samaritan for example, people read that parable as a moral tale of how we should behave, but it is first and foremost a parable about what God has done in Christ to redeem us.

Episode 190 - Everything God Has Made Wants Something

Sunday In Octave of Corpus Christie 2023

Receiving Christ in the Divine Sacrament is not the only thing we do in this life. We work, we eat other food, we marry and raise children, we enjoy creation, and rest, we buy and sell and go about our business from day to day. But in all these things we do, we are still seeking Christ, to be close to Him, to please Him, to Know Him in our core.

Episode 189 - We Must Eat To Live

Corpus Christi 2023

We have holy things among us, holy things to venerate and through which we receive grace and taste the goodness of God. But nothing compares to the very body of God which we receive in the Divine Sacrament. Not the sacred waters of the blessed font, not the sacred chrism, not the holy relics of the saints, not Icons which we venerate, nor the living icons- the saints themselves- Nothing He has given us that we can handle compares with His very body and blood, which is truly divine and worthy of our adoration.

Episode 188 - We Are People Of The Spirit

Trinity Sunday 2023

This Orthodox Christian life is not simply about getting all the t's crossed and i's dotted- as important as that is- getting the Faith right is important so that we can authentically know God in the Spirit, and that knowledge, which is intimate and personal results in us becoming faithful and holy.

Episode 187 - There Is Work To Be Done

Sunday In The Octave of the Ascension 2023

We must reignite our commitment to the mission. Even in times of persecution we are not to simply hunker down and survive- we are called to bear fruit, to multiply our talents. It is time to put the hand to the plow and not look back, time to do the work of the kingdom. There are souls to save, nations to conquer, cultures to build, there is work to be done.

Episode 186 - The Gift of the Holy Spirit

Easter V 2023

Someone once said I do not do the things I want to do and I do the things I do not want to do, and this makes me very unhappy- Well, stop! Start doing the things you want and stop doing the things you don't want to do, and be happy. Be obedient to the command of the Lord and declare the praises of His wonder and be joyful.

Episode 185 - The Woman and The Human Being

III Sunday After Easter 2023

Jesus tells tells his disciples a short little parable. He says in verse 21, "the woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow, because her hour is come, but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has come into the world." This is not a simple, random illustration or some generic narrative about what women experience in childbirth and how that might be comparable to what the disciples are about to go through. That is not what this parable means. This parable is a very particular reference to a very particular Woman, and Human Being which she bore.

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