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February 28, 2010
The Orthodox Church has completed two week of Great and Holy Fast. Second Sunday of the Fast is dedicated to St. Gregory Palama Archbishop of Thessalonika who lived in the 14th century.
It was St. Gregory who bore witness that by prayer and fasting human beings can become participants of the uncreated light of God's divine glory even in this life.
The spiritual theme adds to the First Sunday of Great Lent's theme, faith. In addition to faith, one needs effort. The scripture readings are Hebrews 1:10-2:3 and Mark 2:1-12. The epistle says to give
the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away... how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? The Gospel lesson has the image of effort and desire in the paralytic who is brought to Christ through the roof.
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February 21, 2010
The Orthodox Church has completed first week of Great and Holy Fast. Today is the First Sunday of Great Fast which is called ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’.
The dominant theme of this Sunday since 843 has been that of the victory of the icons. In that year the iconoclastic controversy, which had raged on and off since 726, was finally laid to rest, and icons and their veneration were restored on the first Sunday in Great and Holy Fast. Ever since, that Sunday been commemorated as the "Triumph of Orthodoxy."
Orthodox teaching about icons was defined at the Seventh Ecumenical Council of 787, which brought to an end the first phase of the attempt to suppress icons. That teaching was finally re-established in 843, and it is embodied in the texts sung on this Sunday.
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January 31, 2010
The Sunday of the Prodigal Son is the second Sunday of a three-week period of preparation for Great Fast. The name for this Sunday is taken from the parable of our Lord Jesus Christ found in Luke 15:11-32.
The parable of the Prodigal Son forms an exact icon of repentance at its different stages. Sin is exile, enslavement to strangers, hunger. Repentance is the return from exile to our true home; it is to receive back our inheritance and freedom in the Father’s house. But repentance implies action: “I will rise up and go…” (v. 18). To repent is not just to feel dissatisfied, but to make a decision and to act upon it.
Finally, this parable offers us insight into the world in which we live. It is a world where the activities of people are disconnected and not ordered toward the fulfillment of God’s divine purpose for life. It is a world of incoherent pursuits, of illusory strivings, of craving for foods and drinks that do not satisfy, a world where nothing ultimately makes sense, and a world engulfed in untruth, deceit and sin. It is the exact opposite of the world as created by God and potentially recreated by his Son and Spirit. There is no cure for the evils of our age unless we return to God. The world in which we live is not a normal world, but a wasteland. This is why the reading of Psalm 137 is added to the Matins service for this and the the following two Sundays. This nostalgic lament of the Hebrew exiles states: "By the streams of Babylon we sat and wept as we remembered Zion. On the willows we hung our harps, for how could we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land” (Psalm 137).
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