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OrthoAnalytika
Merk alt (u)spilt...
Manage series 1139073
Innhold levert av Fr. Anthony Perkins. Alt podcastinnhold, inkludert episoder, grafikk og podcastbeskrivelser, lastes opp og leveres direkte av Fr. Anthony Perkins eller deres podcastplattformpartner. Hvis du tror at noen bruker det opphavsrettsbeskyttede verket ditt uten din tillatelse, kan du følge prosessen skissert her https://no.player.fm/legal.
Welcome to OrthoAnalytika, Fr. Anthony Perkins' podcast of homilies, classes, and shows on spirituality, science, and culture - all offered from a decidedly Orthodox Christian perspective. Fr. Anthony is a mission priest and seminary professor for the UOC-USA. He has a diverse background, a lot of enthusiasm, and a big smile. See www.orthoanalytika.org for show notes and additional content.
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713 episoder
Merk alt (u)spilt...
Manage series 1139073
Innhold levert av Fr. Anthony Perkins. Alt podcastinnhold, inkludert episoder, grafikk og podcastbeskrivelser, lastes opp og leveres direkte av Fr. Anthony Perkins eller deres podcastplattformpartner. Hvis du tror at noen bruker det opphavsrettsbeskyttede verket ditt uten din tillatelse, kan du følge prosessen skissert her https://no.player.fm/legal.
Welcome to OrthoAnalytika, Fr. Anthony Perkins' podcast of homilies, classes, and shows on spirituality, science, and culture - all offered from a decidedly Orthodox Christian perspective. Fr. Anthony is a mission priest and seminary professor for the UOC-USA. He has a diverse background, a lot of enthusiasm, and a big smile. See www.orthoanalytika.org for show notes and additional content.
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713 episoder
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OrthoAnalytika
Homily: Holiness Changes Everything (Sunday after Theophany) Ephesians 4: 7-13 St. Matthew 4: 12-17 Review/Introduction. Ontology of Beauty. Designed to provide a deeper appreciation for our faith and to demonstrate the blindness of materialism (to include the “new atheists”). When materialists describe our appreciation for beauty, they either try to show how an appreciation for beauty somehow increased evolutionary fitness, or, in a more sophisticated way, say that it is a happy coincidence. We know that there is more to beauty than these explanations allow. God is beautiful, and His infinite beauty continually flows into creation as naturally as do logic, life, and love. Beauty draws us into a growing relationship with something Good beyond ourselves, while at the same time resonating with and nourishing the spark of beauty within; it is not only real, but it is perfecting. It’s ontology is sacramental. Today we are continuing the feast of Theophany; the celebration of God’s revelation to us of His Triune (Three in One; One in Three) nature at Christ’s Baptism. God the Father (the First Person of the Trinity) is revealed through His voice, which acknowledges Jesus as His Son (the Second Person of the Trinity), while the Holy Spirit (the Third Person of the Trinity) descends on Him and confirms this great truth. This is an important thing for us to know, and we thank God for this revelation. Among other things, the prayerful contemplation of the Trinity tells us much about how we, though separate persons, can and should be united; that the Church is more than a collection of like-minded individuals, and that the thing that they share is the thing that best defines them. It describes how we can, as the Liturgy says, have “one mind” yet maintain our own identities, thoughts, and charismas. Theophany as an Introduction to Holiness. But it is not this mysterious truth that the Church, through the hymns and scripture of the feast, would have us focus on. No, the poetry and prophecy of the feast of Theophany is on the reaction of creation to the presence of the Messiah, the Christ, the God-man Jesus; and in so doing it brings up another reality that – along with the reality of beauty that we discussed last week – “confounds the Greeks” (i.e. the new atheists and all materialists). This reality is the ontology of holiness and its effect on creation. Holiness I: a source and reflection of spiritual light, warmth, and power. Holiness is a quality that blessed things have; things that have been sanctified through their dedication to and proximity to the absolute source of spiritual light, warmth, and power. This source exists outside of creation, but creation is designed to thrive under its influence; and having thrived, to become holy itself. You get a sense of holiness when you perceive that something is “good”; and by good, I do not mean useful or pleasing. These are the selfish perversions of “goodness”. I mean when you can just tell that something is wholesome and right; when it just seems to radiate spiritual light, warmth, and power. Holiness II: Eden as the Cultivation of Holiness. As the race created in the “Image of God”, humans had a special blessing to be cultivators of a holy creation. The rest of creation, in turn, was created to respond to us. But when we forsake holiness in favor of profanity, our special relationship with creation changed; we became as much of a curse to creation as anything else. We, along with everything else, were created “good”, but we have forsaken this goodness and the result is a world that yields weeds and thistles along with fruits and vegetables. Holiness III: But God desires the restoration of creation with us as its cultivator. Old Adam – that is to say, old humanity – forsook holiness and lost its special relationship with the rest of creation. Adam fell, and scripture tells us that creation groaned in agony as a result. But here scripture is simply affirming something we already know: we are at odds with the world – some would say we are at war with it, and our attempts to subdue it through sheer force and technology have been met with, as God describes “thorns and thistles”. The response of the best environmentalists can only mitigate the affects of this sundered relationship; and the desires of the purist secular and pagan ecologists, while well intended, cannot be realized through good will alone. It seems that we are destined to wrestle with the world until either it or us are destroyed. But into this mess comes new hope: the New Adam; the one who never forsook holiness; the one who is, in fact, the pre-eternal source of holiness who chose to join the race of fallen Adam so that through Him it might be restored. Spiritual warmth, light, and power radiated from His flesh. He was holy and creation responded to Him. The waters of the Jordan were transformed by His contact with it; water became the source, the mechanism, of the perfection of humankind. All the wickedness that had come to dwell within the Jordan were “turned back” due to the presence of the messiah, the God-man Jesus. Wickedness cannot abide the presence of holiness. It is forced to either fight it or flee. And this influence of Christ on creation did not stop at the Jordan. The world could not be still at His presence: the good responded to Him as it was intended; the wicked either repented and joined Him in holiness or doubled down in its profanity. Conclusion: the mission of the Church. The marvelous thing is that through Him all of creation is being renewed. His ministry on earth was just the start, the seed. When it was planted in the earth at His death, it immediately sprang out of the earth with greater power and purpose. Through Him, by embracing His holiness – now risen as the Holy Orthodox Church with Him as its root and head – we can bring holiness to the world. In the saints, this took very tangible form; but I know that you have seen it operate in your own life. You respond to holiness and you have seen others do the same. Some recoil in shock and revulsion; others reflect it back so that the mutual glow is increased. Am I being too abstract? Try this. The materialists say there is no proof of what I am saying: let’s show how wrong they are. Repay profanity with holiness. When someone is being mean and spiteful, meet it with patience and kindness. See what the reaction is. If you are pure in your intent, there will be one of two reactions: either the spite will dissipate or it will attack. In either case, do not stop the experiment: watch how your friends and enemies alike respond to the holiness you bring into their lives. Watch how its presence in others affects you. Not only will this confound the new atheists in our midst, it will bring joy back into this troubled world. And that is the real point of the Theophany of Our Lord.…
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OrthoAnalytika
The Sunday before Theophany On Repentance and Its Relationship to Beauty and Love 2 Timothy 4: 5-8; St. Mark 1: 1-8 “Behold, I will send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight;” After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Sandals – he knew humility (despite the many temptations he faced for pride!). The problem is that we don’t: we must listen to and heed St. John’s message (as found in St. Matthew 3:2); “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”. This is not some prophecy of doom, but a revelation that God is among us – and the warning that we need to prepare if we are to meet Him well. “We need to repent? We need to change? Why?” Some preachers might come at this by pointing out the many temptations that we succumb to, call us to account for the resulting sin, and explain the need for contrition, confession, and absolution. I want to come at it from a different direction: I want to focus on how this call for repentance flows naturally from one of the central components of our faith about the world and how it works. Specifically, I want to explain how an appreciation for the existence of beauty should naturally lead us towards repentance (and from repentance to glory). Why come at it this way? Because I am concerned about our faith. There are strong attacks being made against Christianity, and I am not sure that people with a lukewarm and superficial faith can withstand them; people whose faith is not informed by deeper knowledge and experience will drift away. There is a sense in which that might be useful – I am not sure how much good a superficial belief does a person, and we have all seen first hand the detrimental effect that nominal Christians have on the internal life of our parishes, not to mention their witness to the broader community. God says of such people – through St. John the Theologian - that He will vomit such people out of His mouth (Revelation 3:15-17)! No one wants to be vomited out of the mouth of God – and we do not want it to happen. This is why we must evangelize the lukewarm Christians in our midst. And it is not enough to give them a set of rules, describe how they have broken these rules, and then call them to repentance. Nor is it enough to give them more words that describe what it is that the true Christian believes or what Orthodoxy is. We must do everything we can so that they can personally experience the literal Truth of God’s grace. Ideally, this would happen through our worship together, but without an appreciation for the deeper nature of the things that worship taps into (the “Old Magic” as Aslan puts it in the Narnia series), it does little more than provide sentimental entertainment. People need to be taught so that they can enjoy the fruits of worship; they need to be taught so that they “may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:13b) I am not talking about the removal of doubt, but the answer to every thinking Christian’s prayer; “Lord I believe; help me in my unbelief!” (St. Mark 9:24; St. Luke 17:5). I think that one of the best ways to strengthen our faith and counter these new attacks – and especially the misleading reductionism of the militant atheists – is to focus on the fundamental existence of beauty, morality, and love and the implications of this ontology for us. Today I will focus on the sacramental ontology of beauty. 1. Beauty is basic, it is real, and it is eternal. When we say that something is “beautiful”, we do not mean that it interacts in a pleasurable way with the conglomeration of memories that culture and experience has put into our minds: we mean that it has a specific quality to it. It is beautiful. When we say that we like such a thing, what we really mean (or should mean, if we practice humility) is that it is actually likable. Yes, our description of beauty is filtered through our culture and experience - how could it not be? But there is a quality of beauty that flows into this world as a continual outpouring of the absolute Beauty of her creator. Just as the warmth of the sun points to the heat of that great star, so to does beauty serve as a sure sign that there is more to this world than our personal enjoyment of it. 2. Beauty is NOT for passive entertainment. It is interactive. Enjoyed properly, it draws us outside of ourselves as we participate in this special quality. We can be selfish in our encounter with it, simply appreciating how it makes us feel; but we get even more out of it when we release the tethers of selfishness and really lose ourselves in a good piece of art or music or, better yet, worship. When this happens, we experience something right and true: we encounter and commune with something wonderful outside of ourselves. And when the exhibition is over, the concert has ended, or we have come to the end of the book or movie or service; the memory of it awakens within us a longing for more. Our hearts have been enlarged by the time we have spent in communion with greatness. Beauty resonates within us and nourishes and increases our capacity for it. Once this process has begun, things change. After this, we find that when we are separated from Beauty, there is an ever larger empty space inside that needs to be filled. We want to enjoy it more; we want to fill our nights and days with it. We want it to become part of our lives – in, short, we want to become one with Beauty; to sacrifice everything for the sake of Goodness becomes our most earnest desire. Were such a consummation not possible, the existence of such transcendent Beauty would be the cause of the greatest despondency. But the Good News is that consummation is possible. God desires it and has satisfied our mutual longing through the Gift and Grace of His Son. This is the Gospel: that Beauty has become Incarnate not just so we can appreciate Beauty, but so that we can join Him in His Beauty. Through Him we can be made beautiful. Which is simply another way to say that encounters with true beauty are sacramental (mysterious): something fundamental is revealed through them, and by participating in these encounters, the seed of glory within us is nourished and we become more beautiful, perfect, and godly ourselves. But this does not happen automatically. 3. Becoming beauty. There are many wrong ways to try this: we do not become beautiful through surgery or going to concerts or even just by coming to the Divine Liturgy (the greatest gift of beauty offered on this earth). We do it by embracing the deeper virtue. We do it by submitting ourselves to its logic and allowing it to transform our lives in its image. Let me paraphrase an old saw (how Michelangelo created David out of stone): if we want to become beautiful; then we start with what is already there and remove all the bits that aren’t right. If we want to participate in the experience of beauty, then we cannot do things that are ugly. We cannot be ugly ourselves. Which brings me to a critical point: it isn’t enough to look in the mirror to tell the difference between good and bad (beauty and ugliness) within us – our pride and psychoses do not let much of the truth in there. Our pride will either completely overlook many of our obvious warts and defects (perhaps even calling them “beauty marks” or, just as bad condemn things that are actually God-pleasing, No, we do not have enough discernment to affect the necessary changes on our own. We need help. We need to turn our attention away from ourselves toward the source of beauty; the standard of perfection; the wellspring of everything that is good. Christ is Goodness and Beauty Incarnate. When we encounter Him, when we live our lives within the rays of the Sun of Righteousness, we will know the essence of beauty; we will desire more; and we will want to change our lives so that we can better bask in and reflect His glory. Which is simply another way of saying not just that “Beauty will save the world, but “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”…
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OrthoAnalytika
1 Homily - Herod (and us) from temptation to possession 28:50
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28:50Matthew 2: 13-23 (The Slaughter of the Innocents) Herod (and us): from temptation to possession Five Steps of Sin The temptation ( logismoi ) occurs. We are NOT accountable for this. Interaction with the thought – what are the options? What would it look like? In his summary of Orthodox Spirituality in Mountain of Silence, Fr. Maximos (now Mp. Athanasios of Limassol) says that this is not sin, either. I disagree – a symptom of the disease we have is that it is all but impossible for us to imagine possibilities objectively. Consent to do the sin. This is always a sin, even if we do not carry out the action. Defeat to the idea. Not only is this sin, it weakens us to future temptations. Passion, obsession, or possession by the temptation. Let’s look at Herod’s descent into madness. He had an idea to kill all of the male infants. This was not the only choice he had; others would have been less wicked – some may have even softened his heart enough to meet the Christ with joy. This was the temptation. What happened when he interacted with this idea? Moreover, what happened when he considered all the possibilities? Was it a simple cost-benefit calculation, comparing all the options about how to react to the birth of the prophesied Messiah? When he did the math, was it purely objective, or was the scale weighted in a certain direction by his feelings, feelings that were driven by his pride and desire to rule? Remember that, as the King of the Jews, the people of God, he could have brought the Christ child into his palace and raised Him there to rule. But that option was not the one that drew his attention – it was drawn towards murder. It was drawn towards regicide and the slaughter of as many lives as necessary to guarantee it. This was not because it was the best solution – it probably wasn’t even the best way to keep himself in power. But it felt right. And so of all the ideas, or all the logismoi , both sinful and graceful, he focused on this one. He imagined what it would look like, how it would work. Which takes us to consent. He consented to the idea. He entertained it, not just to imagine whether or not it could work or to figure out the best way to get it done – it was more than that. He chewed on it. And somewhere along the way, he made it happen. Next, he was defeated by it. Not just because he pulled the trigger, but because it came to define part of how he defined himself. He was a man who did whatever was necessary to keep himself in power. All other things were defined and valued in relationship to this identity, to this desire, to this obsession. And this is the final step – he was possessed by it. And here is a difficult truth about his path to possession: this was not the first time he had united himself with this kind of sin. He had assassinated rivals, to include his own wife, to consolidate his power. Even before that, he had waged war against his own people in order to capture Jerusalem. Not to free it from the Romans, but in cooperation with the Roman general Marc Antony in order to put himself in charge. Do you see how, once he had given in to sin – in this case, violence - for personal gain, it made it easier to do so in the future? All of his fallen psychology kicked in to make repentance more and more difficult. For example, the devaluation of the lives of others, the web of justifications and lies that he had to convince himself of in order to keep himself going? For someone like this, it takes a real wake-up call to get them to change. He got the call when the wise men came, but he didn’t just hit the snooze button, he threw away the clock. “Send word so that I can go and worship Him myself.” Doesn’t that just drip with evil? How would Herod worship Him; with gifts? With prostrations? That is how the kings from the east did! Not at all. Quite the opposite. What about us? The wide road to sin-full-ness Now here is the rub. I’ve been describing Herod’s descent into madness, but that is the same wide road that beckons to us all. What sins do we entertain? What sins do we chew on? Are we obsessed by? What wickedness have we justified so fully that we feel its evil as good? And as if it wasn’t enough that each of us individually, thanks to ancestral sin, cannot imagine sin without engaging with it, we are surrounded by cultural systems that seek to deaden our instinct for the holy and replace it with other things, like hedonism and power and self-loathing and anything else that the marketers of the powers of the air can distract us with. It's easy to see this happening in others. We know people who have fallen into all kinds of sin and justified it. They immerse themselves in an internet subculture and the next thing you know they are defining themselves in new ways that separate themselves from the good, the true, and the beautiful. But it’s so hard to see this in ourselves. Herod had several baths of purification built into his temple. He was so far gone that he didn’t see the irony of maintaining ritual purity while living such a debauched and self-aggrandizing life. We should be very concerned lest we fall in the same way. What sins do our own personalities, conditions, and cultures lead us to accept as normal or even good? How can we get around the unreliability of our feelings – what we like to call our consciences when it comes to seeking the good? How do we deal with the fact that we are so far from being able to see things as they are and weight alternatives objectively? What then, can we do? The first step is to admit that we have a problem. To admit that the “old man” we put to death during our baptism is not entirely dead. The second step is to cultivate an instinct of humility, including the willingness to admit that we rarely as right as our self-confidence would have us believe. The third is to build relationships of accountability and discernment. How do you react when people correct you or offer a version that differs from your own? Taking criticisms well is a sign of spiritual maturity. It’s one that tyrants, narcissists, and sociopaths don’t have. And it’s one that we are missing unless we work on it. But we need it. We need to have people in our lives that tell us the things that we miss, the things that we get wrong. Herod skipped all these steps, and he died in his sin. We have given our lives to Christ; we are called to something better than tyranny and the slaughter of innocents. Let’s learn to live the kinds of lives – lives in communities of mutual love, trust, and support – that give no place for temptations to grow. Let’s live in Christ, together.…
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Sunday before the Nativity Hebrews 11:9-10,17-23,32-40 St. Matthew 1:1-25 After giving a refresher on motivated reasoning, Fr. Anthony notes how much context affects what we think about our ancestors from the genealogy of Christ. He then encourages us to tip the scales of our judgment so that we are more charitable towards people/things we are inclined to dislike, more skeptical towards people/things we are inclined to like, and generally more loving towards all. Enjoy the show!…
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Today Fr. Anthony uses the simple theory of reading (word recognition x decoding -> reading comprehension) to talk about chanting and why it is so difficult for those new to Byzantine chant to learn it (because they do not have the equivalent of word recognition), especially if they cannot read music (because they have neither the equivalent of word recognition nor the ability to decode). Enjoy the show!…
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Revelation 11 20 November 2024 Chapter 7 Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power , The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011). Patrick Henry Reardon, Revelation: A Liturgical Prophecy (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018), 53. Fr. Patrick Reardon. The final preservation of God’s elect was foreshadowed in their deliverance at the time of the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. This sealing with the mark of the true Paschal Lamb fulfilled the promise contained in that earlier marking of Israel with the sacrificial blood of its type (Ex 12:21–23). Both Ezekiel and Exodus are important for the understanding of this seal. Ezekiel’s reference was to the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC, of which everyone was aware who saw the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. The passage in Exodus 12 had to do with the last of the ten plagues visited upon Egypt, the slaying of the firstborn sons. This sealing in Revelation, then, involves a new Exodus, in which God’s people will be delivered, not left to share in the sin of the earthly Jerusalem. Fr. Lawrence Farley: What is this seal? The image is drawn from Ezekiel 9. In this passage, angels were to slay all in Jerusalem that rebelled idolatrously against Yahweh. But before they began their dreadful task, one angel went through the city and, at the divine command, put “a mark” (in Hebrew a tau ) on all who were faithful (Ezek. 9:4). To be thus marked on the forehead is to enjoy the protection of God and an immunity from coming judgment…. This time of great tribulation seems to last throughout the age, for in Matthew 24:29 the Second Coming is said to occur “immediately after the tribulation of those days.” The parallel version of this verse in Luke 21:24 seems to confirm this, for it describes what Matthew refers to as “great tribulation” as a time of “great distress upon the land … [the people] will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive into all nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled”—that is, until the end of the age. Even the original prophecy of Daniel 12 states that the “time of tribulation” will be followed by the resurrection of the dead, when “many of those who sleep in the dust will awake” (Dan. 12:2). It would seem then that in Matthew 24 the “great tribulation” is the age-long time of suffering for Israel that began with the destruction of the Temple in AD 70… This understanding of “the great tribulation” (7:14) as the suffering of the Church throughout the age explains too the difference in the two crowds mentioned in this chapter. In 7:1–8, John receives a vision of the Church on earth, sealed and protected by God in preparation for their entering the final time of conflict. It is the Church of the final days. In 7:9–17, however, John sees a vaster multitude. This crowd comprises, not just the Church of the final days, but the Church gathered throughout all the centuries, coming from “the great tribulation,” the age-long struggle with the world. Unlike the former crowd, this multitude is vast beyond counting, stretching into the horizons of heaven. It is the Church glorified at last, fresh from its victorious struggle, an overwhelming testimony to the power of God.…
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1 Homily - Discerning Molehills from Mountains 26:02
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26:02Sunday of the Forefathers. 2 Timothy 1:8-18; St. Luke 14:16-24 In this homily (that Fr. Anthony would have preferred audibling to his deacon - if only he had one!), Fr. Anthony challenges us to be strong like the three holy youths but not to put ourselves in the fires of our own hells by making mountains out of molehills. Or something like that. He really needed some sleep, bless his heart! Enjoy the show!…
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1 Homily - A Simple Theory of Reading & Theosis 19:33
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19:33In this homily on Ephesians 2:14-22, Fr. Anthony uses the Simple Theory of Reading to teach about why Byzantine Chant - and theosis - are so difficult, why we need a change of heart more than new words, and how the Church is the solution to our existential crisis. Enjoy the show!
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Revelation 10 04 December 2024 Revelation 5:1 - Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 85–112. o can stand?” Loosening of the First Seal 6:1. And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard one of the four living beings saying, with a voice like thunder, “Come!” And here the good order of those in heaven is shown, from the first orders coming down to the second. Thus, from one of the fourfold-appearing living beings, that is, the lion, he heard originating from the first voice the command “come” to the angel forming the vision through an angel in a figurative fashion. The first living being, the lion, seems to me to show the princely spirit of the apostles against the demons, about whom it has been said: “Behold, the kings of the earth have been gathered together,” and also, “You will appoint them as rulers upon all the earth.”2 [60] 6:2. And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and the one sitting on it having a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. … Thus we explained the loosening of the first seal as meaning the generation of the apostles, [61] those who bend the gospel message like a bow against the demons … [and the return of the nations] Loosening of the Second Seal 6:3. And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living being saying, “Come.” I think the second living being, the calf, is said to characterize the priestly sacrifice of the holy martyrs, while the first describes the apostolic authority, as was said. 6:4. And out came another horse, bright red, and the one sitting [62] upon it was permitted to take the peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another; and he was given a large sword. We suppose that this means the second succession of the apostles, which is completely fulfilled through martyrs and teachers, during which, while the remainder of the gospel message was spreading, the peace of the world was abolished, nature having been divided against itself according to that which had been said by Christ, “I did not come to bring peace to the earth but a sword,” through which the slain martyrs were lifted up to the heavenly altar. The fire-red horse a symbol of either the shedding of blood or the flaming disposition of those suffering for Christ. What was written about the one seated on , that he was permitted to take the peace, shows the all-wise allowance of God testing the faithful servants through trials. Loosening of the Third Seal 6:5. And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third living being saying, “Come!” I think the third living being, the man, is said to signify the fall of people and, because of that, torment, on account of the easy fall into sin through the power of free choice. 6:5b–6. 5b And I saw, and behold, a black horse, and the one sitting on it having a scale in his hand; 6 and I heard like a voice in the midst of the four living beings saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm oil and wine!” It is likely and sensible for a literal famine to occur then, just as it will also be announced by what follows. … Loosening of the Fourth Seal, Showing the Chastisements Which Befall the Impious 6:7. And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living being saying, “Come!” [65] The fourth living being, that is, the eagle, its high flight and keen eyesight coming down upon its prey from above, can signify the wounds from the divinely led wrath of God for the revenge of the pious and the punishment of the impious, unless being improved by these they return. 6:8. And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and the name of the one sitting upon was Death. And Hades follows him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill by sword and by famine and by death and by wild beasts of the earth. The series drawn out previously are connected to the present events. For as Eusebius says in the eighth chapter of the ninth book of his Ecclesiastical History, in the zenith of the persecutions, during the reign of Maximin the Roman Emperor, innumerable crowds were killed by the coming of famine and plague among them, along with other calamities; and such that were not able to bury them, and yet the Christians then generously busied themselves with the burial , and many of those who had been deceived2 were led to [66] the knowledge of the truth by the philanthropy of the Christians. … Seal, Meaning the Saints Crying Out to the Lord About the End of the World 6:9–10. 9 And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of people who had been slain on account of the word of God and on account of the witness which they had . They cried out with a loud voice, saying, 10 “How long, O holy and true Master, before you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?” 6:11. And he gave them each a white robe and told them to rest again a little longer, until their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed in the future, even as they , completed . And by these the saints seem to be asking for the full consummation of the world. Wherefore, they are called upon to endure patiently until the completion of the brothers, so that they will not become complete without them, according to the Apostle Loosening of the Sixth Seal, Signifying the Upcoming Plagues at the End of Time 6:12–13. 12 And I saw, and when he opened the sixth seal, and a great earthquake occurred, and the sun became black as sackcloth, and the moon became like blood. 13 And the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree casts its winter fruit when shaken by a great wind; It seems to us that here a shift has taken place beginning from the time of persecutions to the time before the departure of the pseudo-Christ, during which so many afflictions were prophesied to come, and perhaps the people, being practiced in these afflictions, did not renounce the punishments brought upon them by the Antichrist, of such a sort as we have never known. We often find in the Scriptures that an earthquake certainly a change in events. … 6:14a. And the sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up, The sky rolled up like a scroll hints at either the unknown of the second coming of Christ—because silently and in a moment the scroll is opened—or also that the heavenly powers feel pain over those who fall from the faith as if they will suffer some kind of twisting on account of sympathy and sorrow. … 6:14b–17. 14b And every mountain and island was moved from its place. 15 And the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich and the commanders of thousands [and the strong], and every slave and every freeman, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16 and they say to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 for the great day of his wrath has come, and who can stand?”…
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1 Interview: Fr. Adam Roberts on Pastoral Counseling 45:51
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45:51Today Fr. Anthony talks with Fr. Adam Roberts about his pastoral counseling practice. Fr. Adam is the priest of St. Paul Orthodox Church in Katy TX, the Dean of St. Athansius College, a co-founder of Camp St Thekla, the author of several books, and has a Masters of Theology in Pastoral Counseling from the University of Balamand. In his counseling, he has counseled married couples as well as youth and young adults who are struggling with purpose and identity. You can read more about his practice here . Enjoy the show!…
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1 Homily - The Long Slow Slog of Salvation 29:46
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29:46Luke 18:35-43. Once again demonstrating that there is some overlap between a homily and a hostage situation (30 minutes!), Fr. Anthony talks about the life in Christ being less a moment of pure enlightenment and more about turning the long, slow slog of life into a graceful movement from joy to greater joy. Enjoy the show!…
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1 Homily - We Are Rich in the Ways of the World 40:05
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40:05Galatians 6:11-18 St. Luke 18:18-27 Today Fr. Anthony uses the Apostle Paul’s call for a “new creation” instead of a fulfillment of the Law to help us evaluate the man’s challenge to the Lord. Along the way, he shares the meaning of the commandments in the “new creation” and uses the metaphor of mountain climbing to help us understand Christ’s call to give everything up and follow him. He notes that we are rich in worldly ways, making it as hard for us to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven as the camel getting through the eye of a needle. He forgot to turn on his microphone before the actual homily, so he recorded this reprisal on the drive home. Enjoy the show!…
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Seals, Scrolls, and Wrath Excursus on the Three Senses of Scripture Literal – Straightforward reading of the text. Ex: The outside writing on the scroll, the man Jesus Allegorical – Heavenly meaning veiled in the literal Ex: The inside writing of the scroll, the God-Man the (contains both the physical (literal) and the unseen (spiritual) Moral – What are we to do with this revelation? Ex: Paul’s obedience to the revelation of Jesus Christ to be an Apostle - “Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26.19); contrast with Jonah Tools of Interpretation: Scripture and Tradition Analogia Fidei (or “Analogy of Faith”): Scripture interprets Scripture New is Old revealed; Old is New concealed “This grace hid itself under a veil in the Old Testament, but it has been revealed in the New Testament according to the most perfectly ordered dispensation of the ages, forasmuch as God knew how to dispose all things.” - Saint Augustine Working Principle: Scripture is not divided. One part illumines other parts since all parts have God as its source; contrast to a mere academic approach that divides book based on different authors Scripture testifies to Tradition: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” – 2 Peter 1.20-21 “Holy men” (literally ἁγίου ἄνθρωποι) can be interpreted simply as “saints” ἅγιος – adjective often used as a noun that can be translated “holy ones” or “saints” God is Holy and the source of all holiness; people considered holy, or of God, have a place of authority and deference in the Church in terms of practice and teaching…
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1 Homily - The Rich Fool Impoverished His Soul & His Neighbor 21:52
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21:52THE GOSPEL (For the Ninth Sunday of Luke) The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (12:16-21) Context; 13 Then someone from the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But Jesus said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator between you two?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out and guard yourself from all types of greed, because one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” The Lord spoke this parable: “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ Every moment is an opportunity for grace, or to put it another way, to prepare for death – and eternal life. There will be a judgment: how have used the opportunities that God has given us? How have we prepared our soul? How have we prepared the souls of our neighbor (union!!!) And he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’ Let’s look at how the man has prepared his soul. St. Nikolai: the dog and the lamb. He has killed his soul and moved his passions into its place! The one talent. How has he prepared his neighbor. The original settting. St. John Chrysostom. But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” As He said this, Jesus called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” There will be a judgment. Three types of preparation.…
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In this class, we review Vespers service components, work on matching pitches in hand offs, and chanting clearly and consistently.
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