Traditionally this homily of the great bishop of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom is read at the Easter Vigil. In fact, the Church asks that the priest make this homily his own in the sense that the theology St. John speaks is the authentic, orthodox teaching of the Church. The experience of the saint of the …
Today we hear the proclamation of the Gospel narrative of the man born blind. The story of the Man Born Blind is the third Sunday Gospel in Pascha about the mystery of baptism. This gospel is very clear, “Jesus spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his …
The theme of baptism continues in this Sunday’s Gospel, re-affirming that Pascha is a feast of resurrection and of baptism, being born into eternal life. The center of Jesus’ conversation with this unnamed woman (the Church later gave her the name Photine, the “enlightened woman”) is about water. They met at Jacob’s well, a place …
Today, May 6, in the Byzantine Church following the Gregorian calendar, it is the feast of half-Pentecost (half of the Pascal Time). Let’s attend to the Gospel text of today (John 7: 14-30): verse: 14: We were already in the middle of the week of the feast when Jesus went up to the Temple; and …
There are six Sundays in the forty day celebration of the Resurrection (corresponding to the forty days until the Ascension as recorded in the Gospel of Luke). The first three Sundays have a gospel of the Resurrection and the second three a gospel with a baptismal theme. In our day the baptismal theme of the …
