Father Michael’s Blog
REFLECTING ON GOD’S BLESSINGS
This past Sunday, I gave my annual Pastoral Address at the parish General Assembly. The annual address is a type of “State of the Parish” presentation in which the Pastor lays out his views on the key events in the church from the previous year, and where he wishes us to head moving forward. I […]
BE OF GOOD CHEER
The next of Father Thomas Hopko’s 55 Maxims for Christian Living that we are exploring this year seems deceptively simple: Be Cheerful. At first glance there doesn’t seem to be much to this, or that it has much to do with living the Christian Faith. But when we take a second glance, we realize perhaps […]
BE GRATEFUL
During this past year, we have been exploring father Thomas Hopko’s 55 Maxims for Christian Living. As we explored the first 27 of these, I most commonly found articles and blog posts from other writers to expand upon these important precepts. Maxim 28 is no less crucial than the other 54 if we are to […]
FACE REALITY
For the past several months, most of these midweek reflections have been based on Father Thomas Hopko’s 55 Maxims for Christian Living. For most of these I have found relevant articles and blog posts which I have shared with you, but when I looked to find something written about the next maxim, I could find […]
REDEEMING THE TIME
Tonight is New Year’s Eve and that means that billions of people around the world will stay up longer than they normally do for the momentous occasion of…watching a clock strike 12! Of course, there’s much more to that moment than just the passage of time. If nostalgia doesn’t rise within you when you hear […]
Do the Most Difficult and Painful Things First
So today is one week until Christmas, and among other things, it means that this will be perhaps the busiest week of the year for many of us. With so much on all of our “to do” plates in the next seven days, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the next […]
FINDING REST IN A RESTLESS WORLD
This past weekend spent in celebration of our Patronal Feast was one which brought many blessings, among the highlights of which were the inspirational words of our beloved Bishop ANTHONY. One of the messages that seemed to resonate deeply with many of us was his encouragement for us to pay attention to getting enough rest […]
A TWO BISHOP CELEBRATION
Our Parish popularly calls this coming weekend “St. Nicholas Weekend,” which is a pretty standard event across parishes in the Orthodox World. Parishes annually celebrate the memory of their community’s patron saint and often with the presence of their Bishop to preside over the celebration. But the fact that these two blessings coincide should not take […]
NO THANKS
For a long time, I have been baffled about something. On the one hand, we live in an era of relative peace, health, and prosperity that is unrivaled in modern history. Certainly, life is not without its problems and great tragedies still strike from time to time, but compared to what has been endured in […]
Be Faithful in Small Things
If I had to compose a list of the mistakes that we make in our spiritual efforts, even if we’re serious and well-intentioned about our Faith, somewhere near the top of that list of mistakes would be focusing on big changes that usually never get made, while ignoring all the small changes that, in the […]
Be Totally Honest, First of All with Yourself
We might think that of all the people we could fool in this world, the last person we could fool would be ourselves, but this is just not the case. In Maxim #26 of Father Thomas Hopko’s 55 Maxims for Christian Living he addresses a problem that all of us have, to varying degrees: not […]
What Can WE Do?
Last night our parish was blessed to once again host our annual Middle Eastern dinner, in which delicious, hot food was served up at a rate of one meal every 10 seconds, for three continuous hours. Sure, it was a remarkable sight in terms of efficiency, organization and culinary skill. However, as impressive as it […]
