St. Gregory the Great Orthodox Church

A Western Rite Congregation of the Antiochian Archdiocese near Washington, DC

A Sermon for our Feast of Dedication

(Bishop JOHN blessed and dedicated our new home on May 21st, 2017. This sermon was preached in 2009 on the anniversary of the dedication of our former building.) Today we celebrate the Sunday within the Octave of our Feast of Dedication, as it was on May 6th of the year 2007 that His Grace, Bishop THOMAS, […]

St. Dunstan of Canterbury

(Feast Day ~ May 19) So often we find, in the Orthodox approach to life, that issues are “both/and” instead of “either/or”. We learn from Holy Scripture that Christians are to be both in the world and in heaven; in the Liturgy, we express both sorrow for our sins (“Lord, have mercy upon us”) and […]

St. Theodotus and Companions, Martyrs

(Feast Day ~ May 18) Most of the earliest saints of the Church were martyrs, and for many of those saints, we have few historical details other than their names and the fact that they faced death rather than deny their faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. But a detailed report was written and preserved […]

May Newsletter

We begin this month with the Finding of the Holy Cross on May 3, a feast which celebrates the discovery by St. Helena of the True Cross of Christ, as she made her pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 4th century, searching for the sites associated with the events of our Lord’s earthly life […]

Ascension Day

We will keep the eve of the Feast of the Ascension on Wednesday, 20 May, with Sung Mass at 7pm (Vespers at 6:30).

St. Brendan the Navigator

(Feast Day ~ May 16)  St. Brendan epitomizes the Irish monastic: he was born into a devout family, his brother becoming a bishop and his sister an abbess; he was destined for the monastic life from an early age; he was keenly aware of the supernatural; and he carried the Irish desire for peregrinatio to […]

St. Pachomius, Abbot

(Feast Day ~ May 14) The goal of the Christian life is sanctification, union with God. We are to follow holy Scripture and the traditions of the Fathers, we are to pray fervently and partake of the Sacraments in striving for holy living. In our quest for “deification” we are to abstain from all that […]

St. Boniface of Tarsus, Martyr

(Feast Day ~ May 14)    Time and time again we are reminded that God, in his infinite mercy, will receive even the most dissolute sinners if they repent of their sins and turn to him. The story of the Passion, which we hear many times in Holy Week, gives us the penitent thief as an […]

St. Epiphanius of Salamis

(Feast Day ~ May 12) For those of us who are converts to the Orthodox faith, it is sometimes tempting to go to extremes in our zeal for this new way of life. We often become rigorous in our discipline and critical of “cradle” Orthodox Christians for what appears to us as laxity. It should not […]