(Feast day ~ April 6) In our celebration of Pascha, we rejoice in the restoration of the Alleluia after its Lenten “burial”. With special exuberance, we sing the long, florid Alleluia before the Gospel at the Vigil Mass and the Alleluias at the dismissal, as have Christians from the earliest days of our liturgical celebrations. […]

(Feast Day ~ April 4)   The faith of Christians is tested every day by the inner temptations and sins which constantly confront us. But faith can also be tested by events and circumstances from the outside, from wars to changing economic conditions, and even to shifting cultural and social conditions. These and many other […]

(February 4) Our Western Rite calendar sets aside February 4 as a day to honor the memory of those numerous souls who perished in the persecutions of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, including the recently canonized last royal family of Russia. In the book An Englishman in the Court of the Tsar by Christine […]

(Feast day ~ April 3) A writer of sacred music would hardly have been expected to lead anything approaching an adventuresome, perhaps stormy life. Yet that was precisely the kind of life led by one of the foremost writers of religious music. On the contrary, his life encompassed the controversial, the daring, and the adventuresome… […]

(Feast Day ~ April 2) Mary of Egypt left her parents when she was twelve years of age. It was during the reign of the Emperor Justin. She entered Alexandria, and was a sinner in that city for seventeen years. Having visited Jerusalem, and, it being the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, […]

(Feast Day ~ April 1) Just as the images from a powerful telescope or from a spacecraft orbiting the earth can give us fleeting glimpses of God’s creation that exists beyond our planet, when we look back in history, we have fleeting glimpses of what life was like for Christians in the first several centuries […]

(Feast Day ~ March 31) He was a linguist, a teacher, a writer, a craftsman, a scientist, a world traveler, a family man. While this could be a description of a “Renaissance” man such as a Galileo or da Vinci, these terms also describe St. Innocent, “Enlightener of the Aleuts and Apostle to America” who […]

(Feast Day ~ March 30) According to the ways of the world, in order to have great influence, one must be a prominent statesmen, a talented actor or athlete, a wealthy merchant, or a technological genius. But according to the ways of God, it is often the quiet saint, the reclusive monk, who has the […]

(Feast Day ~ March 27) It is difficult for American Christians to imagine the restrictions experienced by those living under hostile, non-Christian rulers. In our increasingly “multi-cultural” society, all religions practiced within our borders are given equal protection under the law and discrimination on religious grounds is illegal. Americans are free to worship whomever and […]

(Feast Day ~ March 21) Two hundred years after St. Anthony followed the Gospel admonition to sell all that he had and follow Christ to a life of asceticism in the Egyptian desert, another was born whose decision to lead this same life has had a lasting influence through all the centuries since then. Twins […]