118. Holy Tuesday evening Bridegroom Matins, Holy Wednesday morning Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

Holy Tuesday evening Bridegroom Matins   Before we get into the Gospel story … Tonight we hear the Hymn of Kassiane, a ninth century nun and hymnographer. She was Irish, but her family moved to Constantinople, where she was one of several young women interviewed by Emperor Theophilus as his prospective bride. The story says […]

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117. Holy Monday evening Bridegroom Matins, Holy Tuesday morning Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

It will help if you read the Gospel passages before you read this Post. Holy Monday evening Bridegroom Matins Gospel Reading: Matthew 22:15-46; 23:1-39 In tonight’s Gospel, the confrontation between Jesus and the authorities continues. They must stop this man. Killing him was the last option. The better way, the cleanest way was still to outwit […]

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116. Palm Sunday evening Bridegroom Matins, Holy Monday morning Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

This week I’ll post articles daily to explain the services of this blessed Week. This is especially for the benefit of those who can’t make it to church.  It will help if you first take out your Bible and read the Gospel lessons as noted, since I’ll do a lot of paraphrasing of the actual text. […]

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115. An Introduction to Holy Week

Lazarus Saturday There had been fake Messiahs here and there before. The authorities had always been able to discredit them, and their followers had disappeared into the woodwork. But now here was this Jesus at Bethany only two miles from Jerusalem, still going strong – pulling off this ‘fake miracle”, this supposed raising of a […]

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114. The Seven Deadly Sins, Part Two: Sloth – Slothfulness about Leisure, Spiritual Sloth, How to Overcome Sloth

Last week we looked at Bodily, Intellectual and Moral Sloth. Now, moving ahead… 5 Slothfulness regarding Leisure. This sounds like a contradiction. It is not. Fifty five years ago one of my professors predicted that the big problem by the end of the twentieth century would be finding something for people to do with all their spare […]

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