OrthoAnalytika – Details, episodes & analysis

Do You Want to Be Healed? Letting God Rewrite the Story
Ephesians 8:5-19

Today, Fr. Anthony reflects on how the deepest obstacles to healing are often the stories we tell ourselves to justify, protect, and control our lives. Drawing on the Prophet Isaiah, the Gospel parables of the banquet, and the power of silence before God, he explores how true healing begins when we let go of our fallen narratives and allow Christ to reconstruct our story through humility, prayer, and repentance. The path of peace is not found in domination or self-justification, but in stillness at the feet of the Lord where grace remakes the soul. As St. Seraphim teaches, when we acquire peace, myriads around us are healed as well.

One of the great problems we encounter in life is this: we desire healing, but we do not always know how to arrive at it. One helpful way to understand this struggle is through the language of story. Very often, the problem is that we do not have our story right. Scripture tells us to redeem the time, because the days are evil. One of the ways that evil operates is by corrupting our story—our personal story, the way we understand ourselves, the way we frame our relationships, and even the way we understand the great arc of history, what Christians call the economy of salvation.

When we live in evil times, that evil does not remain outside us. It enters in, and our story becomes crooked. If all we do as Christians is add religious language to that crooked story—new words, even new scriptures—we have not truly been healed. We have only changed the decoration. The path itself remains bent. One day that story will be brought into the light. This is what the Apostle means when he says, "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon you." As St. Jerome once observed, St. Paul seems to be paraphrasing Isaiah here—especially that great prophecy where the crooked ways are made straight.
This theme runs deeply through Advent and the Nativity Fast. One small personal ritual during this season is listening to Handel's Messiah. Through that music, the words of Isaiah become alive: the great darkness that covers the earth, and the light that rises to overcome it. But darkness is not overcome by changing words alone. If all we do is rename our brokenness with religious language, the world's darkness will only pollute us more deeply.

So the first discipline of the Christian life is this: we must let go of our story. Our fallen story becomes a way to protect the ego, to justify ourselves, to excuse the very things Saint Paul warns us against. Salvation begins with humility, with letting go of our justifications, with abandoning the need to construct a story that protects us from the world or grants us domination over it. We are called to let go and stand before the Lord in silence. Not to explain ourselves, not to defend ourselves—but simply to be our story before Him in quiet awe.
If we do that work faithfully—and for many of us this must be done daily—then the reconstruction of the story can begin anew. This is where the disciplines of the Church come in: the prayer rule, the psalms, the prayers given to us by the Holy Spirit through the Church. These do not shame us; they heal us. They allow us to see our shortcomings not as excuses to hide, but as wounds that need restoration. This is how our crookedness is straightened so that we can be healed.

The Lord also gives us Scripture to interpret our story. In Isaiah 60 we hear of darkness and of a light that rises. Israel is called a light to the nations—but whenever Christians hear that language, our minds are drawn immediately to the Prologue of the Gospel of St. John. And there, light is not mere illumination. It is transformation. It is grace. It is the energy of God entering the world. And when Scripture moves back and forth between Christ and Israel, it is not a mistake—it reveals our participation in this great movement of salvation. Just as we are healed by grace, so the world is transfigured by that same grace flowing from the Body of Christ into all creation.

The Lord also teaches us through parables. Many parables may not resonate with many of us because of their agricultural contexts, but we can understand a banquet. We understand meals. We understand invitation. And in this parable, we are the ones who were called—and we came. We may not have been the first invited. We came blind, wounded, ashamed, hiding behind excuses. But the invitation came, and we showed up.

Yet getting through the door is not the end of the story. The Lord teaches us what it means to live inside the banquet. When you enter the house, do tell the master how he should run it? Do you take the highest seat as if it belongs to you? No—He says take the lowest place, and let the master raise you up if he wills. This is the posture of true humility. If we were the authors of our story, it would end in darkness. But instead, we are invited into a feast that never ends. And none of our fallen tools—control, manipulation, ego-protection—belong in the Father's house.
This is why the psalmist says he would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than sit among kings. That is our true inheritance. There is no such thing as a low seat at that table. Every place at that feast is glory beyond imagination. The only way it becomes distorted is if we try to overlay God's story with our fallen one.

So yes—do we want to be healed? Of course, we do. That is why we are here. Do we want to grow into our inheritance? That is why we came. But it is not enough merely to arrive. We must live your part in the story.

There is a false humility that sometimes creeps into us—especially if we have been wounded or manipulated. We become afraid to acknowledge anything good about ourselves or even our relationship with God, as if gratitude were pride. But that is not humility. We need to be ashamed of what truly needs repentance and bring it into the light. But we should never be ashamed of our relationship with the Lord. Do not pretend the banquet is a shack just because we know we do not deserve it. Hold both truths together: the infinite distance between God's glory and our brokenness, and the infinite mercy by which He draws us into His glory.  Following St. Silouon the Athonite, we should keep our mind in hell – and despair not.
The lowest seat at that table is greater than any throne the world can offer. It is the seat prepared for us in the council of God. There is no low place there—only mistaken stories that make us think otherwise.

So during this season, let's spend time with the Lord in silence. Let's let go of the instinct to create stories that justify, control, and fix everything. These wandering thoughts only deepen confusion. We need to seek peace and pursue it quietly at the feet of God. Then we can come out from that silence and allow His Word to reconstruct us.

Our Lord is not manipulative. He does not heal through domination. If there is one relationship in which we can finally release our need for control, it is our relationship with Him. If we skip silence, we will guard ourselves even against God, and the crooked ways will remain crooked—only renamed with religious language.

Go in silence before the Lord. Come out and allow His Word to heal you. Then, in that peace, allow your relationships with others to be healed as well. This is how the world is remade: not by power, not by manipulation, but by peace.

St. Seraphim of Sarov put it simply: "Acquire the Spirit of peace, and thousands around you will be saved." When peace grows in the heart, the handles of manipulation fall away. The saint no longer needs to prove anything. There is no hunger for worldly approval. The only desires left are to love, to serve, and to receive love. These are not tools of control—they are mechanisms of grace.

We still have time to prepare for the Lord's coming. Let this be the beginning. And as part of this renewal of our story, we still have time to come to confession. The Church teaches us to come during every Lenten season, and yes, that can be frightening. Authority in this world has often been abusive or manipulative. But confession is not that. It is not tyranny—it is liberation. The Lord does not want us carrying this weight. He wants us free. This is the Church's gift to us. We must not leave it unused.

Let the Lord heal you. Let Him tell you your true story. And then, at last, relax into its glory.

I Corinthians 4:9-16
St. John 1:35-51

In this homily for the Feast of St. Andrew, Fr. Anthony contrasts the world's definition of success with the apostolic witness of sacrifice, humility, and courageous love. Drawing on St. Paul's admonition to the Corinthians, he calls Christians to recover the reverence due to bishops and spiritual fathers, to reject the corrosive logic of social media, and to return to the ascetical path that forms us for theosis. St. Andrew and St. Paul's lives reveals that true honor is found not in comfort or acclaim but in following Christ wherever He leads — even into suffering and martyrdom.  Enjoy the show!

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St. Andrew Day, 2025

The Orthodox Church takes apostolic succession very seriously; the preservation of "the faith passed on to the apostles" is maintained by the physicality of the ordination of bishops by bishops, all of who can trace the history of the ordination of the bishops who ordained them back to one or more of the apostles themselves.  You probably already new that.  But there is another part of that respect for the apostles that you may not know of: the ranking of autocephalist (i.e. independent) national Churches.  The Canons (especially those of the Council of Trullo) give prominence to the five ancient patriarchates of Rome (Sts. Peter and Paul), Constantinople (St. Andrew), Alexandria (St. Mark), Antioch (St. Paul), and Jerusalem (St. James).  

St. Andrew travelled into dangerous barbarian lands to spread the Gospel, to include the Middle East, and, most notably, then North to the lands around the Black Sea; Ankara and Edessa to the south of the Black Sea in what is now Turkey, to the East of the Black Sea into the Caucuses, and up to the North of the Black Sea to the Scythian lands into what is now Ukraine.  That was his first journey.  After this, he returned to Jerusalem and then went on his second journey to Antioch, back up into the Caucasus, out to the land of the dog-headed people in Central Asia, down through what is now Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea, and then back up through Persia and finally into Greece, where he was martyred.
He sacrificed so much for the Gospel and brought so many souls to salvation through the Christ he himself knew, both before and after His glorious Resurrection.  His virtue and sacrificial service allow God's grace to flow into the world and he serves as the patron of several countries, cities, and all Christians who bear variations of His name such as Andrew, Andrei, and Andrea.

As Orthodox Christians, we should know his story, ask for his intercession, and imitate his witness.  And everyone, whether Christian or not, should respect his virtue.  But does it?  Does it even respect virtue?  Do we?

As Saint Paul points out in today's Epistle, many of us do not.  And don't think the problem was just in Corinth; St. John Chrysostom's homilies on this epistle show that the people there were at least as guilty.  And that was in the center of Eastern Orthodoxy, during the time of alleged symphonia between the Church and State.  Should there be any doubt that we, too, allow the world to define the sorts of worldly things we should prioritize?

After all …

What is it that the world respects in a man?  What is it that the world respects in a woman?  Think for a second what it is that impresses you the most about the people you admire – perhaps even makes you jealous, wishing that you had managed to obtain the same things.
I cannot read your minds, but if you are like most Americans, the list would certainly include:

• A long, healthy life, without chronic pain or major physical injury
• A life free of indictment, arrest, or imprisonment
• The respect, admiration, and popularity of their peers
• Money, a big house, a vacation house, and the ability to retire comfortably (and early)

These are some of the things that many of you are either pleased to enjoy, regret not having obtained, or, if you are young, are currently striving for.

The Apostles Andrew and Paul, gave up the possibility for all these things to follow Christ.  Not because they wanted to; not because God made them; they gave up the life of worldly comfort and respect because – in a culture and time as messed up as theirs was – this is the only Way to live a life of grace and to grow in love and perfection.

• A long, healthy life, without chronic pain or major physical injury?
  • Nope – gave it up.
• A life free of indictment, arrest, or imprisonment?
  • Nope – gave it up.
• The respect, admiration, and popularity of their peers?
  • No again.
• Money, a big house, a vacation house, and the ability to retire comfortably (and early)
  • I don't think so (unless a prison in Rome and martyrdom count!).

Because St. Paul is writing as an Apostle, instructing a parish that he was called to lead, it is tempting to put his sacrifices into the category of "things that clergy do".  And clergy certainly should follow their example.  While my example is not so bright, you may know that I gave up a life of wealth, admiration, and the possibility of a comfortable retirement so that I could serve as a priest.  God has blessed that and protected me from harm, but the opportunity costs are real, nonetheless.  

And while I am a pale shadow of him (and he of Christ), I, like the Apostle Paul, did these things not because I wanted to (I liked my life then!) and not because God made me, but because in a culture and time as messed up as ours is, such a life of simplicity and complete service to others is the only Way I can live a life of grace and to grow in love and towards perfection in Christ.

I have made some sacrifices, but I know other clergymen who – in our time – have given up more.  Their entire lives given over to sacrificial servce to Christ.  Who have become experts in both academic theology and the real theology of constant prayer.  Who have and continue to lead their dioceses and Churches through such difficult times.  And yet, who, like St. Paul, are not only reviled by the world, but even by Orthodox Christians.  Yes, to paraphrase St. Paul, we are so smart and educated that we can criticize and heap piles of coal on their heads because we know so much more than they do – because they, like St. Paul, are fools.  We can trash-talk them on social media and applaud others who lead the charge against them because they are so weak and we are so strong.

How long does it take for a Patriarch's priestly ministry to make him respectable in our sight?  For us to respect him, or at least to forebear him?

It must be more than 55 years, based on the things I have heard and read us saying about Patriarch Kyrril who has been leading his Church and people through an incredibly difficult time, as he believes the West works to undermine his people's faith and traditional Christianity everywhere.

It must also be more than 55 years, based on the things I have heard and read us saying about Patriarch Bartholomew, as he works amidst the persecution of the government in the place he lives to bring Christians and Christians who have long been divided into and towards the unity for which we pray daily and which our God desires us to work towards.

It must be more than 42 years, based on the things I have heard and read us saying about our own Patriach John, who has seen his people and Church crucified and persecuted and who seeks to encourage the local authorities to protect the weak and the Church and people he serves (while leading the people he serves in the West to avoid the excesses of liberty).  
I hope you feel the shame, if not your own personal shame for having participated in slandering and judging our bishops and patriarchs, then feel shame for seeing the world and those Orthodox Christians who are living by its rules attacking them and questioning their virtue.

This is the same shame that St. Paul was trying to elicit in Corinth.  Do you feel the shame?  If not, then the world, probably through social media, has deadened your noetic senses.  It is time for repentance.  

And like St. Paul, I have to tell you that – while few of you may be called to priestly or monastic service – all of us are called to reject those things that the world has led us to value, because all of these things are like barrier between us and the eternal joy and perfection we were called to enjoy.

Listen to me, my brothers and sisters, as I repeat the words of St. Paul we so desperately need to hear:  

"For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.  Therefore I urge you, imitate me."  

We do not have St. Paul as our father, but we have one of his successors, Patriarch John, and those whom he has assigned to us, such as Metropolitan Saba, Bishop John, and even this, your unworthy servant.  Let's stop giving attention to those who attack Orthodox clerics and thereby sow division within the Church and undermine its witness to others.

Let's give up our attachment to this world and its ways.  Let's give up everything worldly we love, follow Christ, and gain the things that are really worth our love, admiration, and sacrifice.

Today Fr. Anthony covers Chapter Six from Zachary Porcu's Journey to Reality, "Sacramental Being."  (FWIW, he still doesn't buy the idea of something becoming a spiritual battery as batteries work seperate from an active power source and nothing is separate from the presence of God). Enjoy the show!

Luke 7:11-16 (The Widow of Nain)

At the gates of Nain, the procession of death meets the Lord of Life—and death loses. Christ turns the widow's grief into joy, revealing that every tear will one day be transformed into the eternal song of alleluia.  A "by-the-numbers" homily - enjoy the show!

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This was an encounter between two forces: death and the very source of life. We know how this encounter always turns out. Life seems so fragile (war, disease, accidents, violence) and we seem doomed to die.

What happened (Jesus brought the dead back to life)

Focus briefly on three parts of this Gospel reading: the procession, the grief of the mother, and how it ended.

The funeral procession.  How we do funerals.  Preparation for it.  Psalms.  Preparation of the body.  Funeral service(s).  Burial.  The movement of the person from one list in our daily prayers to the other. Nine-day prayers.  Forty-day prayers.  Annual prayers.  Often with koliva or a special bread.

The grieving mother.  Do not weep.  "Blessed are those who mourn."  Jesus Himself, always in the Spirit, wept at the death of Lazarus.  Do not weep "like those who have no hope…" (I Thessalonians). Repent of the sin that leads to unhealthy tears; and that repentance requires that we live knowing that we may never have another chance on this side of a funeral to mend a relationship.  Tears of honest grief are cathartic, as are tears of outrage at the absurdity of living in a world where death is so prevalent.  But let those tears flow in the knowledge that as outrageous, ignoble, and offensive as death is; that our tears of sorrow are being turned, as we sing in the funeral service, into the song "alleluia!"  And that is how I want to conclude...

How it ended.  This was an encounter between two forces: death and the very source of life.  Who won?  And who won when death took a man captive and found that it, instead, it was forced to encounter God?  Who won?  It was no real contest!  As we hear from St. John Chrysostom on Pascha: Christ-God annihilated death!  In a world that was made and is governed by the source of Life, death place is temporary, a consequence and concession to our sin – sin which itself is, again through Christ, only temporary.  It is holiness and life that endures forever.

Conclusion. That is the side we have chosen: we reject sin and we reject death.  We have intentionally chosen the side of holiness and of life.  It seems as though our relationship with life is so vulnerable – to sickness, to violence, to sudden catastrophes; but in the only reality that matters in the end, it is quite the opposite.  It and all its associated grief, anxieties, traumas, and pain are products of this world, doomed to end when it is remade in glory. 

Again, we have intentionally chosen the side of life.  Let's live it as it was meant to be lived, not in fear of death but in the joy of the One who has through death defeated death and who desires us to live well both now and into eternity.    

Luke 8:5-15.

Faith is a living seed sown by God, but it cannot survive in the air of ideology or emotion—it must take root in the heart. Fr. Anthony calls us to cultivate this inner soil through the ancient disciplines of the Church so that our faith might stand firm and bear fruit a hundredfold.  Enjoy the show!

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Filling all things…
Journey to Reality
Chapter Five: Sacramental Thinking

St John 14: 1-7.  Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.

St. Basil the Great (On the Holy Spirit).  We understand the "way" to be the road to perfection, advancing in order step by step through the words of righteousness and the illumination of knowledge, always yearning for that which lies ahead and straining toward the last mile, until we reach that blessed end, the knowledge of God, with which the Lord blesses those who believe in him. For truly our Lord is a good way, a straight road with no confusing forks or turns, leading us directly to the Father. For "no one comes to the Father," he says, "except through me." Such is our way up to God through his Son. ON THE HOLY SPIRIT 8.18.

 "Modern, westernized people tend to think about the world from the starting point of physicality.  The physical world, as we would say, is the primary reality… It is the objective, measurable world on which we can all agree."  Page 50 of 142.

The assumption of materialists is that if a thing cannot be measured, then it is unprovable, a matter of opinion, AND of lesser importance.

The natural world is everyone's baseline.  Religious or spiritual people have an added category, that of the "supernatural," but as long as we operate in the material paradigm, these are the things that BY DEFINITION cannot be measured and are thus kind of optional.  Belief then becomes a way to stand up and assert that there are some things that are important that cannot be measured directly.  "I believe…" is our assertion that there is a supernatural reality and that it is well-ordered and that there are supernatural outcomes that should matter to us:

·      Forgiveness of sins

·      Sacramental marriage (vs. an agreement or contract)

·      Eternal life

When we talk about religion, it is often in materialist terms.

·      What good is it (for health, family, society)?

·      What does it cost in terms of time and money?

·      Does its system make sense?  E.g. Juridical vs. Therapeutic vs. Holistic Healing

But this worldview can only take us so far.  It "misses the mark" when it comes to understanding the world and how it works.

An irony:  the materialist world may allow us to see things objectively, but not truly.  I am playing with words here, but it points to the difficulty.

Objectivity refers to the quality of being unbiased and fair, making decisions based solely on facts rather than personal feelings or beliefs. It is often considered essential in fields like science and journalism to ensure accurate and impartial reporting or analysis.

Objects have attributes that can be measured.  As a social scientist, I was taught that we have a poor understanding of something if we cannot put a number to it and that if we took enough measurements, we could explain everything.  Omniscience – or godhood – then is a matter of having enough data and the computing power to run the numbers.  Omnipotence involves the ability to manipulate everything towards a desired outcome.  This is no longer just the stuff of science fiction. 

This is another one of those areas where claims are being made for technology that should not be made.  We can rightly question double-predestination, but what will keep us from doing the same thing as we grow in material understanding and power?

A step in the right direction is to recognize that there is a moral dimension to the world.  But the problem is that it cannot be measured.  Outcomes can be measured, but their values can only be asserted.  This is why both secular philosophers like Nichze and religious ones like C.S. Lewis and Fr. Seraphim Rose claim that this kind of worldview leads to nihilism and the assertion of will. 

Religious and spiritual people who believe in the supernatural will then say that God (or spirit, or Arche) is the solution to this problem.  Again, this gets us heading in a good direction, but it usually keeps within the materialist worldview.  Again, which system makes sense, agrees with what I prefer, has the best agape meal, and so on.

But it really is strange to come at God in this manner.  All we are doing is taking the "God of the Gaps" concept and applying to morality and value.  This is like looking at the world through a two-dimensional, black and white filter.

We can do better.  Let's see how our ancestors did it.

They did not see the natural and supernatural as separate.  It was just "the world."

Some things were visible and some things were invisible.  Just as we cannot see radiation, atoms, and gravity know them to be part of reality, so it was with our ancestors for the invisible things. 

"This idea that the physical and the spiritual are not seperable has a few important implications.  If we say that the physical and the spiritual have to go together, then what we're really saying is that there is a spiritual quality to everything physical, and a physical quality to everything spiritual.  This means, among other things, that physical objects and actions can have intrinsic meaning." (Page 53 of 142)

The example of two bisecting lines.  A Cross.  There is a story behind it, and that gives it subjective meaning, but there is more to it.  The things that are described in that story create meaning.  The cross is part of something primal and real it has "cosmic significance" (ibid).  And this is true regardless of whether people recognize it as such (example of vampires).

Another way of describing this older view is as "enchanted" (vs. disenchanted). 

Another way is that we are part of a grand story.  Stories are excellent at conveying meaning.  This is why some stories are said to be true even though they are fiction.  This is complete nonsense to the materialist mind.

What about objectivity?  Isn't this view biased?  Isn't it subjective?

It certainly is biased.  But it is only subjective because our perception of the world is incomplete and often wrong, and we really do assert our wills to create and share meaning. 

We have to go beyond thinking about things primarily as either objective – meaning things that can be measured, or subjective – meaning things that cannot. 

A refresher on objective vs. subjective:

Pizza.

·      Objectively, it has bread, sauce, and topics of a certain type and consistency and spices that affect the olfactory system in certain measurable ways.  This is seen as what the pizza IS.

·      Subjectively, we prefer certain kinds of bread, sauce, topics, and spices.  This is our opinion about the pizza. 

·      We can argue about what belongs on a pizza or how it should be prepared, but it's easy to come to an agreement on what the pizza actually is. 

The problem with this kind of a dichotomy is that it turns value and meaning into a matter of opinion and not only does that lead to disaster – it doesn't describe the way the world really is.

Why disaster?

Disagreeing about pizza can lead to arguments and bringing home a pizza one person sees as valuable and another doesn't may lead to temper tantrums; but what if the thing being described is something like human life or someone else's freedom? 

Why is it wrong?

Because everything has intrinsic value.  And this is because it has being through it's connection to the source of value – the Arche.'

Personal Knowledge

Another step in getting us to where we need to go is to look at knowledge that is gained personally, from the inside. 

But even in relationships, we miss the mark.  Vices and virtues affect how well we can know things and people.  An angry person is going to notice – and even create – things in people and their behaviors that stoke their anger.  Humility allows the person to be open to the truth.  Vice clouds our vision.

"The practice of virtue is, therefore, an essential element in seeking knowledge and the ultimate truth of things.  Why?  Because reality is participatory.  Or, to put it more simply, if you're a bad person, you're also going to be a bad friend.  If you're jealous, resentful, petty, or arrogant, your going to have a hard time building a relationship with anyone to the extent that those impulses control your life.  To have better relationships, you have to be a better person.  And if Truth itself is a Person, you're only going to be able to know Truth to the extent that you're able to have a relationship with Him." (Page 61 of 142)

In summary: the physical and spiritual world are inseparable.  This gives everything meaning.  We learn that meaning through participation; this involves both intellectual and moral growth.  How can this work?  Tune in next week!

Some questions: 

·      How is personal knowledge more than just data?

·      How do we keep from pretending our subjective opinions are illumined?

·      How does anyone know how clean their mirror is or how true their sight is?

St. Luke 6:31-36
The Gospel's "Golden Rule" reveals more than an ethical ideal—it unveils the way God heals His creation. Fr. Anthony shows how practicing mercy, even toward our enemies, transforms hearts and communities, turning the parish itself into an ark of salvation and mechanism of the world's perfection.

St. Luke 5:1-11.

Drawing on St. Luke's account of Christ calling His disciples to become fishers of men, this homily explores why marriages and parishes often falter when built on human strength alone. Fr. Anthony reminds us that brokenness, poor models, and cultural confusion cannot be overcome by willpower or good intentions, but only through Christ and His Church. Just as the apostles' empty nets were filled at the Lord's command, so too our families and parishes flourish when rooted in His blessing and obedience.

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Homily: Why is it so hard to build a good marriage (and parish)?
Saint Luke 5:1-11; Fishers of Men

So it was, as the multitude pressed about Him to hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, and saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets. Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simon's, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat.

When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, "Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch."

But Simon answered and said to Him, "Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net." And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!"

For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish which they had taken; and so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid. From now on you will catch men." So when they had brought their boats to land, they forsook all and followed Him (St. Luke 5:1-11).

Introduction: How Christ Builds the Church

This is a beautiful story from the ministry of Jesus Christ. It comes on the heels of his Baptism, his temptation by the devil in the wilderness, and the beginning of his preaching ministry in the synagogues of Galilee. In this Gospel, Christ has started building something very special; something that would never fall; something that would bring healing to broken humanity; something through which He would change the world. He began building the Church. And He did it with simple fishermen on the side of a lake.

Continuation: We are Building, too

We are participating in this work as well. We want to build something that will never fail; something that will bring healing to broken people; something that will transform a troubled place. We are building a parish. Today's Gospel provides a wonderful lesson for us on this very thing.

In his homily on today's Gospel, St. Nikolai Velimirovich writes;

"Except the Lord build the house, all who labor labor in vain." (Psalm 126:1) If the builders build in God's name, they will build a palace, even their hands are weak and their material poor. If, though, the builders build in their own name, in opposition to God, the work of their hands will be brought down as was the Tower of Babel.

There is no power that can bring God's work to ruin. Pagan palaces and cities fall into ruin, but God's huts remain standing. That which God's finger upholds stands more firmly than that which [the mythical titan] Atlas supports on his back… May the almighty Lord preserve us from the thought that we can achieve any good without His help and His blessing…

May today's Gospel serve as a warning that such vain thoughts must never be formulated our souls. It speaks of how all men's efforts are in vain if God does not help them. While Christ's apostle's were fishing as men, they caught nothing; but when Christ commanded them to cast their nets once more into the sea, they caught such a great haul of fish that their nets tore.

Why would anyone think they can build something worthwhile without Christ? I don't know. It is futile. We know better. But we do it all the time.

Understanding the Curse of Sin: the example of marriage

Let's look at the example of marriage. It can be so hard to get it right, and there are just so many ways to get it wrong. Why is it so hard? It isn't because people aren't trying. In fact, they are trying all kinds of things… but they aren't working very well. At best, some couples might end up with a marriage that lasts, but marriage was not just meant to endure. It's not supposed to be like a boxing match that makes it to the final round; with the two so tired they can hardly lift a glove and they just lean on one another gasping and looking forward to the bell (or, as is as likely to happen in marriages, the two just hang out in their separate corners doing their own thing until the final bell sounds). A good marriage does more than last, it brings joy to its members and its fruit brings happiness that endures from generation to generation.

But why is this so rare? It should come as no surprise. Look how many people  come from broken families. It isn't their fault, but this really puts them behind the eight ball. They come from broken families and a broken world, so they have bad examples and have internalized all the wrong instincts. Brokenness has been imprinted in their minds and hearts; this cannot help but shape their actions, no matter how good and noble their intentions are. Even if they try to rise above and do things right, what examples are they going to follow? Television? Movies? TikTok?  Their friends? Their hearts? None of these is a reliable guide – all of them are fallen. If statistics are correct – and there is no reason to doubt them – our young men are learning more about how to relate to women from pornography than they are from anything good and real. And the expectations and self-respect of our young women are being shaped by this same blighted culture.

Is there really any wonder that we are so bad at marriage? That even those young couples who try to get it right end up building a perverted parody of the kind of blessed union of flesh and spirit that we celebrate in the Mystery of Crowning? That we have far more "towers of Babel" than temples of true love?

Reiterating the Problem… and the solution

To repeat the Psalm; "Except the Lord build the house, all who labor labor in vain." (126:1). We cannot overcome our own brokenness by trying harder or following the examples and guidance of people who are broken, too (St. Matthew 15:14; … if the blind lead the blind both will fall into a pit). An alcoholic cannot live a healthy life by trying harder; he has to admit his problem, heal and transform his heart and habits. And he has to let God be the foundation of this process. This is why twelve-step programs are so successful: they transform the hearts and habits of the repentant, with God as the foundation of the process. How many addicts do you know that continue ruining their lives because they think they can work everything out on their own?

But alcoholics and philanderers do not just hurt themselves. We know from history and our own observations that the children of alcoholics and broken homes are cursed by both nature and nurture. Again, it isn't fair, but it is true. If we want the next generations to succeed then we have to be honest about both the cause and the cure of what ails them and us. The cause is our brokenness, and the cure is Christ Jesus. The cure is His Church. The cure is the Way of Holy Orthodoxy. All else is vanity. They are Towers of Babel. They are sand castles at a low tide.

Back to Today's Gospel: becoming fishers of men

The curse of sin is the very thing that Christ came to remove. To put it in very practical terms, Christ came to save your marriages, to heal your addictions, to restore your sanity, and to replace your sorrow, pain, and frustration with joy and eternal blessedness. That is to say, He came to save you from the very real, very specific, and very damning problems in your life. And not just yours, but everyone's. A world that was created good groans in agony, and our Lord loves it too much to allow that to continue.

And so He became a man, He taught us, He died for us, He was resurrected and ascended into Glory, and, more to today's point, He established the Church to be the Ark of our salvation.

What a beautiful image a boat is for the Church. Think about it: we are drowning in a sea of sin and trying to tread water amidst a storm of temptation. We cannot survive this on our own, and it does not help to band together – eventually, even the strongest swimmer must succumb to weakness; moreover, the weak are infamous for dragging the stronger down. It is a terrible situation to be drowning in this stormy sea. Our breaths are numbered, and we are sure to die in agony. It is only a matter of time. But into this bleak scene comes salvation: the apostles cast out their nets and pull us in to the safety of the boat. We can finally breath without struggling. It is calm in the boat. It is here that our real healing begins… then we are given our own nets. 

Conclusion: we cannot catch men if we don't try; we cannot catch men if we don't learn how

We are in the boat. Here at Christ the Saviour, we have the fullness of the faith (we are like a fractal of the Universal Church) so it is fair to say that we are the boat. But remember that bit earlier about how nature and nurture conspire against our marriages? You know me well enough by now to know that I wasn't just talking about marriage. Marriage is an image of the Church: the union of flesh with one another and the union of that one flesh with God (Ephesians 5:32). Why should we think that we are naturally any better at living as the Church than we are with marriage? The same forces work against us: we suffer from both nature and nurture. Just as good intentions are not enough for the children of broken homes, they are not enough for us as we try to build this parish. Without serious help, we will just end up building the equivalent of a miserable and failed marriage, another Tower of Babel, a perverse monument to our own fallenness. We cannot do it on our own.  We need help.  

We need Christ.

Without Him, we are like the Apostles in today's lesson before our Lord came; "toiling all night and catching nothing" (St. Luke 5:5). It had been a hard night for them and they had given up on catching anything; but then Christ came and told them to go back out, and they caught more than they could carry. So many that their boats almost broke.

This parish has been through a lot.  There was a time when it was down to a handful of people.  Like Simon in today's lesson, we had good hearts and the best of intentions, but we were tired; and we had pretty much given up on catching fish.

But the Lord has told us to get back out there and get it done.

And so that is what we are doing.  Of course, we are smart in the ways of the world, and we are always tempted to rely on our own strength and our own hearts. But our hearts are broken and our strength will fail us. "Except the Lord build the house, all who labor labor in vain." (126:1). But for those who put their trust in the Lord and in His way – there is no limit to the good that they can do. This is where we are. We have given our lives and the future of this parish to the Lord Jesus Christ.  Like Simon, we haven't always seen the point of what the Lord commands, but also like Simon, we follow Him.

And we know the result of doing the Lord's will: the catch was so great that their nets were so full that they were all but bursting, and the ship could barely stay afloat.  Does this sound familiar?  The Lord has bless your commitment and your faith; and our growth has been so great that we wonder if our walls can hold the number of men, women, and children who have been pulled in to the safety of the Church. So great that we, like Simon calling for the second boat, are helping to plant missions and look for new properties to provide enough room. Because there is no reason to expect this growth to stop.  After all, there are a lot of people drowning in the waters around us.

We cannot allow them to perish – it is God's will that all be saved. It is a tough calling.

But we do not labor in vain: because we are building according to the Lord's command. We have been transformed fishers of men.

To God be all glory and may He bless us as we do this work.

This episode introduces our series on Orthodox Christian virtue, beginning with the call to authentic masculinity. Fr. Anthony explains that true manhood is humble, courageous, and sacrificial, and can only be formed through living a life in fellowship with others.

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Introduction to our Series on Orthodox Christian Virtue
Men's Group, Christ the Saviour in Anderson SC
Fr. Anthony Perkins, 28 September 2025

Etymological note: the word "virtue" is from the Latin virtus, which means strength, manliness, and moral excellence.  The trick is not to redefine moral virtue around fallen concepts of manliness, but to regain the sort of masculinity that is, by its nature, both strong and godly (ie, holy).

Why a Series on Orthodox Christian Masculinity?

·      Men struggle with the development of a proper goal and worldview that would allow them to thrive, specifically as Christian men.

·      Men increasingly lack sound role models and guides, but there are many influencers who would fill that role for all the wrong reasons and give bad advice.

·      This combination of high demand and unreliable supply means that everyone suffers; men who are called to be part of the solution to the problem of the world's pain instead increase it.

·      The Orthodox Church is the fullness of the faith, but has addressed this problem inconsistently (Note on the book "Why Men Hate Going to Church").  It is great to have Orthodox influencers addressing the issue, but this happens at the expense of building the kind of community would and should naturally foster community.  Men can watch videos, listen to podcasts (do men even read books anymore?!), and increase their tribal commitment to virtue, but unless they are in the trenches with other men committed to the same goal and part of a system that blesses and supports the goal and its pursuit, this is idle posturing. 

o   This is the problem of superficial mentorship: ideas without connection or skin in the game. (incomplete or bad ecclesiology).  It is both gnostic (because it is anti-incarnational) and Protestant (in that each person becomes their own guide, moving to the idea/guru that matches their inclinations rather than joining and submitting to something substantial and real).

o   The temptation of clericalism.  Leaving all teaching and mentoring to the parish priest. (incomplete or bad ecclesiology)

o   As on the internet, the men who might want to step up and fill this void may not be suited for it because they lack the proper temperament, manner of life, experience, or training.  (Self-selection is bad ecclesiology.) Remember Matthew 15:14b on the blind leading the blind.

·      This is NOT a series that is going to present THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF MASCULINITY ™ so that we can all adjust our minds to its reality.  Lord willing, it will teach the right ideas, but that is not how real spiritual formation happens.

·      It is a series that is part of our effort to create a community of men who not only understand masculine virtue and commit themselves to its achievement, but also one where we train and work towards that standard together.  So it includes NOT JUST ideas of manliness but intentionally develops scalable ecclesial institutions that incarnate the living of those ideas through the brotherly support, mentorship, encouragement, and accountability.

Your role in the process: commitment to living a life of virtue in community with others.

My role in the process and why I am the leader of our local chapter

·      Long-standing commitment to Christian virtue and all the sacrifices that entails; as well as the many blessings that have followed.

·      Married thirty-five years. 

·      A respected and decorated leader in the Army, community, and Church.

o   Retired Military Intelligence Chief Warrant Officer with deployments throughout the world, to include two to Afghanistan.

o   Three master's decrees: political science, divinity, and special education.

o   Ordained as a priest in 2007, have been teaching seminary since 2008; and have served in multiple leadership positions in the national church and at seminary.

·      Trained and experienced in the concepts of teamwork, spiritual development, community, and theology.

·      A lifetime of experience teaching these concepts and discipling others to teach them in the military, academia, parishes, seminary, and on the internets.

If I were into self-promotion or social media, these might get me a following; but the real reason that I am the leader of the process is ontological, that is to say baked into our reality: I am the legitimately and canonically ordained priest assigned by our bishop to the priest – that is to say the "elder" and pastor – of this parish.  This would be true even if I had never served in the military, taught at seminary, or enjoyed the benefits of a healthy marriage. 

It is accepting the fact that we "go to war with the army and leaders we have, not the ones we want" that allows us to get traction in doing the work we are called to do.  We might gain a rudimentary understanding of what we are called to do and be as Christian men from our favorite Orthodox influencers on the internet, but if we are more attached to them and their virtual communities than the leaders and community in which we actually live, then we are setting ourselves up for failure.  The Church has been perfecting the saints for many centuries without the internet; it is foolishness to jettison that system in favor of one that has not been tested and is known to be skewed towards narcissism and exaggeration. 

So here are the objectives of this series:

·      To provide a deeper understanding of Orthodox Christian Masculinity that each of us can defend and commit ourselves to.

·      To provide tools that will allow us to grow in personal holiness, first by dealing with our fallen "manly" temptations (anger, lust, gluttony, manipulation, and just checking out) and second by the acquisition of a peaceful, confident, and humble spirit.

·      To provide the tools – and not just the ideas! – to lead our family, communities, and parish.

·      To develop and intentional community of men, with mentorship, discipleship, and accountability.

·      That mentorship includes

o   The expectation that every man will go to confession regularly and schedule meetings with his priest as necessary.  We should be going to confession AT LEAST FOUR TIMES A YEAR; the ideal is once a month.

o   The development of horizontal friendships with other men IN THIS PARISH for encouragement, accountability, and the deepening of Christian love.

o   Each of us will develop and maintain a relationship with a mentor.  You can have more than one mentor, just like you can go to more than one priest for confession, but the point is that salvation is LOCAL.  Again, you don't go to war with the army and leaders you want, but with the one we have.  The temptation is to Americanize ecclesiology through the internet and to turn the local stable of churches and paraliturgical communities into our very own spiritual buffet.  Didn't we say we wanted to give that way of thinking up when we became Orthodox?
These mentors are:

§  [NAME]

§  [NAME]

§  [NAME]

§  [NAME]

o   Why these? 

§  They are old.  Let no man despise your youth, but a healthy culture has a special place and respect for gray beards.  Younger men are wonderful spiritual brothers and we should rely on them for such.  They can certainly be leaders in other ways, AND it is our job (and especially mine and the mentors) to disciple them so that they are able to do a better job than us when their beards turn gray.  This is within the spirit of having age requirements for formal ordination.

§  They have been committed Orthodox Christians for a while.  This is important because it takes time for Orthodoxy to gain traction.  No one doubts the novice's commitment, but experience is required for mentorship.  Again, this is in line with the spirit of ecclesial norms: Canon Law prohibits the ordination of novices. 

·      Think of it as a kind of apprenticeship, but one where we are all already active life-smiths, but need a good system to help us improve the quality of our work.

So what is Orthodox Christian Masculinity?

·      The way of a man committed to living out his faith humbly, courageously, and sacrificially in service to God, family, and community.

o   Humble

o   Courage (confidence)

o   Sacrificially: DUTY!!!  Get up and do something!  Reliability. 

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

—Theodore Roosevelt

We are doing great deeds together.  To the glory of God and the transformation of the world..

Future classes: Mentors are going to lead.  Spiritual discipline and asceticism.  How to build a strong and safe home.  Financial asceticism.  How to protect and serve the weak and vulnerable. 

In the meantime, commit yourself to being a reliable and godly man.  Peaceful and strong.  Give up things that distract you and build up habits that will make you better.  Lead your family in prayer, lead them in going to church; encourage your friends to be godly and hold them accountable in private when needed, and live the kind of Cross-carrying life that transforms your souls towards perfection and brings peace and joy to those around you.

God is a Personal Triune Arche'
Journey to Reality
Chapter Three: Who is God?

Money quote from this chapter:
"The reality is that Christianity is profoundly different from every other religion in history precisely because the Trinity solves this problem of the One and the Many on the basis that God's nature is love.  No other religion is like that." (pg 37 of 142)

Framing Scripture on the Godhead (this is just an introduction to the subject):

Genesis 16:7&13.  Now the Angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness by the spring on the way to Shur… Then Hagar called the name of Lord who spoke to her, "You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees-Me"; for she said, "I have seen the One who appeared to me face to face."

Genesis 19:24.  Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and on Gomorrah from the Lord out of the heavens. (repeated in Amos 4:11).

Genesis 22:15-16.  Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, "By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you did this thing and for My sake did not spare your beloved son. 

[God appears many times to Abraham in human form.  Jesus confirms that that was Him in John 8:56-58; Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He saw it, and was glad." Therefore, the Jews said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old! Have you seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Most certainly, I tell you, before Abraham came into existence, I AM.]

"God had appeared to Jacob visibly in a dream at Bethel (Gen. 28:10–22), where he was identified as the Lord. Later the Angel of God came to Jacob in another dream and told him point-blank that he was the same God who met him at Bethel earlier (Gen. 31:11–12)." (Heiser, Supernatural), Ch 6).

Exodus 3:4.  When the Lord saw he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush, and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." 

Exodus 23:20-22. Behold I send My Angel before your face, to keep you in the way and to bring you into the land I prepared for you.  Listen to Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My Name is in Him.

[In 1 Corinthians 10 and Hebrews 11, St. Paul explains that it was Jesus the Logos that brought the Israelites out of Egypt, was with them in their journey, and brought them into the promised land.  Jude 1 does the same.]

Judges 6:20-24.  The Angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and the unleavened bread and lay them on this rock, and pour out the broth." And he did so.  Then the Angel of the Lord stretched out the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened bread.  And the Angel of the Lord departed out of his sight.  Now Gideon perceived that this was the Angel of the Lord.  So Gideon said, "O Lord, my Lord!  For I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face."  Then the Lord said to him, "Peace be with you; do not fear, you shall not die."  So Gideon built an altar there to the Lord, and called it the Peace of the Lord.  To this day, it is still in Ephrata, the father of Esdri.

Jeremiah 1:4-9.  Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth." But the Lord said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a youth'; for to all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Be not afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord." Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, "Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.

Proverbs 8:22-30.  Wisdom's role in creation.

All this is to say that God has always been Three Persons and has always made Himself known to us through His Son.  Of course, the Incarnation is the most obvious of this.  We could do the same with the Holy Spirit.

Which brings us back to Chapter Three:

The moral reality of the Arche'.  Not just the unmoved mover – reality itself – but also GOOD itself.  This idea is fairly widespread.

The Personal God.  But the Arche' is also personal, with a mind and a will.  Must avoid allowing this to bring us back to the idea of gods like Zeus or such; or even the Universe as a person.  These pagan ideas are often well-intentioned, but they are too small.

You can imagine something being a person.  A rock with a personality, or a cosmos with a spirit, but we mean a lot more than that.

"We're not taking some object (a rock, a mountain, a planet) and adding the idea of personhood to it.  We're saying that the ultimate governing principle of reality – distinct from the created universe – is personal.  This is what we end up with "I AM" as His name.

The One or the Many?

What is a person like?  Are persons like water, appearing to be separate, but they merge when you put them together and their distinctiveness disappears.  In this view, the Arche is the source of all water, and persons have a propensity and calling to be brought back together into oneness with other drops and the Source.  This is the worldview of the "one".

Or perhaps persons are distinct objects.  You can put them together, as when you stack stones, but they keep their own uniqueness.  You cannot merge them together; if you break them up to do so, they are no longer themselves.  In this individualist view, the Arche' is like one huge stone, and we have broken off of it and can never merge back with it.

Both of these worldviews seem to explain an important element about the world we find ourselves in, but each does so at a cost.  The worldview of the One explains, truly enough, that there is some kind of fundamental unity among all people and all things, but it does so at the cost of our individualism.  Persons can't really exist in this view; our distinctiveness turns out to be an illusion, as our very nature means that we belong to a greater whole that has no place for our individuality.  If a drop of water falls into the ocean, the drop ceases to exist and there's no way to get it back.

In a worldview of the many, we get to preserve our individuality but at the cost of any sense of unity.  Because (in this view) you don't share a connection with any other person at the level of ultimate reality, there's a sense in which you'll always be alone, despite however many connections of relationships you make.  And in fact, this needs to be so in order to preserve your individual uniqueness.  Otherwise you'd just melt into other people and disappear – the way water droplets do. 

Neither of these views paints a complete picture of the way we experience reality, and still less do they resolve the problem of how to understand the Arche' as a person. … In order to transcend the limitations of both these views, we need a worldview that can combine the best features of the One and the many without being either of them.

The Trinity

Three distinct persons (individuals? No.) with one essence.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The Father is not the Son is not the Holy Spirit is not the Father.  BUT they are NOT separate: they are ONE GOD.

There are many ways we try to simplify this: modes, focusing on one aspect at the expense of the others, personalities, three gods.  The Oneness and Threeness are part of the definition and need to be held together.  [Comparing it to a family?  Hmmmm (Awww, Patrick!)  ]

Being and Love. 

Neither the water nor the stone approach (one and many) has room for love.  But the Trinity is ideal for love: there are other persons to love, but it isn't just an individual attribute of attraction.  Our individualism makes it hard for us to understand the implications of a world made for love by love.  We are relational beings.  Interdependent and connected.

God is Love.   Three persons united in one essence and existing as a perfect, loving, community.  We are called be one as God is one.

Next week: The Problem of the Fall?