As I struggled this week to get words on paper, I remembered again that, by any metric, Mother’s Day beats Father’s Day. Mother’s Day was made a holiday back in 1913, Father’s Day took all the way till 1972. Average weekend spending for mother’s day $300, average for Father’s day $200. Hallmark sells 50 million…
If our church’s building projects have only to do with surfaces and stones, we risk becoming like a Hollywood film set, beautiful to behold from a distance, but empty and off-putting inside. Neither Etchmiadzin, nor Antelias, nor St. James in Jeruslaem, not St. Hagop is meant to be a film set for Armenian heritage or…
We have lots of ministries to avail ourselves of at St. Hagop. Those who wish to serve can do so in many ways, on parish council, on the altar or choir; as a greeter or lector or even on mission to Armenia. Today though, the Apostle James reminds us of a church ministry which is…
Perhaps we know so little about the birthday of the church and so little about our own births, because birthdays aren’t buried someplace in the past. Birthdays are an ongoing, everyday miracle, that everyday new life is granted to us.
There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings. -Goethe A parishioner sent me an article this week from the Wall Street Journal titled ‘Eastern Orthodoxy Gains New Followers in America,’ which traces a small but growing trend of those with no ethnic…
After many years in Monastic life, Syncletica teaches this: ‘If you find yourself in a monastery do not switch to another place, for that will harm you a great deal. Just as the bird who abandons the eggs she was sitting on prevents them from hatching, so the monk or the nun grows cold and…
So this is why I think we all benefit from marital preparation in any way, at any time. Marriage-to work, to others, to God himself-is a sacramental bond specially blessed by God. But they can only form and transform us if we prepare and discipline ourselves to endure the ups and downs of those relationships. …