it just so happens that today on Armenian Christmas, celebrating the baptism of our Lord, we have one of the greatest calls and responses the world and this church has ever known. As Jesus is being baptized in the river Jordan, suddenly the heavens open, the Spirit of God descends like a dove and a…
Don’t stop with being just children of God, for we have great work to do as we grow up! I think that’s the special message which the Armenian Church and other Orthodox churches have preserved in celebrating Jesus’ baptism, as we are today, as one piece with his Christmas birth. Jesus was born, yes, this…
So here we are, and today I want to invite you into our Christmas scavenger hunt. If you want to be a Christian these days, you must go on scavenger hunts and work to recover the lasting things buried under so much stuff. For behind the inflatable lawn ornaments and the three billion dollars of…
Today’s reading describes the Wedding at Cana; the first of Jesus’ seven miracles in the Gospel of John, where Jesus turns water into wine. We correctly use the term miracle, but it is one of those words that has been clouded by many false associations. I prefer the old Armenian word, Nshank, which simply means…
As we approach the Christmas birth and revelation of our Lord, our church sacred calendar is very densely populated by saints’ days. Some of these saints are well known; we celebrated James and John, Peter & Paul, Ephrem and Stephen this week. Many of these saints are less know, we celebrated Eustratius, Auxentius, Eugenius, Orestes…
“This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” (Mt 3:17) Gabriel Garcia Marques, in his classic 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, writes about a village in Central America. A virus strikes this community and the virus causes amnesia. It becomes necessary to hire people from the outside world to…
This Christmas special follows the Magi on their spiritual journey to meet Jesus.