OrthoAnalytika

I Corinthians 4:9-16 St. Matthew 17:14-23 Fr. Anthony reflects on St. Paul’s call to imitation, teaching that we are shaped by those around us and must guard our hearts and minds against sin while cultivating holiness. He explains the spiritual power of the Antiochian pre-communion prayers, showing how their repetition trains our minds, transforms our souls, and unites the faithful as one body in Christ.  Enjoy the show! --- Here is the Antiochian Orthodox Pre-Communion Prayer for the Divine Liturgy: I stand before the doors of thy temple, and yet I refrain not from my terrible thoughts. But do thou, O Christ God, who didst justify the publican and hadst mercy on the Canaanite woman and didst open the gates of paradise to the thief: open unto me the compassion of thy love toward mankind, and receive me as I approach and touch thee, like the harlot and the woman with the issue of blood; for the one, by but touching the hem of thy garment, received healing, and the other, by embracing thine immaculate feet, received the forgiveness of her sins. And I, who am pitiful, dare to partake of thy whole Body. Let me not be consumed, but receive me as thou didst receive them, and enlighten the senses of my soul, burning up the accusations of my sins, through the intercessions of her that without seed gave thee birth and of the heavenly powers; for thou art blessed unto ages of ages.  Amen.   I believe, O Lord, and I confess that thou art truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, who didst come into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first. And I believe that this is truly thine own immaculate Body and that this is truly thine own precious Blood. Wherefore I pray thee, have mercy upon me, and pardon my transgressions both voluntary and involuntary, of word and of deed, of knowledge and of ignorance; and make me worthy to partake without condemnation of thine immaculate mysteries, unto remission of my sins and unto life everlasting.  Amen.   Behold, I approach Divine Communion; O Maker, burn me not as I partake, for Fire art thou which burneth the unworthy. But purify thou me of every stain.   Of thy mystic supper, O Son of God, accept me today as a communicant; for I will not speak of thy mystery to thine enemies, neither will I give thee a kiss as did Judas; but like the thief will I confess thee: Remember me, O Lord, in thy kingdom.   Tremble, O man, as thou beholdest the deifying Blood, for it is a burning coal consuming the unworthy. The body of God both deifieth and nourisheth me. It deifieth the spirit and wondrously nourisheth the mind.   Thou hast smitten me with yearning, O Christ, and by thy divine love hast thou changed me. But with thine immaterial fire, consume my sins and count me worthy to be filled with delight in thee, that leaping for joy, O Good One, I may magnify thy two comings.   Into the splendour of thy Saints how shall I, the unworthy one, enter? For should I dare to enter the bridal chamber, my vesture doth betray me, for it is not a wedding garment; and as one bound, I shall be cast out by the Angels. Cleanse, O Lord, the defilement of my soul, and save me, since thou art the Friend of man.   O man-befriending Master, Lord Jesus my God, let not these holy Gifts be unto me for judgment through mine unworthiness, but for purification and sanctification of both soul and body, and as an earnest of the life and the kingdom to come. For it is good for me to cleave unto God and to place in the Lord the hope of my salvation.   Of thy mystic supper, O Son of God, accept me today as a communicant; for I will not speak of thy mystery to thine enemies, neither will I give thee a kiss as did Judas; but like the thief will I confess thee: Remember me, O Lord, in thy kingdom.   Not unto judgment nor unto condemnation be my partaking of thy holy mysteries, O Lord, but unto the healing of soul and body.

In this homily, we reflect on Christ’s miraculous feeding of the five thousand as a revelation of His abundant love and the Church’s calling to hospitality. Fr. Anthony explores how, through grace, even our limited offerings are multiplied to nourish the world, revealing a Kingdom where scarcity has no place.  Enjoy the show! ------ MATTHEW 14:14-22 At that time, Jesus saw a great throng; and he had compassion on them, and healed their sick. This is what he does.  He sees our suffering and heals us.  What a blessing to have such a compassionate and capable God. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a lonely place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves." Jesus said, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat."  Hospitality.  We are meant to do more than eat and learn; we are meant to feed and teach.  And more than that, we are meant to instruct others in the way of hospitality, so that they, too, may feed and teach (and teach others to feed and teach).  This system is scalable, through grace, towards perfection.  Scarcity is destroyed by the model of Christian hospitality. They said to him, "We have only five loaves here and two fish." The apostles did not have enough and Christ new that.  But He knew they had something He could build on and multiply; again destroying the limitations of scarcity and localism.  St. Hillary develops the spiritual version of this theme;  This means that up to then they depended on five loaves—that is, the five books of the law. And two fish nourished them—that is, the preaching of the prophets and of John. For in the works of the law there was life just as there is life from bread, but the preaching of John and the prophets restored hope to human life by virtue of water. Therefore the apostles offered these things first, because that was the level of their understanding at the time. From these modest beginnings the preaching of the gospel has proceeded from them, from these same apostles, until it has grown into an immense power. This is the way the Lord works.  He takes what we are and, through grace, transforms it into something better.  In sin, we are part of the problem.  Hunger, scarcity, selfishness; but He lifts us up and we become part of the solution.  Feeding people with His love from a source that never ends and, as for selfishness, not only moving us unto something better, but allowing us to be a healing balm to those who suffer from the same malady. And he said, "Bring them here to me." Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass; and taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the crowds. St. Jerome.  By the breaking of the bread, he makes it into a seedbed of food—for if the bread had been left intact and not pulled apart and broken into pieces, they would have been unable to feed the great crowds of men, women and children. The law with the prophets are therefore pulled apart and broken into pieces. Mysteries are made manifest, so that what did not feed the multitude of people in its original whole and unbroken state now feeds them in its divided state. And they all ate and were satisfied. The Church has always seen this as pointing toward the Eucharist.  God is the food that is “forever eaten but never consumed.”  Again, note how scarcity does not exist in the Kingdom.  And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. Then he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. St. Hilary:  The loaves were given to the apostles, for through them the gifts of divine grace were to be administered. The crowds were then fed with the five loaves and two fish, and they were satisfied. The leftover fragments of bread and fish, after the people had their fill, amounted to twelve baskets. Thus, by the word of God coming from the teaching of the law and the prophets, the multitude was satisfied; and an abundance of divine power, reserved for the Gentiles from the ministry of the eternal food, was left over for the twelve apostles. And, following this metaphor, still eat from these baskets because our bishop is an inheritor of this meal, something we are blessed to share here so that we may be fed. Now we celebrate the presence of God in our midst, in this deserted place, healing our infirmities, feeding our hunger, and empowering us to do the same for others.  

This recording of the Divine Liturgy (Christ the Saviour, Anderson SC) starts with the Great Doxology.  The homily and reception of communion were cut from the recording.  The sound quality isn't great - it was done with a phone sitting on an analoy off to the side.  Of course, worship is always better in person; join us when you can!  orthodoxanderson.org

Title: Seeing Suffering Brightly: Faith, Discipline, and the Light of Christ Matthew 7:27-35; The Two Blind Men In this homily, Fr. Anthony shares Metropolitan Saba's teaching from the 2025 Convention that true spiritual vision begins not in denial of suffering, but in faithful endurance of it, transforming evil through thanksgiving and trust in God. Drawing on real martyrdom and lived faith in places like Damascus, he challenges us to see God’s love even in discipline and to witness to Christ with joy, courage, and unwavering hope. For a complete text of His Eminence, Metropolitan Saba's talk:   https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/2526  

Everything is Awesome! James 5:10-20; St. Matthew 9:1-8 (Riffing on St. Peter Chrysologus) Over the last few homilies, I have tried to share an approach to living that looks for the good, and the beautiful, and the true in all things so that we might have joy in them and nurture them towards greater glory.  Today, I am going to continue this lesson by applying it to scripture.  Of course, in this case we are not nurturing scripture to greater glory, but we always grow in our appreciation of its goodness, beauty, and truth so that those virtues might grow within us. Let’s go through today’s Gospel reading. This story starts out so mundanely, with Christ entering the boat, crossing the sea, and coming to his town.  But even in, this there is something to learn, something that should leave us in awe. This is the God who has complete mastery over all the elements, over all of time and space.  Why does he cross the sea in this way – surely the hosts of heaven, at the very least, could have born him to his destination? As St. Peter Chrysologus teaches us the way that he juxtaposes the material with the spiritual and the mundane with the glorious; Christ came to take up our infirmities, and to confer his own power upon us; to experience human things, to bestow divine ones; to accept insults, to return honors; to endure what is irksome, and to restore health, because a doctor who does not bear infirmities does not know how to cure; and the one who has not been a fellow patient is unable to confer health. To summarize St. Gregory of Nazianzus; that part of humanity that God did not accept or assume, cannot be saved.  There were no shortcuts for our salvation.  God became man and lived according to our infirmity (in everything but sin). Therefore, he endured these limitations so that he would be shown to be true man by these human limitations. Do you see how much beauty here? We go on to read that he entered the boat. He entered a boat?  Sure you see where we are going with this!  We know these truths, but do we ever slow down and just bask in their glory? What is the boat but the Church?  Again, let’s listen to St. Peter Chrysologus; Christ always enters the boat of his Church to calm the waves of the world, so that he might lead those who believe in him tranquilly across to his heavenly homeland, and make citizens of his own city those whom he made sharers in his humanity. Therefore, Christ does not need the ship, but the ship needs Christ, because without a Pilot from heaven the ship of the Church is unable to pass through the sea of the world amid so many grave perils and reach heaven’s harbor. We have talked about the sea and the boat; what about his destination? How can we not be amazed that the Creator and Lord over all the cosmos, for the sake of our salvation; … began to have a human homeland, began to be a citizen of a Jewish town, and he himself the Parent of all parents began to have parents, in order that his love might invite, his charity attract, his affection bind, and his kindness persuade those whom his sovereign might had put to flight, dread had scattered, and the force of his power had made exiles. I cannot tell you how often I passed over these words as if they were filler between the really important things in the narrative.  How often do we do this not just with scripture, but with life?  Every moment, every detail of life is precious, brimming with meaning and potential.  But we skip over this invitation to joy, to glory, because we are looking or waiting for greater things.  My brothers and sisters, in a world that has been infused with the divine, everything is steeped in magnificence. And so, we finally get to the meat of the story; He came to his own town, and they brought him a paralytic lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, it says, he said to the paralytic: “Have confidence, son! Your sins are forgiven you” (vv. 1–2). While the point about God having the power to forgive sins, and Him choosing to exercise that power as man, as the new Adam, thus setting the scene for giving that power to us as the new humanity in Him; while all that may be obvious, or if not obvious, certainly provides the grist for most homilies on this passage…. There are details that we often pass over and that deserve our attention.  Jesus saw their faith… Their faith… not the faith of the paralytic.  St. Peter points out that the faith of the infirm is often unreliable – the mind of the infirm is often delirious – and so “he does not examine all the senseless desires of the infirm, but he comes to help thanks to someone else’s faith, so that he may grant through grace alone, and not deny, whatever is of the divine will.” What a beautiful thing is the love of the Lord for all of us in our delirium!  And, when we are thinking straight, and thus concerned more for the ill and infirm among us as ourselves – he brings his mercy and forgiveness to those we bring to him!  Do you see how great this is?  When we pray for others, it does not fall on deaf ears but on ears that are always ready to hear and respond.  And who is more ill among us than the spiritually or even physically injured or dead?  And yet He teaches us, through this example from His life and from the way His Spirit has guided our worship and prayer to pray for all, and most especially for those who cannot pray or act for themselves.  Lord hear our prayer! And, just to make sure you appreciate the goodness evident here, take a moment to appreciate the paralysis and incapacitation of our own minds and thus appreciate why it is that the prayers of the prayers of the righteous avail so much!  They bring our paralyzed souls into the presence of God and plead for our healing before Him. And to all this, the Pharisees responded: He blasphemes: for who can forgive sins except God alone? (v. 3) 6. And when Jesus had seen their thoughts, it says, he said to them: “Why do you think evil in your hearts? What is easier to say: your sins are forgiven you, or to say: stand up and walk? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has power to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic: “Stand up, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he stood up and went home (vv. 4–7). Pick up your bed, that is, “Carry what used to carry you, reverse the burden, so that what is a testimony to your infirmity may be a proof that you are healed; so that the bed of your pain may be evidence that I cured you; so that the amount of its weight may attest to the amount of strength you have regained.” Go home, to the place that you belong – our heart’s true home.  The place that is where we can grow in glory.  The place that is for the believer – every single place, because every single place, like every single moment, is connected with the divine source of all beautiful, good, and true.   Peter Chrysologus, Selected Sermons of Saint Peter Chrysologus, ed. Thomas P. Halton, trans. William B. Palardy, vol. 2, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 193–197.  

The Sunday for the Fourth Ecumenical Council Titus 3:8-15; Matthew 5:14-19 Note: the recording includes a few seconds when Fr. Anthony's mind went apophatic and he forgot a critical detail.  Real life is like that sometimes!   First Council: Nicea in 325 (vs. Arius) "And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made:  Who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man;  And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried;  And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; And ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father;  And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end." Second Council: Constantinople in 381 (defend the Holy Spirit). Finished our Creed; Holy Spirit, the Church, Baptism, Resurrection, Life in the age to come. Third Council: Ephesus 431 (vs. Nestorius – she gave birth to the man Christ; Christotokos). Jesus Christ was fully God and fully Man. Because Jesus was true God of true God, the Virgin Mary gave birth to God; thus she should be called Theotokos.  Fourth Council: Chalcedon in 451 (vs. Nestorianism and the Abbot Eutyches and the Alexandrian Patriarch Diasocurus (recent robber council) The Fathers accepted the message sent by Pope Leo, which Dioscorus had abstained from reading at his robber Council in Ephesus. In the message, The Pope distinguishes clearly between the two natures, emphasizing the presence of the two natures in one hypostasis. Among the most important conclusions of the Council was that Christ is “perfect God and perfect Man. A true God and a true Man. Equal to the Father in Godhead and equal to us in humanity, like us in everything except in sin. He was begotten from the Father as God pre-eternally and in the last days He was born of the virgin Mary the Mother of God (Theotokos), according to humanity. He is one. He is the Messiah, the Son of God, the Lord who must be confessed in two natures united without confusion nor change, without division nor separation. He was not divided into two persons but he has always been the Only Begotten God the Word and the Lord Jesus Christ”.  In this Chalcedonian definition, the Fathers of the Council re-emphasized the Creed. They also emphasized two other important things: ·      The unity of the person in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is indicated in the “he is one and the same”. The Lord Jesus Christ is One. He is the Word of God eternally born from the eternal Father before the ages, and born from Mary in humanity. ·      That the two natures in Christ sustain their properties amidst the unity of the person. The word became Flesh assuming all the Human Nature except “sinning”, without giving up or abandoning his Divine Nature. Application The Church Fathers chose a gospel to be read in relation to this Council. It is Christ’s saying: “You are the light of the world”.  Not just the physical light, but the spiritual light. One of the things that the spiritual light is that we can be full of it ourselves; that we can carry God within us and He can become the light through which we see one another. Not the light of ego or self-confidence; this is a shortcut which will lead us into division (heresy); not the heresy of Nestorius or Eutechius, but the witness of a proud and divisive spirit that actually drives the self and others away from the true light – even while using pious words of Scripture and the Fathers.  This true light is helps us see one another. The Lord says after that: “let your light shine on people so that they can see your work and glorify your Father in the heavens”. This is done not by pious strutting or false humility; but by the way we see and connect with others in the light; by the way we avoid being contaminated by giving in to the dark tempations of the world; and by sharing the same kind of sacrificial light that the Source of Light did when He became perfect man. That is how we can live as a real family with God in heaven as our Father. We avoid sin; and we love one another. This way we can make God’s Will come true. The gospel which we heard was chosen to describe the Holy Fathers (whose number is 630) of the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon. These Fathers were the light of the world in both their time and ours as well. We abide by their teachings which were handed down to us. By their teachings we are able to avoid the darkness of heresy. Let us be like them. Let them be our example and model, through Christ, who lives in them, that He might dwell in us too. See https://www.antiochpatriarchate.org/en/page/1155/ for a more thorough treatment.

In this homily on St Matthew 8:5-13 (the faith of the Centurian), given on the Sunday after the Feast of American Independence (7/6/2025), Fr. Anthony continues to remind us of our calling to order creation, focusing on the evangelic method that looks for the good in something and working to make it better.  Christ did not focus on the faults of the Centurian, but on what was good in Him so that it might become his defining characteristic and thus guide him (in Christ!) towards the better, the more beautiful, and the True.  He encourages us to do this for our neighbor and our nation.  Enjoy the show!

This homily was given at an outdoor chapel up in the mountains at Camp St. Thekla on the 27th of June, 2026.  The recorder was a few feet away from Fr. Anthony, so the recording has a chorus of insects as background noise.  In the homily, Fr. Anthony describes our calling to identify and nurture the good in creation (to include that in our souls!) towards perfection.  Enjoy the show!

This homily was given on the 26th of June 2025 at Camp St. Thekla in Cleveland, South Carolina, at the celebration of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (offered in anticipation).  In it, Fr. Anthony reflects on the bold faith and deep friendship between these two pillars of the Church. Drawing from their distinct personalities— Peter the confident fisherman who was always both bold and repentant and Paul the intellectual missionary who was always ready to live and sacrifice for his beliefs.  Father encourages all of us to recognize how God uses our unique gifts for a greater purpose. He challenges listeners, especially the youth, to be courageous in their faith, to build strong friendships rooted in Christ, and to be open to the mission God is calling them to.  Fr. Anthony gave a version of this homily tailored for his parish the following Sunday (but neglected to record it).  Enjoy the show!

This homily was given at Camp St. Thekla in Cleveland SC, on June 24, 2025, the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Fr. Anthony used it as an opportunity to encourage all the campers who felt like they didn't belong.  It touches on the themes of prophecy, being called, and how to listen for the voice of God.  Enjoy the show!