Dearest Sisters and Brothers, we have to bid a very consequential and challenging Advent season goodbye, and pass over to the Eve of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ…or do we? This final Advent reflection crescendos with Love, the theme of the final Advent candle. Popular voices clamor
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Mother Emily Lukanich has prepared a special four part video series for celebrating Advent at home and Christmas, as we prepare for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Enjoy!
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Well now, this is interesting. As if 2020 didn’t throw us enough, here comes cosmology too! How many times does God have to wave a divine astrometric hand right in front of us?! Dear readers, welcome to the Great Convergence, when Jupiter and Saturn’s orbits come so close together they
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Mother Emily and I agree. We both consider the Collect, or gathering prayer, for the Fourth Sunday of Advent to be one of our favorite prayers of the Christian year. I love all the Advent Collects as my respect for their wisdom has evolved over many years. This week’s Collect:
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Today is how the church disrespects one of her own, and let’s put that right. We considered the Apostle Thomas, hung with moniker “Doubting,” some time ago in the Great Fifty Days of Easter. Given that today, December 21st, Winter Solstice, Midwinter, the day when our Northern Hemisphere is declined
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Today, the Fourth and final Sunday in this too-brief Advent, we finally meet her. The Queen of Heaven, Mother of all, Eternally Virginal, Luke’s first Apostle, Theotokos (literally God-bearer in Greek, a profound title conveyed by an early church council by which Orthodox Christians best know her), Madonna. For Anglicans,
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The second of our Advent hymns is brought to you by the letter “O,” as in the well known O Come, O Come Emmanuel! I was shocked to discover the hidden gems of this Advent classic so beloved in Anglican hymnody. Emmanuel is easy, simply a direct transliteration of the
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Yesterday we met fiery John the Baptizer, calling 1st century Judaism to radical repentance to prepare for the coming of Messiah. John used baptism reinterpreted as God’s vehicle to obliterate sin as his primary strategy to effect that repentance. And John always spoke truth to power, and as usual, power
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It’s time to meet the first of our two constitutive Advent figures! Dear readers, may I introduce you to John the Baptizer, the enigmatic 1st century Jewish seer who singlehandedly resuscitated the great Jewish prophetic tradition from its near hibernation. John’s apocalyptic (does anyone remember this term from our Lenten/Holy
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With all due respect to Bob Marley and the Wailers, the Third Sunday in Advent is often nicknamed “Stirrup Sunday” because of the fantastic Collect for this third week of our Advent journey. Here it is: Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us;
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