Sermons

“As the Lord put on the body…so Christians put on the Holy Spirit, and are at rest” (St. Macarius the Great). Christianity is a divine exchange. The Word of God clothed himself in flesh so that we can cloth ourselves in spirit. Drop an ice cube into lukewarm water. The ice melts and the water cools. The Holy Spirit has a similar impact. Drop heaven into humanity, and humanity becomes a little more like heaven. “Now I am going to him who sent me…I tell you the truth: it is to

“What you will find in your heart is not heaven but a picture of heaven, a silhouette of heaven, a heaven-shaped shadow, a longing unsatisfiable by anything on earth…What you will find in your heart is not heaven but a heavenly hole, a womblike emptiness crying out to be filled” (Peter Kreeft). Almost. Not Yet. There must be more. God has put in our hearts an insatiable appetite. Frans de Waal is a Dutch primatologist. He has spent his life studying the behavior of primates,

“Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jeremiah 15:16). The good life is a life of cherishing God’s word. Pascha is a time for cultivating gratitude, for reveling in God’s beauty, for learning how to feast. Well, there is no feasting more important and more satiating than feasting on the Word of God. In our Gospel today, we hear about the Good Shepherd. “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me”

“You have never had it…tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear” (C. S. Lewis). If there is one, distinct work in Eastertide, it is to meditate on joy. Lent was a desert. Christ went out into the desert, and we fasted in order to follow him. Now we have to leave the desert behind and join Him in the resurrection joy. Through these forty days of Pascha, we have work to do. We must learn to feast, not by gorging, n