Tag: Christianity

St. Athanasius was born to Christian parents in 296 in Alexandria, Egypt. His parents made sure he received a full education, and a local priest, later made St. Alexander of Alexandria, noted the boy’s talents. He tutored Athanasius in theology and eventually made him an assistant.

Around age 19, Athanasius spent time in the Egyptian desert as a disciple of St. Anthony in his monastic community. When he returned to Alexandria, he was ordained a deacon in 319, and resumed his assistance to Alexander, now a bishop.

At this time, the Church was facing the threat of heresy spread by a priest named Arius. Arius taught that Jesus could not have existed eternally as God, prior to becoming man. He held that Jesus could only be considered “divine” by analogy, and his “divinity” meant only that he was God’s greatest creation.

Arius’ opponents brought forth many scripture passages to discredit him and prove Jesus’ identity as God, but for many Greek-speaking Christians, it was intellectually easier to believe in a created demi-god than to understand the mystery of the Father-Son relationship within the Godhead. The controversy divided the Church.

In 325, Athanasius attended the Council of Nicea, held to judge Arius’ doctrine in light of apostolic tradition. The Council reaffirmed the Church’s traditional teachings and established the Nicene Creed as an authoritative statement of faith. Throughout the rest of his life, Athanasius struggled to uphold the council’s teachings.

When Alexander was nearing the end of his life, he insisted Athanasius succeed him as bishop of Alexandria. Athanasius took the position as Emperor Constantine decided to relax his condemnation of Arius. He urged Athanasius to admit Arius to communion, although Athanasius consistently refused.

Over several decades, Arius and his followers tried to manipulate bishops, emperors and popes against Athanasius, mainly through false accusations. They accused him of theft, murder, assault, and even causing a famine.

Arius died in 336, but his heresy lived on. Under the rule of the three emperors after Constantine, Athanasius was forced into exile at least five times. He received support from several popes, and spent a portion of his exile in Rome.

In 369, Athanasius managed to convene an assembly of 90 bishops in Alexandria, to warn the Church in Africa against Arianism. He died in 373, and was vindicated by a comprehensive rejection of Arianism at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 381.

At that Council, St. Gregory Nazianzen described St. Athanasius as “the true pillar of the church,” whose “life and conduct were the rule of bishops, and his doctrine the rule of the orthodox faith.”

The greatest enemy of faith is fear, Pope Francis said at his weekly general audience.

That is why faith is the first gift “that must be welcomed and asked for daily, so that it may be renewed in us. It is seemingly a small gift, yet it is the essential one,” he said May 1 in the Paul VI Audience Hall.

Continuing a series of audience talks about vices and virtues, the pope reflected on the virtue of faith, reiterating the difference between “cardinal” virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance and the “theological” or New Testament virtues of faith, hope and charity.

The three theological virtues, he said, “can be lived only thanks to the gift of God.”

“Without them, we could be prudent, just, strong and temperate, but we would not have eyes that see even in the dark, we would not have a heart that loves even when it is not loved, we would not have a hope that dares against all hope,” he said.

Faith is the act by which a person freely commits him- or herself to God, the pope said.

Pope Francis recounted the story of the disciples crossing the lake in a boat with Jesus, but beginning to panic when the boat started to fill up with water in a storm. They woke Jesus who had been sleeping and were upset he seemed not to care they were in danger.

Jesus rebukes them, saying, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

Pope Francis said, “Here, then, is the great enemy of faith: it is not intelligence, it is not reason, as, alas, some continue obsessively to repeat.” The enemy is “simply fear.”

“We who are believers also often realize that we have only a short supply” of faith, he said.

“But it is the happiest gift, the only virtue we are permitted to envy,” the pope said, “because those who have faith are inhabited by a force that is not only human; indeed, faith ‘triggers’ grace in us and opens the mind to the mystery of God.”

“Faith is the virtue that makes the Christian. Because to be Christians is not first and foremost about accepting a culture with the values that accompany it, but welcoming and cherishing a bond” between God and oneself, he said.

After his main talk, the pope noted that for the church May 1 is the feast of St. Joseph the worker. It is a major holiday in many countries, including Italy, as it marks Labor Day or International Workers’ Day.

The day also begins “the Marian month,” he said. “Therefore, to each of you I would like to re-propose the Holy Family of Nazareth as a model of domestic community: a community of life, work and love.”

Sudden peace negotiations or an intervention by the United States will not deliver Israelis and Palestinians from the suffering caused by the war in Gaza, a Jerusalem-based cardinal said.

As a result of the war, the rift between Israelis and Palestinians is “deeper than it has ever been,” Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, patriarch of Jerusalem, said May 1.

“We are all waiting for something big, something that changes the course of the history of events,” he said in his homily during a Mass to formally take possession of his titular church in Rome. “We all want the United States to resolve the problem; we all want the peace negotiations to end in something big, important, in a way that marks the course of history.”

But “this is not the way the kingdom of God grows,” he said. “The kingdom of God grows in community, with communal gestures, calmly, little by little.”

The kingdom of God is not “a miracle that is performed, suddenly changing the fate of the world,” the cardinal said, rather it is “a seed sown in the ground that dies and little by little grows and bears fruit.” The Catholic Church, he added, is called to be that slowly but steadily growing seed.

Cardinal Pizzaballa preached before a packed congregation in the small, historic Church of St. Onuphrius on the Janiculum Hill in Rome as he formally took possession of the church, a tradition meant to seal his identity as a member of the clergy of Rome. In ancient times, the cardinals who elected popes were pastors of the city’s parishes.

Knights and dames of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, dressed in their ceremonial capes, joined the cardinal for the celebration. The ancient Catholic chivalric order supports the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem with prayers, financial assistance and regular pilgrimages. Cardinal Fernando Filoni, grand master of the order, participated in the Mass as did Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, vice dean of the College of Cardinals.

The congregation at the Mass also included Franciscan friars, the order to which Cardinal Pizzaballa belongs. The Church of St. Onuphrius, established in 1439, has been under the care of Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, a religious congregation founded in the United States, since 1946.

Joe Donnelly, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, was also present for the Mass.

After the Mass, Cardinal Pizzaballa told reporters that he struggles to understand the protests taking place across college campuses in the United States over academic institutions’ investments in companies that do business with Israel.

“Universities are places where cultural debate, even when heated, even when tough, should be available at 360 degrees,” he said. “The contrast of completely different ideas, harsh as they may be, must be expressed not through violence or boycotting, but by knowing how to confront one another.”

“The world is made of different opinions that must be confronted, not by explosions but by discussions,” he said.

The Mass began with the reading of the formal declaration from Pope Francis assigning the church to Cardinal Pizzaballa when he was made a cardinal Sept. 30, 2023.

“It’s stupendous that the pope thought that the patriarch of Jerusalem should be a cardinal,” said Cardinal Filoni while greeting Cardinal Pizzaballa on behalf of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre at the close of Mass. “Today it unites Jerusalem, the Holy Land and the patriarchate which you represent, with the church of Rome.”

Holding her 18-month-old son Ahmad in her arms, Ayah Issa, 32, broke into a smile when she saw Sister of Charity Aleya Kattakayam at the entrance of the Caritas Baby Hospital Bethlehem. “My darling Sister!” Issa, who wears a hijab, exclaimed, hugging the nun and handing Ahmad to Kattakayam, originally from India, to hold.

Though far physically from the war, many people in the West Bank have been left without work as Israel closed its borders to Palestinian laborers and the tourism industry came to a halt. The only pediatric hospital in the West Bank gives them a sense of hope and security.

“It was a very difficult experience with Ahmad, my first child. When I used to cry, Sister wiped my tears. She stood by my side,” Issa said.

Issa, from the nearby village of Artas, spent 14 months at the hospital with Ahmad in the intensive care unit after he was born with a congenital disease, while she was able to stay at the hospital thanks to the mothers’ unit where mothers can remain overnight. The boy still had a tracheostomy tube in his throat, but he was holding himself up on his own and reaching his arm out to his mother.

“I feel so happy to see this child and mother,” said Sister Aleya, who is in charge of the mothers’ unit. Three other Sisters of Charity are nurses at the hospital. “I feel we have spoken not with words. This is what Christ asks from us. That we leave some message in their life. People long for such expressions in life. They don’t want anything but a little bit of understanding. We are all here to love.”

Founded in 1953 in Bethlehem as an outpatient clinic by Caritas Switzerland employee Hedwig Vetter, Swiss Father Ernst Schnydrig and Palestinian pediatrician Antoine Dabdoub, Caritas Baby Hospital is now the only exclusively pediatric hospital in the West Bank serving about 50,000 children a year. Caritas in Switzerland and Germany were the first donors to the hospital, but since 1963 the hospital has been affiliated with the Swiss NGO Children’s Relief Bethlehem.

Director of the hospital social work department Lina Raheel said while initially following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities patients were unable to reach the hospital because of Israeli imposed closures, many roadblocks have since been lifted, and CBH has felt an increased need for its services.
As the only medical center specifically for children, the Caritas hospital brings hope not only to parents cut off from work and impoverished by the Israel-Hamas war that will enter its eighth month on May 7, but also to children directly affected by war.

In March, the pediatric hospital provided a medical team to examine a group of 68 children from the SOS Children’s Village Rafah in Gaza who arrived in Bethlehem. SOS Children’s Villages Palestine is a nongovernmental, humanitarian and nonprofit organization created in 1966 that helps children who have lost parents.

The hospital is also caring for seven children from the Gaza Strip who were being treated in Israeli hospitals when the war broke out and were no longer able to return home.

The Hamas assault left 1,200 mostly civilians murdered and 254 people taken captive into Gaza, according to Israel, while the subsequent Israeli military campaign into Gaza has killed almost 34,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women according to the Hamas Gaza Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between Hamas members and civilians.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Gaza’s health authorities have now said they can no longer count the number of dead as hospitals, emergency services and communications are barely functioning.

The latest tragedy struck the Catholic Gaza community amid news that, during a 100-degree heat wave at the end of April, 18-year-old Lara al-Sayegh died of heat and sun stroke. She and her mother were making an almost 20-mile trek, mostly on foot, from Gaza City — where they had been sheltering at the Holy Family Parish — to the Rafah crossing in the south after receiving permission to leave Gaza. Lara’s father had died in December due to lack of medical care. Her mother remains in a coma, also having suffered from heat and sun stroke, as well as shock from losing her daughter.

After the release by Hamas of two videos of Israeli hostages in the last week of April — including of Israeli-Americans Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Keith Siegel — pressure from hostage families and their supporters has mounted on the Israeli government to approve a ceasefire and a hostage release agreement. Meanwhile Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist it will persist with plans for an offensive on Rafah “with or without a deal.”

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who was in Riyad, the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia, at the World Economic Forum, said he was “hopeful” about a new proposal for a Gaza truce brokered by Egypt as a Hamas delegation was due in Cairo for talks on April 29.

Meanwhile in the West Bank, poverty has hit residents hard, with the economic situation beyond dramatic due to the ongoing war. With public insurance only covering treatment in the overcrowded public hospitals, parents with children requiring more specified treatment have found themselves with no way of paying for treatments, the director of the hospital social work department said.

Many were also afraid to travel the distance from their villages to Bethlehem because of the uncertainty on the roads during the first months of the war — with soldiers and checkpoints and also increased settler violence and arrests by soldiers, Raheel said.

Her team of four social workers have also limited their home visits to only those in vital need because of the uncertainty on the West Bank roads, she said.

“The hospital doors are open for … whoever comes to the hospital; we don’t turn our back to them,” said Raheel. The hospital is part of a Christian social network that works together to provide social services to the needy in the community, she added.

Having experienced previous military and political difficulties, the hospital management team went into emergency mode on Oct. 7, and began stocking up on medical supplies and food, said medical director Hiyam Awad. They also opened a hotline to allow parents to receive medical advice over the phone, she said.

“At the beginning it was very strict, we thought it would be a matter of a month, like it always is in Gaza. We never estimated that it would be this long or this hard,” she said. “The (medically) difficult patients need us more. The situation is depressive. We are afraid of the unknown. There are a lot of rumors. At the hospital we try to connect to the good and to work on our strategic plan.

“The more data we have about why a woman chooses abortion will allow policymakers and social service agencies to help women to make an authentic choice for life if that’s what she chooses to do,” Weber said.

The abortion coercion bill “could further hurt or retraumatize survivors,” Wales said.

But Weber said the bill is meant to determine if women seeking an abortion are victims of sex trafficking or other kinds of coercion.

One of the abortion bills allows donors to crisis pregnancy centers a tax credit of 70% of what they give, with a total statewide cap of $10 million. It also gives a sales tax exemption for crisis pregnancy centers.

“They’re the front line,” Lucrecia Nold, policy specialist of the Kansas Catholic Conference, said of crisis pregnancy centers. “So let’s give them all of the resources that are available so that we can help these women.”

The bill also encourages adoption by offering a state adoption tax credit that matches the already-existing federal adoption tax credit and by allowing would-be adoptive parents to create an adoption savings account.

An effort to override the governor’s veto of a bill that would have banned gender transitioning for minors failed by two votes when two Republican state legislators flipped at the last minute.

Opponents of the bill argue that parents and children should decide whether a child who identifies with a gender other than the one that corresponds to the child’s sex should seek to transition.

But supporters say children should be protected from such transitioning, which they argue is harmful and may have permanent consequences.

Weber said supporters of the gender-transitioning ban will try again next legislative session.

“We’re going to continue to try to protect the children of Kansas from these life-changing, life-destructive practices that are both surgical and chemical,” Weber said.

Seminarians and religious men and women need well-rounded formation throughout their lives, not only at the onset of their religious training, Pope Francis said.

In his prayer intention for the month of May, released April 30 by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, the pope described each vocation as a “diamond in the rough” needing careful and continual cultivation.

Each vocation “needs to be polished, worked, shaped on every side,” Pope Francis said in a video accompanying his message.

He highlighted the need for religious men and women to be well-rounded, both spiritually and as people who are members of a community.

“A good priest, sister or nun must above all else be a man or woman who is formed, shaped by the Lord’s grace,” he said, adding that they must be “people who are aware of their own limitations and willing to lead a life of prayer, of dedicated witness to the Gospel.”

The pope stressed that effective formation begins in the seminary or novitiate stages of a vocational journey through direct contact with others in the “enriching” experience of community life, “although sometimes it can be difficult.”

“Living together is not the same as living in community,” he said.

Yet he added that formation “does not end at a determined moment but continues throughout life, throughout the years, integrating the person intellectually, humanly, affectively and spiritually.”

Pope Francis ended the video by asking Christians to pray so that seminarians and men and women religious may “grow in their own vocational journey through human, pastoral, spiritual and community formation that leads them to be credible witnesses of the Gospel.”

Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless.  Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom.  But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God.  Through the Theotokos, have mercy on us.

+ Troparion of Bridegroom Matins

The services of the first few days of Orthodox Holy Week have a collective theme of judgment. The centerpiece of those days is the service known as “Bridegroom Matins,” so named for the icon of Christ the Bridegroom (pictured here), an interesting name for Christ depicted in His humiliation, crowned with thorns, robed in derision, with the rod of His chastisement in His hand. It is part of the “upside-down” character of Holy Week. Judgment is clearly one of the most upside-down characteristics of the events that unfold in Christ’s last earthly days.

I was nurtured on stories as a child that contrasted Christ’s “non-judging” (“Jesus, meek and mild”) with Christ the coming Judge (at His dread Second Coming). I was told that His second coming would be very unlike His first. There was a sense that Jesus, meek and mild, was something of a pretender, revealing His true and eternal character only later as the avenging Judge.

This, of course, is both distortion and heresy. The judgment of God is revealed in Holy Week. The crucified Christ is the fullness of the revelation of God. There is no further revelation to be made known, no unveiling of a wrath to come. The crucified Christ is what the wrath of God looks like.

The first three days of Holy Week are collectively known as the End. And it is this End that forms the character of judgment. The end of something always reveals the truth of a thing. As the popular saying has it, “Time will tell.” When the End is the end that is brought by God, then the true end of all things is revealed.

And this is the characteristic of the judgment made manifest in Holy Week. Christ is moving towards His end, the consummation of the Incarnation. As He is increasingly revealed, everything around Him is revealed as well. Things are shown to be more clearly what they are. Those who hate Him, begin to be revealed as plotters and murderers. What was once only thoughts and feelings of envy become plots and perjury. The power of Rome is unmasked for its injustice, mere people-pleasing. The High Priest is revealed to believe that the destruction of God is good for his nation. The weakness of the disciples and the empty boasting of Peter and the rest are shown for their true emptiness. The sin of the world is revealed in the death of God.

But this had been prophesied from the beginning:

Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel…that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed  (Luk 2:34-35).

But the righteous are revealed as well. The steadfast love of the Mother of God never wavered before the Cross. Her faithfulness is revealed. The kindness of Joseph of Arimathea is forever marked by an empty tomb. The tears of a harlot reveal the nature of love, even hidden beneath the deeds of her life. In the judgment of God, all things are simply shown to be what they truly are. Sin is seen to be sin. Love is seen to be love. There is clarity.

And in the judgment of God, His own love is shown to be what it truly is – self-sacrificing, forgiving, relentless in its mercy. It is not a love that pronounces forgiveness from the Cross only to pronounce destruction on another occasion. The crucified Christ is not a revelation that is succeeded by another.

For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. (1Co 2:2)

The Bridegroom comes. Judgment arrives. All things are revealed for what they truly are.

Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, and I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul, and save me.

+ Exaposteilarion of Bridegroom Matins

As volunteers for Catholic Engaged Encounter (CEE), John and Amy Sabol have spent the last 28 years helping engaged couples plan for their big day by preparing them for what comes after their big day. 

The Sabols, who’ve been married for 50 years, help run CEE weekend retreats where they encourage couples to bring God into their relationship and develop healthy communication habits, as a reminder that a wedding lasts a day, while a marriage lasts a lifetime.

The Sabols said their own marriage was strengthened by sharing their life story with retreat participants and explaining how forgiveness, open communication, and making a conscious decision to love your spouse even in difficult times can lead to a more fulfilling union. 

“We always talk about how marriage is work,” said John, “but we also try to tell them that it’s worth it. Being in a good relationship with your partner is worth more than anything else.”

“We’ve learned that we’re kind of best friends as well as a married couple,” Amy added. 

The Sabols are part of a global network of priests and married couples who present weekend retreats for CEE, an international Catholic marriage preparation program that grew out of the Marriage Encounter program about 50 years ago. 

In the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, couples can meet marriage preparation requirements by completing a CEE weekend retreat.

During the three-day gatherings, a presenting team — composed of a priest and married couples — delivers talks in a group setting touching on five major themes: “The Family We Grew Up In,” “Sacramental Marriage,” “Communication,” “Intimacy,” and “Values.” After the presentations, participants are given time to journal and share their reflections with their partners.

“The purpose of the weekend is to help the couples dig deeper into their relationship and make sure that they have discussed issues that are important to the relationship and maybe have been taking a backseat because they’re doing wedding planning,” John said. “The purpose is to get them to really communicate on a deeper level about all these topics.”

In April, the Sabols hosted a CEE retreat at the Sacred Heart Retreat House in Alhambra along with co-presenters Joe and Kathie Schneider and Father Larry Gosselin, OFM. Thirty-eight engaged couples from across the archdiocese — and beyond — attended. 

The retreat kicked off Friday night with exercises designed to help participants get to know themselves better because, as the Sabols pointed out, participants need to know who they are as individuals before they can truly open up to their partners. 

As the weekend progressed, the team went on to deliver 14 presentations on topics ranging from conflict management, fertility, finances, and more. 

Couples also had the opportunity to write betrothal promises to each other, public pledges of love and commitment that detail the steps they plan to take to prepare for the sacrament of marriage. 

The retreat wrapped with two final sessions on Sunday afternoon, in which participants shared their thoughts about the weekend and received certificates of completion while being cheered on by their peers. 

Nearly 20 participants spoke, with many saying that the retreat exceeded their expectations and gave them a better understanding of the sacrament they would be celebrating. 

“It was so much more than a church requirement,” one person said. 

For Jada Selexman and Dominic Scaglione, of St. Clare of Assisi Church in Santa Clarita, the weekend provided an opportunity to dive deeper into topics they don’t often have time to discuss and prompted them to think more about the solemnity of their impending wedding Mass.  

“It’s very grounding to hear that our wedding is not just about the reception and how much fun we’re going to have, but it’s about the ceremony and the sacrament itself,” Selexman said.   

For Tiffany Herrera and John Le, of Holy Family Church in South Pasadena, the retreat taught them how integrating more prayer and communication into their lives can help strengthen their relationship today and beyond.

“It just brought our level of intimacy to a whole new level,” Le said. “I really didn’t imagine that happening. I imagined us being closer to God, but never thought about what it means to have him be a part of our relationship. It just really makes me love her a lot more than I thought I would, coming out.”

For Jeannine MacAller and Jorge Anguiano, of Padre Serra Church in Camarillo, the CEE retreat had been a long time coming. The couple initially planned to get married in 2020, but their plans were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, MacAller’s fight with cancer, and other challenges. 

The couple said the retreat taught them how to be vulnerable while communicating with each other, and further solidified their desire to bring God into their union. 

“God is the center of our lives, and we want him at the center of our marriage,” MacAller said. “We know how much we have needed him as individuals and we need him just as much, if not more, as a married couple. I’m so glad we did this.” 

Members of the presenting team said they were energized by participants’ zeal and desire to get married in the Catholic Church, even in today’s contemporary times. 

“This is a sign that the Church is still very much alive and there’s still young people who desire to make their commitment as husband and wife in the sacrament of marriage in the Church,” said Gosselin, who’s been giving CEE retreats for about 40 years. “To see their excitement, and to see their joy and their enthusiasm about living their faith is rewarding.”

The Schneiders — who’ve been married for almost 60 years and have been volunteering for 45 years with CEE — said they continue to present weekend retreats as a way to give back. 

The couple struggled early in their marriage, Joe Schneider said, and wishes they would’ve had a resource like CEE back then. 

“It really gives us hope for the future, and hope for the Church,” he said. “And it keeps us honest. It challenges us to remember what we started out with and how, hopefully, we’ve grown.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

Today, on Holy and Great WednesdayJudas stretched forth his hand to the lawless. She sought the remission of her sins, while he took the pieces of silver. The harlot brought myrrh to anoint the Lord; the disciple made an agreement with the lawless. She rejoiced when she spent the precious myrrh; he set out to sell Him who has no price. She recognized her Master, while he departed from his Master. She was freed from sin, but he became the captive of sin.

“>Holy and Great Wednesday, we recall two events described in the Gospel. These are the anointing of the Lord with myrrh by the woman who led a sinful life, and the betrayal of Judas. These two episodes are often contrasted in liturgical texts. On the one hand, here is a former sinner who repented; on the other hand, here is a disciple who betrayed the Savior.

Judas’ Kiss. Giotto. 1303–1305. A fragment of a fresco at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Italy)     

The personality of Judas has always attracted the special attention of Orthodox theologians, various thinkers, philosophers, and artists. Indeed, how did it happen that the Lord chose a man as His disciple though He knew perfectly well that that man would betray Him? Or why did this man, who obsessed with the passion of love of money had betrayed Christ, then felt remorse, threw away the thirty pieces of silver, and hung himself, unable to bear the terrible pangs of conscience? These are all questions that are not so easy to answer.

Over 2,000 years, theologians, artists, and others have answered these questions in different ways… There have even been absolutely horrible, almost insane thoughts about this, yet there have also been very sober and wise arguments. Anyway, the story of Judas gives us all a very important lesson to learn.

Throughout the Gospel narrative, we see that Judas especially loved money and was enslaved by the passion of Love of Money, the Sin of Distrust in GodSpeaking about love of money in our days is just the same as describing hot weather in summer. Everyone suffers torment from the scorching heat in July, and it seems there is no way to hide from it, though there are air conditioners, fans, shady places, and cold water. Very few people like the blazing sun, while the love of money captures our hearts and enslaves us. And this may happen even to those who have no money in their pockets…

“>love of money. The Lord noticed this and knew that Judas stole funds from the money-box (of which he was in charge) where donations were stored, knew about the sinful passion of His disciple, but at the same time He was patient and waited for Judas to reform. But just the opposite happened: Judas became more and more engrossed in his passion, and as a result of this vice, which may seem “insignificant” and “petty” (one can argue that “many people love money”) Judas was led to stealing, then to betraying Christ Himself, and eventually, to suicide. And this shows us how dangerous each passion is, even a seemingly petty one, and what terrible consequences it can have.

​The Betrayal of Judas. Fragment of a seventeenth century fresco     

If we open Patristic works, which describe various sins and How to Be Delivered From PassionsThe Christian life is man’s return to his true health, which is a joy for him, which he perceives as the fullness of life, because Christ is poured out into this man to live in him.

“>passions, we can see that the Holy Fathers described every sin as the worst, the greatest, most terrible sin in the world, and that you cannot be saved if you are obsessed by this vice. It was said about pride, love of money, judging, gluttony, envy, and so on. Whatever sin you take, it is called the most destructive. And that is absolutely true, because the most dangerous sin is the one that we have neglected, about which we thought, “Well, never mind! There’s nothing so bad about it.” Any such sin can ultimately grow into a violent passion and destroy us. That is in fact what happened to Judas.

Of course, it is very important for us to examine our lives thoroughly: Are there any sins that we, God forbid, have totally neglected? It is extremely difficult to rid ourselves of all passions completely, and if we do succeed in this, it will not happen immediately. But the most important thing is to move in this direction so that there can be no sin (not even a petty one) in our lives about which we would say, “It’s nothing to worry about!” Today we see very clearly what consequences this can lead to, as was the case with the Apostle Judas.

Let us take heed concerning this. Let us ask God to help us see our sins, as we have read today (for the last time this year) in the Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, that these sins might be obvious to us, that we might strive to war against them as much as we can without neglecting them, and that they will not destroy us or deprive us of the Heavenly Kingdom. Amen.

Today the church honors St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus, in his second of two feast days — St. Joseph the Worker. 

Although we know little about the life of Joseph from Scripture, we know that he was the chaste husband of Mary, foster father of Jesus, a carpenter and a poor man. He came from the royal lineage of King David. 

From his actions recorded in the Bible, we know that St. Joseph was a compassionate man, and obeyed the will of God. He loved Mary and Jesus, and strove to protect and provide for them throughout his life. 

Because Joseph is not mentioned in records of Jesus’ public life, his death, or his resurrection, many historians believe Joseph had likely died by the time Jesus began his public ministry. 

St. Joseph is the patron of the universal Church, fathers, the dying, and social justice.