Scriptures – St Jacob Orthodox Church

October 23, 2024October 24, 2024

The Holy Spirit is the Answer to Our Prayers

Today’s daily gospel reading ended with the Lord saying, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” What does it mean that he will give us the Holy Spirit? Some leftover influence from our Protestant past made this line stick out to my wife and me, which, in turn, started a conversation about what Christ means here.

Yesterday, in the daily gospel reading from Luke 11, in response to the question of how to pray, the Lord shared “Our Father…” and then some direction to remain persistent in prayer: Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

March 9, 2024March 9, 2024

The Monk Who Never Judged Anyone and Died Joyfully

Coming up on the Sunday of the Last Judgment, we might feel a stirring of some of those fears we have, deep down, of that Judgment Day. But there is a trick. We actually have a large amount of control over how we are judged.

Christ says, Judge not, and you will not be judged. And, he adds elsewhere, with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. Meaning, if I am incredibly lenient with my judgment of others, the Lord will also be incredibly lenient with me. There is a beautiful entry of an unnamed monk in the Prologue of Ochrid:

November 30, 2023November 30, 2023

Zephaniah – Zechariah – same difference

In the process of preparing text to be sung in our services, I often run across questions about the meaning. I try my best to reword unclear passages so they will make sense to the hearer, who, in almost all cases, will only get one chance to hear that particular text, and that, sung by the choir, no less. It is a bit of a musical, poetic, biblical, historical puzzle.

Sometimes the unclear passage is a reference to something in the saint’s life: “thou didst offer an incense of sweet savor with thy martyr’s hand” (Barlaam, 19Nov). We understand the words, but it raises questions in our minds. Sometimes, it is an unclear combination of the saint’s life and and a particular scripture passage; the irmos portions of Matins do this fairly often.

This coming Sunday, we will be celebrating the prophet Zephaniah. Something about the kontakion hymn for him, and the quote from the prophecy included in it, caught my eye and I looked it up. I just copied the words into the search engine, and was a bit surprised to find the results listed as Zechariah…a different Z-prophet. This is a problem I have not seen before.

November 12, 2023November 17, 2023

Apply Wine and Oil

I just love the interaction between Christ and the lawyer that we see in Luke 10. Christ asks: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” The lawyer replies: “You shall love the Lord your God from all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Christ says: “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”

This man is an expert in the Law; he knows his stuff, and more than that, he has a right understanding and a good interpretation of it. He understands that these two “laws”—neither of which come from the Ten Commandments, nor even from sections that we would usually consider law—that these two truly encompass the whole law of God. “Do this and you will live.” The parable that Jesus tells is to re-emphasize the rightness of what the lawyer said, but also to lead him to a full understanding of those two “laws”.

July 17, 2023July 17, 2023

What Is Eternal Life

If any of us were asked to define it, we likely would not give a very biblical answer…or a very Christian answer. And by “Christian” I mean, defining it as Christ does in the words of the Gospel reading this Sunday.

Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

Knowing God is eternal life. If eternal life were just living forever, as a matter of length of time, then those in hell, those in punishment, those outside of the grace of God, also have eternal life. That is forever, too, but obviously not what Christ means by “eternal life”. Eternal life is not about length of time.