Monthly Reflections from Fr. Antony Hughes

Fr. Antony reading the Gospel In every edition of our parish's newsletter, Fr. Antony offers a short, but inspiring message to complement the activities, minsitries, and current events of the life of the church.  Below is a collection of these messages.

February 2015

When we speak of the sanctity of life it must not only be in reference to abortion. We speak of the reverence for all human life at every phase of existence from womb to tomb and we must address how it is that we are to respect life in all its manifestations. Read more »
 

January 2015

Thomas Merton once wrote of the Incarnation of the Son of God as sunlight through a magnifying glass. The rays are captured and focused like a laser. This focused light is able to set things on fire. The Incarnation is like that. All creation is set afire by the coming of God in the flesh. All the light of God was concentrated in this miraculous event in one divine person, specifically in one place and one time. Read more »
 

December 2014

The Nativity fast is about growing in love so that we may make ourselves ready to receive the King of Love on the Great and Holy Feast of Christmas. The beauty of this season is resplendent with warmth and light and peace and love, that is, all of those wonderful things that are revealed to the world when God is born in the flesh. Read more »
 

November 2014

I am a voracious reader. You probably know that. My sermons are often speckled with quotes I glean from books because other people say things better than I could in a shorter amount of time and, frankly, I don't want to waste your time trying to say in paragraphs what Aristotle managed to say in a sentence. Read more »
 

October 2014

Listening is not as easy as it seems! If we think we know what the other needs and try to impose our own agenda, we will never actually hear what the other says. What is revealed in such misguided attempts is not the needs of the other but the needs of the teacher, priest, or therapist. Read more »
 

September 2014

It is important to spend time looking within. We need to know what is going on under our own noses. Too much emphasis in religion is placed on externals which are important, of course, but what goes on within is far more important. Read more »
 

August 2014

It is now less than a year before we host the Archdiocese Convention (July 19-26). Excitement across the Archdiocese is high. In the parish our committees have been hard at work doing the preparatory work to make this a truly wonderful event. Read more »
 

June 2014

I was hiking through the Great Smokey mountains on the Appalachian Trail during my high school days with several of my friends. The way you know you are on the trial is that every so often you will see a red mark on a tree. After a while I noticed that there were no red marks! We were lost. Read more »
 

May 2014

The celebration of Pascha is over and the Resurrection is not. Nor has it ever been. Not in yours or my memory. We celebrate the feast with intensity and when we are done we return to our ordinary lives. The thrill and excitement associated with the Feast of Feasts ends. The kingdom does not. Read more »
 

April 2014

The death of our Father in Christ, Metropolitan PHILIP has come as a shock to us and also as a reminder. We are shocked because we respected and loved him. Sometimes we took delight in him, sometimes we disagreed with him, and yet this is what families are like - like waves of the sea, now calm and the next moment troubled. Read more »
 

March 2014

Christ is in our midst! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. The Least of the Brethren is Me. The Holy Spirit is in all places, filling all things. All of this, we believe, is true, so why then do we not see? Perhaps we suffer from a fundamental form of blindness that causes us to create realities with our hopes, dreams and desires that do not actually exist. We see what we want to see and so we miss all those things we don't. Read more »
 

February 2014

Christmas comes. Epiphany comes. The Feast of the Presentation follows. All celebrations of Light in the darkest season, revelations of the glory of God piercing the veil. Each one an apocalypse in the truest sense. Read more »
 

January 2014

The celebration of God's birth in the flesh and his baptism, the revelation of the Most Holy Trinity, points us to the truth that the spiritual life is not about ethics and morals, it is about mystery. Read more »
 

December 2013

The highest values, those that ennoble both ourselves and our neighbors are our values. The seeds of aggression born of fear and ignorance do not rank among them. Long ago Aristides wrote to the emperor Hadrian about Christians Read more »
 

November 2013

The question has been asked (in a curious way) what am I for? I will tell you. I am pro Holy Trinity. I am pro Incarnation. I am pro Gospel of Jesus. I am pro Orthodox Church and rejoice when she actually lives up to her high calling. I am pro image of God in every man, woman and child I meet. Read more »
 

October 2013 Anniversary Message from Fr. Antony

The question has been asked (in a curious way) what am I for? I will tell you. I am pro Holy Trinity. I am pro Incarnation. I am pro Gospel of Jesus. I am pro Orthodox Church and rejoice when she actually lives up to her high calling. Read more »
 

October 2013

It is so simple. The Kingdom of heaven which is to come is embedded in the creation here and now. If we look deeply into everything we discover it. We find Him who has not made a secret of this, but who waits for us to open our hearts and minds to show us. Read more »
 

September 2013

I want to welcome everyone back from vacation and I hope it was a restful and exciting summer. We are back to our regular schedule of services, Sunday School will begin shortly with our new superintendent, Barbara Shoop, and a fresh crop of teachers ready to educate our children, Bob Kowalik's Catechism Class will start up soon, and life at St. Mary's (which never seems to slow down anymore) will rev up again for another liturgical cycle beginning on Sept. 1. Read more »
 

August 2013

The summer is hot...and humid this year. There are some of us who love this kind of weather. I am not one of them, but, as in everything, there is hope. The weather eventually will change. Everything changes. All the time. Read more »
 

June 2013

One of the very first books I ever read (that I enjoyed) was THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES by Ray Bradbury. I found it in my father's personal collection on the bookshelf he made from planks and cinder blocks painted black in the sun room of our house on Elm Street. This was the first time I paid attention to what was on that shelf. There were other treasures there that I picked up later, but this was the book I never forgot. Read more »