St. Mary Orthodox Church

September 13, 2026 - by Dn. Jeff Smith

When we forgive, we reveal the Cross. When we show mercy, we reveal the Cross. When we refuse to return hatred, we reveal the Cross. When we care for someone who is lonely or forgotten, we reveal the Cross. When we repent and begin again, we reveal the Resurrection.

September 06, 2026 - by Fr. Antony Hughes

When life sends challenges stop, breathe deeply, look within and listen. The Comforter resides in our hearts. He longs to bring us peace, love, and joy even when we cannot easily find them.

August 30, 2026 - by Dn. James Wilcox

This is the moment in Jesus’ public ministry when the religious leaders begin searching for a means of doing away with Jesus. We always look for a way to get rid of the person who challenges the golden calf of our most cherished falsehoods. If our first response is to do away with someone because we don’t like how they challenge us to think more critically about our actions, we have lost the plot.

August 25, 2026 - by Dn. Jeff Smith

We, too, are asked to hold Christ - in prayer, in the Eucharist - carrying Him as best we can in the vessels of our lives, the way she carried Him in her body. And the promise is that the One we have carried, will one day carry us.

August 02, 2026 - by Subdeacon JD Swartz

If we close the door of our heart to another, we break the communion of creation, we perpetuate the fallen world, and we live contrary to the prayer that Christ taught us, 'Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' This prayer is a call to action, it is a demand that we who name ourselves Christians, we who are meant to have built temples of gold, silver, and precious stones within us, we must open the doors of those sanctuaries and share the wealth which we have gained, and serve as another entry point for the bountiful Kingdom of God to pour out into the world; we enter His Kingdom on the Day of Judgment by enacting His kingdom on earth now.

July 26, 2026 - by Fr. Antony Hughes

In the same way we are called to provide spiritual food for the least of the brethren within us. To open our eyes to them, listen to their voices, to understand them and their hunger for transformation, love, and compassion. In us is a multitude of the needy, the frightened, the lonely, and despairing.

July 19, 2026 - by Dn. Jeff Smith

We often think about commandments as restrictions, but the saints hear them as pathways to freedom. Each commandment shines a light. Every act of forgiveness removes another covering from the lamp. Every movement toward humility cleans another window through which grace may shine. Every prayer opens another chamber of our hearts to the presence of Christ.

July 12, 2026 - by Subdeacon JD Swartz

The commandment to love the Lord your God is inseparable from the next, to love your neighbor. Accessibility and accommodation are nothing less than revelations of love, just as Christ is the revelation of God, who is Love. The alternative to accessibility is not merely inaccessibility – it is sin; by being inaccessible we have missed the mark.

July 05, 2026 - by Dn. James Wilcox

When the Apostle Paul speaks of the Fruits of the Spirit, he is not referring to moral platitudes one attains through the sheer force of their will. The Fruits of the Spirit, rather, are a natural outpouring of a heart transformed and sanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ. If your heart has been truly made new, it means your heart has found repentance. It is from the repentant heart that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-mastery will naturally flow.

June 28, 2026 - by Fr. Antony Hughes

A true leader does not work to become more popular, more essential, more visible. They fade into humility and point away from themselves. 'I must increase' is not the language or attitude of the Gospel. It is its opposite. Thomas Merton once defined a saint not as someone admired by all, but rather someone who has come to admire everyone else.

June 21, 2026 - by Dina Zingaro

Each of us has a mammon, something that swallows up our attention, demands our attention, and pulls us away from God’s presence in the world. It prevents us from seeing God’s presence in ourselves or in our neighbor. It becomes what we see, what we see taste, touch, hear. It sucks up all the oxygen in the room.   

June 14, 2026 - by Dn. Jeff Smith

With a few words—just two, actually: 'Follow me' and 'I will make you fishers of men'—and we go on to say, 'and you will fish the universe,' the disciples left their nets. Immediately they leave, and their lives are changed forever. The call to leave our nets remains just as urgent today. Whatever prevents us from following Christ can become a net that entangles us, but the Lord stands on the shore of our lives and calls us as surely as He called Peter and Andrew.

June 07, 2026 - by Dn. James Wilcox

Life’s most difficult moments will come to each of us. There is not a single person in this room who can avoid the experience of suffering. We can question it, we can try to deny it, we can do our best to avoid it, but suffering, nevertheless, will come to us. It is something from which we cannot escape. It is simply part of the human experience. The hard part is learning to voluntarily accept it.

May 31, 2026 - by Fr. Antony Hughes

We must always watch that the choices we make at every moment of our day reflect the goodness of God. We were created to be vessels of God's grace, mercy, and love without prejudice. So, let's commit ourselves to allow only rivers of living water to flow through and from us.

May 25, 2026 - by Dn. Jeff Smith

The 17th chapter of John is the most profound prayer in the entire bible. The whole scene is improbable. The disciples have been with Jesus for years, they have seen his miracles, and yet, he is still a mystery to them. Until the very end, they don’t really understand his way of liberation.

May 03, 2026 - by Subdeacon JD Swartz

Healing is the process of being made whole. Your healing, your wholeness, my wholeness, is not for us alone – you are not an individual, you are a person. We are not meant for isolation. We are relational, made to live in interaction with one another and with God. Our healing, our wholeness, is affected by and has an effect upon, others.

April 26, 2026 - by Dn. Jeff Smith

The Church has always honored the Myrrh-bearing Women as 'equal to the apostles,' not because they held an office, but because they received and proclaimed the Resurrection. St. John Chrysostom notes that while all the disciples were hidden away in fear, the women came forward in love and boldness, and so they were made worthy to hear the angelic proclamation first. Their receptivity was their strength—their capacity to remain present during Jesus’ suffering at the Cross, to endure their grief without turning away, and to approach the tomb even when all hope seemed sealed away behind the stone.

April 19, 2026 - by Dn. James Wilcox

It is not possible to understand Christ apart from the Cross. The very message passed down to us from the time of the Apostles IS the crucified Christ. Not a physical warrior, not a political leader, not culture warrior, but a humiliated, beaten, bullied, emasculated, and crucified Christ. And the way TO Jesus is through the Cross. We cannot claim to know Jesus Christ and then tack on the Cross as a postscript. Christ Himself tells us “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

April 08, 2026 - by Teva Regule, MDiv, PhD

Our service tonight gives us a glimpse of compassion, in particular the compassion of God in which we are called to emulate. God did not abandon His creation, but eventually sent His Son in order to heal our estrangements—to reactualize the Edenic harmony of His creation.  We can experience this harmony now through our participation in the Body of Christ.   

March 22, 2026 - by Inga Leonova

A recounting and reflection of the life of St. Mary of Egypt on the day dedicated to her on the 5th Sunday of Great Lent.