✦ Pastoral Teaching
Homilies &
Reflections
Sunday homilies and pastoral letters from Fr. Joseph, rooted in the Scripture and Tradition of the Eastern Catholic Church.
✦ Most Recent Homily
Holy Pascha — The Feast of Feasts
Christ is Risen: The Answer to Every Question
"Tonight the Church does not offer us an argument. She does not present a philosophical proof or a theological treatise. She opens the doors and sings. The Paschal proclamation is not a proposition to be debated — it is an announcement to be received, a fire to be carried, a joy that no grief can finally extinguish."
Gospel: John 1:1–17
✦ About These Homilies
These homilies are offered as a resource for the community and for all who seek nourishment from the Word of God as interpreted through the lens of the Eastern Catholic tradition. They are not academic treatises but pastoral words, spoken first in the context of the Divine Liturgy.
If a homily has spoken to you, or if you have questions it raises, Fr. Joseph welcomes conversation — before or after Liturgy, or by appointment.
✦ Homily Archive
Palm Sunday — Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem
The King Who Rides a Donkey
Every king in the ancient world made his entry on a warhorse — a symbol of power, conquest, and the capacity for violence. Christ enters on a donkey, the animal of the poor, the beast of burden. He is not announcing a military campaign. He is announcing a different kind of kingdom, one that conquers not by force but by love, not by death inflicted but by death accepted.
Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast — St. Mary of Egypt
The Desert as a Place of Encounter
St. Mary of Egypt went into the desert to hide from God. She found him there instead. This is the paradox at the heart of the ascetic life: the more we strip away, the more we find that we cannot escape the One who made us. The desert does not create holiness — it reveals what was always there, both the wound and the Physician.
Third Sunday of the Great Fast — Veneration of the Holy Cross
The Cross in the Middle of Lent
The Church places the Cross before us in the middle of the Great Fast not as a reminder of suffering — we are already well acquainted with that — but as a reminder of what suffering is for. The Cross is not the end of the story. It is the hinge on which the whole story turns. We venerate it not because we love pain, but because we love the One who transformed pain into the instrument of our salvation.
Second Sunday of the Great Fast — St. Gregory Palamas
The Light That Is Not Created
St. Gregory Palamas taught that the light the disciples saw on Mount Tabor was not a created light, not a symbol or a metaphor, but the uncreated light of God himself — the divine energies by which God truly communicates himself to those who are purified and open to receive him. This is the promise of the spiritual life: not merely to know about God, but to participate in his very life.
First Sunday of the Great Fast — Triumph of Orthodoxy
Why Icons Matter
When the Church restored the icons in the ninth century, she was not settling a dispute about art. She was defending the Incarnation. If God truly became flesh — if the Word truly took on a human face — then that face can be depicted. To deny the icon is to deny that God truly entered matter, truly became one of us. The icon is the Incarnation made visible.
Sunday of the Last Judgment
Sheep and Goats: The Judgment of Mercy
The parable of the sheep and the goats is not, in the end, a parable about fear. It is a parable about vision — about learning to see Christ in the face of the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner. The judgment does not reveal a God who was hiding and waiting to catch us out. It reveals what we have been doing all along with the love we have been given.
Meeting of the Lord — Presentation in the Temple
Simeon's Song: Learning to Let Go
Simeon had been waiting his whole life for this moment. And when it arrived — when he held the infant Christ in his arms — he did not cling to it. He sang, and he released. 'Now let your servant depart in peace.' The spiritual life is, in large part, learning to hold things with open hands: our plans, our certainties, our very lives. Simeon shows us how.
✦ Pastoral Letters
Reflections from Fr. Joseph
A Pastoral Letter
On the Jesus Prayer
Lent 2025
""Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." These twelve words contain the whole of the Gospel. They address Christ by his full title — Lord, Jesus, Christ, Son of God — and they place us in the only posture that is honest before him: the posture of the one who needs mercy. The Jesus Prayer is not a technique. It is a way of life."
A Pastoral Letter on the Great Fast
Why We Fast
February 2025
"Fasting is not a diet. It is not a spiritual achievement to be proud of, nor a punishment to be endured. It is a reorientation of desire — a way of saying, with our bodies, that we hunger for something more than bread. The Great Fast is the Church's annual school of desire, and we enter it not as athletes in training but as patients in a hospital, trusting the Physician."
A Pastoral Letter
On Confession in the Eastern Catholic Tradition
January 2025
"In the Eastern Catholic tradition, the priest does not sit behind a screen. He stands beside you, before the Gospel and the Cross, as a witness — not a judge. The words of absolution are not his words; they are Christ's words, spoken through him. Confession is not a transaction. It is an encounter with the mercy of God, who runs to meet us while we are still a long way off."