every time with The Gifted Pan. Make your Priest and Deacon happy. Make this blessed task even better.

Abba Peter the Pionite said, “We must not be puffed up when the Lord does something through our mediation, but we must rather thank Him for having made us worthy to be called by Him.” He used to say it is good to think about each virtue in this way.

has died. An article worth reading despite the comments about other Bishops which I think should be attribued to grief.

Robert Dmitri Royster left this life in the upper room of a dilapidated cottage, one so frail the faithful worried that the ceiling would collapse from the weight of those praying at his bedside. His razor-sharp mind had been scattered by old age. His once-strong body had been stripped by mortality of all dignity. The elder had barely a penny to his name, having given it all to the service of the Lord and His people. But I believe he died the richest man in Dallas. Blessed are his spiritual children in their inheritance.

to each and every Orthodox Christian and the world.

these past few years have been bumpy in US Orthodoxy, especially when it comes to our Bishops. And the truth is that I don’t know either all the details or all the answers. One thing, though, seems clearer to me as the days go on and the events unfold; sometimes the people have to care for the shepherds.

Let me explain. I’ve been a Pastor in both congregational and episcopal polities and I’ve learned that when the devil wants to wreak havoc it can often come in the pattern of the polity. If the church is congregational the people get stirred up. If the church is episcopal the Bishops are attacked. People don’t understand this and often think of all the troubling things that are happening in these past few years as a matter of personalities, programs, or politics. I think we might be forgetting that there is a component of spiritual warfare in all of this.

In our case as Orthodox Christians if our leaders can be stirred up, in conflict with each other, or find themselves focused  on the trees and not the forest the basic and primary mission of the Church can be hamstrung for as long as it takes to get these things worked out. Leaders who can’t agree. Leaders who listen to their passions. Those leaders will be diverted from their essential tasks and if the shepherds are struck the sheep can be scattered.

So sometimes we who are followers, with due regard for our own sins and struggles, need to reach out and deeply pray for our leaders asking God to protect them, to help them to stand for the Faith and against the fiery darts thrown at them every waking hour even as we pray for the same things for ourselves. Imagine what could happen if the Orthodox of this country prayed every day for their Bishops? Our prayers could become for them a wall of protection, a holy fortress where they can rest from the attacks of the enemy.

And imagine how that would change us as well!

consider visiting St. Juvenaly Mission. It’s near Kona on the Big Island (Hawaii).  Attend a liturgy and you can have a taste of heaven in paradise.

Let us, considering the Mystery of the Transfiguration of the Lord in accord with their (the Apostles‚) teaching, strive to be illumined by this Light ourselves and encourage in ourselves love and striving towards the Unfading Glory and Beauty, purifying our spiritual eyes of worldly thoughts and refraining from perishable and quickly passing delights and beauty which darken the garb of the soul and lead to the fire of Gehenna and everlasting darkness. Let us be freed from these by the illumination and knowledge of the incorporeal and ever-existing Light of our Savior transfigured on Tabor, in His Glory, and of His Father from all eternity, and His Life-Creating Spirit, Whom are One Radiance, One Godhead, and Glory, and Kingdom, and Power now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

St. Gregory Palamas