Resources

Many informative articles were published in our parish newsletters in the years prior to Covid. Email to the friends and faithful of Holy Cross has replaced our newsletters, but many of the articles are collected here. Use the indexes below to find the topic or author you’re interested in. (Once you click on a topic or author, scroll to the bottom of the page to see the search results.)

Also, have a look at the Recommended Readings on the OCA (Orthodox Church in America) website for a list of books covering a wide range of topics. Essential Orthodox Christian Beliefs: A Manual for Adult Instruction is also available for free download on the OCA’s website.

(Speaking of our parent jurisdiction, the OCA traces its origins to the arrival in Kodiak, Alaska in 1794 of eight Orthodox missionaries from the Valaamo Monastery in the northern Karelia region of Russia. Today, the OCA includes some 700 parishes, missions, communities, monasteries, and institutions throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.)

We hope you’ll find these suggested readings to be both edifying and encouraging!

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh 11/14/25 Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh 11/14/25

Resurrection Victory

It all begins with an idea.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

May 2011

In the 60s and 70s the visits of Metropolitan Anthony to Russia, where normal Church life was almost entirely suppressed, seemed like a breath of fresh air. Wherever he went, in parishes, in seminaries, he would preach the Gospel of Christ, and people would follow his progress, going from church to church as the ‘grapevine’ provided news of his movements.
Some of his many sermons were recorded on tape and are now being transcribed and published in Russia. The present text, a sermon delivered after the Vigil Service on Saturday, 29 May 1971, appeared in All-Conquering Love (Lubov Vsepobedaiushchaia), (St Petersburg: Satis 1994), pp. 68ff.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Every Sunday throughout the year, century after century, the Orthodox Church proclaims the Resurrection of Christ. Each Sunday we relive once again our joy that Christ is risen. And that joy is so deep, so profound, that it bears witness of itself: we rejoice not only because the Lord is risen, but because his Resurrection is for us the beginning of new, renewed life. In the Sermon of John Chrysostom which is read on the night of Christ’s Resurrection each year, it is said that ‘Christ is risen, and there is none dead in the tomb...’ And we ourselves continue to pass on this message from one century to the next. Yet is it true? Do we not see that death continues to reap its harvest around us? Are there not graves beside Christian churches as well? How can we say that ‘there is none dead in the tomb’, that Christ has conquered death by death?

We can say this because death has two completely different meanings, and the tombs are indeed empty. Until the coming of Christ, every human being, when he died - whether he was righteous or not - was deprived of the joy of meeting God. According to the Old Testament story of the primal sin of our ancestors, Adam and Eve, the whole human race was deprived of the radiance, the joy, the glory of God. Everyone who died thereafter entered into an abyss of horror, of separation from God and, as a result, of separation from those closest to him. And his death was twofold: not just an earthly death when the soul, separated from the body, flies upward towards God and worships at the throne of the Lord, who consoles it for its earthly sorrows. There was another death as well, a second separation. While someone lived on this earth, he could, in one way or another, with just the tip of his soul, touch at least the border of the Lord’s garment. But after death, any separation became final, definitive, dreadful. And age after age people waited for the Saviour, for the one who would unite heaven and earth, God and creation. But until the Lord came, our Saviour Jesus Christ, that separation remained dark and terrible.

And then the Lord came and died on the Cross the death of every man, having first shared in the dreadful loneliness and torment that precedes death. Remember the garden of Gethsemene: ‘O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me...’ He shared in the horror of that separation when he cried out to God from the Cross: ‘My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ And he descended into hell... into hell!

And hell opened wide with joy in the hope that now the enemy whom it had found invincible on earth had been overcome and taken prisoner. Hell opened up, as John Chrysostom says, to take in flesh - and opened itself to God. Hell opened to imprison the incarnate Son of God become man - and before him stood, into him entered the Living God who fills all things, entering hell and destroying it for ever. Hell was no longer that former terrible hell of separation, because in it was the living God.

The Prophet David in his mysterious vision said: ‘Whither shall I go then from thy presence? If I go up into heaven, thou art there: If I go down to hell, thou art there also’. For us this seems simple, because for us that eternal, hopeless hell of the absence of God no longer exists. But for the man of the Old Testament this was a puzzling statement: how can God be where God is not? How can he be in the place of separation from God? But David foresaw - and prophetically foretold - the coming of the Lord and the end of that final separation. Today death has become for us something else. Now it is a falling asleep. In the body we fall asleep to the anxieties of the earth, and peace descends upon our flesh. Our body now lies there like an icon of Christ lying in the grave on that mysterious, blessed Saturday when the Lord ceased from his works, from the work of saving mankind, from the labour of suffering, from the Cross, from crucifixion. Everyone who dies now, falls asleep in Christ, he falls asleep until the day his body rises at the last trumpet, on the day of the resurrection of the dead. ‘Blessed are they who die in the Lord’, as John the Theologian says in the Apocalypse.

This is why for the Christian, death is not something terrible. This is why someone who meant a great deal to me was able to say to me: ‘Wait for your death as a young man waits for his bride’. With the same kind of trembling, with the same rejoicing of soul we can say to death: ‘Come, open for me the doors of eternal life, so that my rebellious flesh may find peace, and my soul may soar up to the eternal dwelling place of God’. This is why we can say truly and rightfully proclaim that ‘there is not one dead in the tomb’. For the grave has ceased to be a prison, a place of final and terrible captivity. It has become a place where the body awaits resurrection while the soul grows, to the extent it can, into eternal life.

Yet death, the separation of death, is none the less still present on earth to a certain extent. It has been defeated even in its own kingdom, yet man himself continues, by cutting off others from the mystery of love, to prolong that separation on earth. Just look at our human society. There is no need to look far: just look at your family, at those closest to you, at your friends, your parish, at the Church. Can we really say that we are so linked together by love that death, that separation, that separation from God, that separation from one another doesn’t exist on earth? Sadly, God has conquered death everywhere, but in the heart of man it must be conquered by man himself.

Death and love are inseparable from one another. And it is because of this that it is such a fearsome thing to love. To love just a little, to love irresponsibly, to love in such a way that a relationship is begun and then allowed to end when it becomes painful or difficult or dangerous - we can all do this. But to love as the Lord loved - this we seem unable to do. The Apostle Paul says to us: ‘Accept one another, love one another as the Lord loved you...’ But do we realize how the Lord loved us? He loved us so much that he did not want to be a stranger to us and became one of us, one among many others - and not just temporarily, but for eternity, for ever - with all the pain, with all the horror of that union.

The glory of God was extinguished when the Word became Flesh. No one knew him. His victory appeared to be defeat. He became the one whom the Holy Scriptures declared would be ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief ‘. He became one with us forever. Can we become one with each other in this way? Can we so love one another that we can say: ‘For ever! In sorrow and in joy, in horror and in exultation, whatever happens, I will stand by you for ever’? If this were the case, how marvellous our world would be, how marvellous our Church would be, what parishes we would have, what families, what friends! But our meetings are like two ships meeting on the sea: they meet and pass on. We haven’t enough depth, not enough faithfulness, not enough readiness to do what Christ did: to descend into hell, into the hell of suffering of someone whom we love, into the hell of his temptations, into the hell of his pain, into the hell of his destruction. Instead, we stand on the shore and call out: ‘Save yourself, swim over here to me - I will reach out my hand to you!’ But we ourselves do not enter that hell, and so it is terrible for us to talk about love, it is so difficult to love - because we should love only as the Lord has loved us. Death and love are bound up together because to love means to forget oneself until one doesn’t exist, not to remember oneself. The other becomes so dear to one that to think about oneself gets in the way. We need to say to ourselves what Christ said to Peter when he stood in front of him on the way to Golgotha: ‘Get behind me, Satan; you are thinking about earthly things, and not about heaven’. Can we forget about ourselves to that extent, can we love like that, can we die like that?

At the same time, so long as we cannot do this, we are touching only the border of the Lord’s garment, we are joined only to the outer edge of the light, the radiant light and brilliance of the Resurrection of Christ. To live the Resurrection is possible only for someone who has passed through death and is on the other side of death, not the death of this world, not material, bodily death, but the death which is also called love, when a person forgets about himself and loves so much that he lays down his life for his friend. Moses is called a ‘friend of God’ in the Scriptures, and what does he say? ‘Lord, if you do not forgive your people their sins, then strike out my name from the book of life. I do not wish to live, if others go to their death’. The Apostle Paul says that he would prefer, if possible, to be separated from Christ, rather than see the destruction of the people of Israel. These are nonsensical words - nonsensical in the sense that when a man experiences such love, he is already on the other side of death. But humanly speaking that is all we are able to say: ‘Yes, it is better that I should perish, than that I should be separated from anyone’. This is the standard shown us by the Cross - and by the Resurrection, for one is inseparable from the other. And so, from Sunday to Sunday, when you hear the news that Christ has risen, remember that we are all called to be, on this earth, people risen from the dead in love. But for this to take place, we must so love each other as to pass through the gates of death, to descend through the Cross into hell, to share through Love in the suffering of the other, to forget ourselves - and then suddenly discover that I am alive, alive with the life of Christ! Amen.

Fr Christopher Foley 9/6/25 Fr Christopher Foley 9/6/25

Show Us Also Thy Glorious Resurrection!

It all begins with an idea.

Fr. Christopher Foley

April 2007

“From the very outset, the coming of Christ represents the fulfillment of hope. From the very beginning the Gospel story means victory arising out of catastrophe. Disappointment, defeat , despair, confusion - and all of a sudden, an unexpected display of the miraculous power of God.” - Fr. Alexander Men

Towards the end of Great Lent we begin to understand what Christ means by taking up our cross daily. Both through our ascetic discipline during the fast and through our negligence we have come to understand our own personal fallenness. We have begun to see ourselves as sinners in need of repentance. We realize that we are the bride who has no wedding garment to wear for the bridegroom. We have many crosses in our lives that we must take up in order to be co-crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20). It can be easy to get discouraged at this point. We may begin to feel that there is no hope or possibility of finding the joy of Christ in the midst of these troubling revelations about ourselves.

Then we come to Great and Holy Friday where we mourn and lament the death of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. We begin to understand the depths of His love for mankind. We hear the words of the hymns, “Today He who hung the Earth upon the waters is hung upon the tree. The King of Angels is decked with a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple robe of mockery. He who freed Adam in the Jordan is slapped on the face. The bridegroom of the Church is affixed to the cross with nails. The Son of the virgin is pierced with a spear. We worship Thy passion, O Christ. We worship Thy passion, O Christ. We worship Thy passion, O Christ. Show us also Thy glorious resurrection.” The devastating event begins to sink in. Christ our Lord is being killed. We begin to feel as if the whole world is fading into the darkness of sin and death. It is at this very moment that we utter this last line, “show us also Thy glorious resurrection!” Just when the night is at its darkest depths, light begins to dawn.

While Christ is still in the tomb on the matins of Holy Saturday, we begin to sing of His coming resurrection, “O Life, how canst Thou die? How canst Thou dwell in a tomb? Yet by Thy death Thou hast destroyed the reign of death, and raised all the dead from hell. O , how great the joy, how full the gladness, that Thou hast brought to Hades’ prisoners, like lightning flashing in its gloomy depths.” The tomb becomes the life-giving tomb. We realize that Life had to enter death in order to be raised in glory freeing all of those held captive to sin and death. Here is the victory arising out of catastrophe. It is here that we begin to see the full meaning of the Cross - death is swallowed up in victory and Christ bursts forth from the tomb proclaiming, “Let creation rejoice! Let all born on earth be glad! For hateful hell has been despoiled. Let the women with myrrh come to meet me; for I am redeeming Adam and Eve and all their descendants, and on the third day shall I arise!”

Christ Himself tries to console even the sorrow of His mother while she laments the death of her son. “Do not lament me, O Mother, seeing me in the tomb, the Son conceived in the womb without seed. For I shall arise and be glorified with eternal glory as God. I shall exalt all who magnify you in faith and in love.” Thus in the darkness of the Paschal midnight we begin to sing the hymns of Christ’s resurrection. We sense this building joy springing up within us as we anticipate the light dawning from the east. Even before the rising of the sun we already begin to joyfully proclaim “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs, bestowing life.” All of life is brought to this one moment of resurrection, everything becomes clear in this light of glory. We are filled with a joy inexpressible and full of glory.

Fr. Alexander Men, a 20th century Russian priest and martyr wrote of the centrality of the joy of Pascha for the life of a Christian. He says, “If you want to find something real in Christianity, then search for it only through the risen Christ. Secondly, the Resurrection means victory. It means that God entered our human struggle, the great struggle of spirit against darkness, evil, oppression. He who was rejected, condemned, killed, humiliated, somehow focused all the misfortunes of the world in Himself and triumphed over all of them.” We die with Christ in order to be raised with Him. This event brings meaning and comfort to the world. This is the essence of the Gospel, or the “good news” that we confess and proclaim. Fr. Alexander continues, “This means that the Resurrection is not something that occurred once upon a time proving Christ’s victory to the disciples, something which had its place two thousand years ago. The Encounters continued to happen, they always happened... Here lies the meaning of the Resurrection, today’s meaning, for this time, not for history, not for the past, but for this day... He acts today regardless of human weaknesses. He will triumph always: and He has only begun His work, only begun, because His aim is the Transfiguration of the world, the Kingdom of God. We need only to anticipate this, to feel its coming.” This is the giddy and intoxicating joy that we sense at Pascha. This is the joy that we are take into the world and proclaim in and through our lives. Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!