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!

Fr Christopher Foley 10/23/25 Fr Christopher Foley 10/23/25

“Cooking Theology” & the Cross

It all begins with an idea.

Fr. Christopher Foley

September 2010

A friend of mine recently said about baking banana bread, “I think my family and life is like the bread I just made... a lot of different ingredients... but turning out GREAT! How do rotten bananas make yummy bread? How do the bad things in life turn out good? Just a little cooking theology. Thank you God for family and the friends you gave me in this journey of life!” How profound. How simple. It is really in these moments of clarity, one’s life begins to make sense.

Our Lord became incarnate for us in order to fill all of our life with Himself. It is His presence within our life that fills our earthly existence with meaning and purpose. As Orthodox Christians we participate IN Christ. We put Him on at our Baptism. We offer our lives in sacrifice to Him as the universal priesthood of creation. We partake of Him in the Holy Mysteries for the healing of soul and body. We become participants in Christ. We then realize how Christ is present in all of the events of our life - one’s family, one’s occupation, one’s circumstances, one’s joys as well as heartbreaks. It is in these more difficult times that we have a harder time seeing clearly. As my friend put it, “How do rotten bananas make yummy bread? How do the bad things in life turn out good?”

Recently I came across two passages of Scripture that bring great consolation during difficult times of struggle. The first is found in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:18-25). It reads:

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.”

I love this imagery of this earnest longing, this groaning to be redeemed, these “birth pangs.” This glorious hope and liberty of the children of God. I think we can relate to this indescribable longing and yearning that St. Paul speaks of. We find it hard to put it in words. This is the same longing of the prodigal son, upon “coming to himself” remembers the House of the Father. What consolation to read that the “sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” As Christians we have this eager expectation, this hope, which is in Christ. This culminates in our Eucharist prayer - this great and glorious Thanksgiving to God for this coming full redemption of our souls and bodies in Christ - partakers of His Divine Nature and His glorious resurrection. We come to know Christ and we come to know ourselves. We see for the first time our failures, our sin, ourselves stripped of any projection of who we think we are. We then descend with Christ to hell. This is where true growth begins. “The place of the skull becomes the place of Paradise.” “Thy tomb, O Christ, is the fountain of our resurrection.” We begin, out of this longing and groaning of creation, to yearn for participation in this Light of Christ.

This brings us to another reading which is found in St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (4:6-15). It reads:

“Brethren, it is the God Who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ Who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. Since we have the same spirit of faith as he had who wrote, ‘I believed, and so I spoke,’ we too believe, and so we speak, knowing that He Who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into His presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”

We begin to find that it is actually through our sufferings that we come to know the true power of Christ and His Cross in our life. We live in these “earthen vessels” to show that it is by God’s power that we are healed. We carry about in our bodies the death of Christ “so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” The is the joy of the Cross. We will sing this month at our parish feast, “Through the cross, joy has come into all the world.” Christ came primarily to unite Himself to us - to become everything that we are, to experience everything that we experience. He brought us with Himself to this Cross of shame and made it a place of victory. This is why we are “afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” because the power of the Cross tramples down death by Christ’s death. Thus when we venerate and lift high the Cross of our Lord, we are really offering up our life which is our living sacrifice - dying with Christ and raising with Him in a glorious resurrection.

This is the “rotten bananas” that become the yummy bread as my friend said. Let us all continue to groan and yearn for Christ with hopeful expectation. Let us remind ourselves that “He Who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into His presence.” This is what will cause to increase in us this thanksgiving “to the glory of God.” Amen.

Fr Alexander Schmemann 9/1/25 Fr Alexander Schmemann 9/1/25

Great and Holy Friday: The Cross

It all begins with an idea.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann
April 2008

From the light of Holy Thursday we enter into the darkness of Friday, the day of Christ's Passion, Death and Burial. In the early Church this day was called "Pascha of the Cross," for it is indeed the beginning of that Passover or Passage whose whole meaning will be gradually revealed to us, first, in the wonderful quiet of the Great and Blessed Sabbath, and, then, in the joy of the Resurrection day.

But, first, the Darkness. If only we could realize that on Good Friday darkness is not merely symbolical and commemorative. So often we watch the beautiful and solemn sadness of these services in the spirit of self-righteousness and self-justification. Two thousand years ago bad men killed Christ, but today we -- the good Christian people -- erect sumptuous Tombs in our Churches -- is this not the sign of our goodness? Yet, Good Friday deals not with past alone. It is the day of Sin, the day of Evil, the day on which the Church invites us to realize their awful reality and power in "this world." For Sin and Evil have not disappeared, but, on the contrary, still constitute the basic law of the world and of our life. And we who call ourselves Christians, do we not so often make ours that logic of evil which led the Jewish Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate, the Roman soldiers and the whole crowd to hate, torture and kill Christ? On what side, with whom would we have been, had we lived in Jerusalem under Pilate? This is the question addressed to us in every word of Holy Friday services. It is, indeed, the day of this world, its real and not symbolical, condemnation and the real and not ritual, judgment on our life... It is the revelation of the true nature of the world which preferred then, and still prefers, darkness to light, evil to good, death to life. Having condemned Christ to death, "this world" has condemned itself to death and inasmuch as we accept its spirit, its sin, its betrayal of God -- we are also condemned... Such is the first and dreadfully realistic meaning of Good Friday -- a condemnation to death...

But this day of Evil, of its ultimate manifestation and triumph, is also the day of Redemption. The death of Christ is revealed to us as the saving death for us and for our salvation.

It is a saving Death because it is the full, perfect and supreme Sacrifice. Christ gives His Death to His Father and He gives His Death to us. To His Father because, as we shall see, there is no other way to destroy death, to save men from it and it is the will of the Father that men be saved from death. To us because in very truth Christ dies instead of us. Death is the natural fruit of sin, an immanent punishment. Man chose to be alienated from God, but having no life in himself and by himself, he dies. Yet there is no sin and, therefore, no death in Christ. He accepts to die only by love for us. He wants to assume and to share our human condition to the end. He accepts the punishment of our nature, as He assumed the whole burden of human predicament. He dies because He has truly identified Himself with us, has indeed taken upon Himself the tragedy of man's life. His death is the ultimate revelation of His compassion and love. And because His dying is love, compassion and cosuffering, in His death the very nature of death is changed. From punishment it becomes the radiant act of love and forgiveness, the end of alienation and solitude. Condemnation is transformed into forgiveness...

And, finally, His death is a saving death because it destroys the very source of death: evil. By accepting it in love, by giving Himself to His murderers and permitting their apparent victory, Christ reveals that, in reality, this victory is the total and decisive defeat of Evil. To be victorious Evil must annihilate the Good, must prove itself to be the ultimate truth about life, discredit the Good and, in one word, show its own superiority. But throughout the whole Passion it is Christ and He alone who triumphs. The Evil can do nothing against Him, for it cannot make Christ accept Evil as truth. Hypocrisy is revealed as Hypocrisy, Murder as Murder, Fear as Fear, and as Christ silently moves towards the Cross and the End, as the human tragedy reaches its climax, His triumph, His victory over the Evil, His glorification become more and more obvious. And at each step this victory is acknowledged, confessed, proclaimed -- by the wife of Pilate, by Joseph, by the crucified thief, by the centurion. And as He dies on the Cross having accepted the ultimate horror of death: absolute solitude (My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me!?), nothing remains but to confess that "truly this was the Son of God!..." And, thus, it is this Death, this Love, this obedience, this fulness of Life that destroy what made Death the universal destiny. "And the graves were opened..." (Matthew 27:52) Already the rays of resurrection appear.

Such is the double mystery of Holy Friday, and its services reveal it and make us participate in it. On the one hand, there is the constant emphasis on the Passion of Christ as the sin of all sins, the crime of all crimes. Throughout Matins during which the twelve Passion readings make us follow step by step the sufferings of Christ, at the Hours (which replace the Divine Liturgy: for the interdiction to celebrate Eucharist on this day means that the sacrament of Christ's Presence does not belong to "this world" of sin and darkness, but is the sacrament of the "world to come") and finally, at Vespers, the service of Christ's burial the hymns and readings are full of solemn accusations of those, who willingly and freely decided to kill Christ, justifying this murder by their religion, their political loyalty, their practical considerations and their professional obedience.

But, on the other hand, the sacrifice of love which prepares the final victory is also present from the very beginning. From the first Gospel reading (John 13:31) which begins with the solemn announcement of Christ: "Now is the Son of Man glorified and in Him God is glorified" to the stichera at the end of Vespers -- there is the increase of light, the slow growth of hope and certitude that "death will trample down death..."

When Thou, the Redeemer of all,
hast been laid for all in the new tomb,
Hades, the respecter of none, saw Thee and crouched in fear.
The bars broke, the gates were shattered,
the graves were opened, the dead arose.
Then Adam, thankfully rejoicing, cried out to Thee:
Glory to Thy condescension, O Merciful Master.

And when, at the end of Vespers, we place in the center of the Church the image of Christ in the tomb, when this long day comes to its end, we know that we are at the end of the long history of salvation and redemption. The Seventh Day, the day of rest, the blessed Sabbath comes and with it -- the revelation of the Life-giving Tomb.

(This article was taken from the DRE publication Holy Week: A Liturgical Explanation from the Orthodox Church in America.)

Fr Christopher Foley 9/1/06 Fr Christopher Foley 9/1/06

“O Most Strange Wonder”

It all begins with an idea.

Fr. Christopher Foley

September 2006

O Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance.
Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians
over their adversaries, and by virtue of Thy Cross,
preserve Thy habitation.

(Troparion Tone 1)

This is the first line from one of the stanzas of the Praises sung at Vigil of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This sums up the totality of the message of the cross. It is the convergence of many things. Over the centuries the Cross has been the center of our Christian faith, and, unfortunately has also been sorely misunderstood by some. What is this Cross that we sing hymns to on this blessed feast? What is this Cross that St. Paul preaches and says is the power of God? Why would the Church commemorate the finding of this Cross by Sts. Constantine and Helen and sing hymns to a device of torture, an inanimate object?

What the Cross Is Not

What does it mean when we pray for the Lord to "grant victories to the Orthodox Christians over their adversaries?" There has been a tendency in modern times to disregard any allusions to the cross having to do with smashing enemies. Unfortunately, if we take all of these out of our hymnody and worship we miss an important element of the cross - the cross of our Lord has the power to crush sin, death, and the Devil. This is what we mean when we sing hymns about destroying our enemies by the cross. Everything is to be understood in a Christo-centric way. When we think of the Psalms of David, we can also apply this same way of reading. Though David may have been writing about real experiences of enemies trying to hunt him down and where he prays for deliverance from those enemies, we now read them in the Church as God delivering us from our enemies that wage war against our souls and bodies - the passions - pride, lust, greed, and all manner of evil. This is what we mean when we pray for deliverance over our adversaries and the preservation of our life, or habitation.

Nor is the cross some sort of talisman or good luck charm that we use as some sort of magic to bring us blessings, wealth, deliverance, or power. The cross is always tied to a personal encounter with the suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord, as well as our co-crucifixion with Him. As St. Paul says, "I am crucified with Christ, . It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Christ Himself says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mk. 8:34). There is no Christianity without the cross, and no cross without voluntary suffering. Christ bids us to come and die: die to our sins and be killed, or co-crucified, with Him. It is here that we participate in His death and are resurrected to true life in Him. It is through our baptism that we die to our sins and are raised to newness of life. This is actualized in our real life on this earth in the Church. The power of the cross lies in the revelation of the God-man, Christ, suffering and transforming this into life. Death has lost its power.

What the Cross Is

The cross of our Lord is so central to our salvation. It is on this tree of shame that the God-man willingly and voluntarily went to His passion and death for our sakes. He reversed everything that mankind had messed up. It is the reversal of the sin of Adam. We continue in this sin because we choose to miss the mark of the image and likeness of God every day. When Adam partook of the fruit of the tree, man died. The wood of the cross is often compared to the tree in the garden of Eden. "The tree has been healed by the Tree." Now in Christ, the heavenly fruit who hung on another Tree, has made it possible our salvation. This is seen in the hymns from this feast:

O most strange wonder!
The cross which carried the most high as a
cluster of grapes full of life
is seen today exalted high above the earth.
Through the cross we are all drawn to God
and death has been forever swallowed up.
O undefiled wood, through thee we enjoy the
immortal fruit of Eden as we glorify Christ.

The cross is always linked to Christ, the one who triumphed over death and weakness in order to save the world. It is here that God is revealed in His glory. In icons of the crucifixion the plaque above Christ reads: the King of Glory. We hymn, glorify, praise, and venerate the cross at this feast for what was accomplished and revealed on this life-bearing wood. We pronounce with boldness the Gospel - through death, resurrection - through suffering, life. This is
the preaching of the Holy Apostles that has been preserved through the Holy Spirit in the life and worship of the Church. We actualize this in our own lives.

Thanks be to God who has deemed to save us and reveal Himself to us! "But now the cross is exalted! Today the power is realized in us” (from Litya Stichera at Vespers)!

Various quotes to dwell on with this feast:

"For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God!" I Corinthians 1:18
"But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." I Corinthians 1:23,24
"When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM." John 8:28
"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." John 3:14,15
"And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly." Mark 8:31, 32a
"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before it shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth... Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." Isaiah 53:7,10
"O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." Luke 24:25-27
"Thus if you wish to see the mystery of the Lord look at Abel who is likewise slain, at Isaac who is likewise tied up, at Joseph who is likewise traded, at Moses who is likewise exposed, at David who is likewise hunted down, at the prophets who likewise suffer for the sake of Christ." St. Melito of Sardis
"St. Gregory of Nyssa argued that the Passion of Christ is not 'evidence of his weakness,' but evidence of 'the surpassing act of power, by which this was possible,' so that 'it is necessary to honor the God revealed through the Cross just as the Father is honored.' So far is the Passion from being a mark of weakness, for St. Gregory, that 'the God revealed through the Cross' is not only honored, but honored equally with the Father." Fr. John Behr.

Titles for the Cross from the Hymns of the Feast:

banner of godliness
gate of paradise
protection of the faithful
might of the Church
enemy of demons
invincible weapon of peace
sign of true joy
help and strength of the faithful
power of the righteous
majesty of priests
shepherd's rod
guide to the blind
physician of the sick
resurrection of the dead
hope of Christians
guide to the lost
haven of the bestormed
confirmation of the universe
guardian of the whole earth
beauty of the Church
strength of kings
support of the faithful
glory of angels
wonder of demons
life-giving tree
strange wonder
undefiled wood
Divine ladder
life-creating wood
redemption of Adam
confirmation of sufferers
glory of the faithful
protection of the righteous
salvation of all the saints
Divine footstool
blessed tree
healing tree
driver away of demons