All Saints Homilies

Fr. Pat contrasts the childhood dedication and life of Mary with that of Hannibal.

Putting on the panoply, the full armor of God.

Jesus is our Holy One, our Mediator, and our Brother.

We imagine that life is like football or basketball. You play until the clock runs out. But life is not like that at all. There is no set time for the clock to run out that you know about.

Fr. Pat considers the case for iconoclasm, for the veneration of icons, and the settling of the issue.

Mark 2:1-12

Most of the sources in Holy Scripture, and most emphatically the Psalms, look upon Israel's time in the desert as a period of unmitigated tragedy. Israel was consistently unfaithful. However, the prophets Hosea and Jeremiah chose to see things differently, which is a source of strength and consolation for us today.

Preaching on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), Fr. Pat urges us to always maintain a proper perspective.

In this vesperal homily, Fr. Pat preaches from 1 John 2:1-6, about the true blessed assurance of our salvation.

Fr. Pat preaches from Numbers 32:1-27.

Last week a former vice-president and now presidential candidate said on the campaign trail, "We choose science over fiction; we choose truth over facts.” Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon reflects upon truth vs. facts, and the role memory plays in this.

Fr. Pat argues that the doctrine of the Incarnation must dominate anthropology.

Fr. Pat compares the march of the Israelites through the desert, the Church’s march through history, and the Christian's daily walk.

On the Sunday of the Holy Cross, when Jesus asks us “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Fr. Pat shares reflections on faith and its relationship to the soul.

Fr. Pat looks at the life and character of Joseph the Betrothed: a model of God, and another David.

On the Sunday of All Saints Fr. Pat looks at three aspects of Christian holiness.

Preaching from Acts 4:32-37, Fr. Pat takes a closer look at the Apostle Barnabas.

On Forgiveness Sunday and the start of Great Lent, Fr. Pat encourages us to rededicate ourselves to a serious life of prayer.

Fr. Pat takes a closer look at Rabbi Gamaliel, teacher of St. Paul, and at Gamaliel’s advice to the Sanhedrin concerning how to deal with the Apostles, who in disobedience to the Sanhedrin would not stop teaching in Jesus’ name.

In this homily from Agape Vespers 2021, Fr. Pat explains how the task of the Church is to share with the world the message of the Cross; not as an abstraction, but as something they can reach out and feel.

The idea that all things came from God the Father was an idea that fell on the Greco-Roman intellectual world with the force of a bomb. It still does. Fr. Pat preaches from 1 Corinthians 8:6.

In this Palm Sunday homily, Fr. Pat looks briefly into the testimony of three spokesmen for the apostolic memory with respect to the passion and death of Christ.

On the 5th Sunday of Lent, Fr. Pat preaches on the request by James and John from Mark 10: "Grant us to sit, one at Thy right hand and one at Thy left, in Thy glory.”

In this homily preached the fourth Sunday of Great Lent 2014, Fr. Pat looks at the story from Mark 9 of Jesus driving a demon out of a young boy, and makes three observations of what this story teaches about faith.

A meditation on Christ’s humanity for the Third Sunday of Lent; the Scripture readings are Mark 8:34-9:1 and Hebrews 4:14-5:10. Fr. Pat preached this sermon in 2011.

Fr. Pat preaches from 1 Kings 18:42-19:18, about Elijah, who, after his fearless encounter with the priests of Baal, is now isolated and filled with self-pity.

In this homily from Pentecost Sunday, Fr. Pat reflects with us on three points about the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in our lives.

Fr. Pat preaches from Isaiah 2:1-9, in which Isaiah delivers two oracles: the first about the ideal Jerusalem which is to come and the second about the actual Jerusalem which exists in Isaiah’s time.

Fr. Pat offers pre-Lenten reflections on Hanna, the mother of Samuel and Anna the Prophetess.

In this meditation on Isiah 1:16-31, Fr. Pat reflects upon the Bible’s prophetic voice on behalf of the poor.

Fr. Pat preaches from Isaiah 1:1-15. This homily was given at Vespers on November 13, 2010.

The Cross is the key to unlocking God’s will for us in every stage of our lives. But at every stage, we may find ourselves resistant to the word of the Cross. And just when we imagine we have grasped what it means to be a Christian, we discover, perhaps with shock, that we’ve hardly begun.

What is there about the human being that must be said if we are to take the Last Judgment seriously? Fr. Pat explores this question.

Fr. Pat contrasts the Prodigal Son and Esau, and offers thoughts on the mystery of repentance.

In this meditation from a vespers service in January of 2010, Fr. Pat looks at Numbers 20, in which the people of Israel complain to Moses about their situation.

Israel recognized no possibility of conflict between God’s will fixed in the Torah and the more fluid guidance He provided in the cloud and the pillar. Fr. Pat offers reflections from Numbers Chapter 9.

We bear within our very flesh the hope of which the Apostle Paul speaks; therefore there is going to be something very fleshly about our transformation. Fr. Pat preaches from Colossians 3.

Strictly speaking, the Orthodox Church does not celebrate doctrines, it celebrates events. On this homily given on the Sunday before Theophany, Fr Pat considers the event of Jesus's Incarnation.

The Christian faith is based on an event that took place in a specific place at a specific time in history; God instructs us through history, and we are to be learners. Fr. Pat gave this homily on Christmas Eve several years ago.

Isaiah's prophetic vision of a Child, a son of David who was to come and Who would be God with us, Immanuel.

The bishops at the Seventh Ecumenical Council reasoned that the legitimacy, indeed, the necessity of icons in the church was an organic inference from the thesis that God became visible in the Man Jesus of Nazareth. Fr. Pat gave this homily on The Sunday of Orthodoxy, 2020.

A look at the journey of the human race as such, the meaning of the incarnation, and the fulfillment of the great promise of Israel’s prophets.

We all have schedules and agendas, and we’re mindful of our own and of those with whom we interact. Using stories from the Gospels and Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Fr. Pat considers with us God's schedules and hidden agenda.

Matthew 25:31-46, the Gospel passage for the Sunday of the Last Judgment, is about the judgment of history, meaning the judgment to which history itself will be subjected. Fr. Pat delivered this homily on February 23, 2020.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the grace of God comes into the soul and transforms it. Fr. Pat gives three major examples of the Holy Spirit’s transformation of our instinctual human capacities.

Throughout the book of Ephesians (and elsewhere) the Apostle Paul uses the phrase “in Christ.” Based on Ephesians 5:8-19, Fr. Pat looks at some practical ways to live a life in Christ.

Mark’s account of the Lord’s questions about baptism and the cup (Mark 10:32-45) are especially poignant for the Christians at Rome, who are thereby instructed about an important dimension of their own participation in the sacraments.