New Skete Monasteries News

Reflections by Brother Luke             Celebrating Christmas in America is so familiar to all of us that we can easily be swept up by all the fanfare. With Christmas carols on the radio and TV specials filled with warm and romantic images of holiday cheer, we are hard-wired to respond to all these influences without even thinking about it. Even in church, that 19th-century British creation of “Lessons and Carols” has become a standard for Christmas liturgy in many churches and a staple of radio broadcasting. When I first came to New Skete in 1995, Brother James used to joke with newcomers that our celebration of Christmas would not have any of the familiar carols, so, “Get ready, you won’t recognize anything!”  For me that wasn’t totally true, since I had been going to the Orthodox Church for my entire adult life, and I was familiar with many of the traditional Christmas hymns used in the Orthodox Church. But for some, ...

  By Brother Christopher “Always be joyful, pray always, give thanks to God for all things...” 1 Thessalonians 5:17             Thanksgiving is a national holiday, one we collectively celebrate to give thanks for all of God’s blessings. But in thinking about the deeper significance of what we celebrate, I wonder if we often don’t keep the holiday on a superficial level: God gives us good things—blessings—and these are the things that we are grateful for. From a Christian perspective, however, the meaning of thanksgiving goes so much deeper, and it carries with it a profound challenge: we are to give thanks to God for all things. All things. How do we do that precisely? honestly? In a like manner, when Jesus tells us in the Gospel “do not worry,” how do we do that? Is it really possible? At face value, it can sound simplistic, pie-in-sky, naive. We know that we live in a dangerous world. All we have to do is think of ...