Welcome to Saint Herman's, Hudson, Ohio

This blog is a partial compilation of the messages, texts, readings, and prayers from our small community. We pray that it will be used by our own people, to their edification. And if you happen by and are inclined to read, give the glory to God!

The blog title, "Will He Find Faith on the Earth?" is from Luke 18:8, the "Parable of the Persistent Widow." It overlays the icon of the Last Judgment, an historical event detailed in Matthew Chapter 25, for which we wait as we pray in the Nicean Creed.

We serve the Holy Orthodox cycle of services in contemporary English. Under the omophorion of His Eminence Metropolitan Joseph of the Bulgarian Patriarchal Diocese of the USA, Canada and Australia, we worship at 5107 Darrow Road in Hudson, Ohio (44236). If you are in the area, please join us for worship!

Regular services include:
Sunday Divine Liturgy 10AM (Sept 1 - May 31)
930AM (June 1 - Aug 31)
Vespers each Saturday 6PM

We pray that you might join us for as many of these services as possible! We are open, and we welcome inside the Church all visitors. See our Parish web page:

Friday, July 22, 2022

"Because of Their Unbelief"

St. Matthew records in Mat 13:53-58 that our Lord was rejected by His own people, the people of Nazareth.  And he ends the chapter by saying, "Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief."

St. Theophan says this about this passage of Scripture.

Arriving in Nazareth, the Lord found no faith there.  His visible simplicity hindered the Nazarenes from seeing His invisible glory and Divinity.  Does not the same occur with a Christian?  Christian dogmas are very simple in appearance; but for the mind which enters into them, they represent an all-embracing harmonious system in and of themselves, which was not - nor could ever be - generated by any creature's mind.  Proud-mindedness, casting a fleeting glance at the simplicity of the Gospel, is repelled by it and begins to build his own house of knowledge, which he deems enormous and full of broad horizons.  It is in fact no more than a towering house of cards, and the horizons are no more than mirages, phantom products of a heated imagination.  But there is no point in telling him.  He and his brothers are ready with their critical attacks to immediately cast anyone who tries to dissuade them from the mountain into the abyss, but the truth always passes unharmed through their midst and goes on to other souls capable of receiving it.

We must ever seek the help of the Holy Spirit, for discernment comes through Him.  Human views when instructed by the Spirit are founded in His Truth ("the Spirit of truth, Who is everywhere present, filling all things...").  When human views are founded on human intellect alone, truth fails to be the absolute that is Godly truth and moves to relativism.

Where we find our world today.

Let us, the faithful, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, let us not have Him approach us, His own people, and find us not just lacking in faith, but having NO faith!

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