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:

Monday, August 22, 2022

A Servant is not Greater than His Master

These words from our Lord are found in the Gospel of St. John, Chapter 13, in which our Lord has gathered with the twelve for the Last Supper.  The message comes as Jesus is washing the feet of His beloved Apostles.  The ending to the verse adds, Nor is he who is sent greater than He who sent him.  

We bring forward these words as we ponder the teaching today from St. Paul in his first letter to the people of Corinth (1Cor 4:9-16).  In this letter, St. Paul pointedly instructs his spiritual children on how, once one chooses to follow where the Spirit leads, one is subject to the same rejection that our Lord experienced.

St. Paul carries his spiritual children to places where he denigrates himself while aggrandizing them.  We are weak, but you are strong.  We are dishonored, you are distinguished.  Is the saint purposefully lauding them to build up their egos?  No, he is leading them on the path of humility, and showing them that the way of the Cross is not an easy way.

St. Paul details for his spiritual children the things that he, the Apostles in general, and those who were evangelizing the faith had to endure in their ministries.  We see in his description the “least of our Lord’s brethren” from Matthew Chapter 25 repeated in his words.  He speaks to hunger, thirst, being poorly clothed, beaten (prisoners), and homeless—all characteristics of those whom our Lord in Matthew 25 encourages us (and St. Paul is teaching the people of Corinth) to care for.

But if this is a veiled reference to Matthew 25 and the least of our Lord’s brethren, St. Paul then takes a turn that shows how and why caring for the needs of such people has merit.

We labor with our own hands.  We must not be judgmental of the merits of the needy based on appearance.  My father (of blessed memory) spoke of men in the 1930’s who would hitch rides on empty train boxcars, moving from town to town looking for some one or some place that would exchange their work for food or pay.  The word in that day was “hobo” - today’s homeless.

Being reviled, we bless.  We have no way of knowing how those who are poor, those who are the beggars of our day, might pray for US, the people who give them change, or a sandwich, or even those who give them nothing, who perhaps need their prayers the most.

Being persecuted, we endure.  When one has little to nothing, what remains except to continue trying to find the way out of one’s emptiness?

Being defamed, we entreat.  Webster defines the word entreat to have the synonym “beg”.  St. Paul is defining himself as a beggar, aligning himself with the same people we see who are in need around us—in ever greater numbers—today.

We have been made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things until now.  Offscouring—defined as an outcast in one sense, but in another as refuse, matter that is vile and despised.

But a servant is not greater than his Master.  The things St. Paul is detailing as that which those who are serving the Church and or Lord are enduring are nowhere near as significant as the reviling and beating and defamation endured by our Lord.

And so if we are to truly be His followers, who are we to look down on the needy, the least of His brethren?  Who are we to think that we deserve something better?  Who are we to place ourselves on some kind of pedestal, thinking we deserve the best and finest this world has to offer?

St. Paul even teaches us the answer to these questions.

Eph 5:1—Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.


Tuesday, August 2, 2022

Build Wisely

People in the world, when they erect a luxurious house, give themselves no rest at night, and at the end of the day they toil and plan, laboring until they have achieved their objective; and such is the longing that fills them that their mind is wholly occupied in this and in considering how the roof may be well covered, or how the floor, adorned with many different marbles with every other form of elegance, will offer lovers of fine sights the most pleasing appearance.  But if someone were to wish to tear them away from that care, they would be more distressed, as though they were being seriously wronged.  

But we. when we are building not a corruptible house but an incorruptible one, one not made out of stones and wood, but one skillfully constructed from spiritual graces, how can we be idle and come far below these others in zeal?  How should this not be the greatest of wrongs?  

That other house harbors people who love the flesh, and when it has passed through many masters it will be pulled down and deserted.  The other knows that it welcomes the Holy Spirit, since we are a temple of the living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in us, as the living Apostle says.

- St. Theodore the Studite