Sermon for the Baptism of Christ – 9th January 2022: Isaiah 43, 1-7; Acts 8, 14-17; Luke 3, 15-17, 21-22)

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

During these few weeks we are required to have a degree of -and maybe a degree in – liturgical dexterity. What do I mean? The feast days we celebrate over the 40 days from the time of the Nativity of Our Lord, jump backwards and forwards, and don’t follow the chronology of Christ’s life, which I am sure we would all feel more comfortable with.

Two weeks ago we were in the cave with its stable canopy, with a new-born baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes. This was an ‘earthy’ event, surrounded by animal noise and smell, straw and a complete lack of dignity and glory as we normally understand it. The birth of a king would normally be in a different location, and with different more luminary circumstances. This is more what we would expect.

St. Gregory Palamas says, ‘However great the heaven of heavens may be may be or the upper waters which form a roof over the celestial regions, or any heavenly place, state or order, they are no more marvelous or honourable than the cave, the manger, the water sprinkled on the infant and His swaddling clothes. For nothing done by God from the beginning of time was more beneficial to all or more divine than Christ’s nativity.’ (Homily 58).

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LOGOS LANGUAGE OF LOVE SECOND SUNDAY OF CHRISTMAS 2/01/22: READINGS: Ephesians 1:3-14, John 1 1-18.

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s. Athens

May I speak in the name of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit  AMEN

HAPPY NEW YEAR kali chronia IN A SECULAR SENSE for we celebrated the church’s new year with the start of Advent back in November. Today’s gospel reading takes us back to the reading set for Carol services and Christmas – for we are still in the liturgical Christmas season before we move into Epiphany this week.

So today we are thinking about beginnings and endings and the advent book by Maggi Dawn I followed this year has just this as its title. I probably do not have to repeat the beginning of St John’s gospel, ‘In the beginning was the Word and how that very first verse takes us back to Genesis 1. If you were to begin your story how would you start? Where does a storyteller begin?

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Sermon for the feast of St Stephen – 26th December 2021:ACTS 7: 51-60, MATTHEW 23:34-39,Galatians 2 16b- 20

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

STICKS AND STONES

Today is Boxing Day right?  When just to confuse things we don’t do any boxing but traditionally things were boxed up to be distributed to the poor. Today we celebrate Emmanuel in the Orthodox calendar and St Stephanos is celebrated tomorrow. For us, this the first Sunday of Christmas falls on St Stephen’s day this year. The famous carol Good King Wenceslas, that we sang at the beginning of this service, is sometimes only thing people know or remember on this festival. I have been fortunate enough to visit Prague and Wenceslas Square .And no I won’t start singing.

As a deacon this feast is close to my heart. Stephen is a role model for all deacons – a protipo. Let us remind ourselves on St Stephen’s day of his story and how he became the first Christian martyr- μαρτυρας –literally witness, we still use it in Modern Greek legal language.  We remember Stephen’s death as a witness to Christ, the Way, Truth and Life not on a cross but under a storm of stones and rocks( ελιθοβολουν).As we remember and relearn from Stephen’s story for our times, let us also consider it in light of the Christ child, whose birth we celebrated yesterday and the crucified Μessiah and in the context of the early church. Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York comments on the juxtaposition of these two great days and how they look forward to the cross.

In the early life of the Christian church all the followers of Jesus, not yet called Christians, attend the Temple. They are taught by the twelve Apostles, break bread and pray together. Those who own property and possessions sell what they have and everything is held for the good of all people according to their need. But it isn’t long before a dispute arises over the distribution of food. There were two groups of Jews in Jerusalem at the time those who had been born and raised there and spoke Aramaic and those who were known as Hellenists who spoke Greek as their first or second language and who were immigrants from neighbouring countries.

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Audio Sermon preached at St Paul’s Athens on Christmas Day 2021

Fr Leonard Doolan

Sermon preached at St Paul’s Athens on Christmas Day 2021: Isaiah 9, 2-7; Luke 2, 1-14

Fr Leonard Doolan

‘He is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’. (Is 9, 2-6).  ‘To you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, who is the messiah, the Lord’. (Luke 2, 11)

Both the prophet Isiah and St. Luke the Evangelist present to us what we might expect. The language, the vision, the expectation fits with the sort of power and authority that religious people want to see in and from God.

Then unexpectedly, ‘You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ (Luke 2, 11). The contrast is stark and should take us by complete surprise were it not all so familiar in the annual Christmas story.

The paradox at the heart of our faith is that God becomes flesh and face in a baby – Jesus, born in Bethlehem. ‘Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, have mercy upon us’ we say in the prayer called the Trisagion.

It is one enormous risk that God takes – perhaps even greater than the risk of creating man and woman. God’s glory has the setting of straw and smell; God’s eternity has time and place and person; God’s mightiness cries in the night and needs the love and care of a mum and dad. God’s immortality is moving immediately, relentlessly towards the mystery of the cross.

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Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Advent – 19th December 2021:Micah 5, 2-5; Heb 10, 5-10; Luke 1, 39-45.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Christmas Eve 18.00 – only on Zoom (see login details on website)

Christmas Morning: 10.00 in St. Paul’s Church

Last Sunday I quoted from Rowan Williams new book Looking East in Winter, (Bloomsbury 2021 p145) He says, paraphrasing someone else,  ‘the prophetic vision is… specifically the vision of all human flesh and every human face with the amazed attention that arises from the fact of God having become flesh and face.’ God in Christ, our Christmas narrative, is about God becoming flesh and face.

These previous two weeks in the Advent season we have had the luxury to dwell on the person of John the Baptizer. We have seen in the scriptures for these two Sundays the challenge and the dis-comfort of the voice that cries in the wilderness – the message of the one who prepares the way for the Lord’s coming. It is not easy reading, and it is a challenge to the preacher to bring into high relief, especially when we are all thinking about Christmas celebrations, the message of repentance and indeed of judgement.

John is the person, the voice, and the face of prophecy, being rooted in the tradition of the old promise, but who invites us to greet the arrival of the new promise in Jesus. John’s is the hard face of the Advent season.

If John is the hard face of this season, it is Mary’s that is the soft face of Advent, and we look to the expressions of her face on this Sunday nearest to Christmas.

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Audio Sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent – 19th December 2021

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Advent 4 2021 – Sermon

Sermon Preached at St Paul’s Church on the Third Sunday of Advent – 12th December 2021:ZEPHANIAH: 3:14-20, LUKE 3:7-18, PHILIPPIANS 4:4-7

Deacon Christine Saccali

PASS THE PARCEL 

I speak in the name of the triune God Father, Son and Holy Spirit AMEN

I remember well a childhood game usually played at birthday parties called Pass the Parcel, do you know it? If you don’t, then it goes like this: the children sit round in a circle, on the floor, and music is played. A large wrapped parcel is passed round until the music stops whereupon that child opens one layer of paper only to reveal yet more layers often of different coloured paper. There is much anticipation and squealing. In a later version sweets would drop out and be grabbed in a free for all.

A bit like the updated versions of luxury advent calendars which have upstaged the simple picture windows of my youth. The new ones seem to me to be missing the point of Advent. So many people glide over it or through it unlike Lent. But Advent is a gift to us to pause and reflect before the great feast of Christmas. We do not have to open all its layers at once there is a time of watching and waiting and savouring what is to come while enjoying the four weeks of Advent.

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Sermon preached for the congregation at Thessaloniki on the Third Sunday of Advent – 12 December 2021: Zephaniah 3, 14-end; Luke 3, 7-18

Fr Leonard Doolan

I begin by recognizing that today is the feast day of St. Spiridon, who is the patron saint of the island of Corfu. When we had our Archdeaconry Synod in Corfu in October I had the privilege of attending a Holy Liturgy in St. Spiridon Church in Corfu Town, where his remains are laid, and the presiding Orthodox priest was my friend Archimandrite Ignatios Soteriadis. This church has a palpable sense of holiness, but yet of easy accessibility, and the local people and shop keepers just wander in and out of the holy temple, as if Spiridon were among them as a friend and neighbour. Those who have gathered in Thessaoloniki this morning have are looking at an icon of St. Spiridon on the holy table.

We make our way through Advent with all the rich themes and images of this holy season – and we are forced to sort things out in our hearts, minds and lives by the scriptures appropriate to this season, and to the challenge of these images and themes – and we get a second chance to encounter John the Baptizer – who stands for no nonsense. Now there is a theme in itself!

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Audio Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Advent – 5th December 2021

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens