A terrible saying of modern feminists goes something like this: "well behaved women rarely make history." On this Feast of the Annunciation, we celebrate the humble obedience of the mother of God whose assent to the will of God opened the gate to our salvation and healed the broken communion between God and His creation. Truly let us praise this well behaved woman who all of history owes a debt!

We've all heard about denying ourselves and following Christ. Today, that Gospel passage is often used to suggest that we must put our intangible wants and desires second to following Christ. Taking up our cross is said to mean doing the hard things, even when we don't want to. But when Christ urged the faithful to deny themselves and take up the cross, his words carried a far more weighty obligation: to give one's self up to mockings and scourgings and literally to die for Christ and the Gospel. This call was heeded by the apostles and martyrs until they gained their crowns of victory. Denying ourselves has next to nothing to do with our feelings, emotions or desires. New martyrs live even in this day. Let us not permit our relative material comfort in this land to obscure the true, hard meaning of the Gospel.

On the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, we remember his defense of hesychasm and the ability of the faithful to experience God directly in his energies. In this week's homily, Bp. Irineos argues that this direct engagement with the divine is the bulwark against secular atheism and that the west's abandonment of Christian culture stems directly from its rejection of the Palamite teachings and its embrace of a scholastic approach to God.

On the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the Liturgy ends with the Rite of Orthodoxy, which consists of an Icon Procession, and when a bishop is serving, the reading of the Anathemas. In lieu of the regular homily, today's podcast starts with the reading of the Anathemas and concludes with a brief commentary from Bp. Irineos one of the themes of the Lenten Gospel readings.

As we prepare to enter the Lenten fast, Bp. Irineos shares some stories of the Desert Fathers and their thoughts on fasting, to the end that we might consider why we fast, and what the various objects of our fast.

On the Sunday of the Last Judgment, Bp. Irineos looks at the Gospel account of the Last Judgment and discusses how the bases of the judgment align with Holy Scripture and how we understand being judged according to our deeds while understanding that we are saved by the mercy of God and not on the merit of our works.

Bp. Irineos looks at the Parable of the Prodigal son from the perspective of the son and his elder brother. While much of the discussion of this parable focuses on the prodigal son, an important warning must be understood in the envious deeds of his elder brother.

On the occasion of Zacchaeus Sunday, Bp. Irineos discusses the Gospel account of Zacchaeus's encounter with Christ and how his repentance relates to the preceding account of the rich young ruler.

On the day the Church remembers St. Maximos the Confessor, Bp. Irineos praises this simple monk's refusal to surrender to heresy even at great person cost and physical torture.

The Gospel Reading for the Healing of the Ten Lepers (Luke 17:11–19) is instructive on many different levels. Bp. Irineos examines today's reading as a tale of ingratitude, as a foretelling of the acceptance of the Gospels by the Gentiles, and as an allegory for the dealing with false teaching from those who claim to follow Christ. Glory to God who provides for our instruction in His Holy Gospels!