Church of the Advent

04/03/2026

Friday in Passion week: Our Lady of Sorrows

Our Lady, the new Eve and Mother of Life, through her assent gave her flesh for God's incarnation. When his flesh was pierced for our transgressions, she stood by the Cross, willingly yielding back the blessed Fruit to the true Tree of Life, as Simeon's prophecy was fulfilled and a sword pierced her soul.

03/29/2026

“But Jesus hid himself…” -St. John 8:59
The veils of Passiontide reset our eyes and prepare us to behold anew the Bridegroom as he will be revealed to us on Good Friday, ready to consummate his love for his Bride.

03/01/2026

This handy visual provides some useful imagery for the season of Lent. At the center and dominating the picture is the Cross, because this entire season has at its center the Cross. The steps leadi…

02/27/2026

Hear how early the Gospel came to the British Isles, and of their first martyr, our Patron, St. Alban:

Dcn. Seraphim begins The Great Roodscreen Podcast with the legend of Joseph of Arimathea's arrival at Glastonbury, the miraculous Holy Thorn, and the foundin...

02/25/2026

As we begin this season of Lent, it's crucial to our spiritual health that we remember our complete and total contingency: we didn't create ourselves, and we can do nothing to keep ourselves in existence. Our soul may be required of us at any time (Luke 12:20). This, coupled with a sense of the unfathomable power of God, is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). May we all, beginning here, move through humility, the fear of the Lord, and self-denial to the joining in with the plans and work of the Lord as his friends. Blessed Lent to all.

Remember, O man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.

02/15/2026

On Sexagesima Sunday, the office of Matins combines the story of Noah with a reflection by St. Gregory the Great on the Mass Gospel, the parable of the Sower. The Church is teaching us that Christ is the true builder of the saving Ark (the Church), the true patriarch of the people of a new world, and the true planter of a new garden, sowing his word liberally into the world, teaching us all to tend the soil of our heart so that his word may grow in us.

02/07/2026

Our journey to Pascha begins this Sunday with Septuagesima! It's time, at this early hour, to begin laboring in the vineyard of spiritual discipline and asceticism so that our Lenten journey is holy and profitable for our healing.

01/24/2026

Hello all. Due to ice on the roads in Atlanta Sunday morning, there will be no services on 1/25, either for our WR Morning Prayer or Divine Liturgy with St. Elias Orthodox Church. Please stay safe!

01/06/2026

Happy Epiphany!

Text: O sola magnarum urbium
by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius; tr. Edward Caswall

1 Earth has many a noble city;
Bethl'hem, thou dost all excel:
out of thee the Lord from heaven
came to rule his Israel.

2 Fairer than the sun at morning
was the star that told his birth,
to the world its God announcing
seen in fleshly form on earth.

3 Eastern sages at his cradle
make oblations rich and rare;
see them give in deep devotion,
gold and frankincense and myrrh.

4 Sacred gifts of mystic meaning:
incense doth their God disclose,
gold the King of kings proclaimeth,
myrrh his sepulcher foreshows.

5 Jesu, whom the Gentiles worshipped
at thy glad Epiphany,
unto thee with God the Father
and the Spirit glory be.

12/25/2025

Merry Christmas, friends and family of The Advent!

The season of waiting and anticipation called Advent has brought us finally to Christmas. Though utterly gutted and secularized in the culture that surrounds us, we in the Holy Church mark this day as the day in which our Savior's human face is first revealed in this world, the day when--9 months after March 25 (the Annunciation and conception of the Word of God in the Womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary)--the silent Word is born into the world he sustains, to the wonder of all nature. Heaven and nature truly sing, as the Angels hymn their 'Gloria' and lowly shepherds rejoice at the sight.

The true Ark of God has come to Bethlehem (Bet Leḥem, or "House of Bread) carrying in her the true Bread of Life (St. John 6:41-58). Before he would emerge from a cave as a tomb, he is born into a cave from a Womb. The ox and donkey know their Master's crib (Isa. 1:3). The shepherds from the fields meet the Good Shepherd. And as St. Augustine puts it:

“He by whom all things were made was made one of all things. The Son of God by the Father without a mother became the Son of man by a mother without a father. The Word Who is God before all time became flesh at the appointed time. The maker of the sun was made under the sun. He Who fills the world lays in a manger, great in the form of God but tiny in the form of a servant; this was in such a way that neither was His greatness diminished by His tininess, nor was His tininess overcome by His greatness.”

Christ is born! Glorify him!

12/25/2025

Merry Christmas all

Gloria In Profundis by G.K. ChestertonThere has fallen on earth for a tokenA god too great for the sky.He has burst out of all things and brokenThe bounds of...

12/23/2025

Tonight the last of the 7 ancient O Antiphons is sung at Evensong. Enjoy this playlist of videos expounding on each antiphon and what they mean:

O Wisdom, that comest out of the mouth of the Most High, that reachest from one end to another, and orderest all things mightily and sweetly: come to teach u...