St. Columba Orthodox Church

St. Columba Orthodox Church A welcoming congregation with traditional values, a western rite parish of the Antiochian Orthodox Church. St.

Sunday Mass at 9:30 am
Wednesday Mass 6:30 pm
Saturday Vespers at 5:30 pm

Who is Saint Columba? In the days before the great schism, when the Church in Britain was fully Orthodox, the Irish monk Columba became one of the first missionaries to Scotland. Columba came from a noble Irish family and was the founder of several churches and monasteries in Ireland. About 563, with several companions, he

established himself on the island of Iona where he founded a monastic center for the evangelization of Scotland. He succeeded in converting Brude, king of the Picts, and in 574 the new king of the Scots of Dal Riada came to Iona to be chrismated by Columba. Iona continued to be a center for Scottish Christianity until it was destroyed during the reformation. So it was that Columba became one of the founders of ancient British Orthodoxy. Columba's Parish celebrates the reinstitution in the twentieth century of British Orthodox tradition.

But Scripture Hath Concluded All Under Sin – Galatians 3, 22The Greek of the text seems stronger than the King James tra...
09/06/2026

But Scripture Hath Concluded All Under Sin – Galatians 3, 22

The Greek of the text seems stronger than the King James translation; συνέκλεισεν means imprisoned. We are shut up under the dominion of sin, which is why we need Jesus Christ to come and set us free. What’s the point of believing, people sometimes ask. The point of believing is experiencing that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, the glorious liberty of the children of God!

Even when we see Him as a baby wrapped in swaddling bands and held at the Virgin’s breast, still we believe Him to be th...
09/06/2026

Even when we see Him as a baby wrapped in swaddling bands and held at the Virgin’s breast, still we believe Him to be the God Who fills the universe – St Cyril of Alexandria

Today we celebrate the Mother of God, the Theotokos, this title which is really Christological shorthand, telling us abo...
09/05/2026

Today we celebrate the Mother of God, the Theotokos, this title which is really Christological shorthand, telling us about the identity of Jesus Christ, Who He is: God born of a woman.

As John of Antioch wrote to Nestorius: ‘To reject this title implies that the One Who has taken upon Himself our salvation is not God, and that God the Word is not the One Who manifested such an exceedingly great love for us in emptying Himself and taking upon Himself the form of a slave.’

‘But,’ John continues, ‘these are things that the divine Scriptures particularly affirm in connection with God’s great love for us; they declare that the pre-existent, eternal, and only-begotten Son of God descended in an ineffable manner to be born from the Virgin, according to the saying of the divine apostle, “God sent forth his Son, born of a woman”.’

And that is why we honour that same woman, Mary, because of her Son! Far from obscuring Him, she teaches us to worship Him and adore Him as God, eternally begotten from the Father, One with Him in every way: to say anything other than which is not a theological opinion but the vilest blasphemy.

So, therefore, let us confess the Virgin’s divine maternity, let us proclaim her to be indeed Theotokos, so that we may give true honour and worship to Her Divine Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Our God.

Today we celebrate a votive mass in honour of St Gregory the Great, who ascended the throne of Rome this day, September ...
09/03/2026

Today we celebrate a votive mass in honour of St Gregory the Great, who ascended the throne of Rome this day, September 3, in 590.

And we do this because it is St Gregory who gave us this liturgy which we now celebrate, though much of it was based on earlier materials, the work of the saints who preceded him, the work of saints designed to make us saints, transmitting to us their doctrine and teaching not in arid scholastic propositions, but in words of prayer.

If you want to know what it means to be western Orthodox look at our liturgy, look at what it tells us about God, and about ourselves, how we are to live in union with Him.

And that is what Orthodoxy is, living in union with God by the Son through the Holy Spirit; as St Gregory himself teaches in a homily for Pentecost: this feast, he says, celebrates how we become gods by adoption, gods united to God by love, the visible fire descending on the apostles a sign of the love burning in their hearts, a love we have come to share, a love which unites us also to God, but only if it is a genuine love, that is, one manifested in outward action. Probatio amoris exhibitio operis, Gregory says: the proof of love is the manifestation of works.

So, as we celebrate the great saint of our liturgy, let us give heed to his teaching. Let us give proof of our love by doing good, which is how we are most God-like and divine, since in His love God is always pouring out good on His creation.

Today we commemorate St Stephen of Hungary, this day fixed for his commemoration because it celebrates the deliverance o...
09/03/2026

Today we commemorate St Stephen of Hungary, this day fixed for his commemoration because it celebrates the deliverance of Buda from the Turks although Stephen himself died August 15 1083, having established his kingdom as a political power that was to endure almost a thousand years, until 1946, a kingdom that was solidly Christian, as still today the republic of Hungary continues to be.

Because of his piety, Stephen now he shares in the unending Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ, just as we all hope to share, that which is our boast, that which is our pride. For though we may be proud of our achievements and accomplishments, nothing compares to this, that we are called to share in the Kingdom of God, and reign with Him forever, gods ourselves.

For, as St Maximus says, we are and we are called (meaning called in scripture) gods, and children of God, and the Body and Members of God; we are, in St Gregory the Theologian’s startling phrase, a portion of God, μοῖρα θεοῦ, because we share in God by His grace and the outpouring of His Holy Spirit.

What, compared to that, are earthly kingdoms and wealth and power and prestige, honour and glory in this world, which even now is passing away and ready to reach its end, as we ourselves are destined soon to perish?

Soon to perish, but then to reign! As St Maximus again says: Death is but the prelude to the Resurrection.

Today we celebrate the memory of St Giles, one of those so-to-say annoying saints who is immensely popular but about who...
09/02/2026

Today we celebrate the memory of St Giles, one of those so-to-say annoying saints who is immensely popular but about whom virtually nothing is known.

As always where this is the case, people make up stories. And the most famous story about St Giles, or Aegidius, as he is also called, is that when he fled the world to become a hermit, God sent him a hind, which he used to milk for sustenance. One day, the hind was chased by the king during a hunt. The king let loose an arrow which struck not the hind but the saint, in reparation for which the king build Giles a monastery, which is said to be the origin of the Abbaye de St Gilles, in St Gilles-du-Gard in the south of France.

Wounded by the king, a wound which left him disabled, Giles became a patron invoked by many different types of sick people, including lepers, which is how he came to be the patron of the city of Edinburgh, where in 1124 King David I built a church in his honour, hoping to keep the city free from leprosy.

And this is what matters. Not the biographical details of the saints, but the fact that they are now living with Christ, able, by their prayers, to help us in the present. So let us ask their intercession, let us seek their aid, that we who are also sick, disabled by sin, sin which, as St Augustine says, ‘makes men to hobble’ we may find healing and spiritual rehabilitation.

How great and wonderful, how glorious and magnificent were the temples of Solomon and then of Herod. But they are glorio...
09/02/2026

How great and wonderful, how glorious and magnificent were the temples of Solomon and then of Herod. But they are glorious no longer 'by reason of the glory which excelleth,' the glory of the living temple that we are, in whom God Himself lives.

There is no god so close to his people as our God is close to us, the Israelites boasted. But now God is dwelling inside of us, in our hearts and in our souls!

I always say this to catechumens and I say it also to you, because it is profoundly, deeply true. Always, always, stay c...
09/02/2026

I always say this to catechumens and I say it also to you, because it is profoundly, deeply true.

Always, always, stay close to the Virgin Mary, because she will always help you, always protect you, she to whose maternal care we commend you now as we say together the Salve Regina.

Love is no easy thing, not least the love of God, from which we can so easily be swayed by temptation, or by the assault...
09/02/2026

Love is no easy thing, not least the love of God, from which we can so easily be swayed by temptation, or by the assaults of the demons.

So always remember that you are not alone. You have many friends, many allies, as you seek to live out your Christian life: your sponsor, your priest, your brothers and sisters in this congregation, and in the wider church, but also all the saints and all the angels, and, above them all, the great and glorious Mother of God, our champion leader as she is hailed in a hymn of the Byzantine rite.

So, Alec, congratulations to you on being enrolled amongst the number of the catechumens. In some places in the ancient ...
09/02/2026

So, Alec, congratulations to you on being enrolled amongst the number of the catechumens. In some places in the ancient world, this enrollment was literal, the names of those deemed worthy of baptism being recorded in a book, the grandly titled book of the elect.

But, as St Augustine notes, being written in the book of the elect does not mean that your name is written in God’s book of life! Becoming a catechumen, becoming an Orthodox Christian is not in itself enough. What is demanded of you, as is demanded of us all, is conversion of life, an on-going repentance by which we seek to die daily to sin and grow in our love for God, our love for God, and therefore our love for all people, and, indeed, the whole creation.

We will try to teach you the rudiments of the faith, and there is much literature and ‘content’ which you can discover for yourself: but always remember this, the most important thing is not knowledge, but love.

That is what it means to be a Christian; that is how we shall be judged in the Last Day, on how we have loved, ‘not in word and in tongue’ in theory ‘but in deed and in truth,’ in action.

Address

726 N 119th Street
Lafayette, CO
80026

Telephone

+19703911576

Website

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