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.

Today, as we continue to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi, we commemorate also St Ephrem the Syrian, a man who wrot...
06/18/2026

Today, as we continue to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi, we commemorate also St Ephrem the Syrian, a man who wrote much about the eucharist, including these words:

The spiritual Bread makes us light and causes us to fly. Through it everyone becomes an eagle who soars up as far as Paradise. Whoever eats the Living Bread of the Son flies up to meet Him in the clouds.

Beautiful words, beautiful not least because they are true. The eucharist unites us to Christ and lifts us up to heaven. Or so it ought ever to be.

Communion must never become for us a thoughtless act, an empty ritual; it must always be an encounter with the True and Living God.

Today we continue to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi, the feast of the Lord’s Body and Blood, the Lord’s Body and ...
06/18/2026

Today we continue to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi, the feast of the Lord’s Body and Blood, the Lord’s Body and Blood which we receive as a gift from God, but which also is a gift we offer up to Him, the most precious gift, the best thing that we can ever give to Him, His Own Son.

He Own Son Who from all eternity offers Himself up to the Father in love. As the Russian theologian Sergei Bulgakov writes, ‘His very existence as the Son is already a sacrifice,’ this eternal sacrifice which He made visible on earth, by the oblation of His entire Incarnate Life to the Father, culminating in Calvary, Calvary which here on this altar is made present now in the mass.

That is why all the hymns, all the psalms, all the prayers and services offered in the church cannot compare to this sacrifice, the sacrifice of the mass, the sacrifice of God’s Own Son.

This sacrifice in which we participate as priests, offering it together with Christ, and ourselves together with Him, a privilege which God does not grant even to the angels. For although they stand before Him, thousands upon thousands, yet we are the priests who offer up the sacrifice, in union with Jesus Christ, Who as well as Victim is also priest, ipse offerens, ipse et oblatio, as St Augustine says, Himself the offeror, Himself the offering.

Understanding this, inasmuch as we can understand so great a mystery, let our hearts thrill with joy and let us praise the All-Good God Who has vouchsafed to call us to this sublime ministry and service, the eternal priesthood of Jesus Christ, which He shares with us.

The Octave enables us to explore the epistle for this feast, this epistle the opening words of which I have long made my...
06/18/2026

The Octave enables us to explore the epistle for this feast, this epistle the opening words of which I have long made my own personal motto, Ego enim accépi quod trádidi vobis, I have passed on to you that which I have received, the divine and sacred tradition which Christ Our God entrusted to the apostles and which has been handed down from them across the centuries until our own time, including the liturgical tradition.

Not, of course, that Our Lord or His apostles said this mass; but this mass is still the work of saints, brought by a saint from a saint to the English people, by St Augustine from St Gregory the Dialogist, the pope of Rome: as far as the text is concerned, the very same mass that we celebrate today.

This is why it is vital that we guard and maintain the western rite; it is a holy patrimony, of which we must say with Naboth, 'The Lord forbid that I should give up the inheritance of my ancestors,' his words to the thieving king.

And God grant us ever to say likewise, to ever guard and preserve this great treasure that is the western rite, so that we in our turn may indeed be able to declare with the Apostle, as we look to the next generation, That which I have received, that which I have received from the great saints of old, that I pass on to you.

The link between icons and the Incarnation made during the iconoclast period translated into seeing every human being as...
06/17/2026

The link between icons and the Incarnation made during the iconoclast period translated into seeing every human being as the most noble of icons, the image and likeness of God.

The other week I was reading an interesting piece in which the author set forth the argument that the importance laid on...
06/16/2026

The other week I was reading an interesting piece in which the author set forth the argument that the importance laid on care for the poor in the early church was linked to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, the teaching that Christ is One Person in two natures, human and divine, and that in uniting His divine nature to our own He has raised the dignity of human nature itself, so that everyone who shares in it is precious and therefore to be helped and loved and cared for, whereas the pagans despised the poor and regarded them with disdain.

The Incarnation, the author claimed, was the basis of the early church’s compassion, the self-emptying, the self-giving of Christ the model for their own.

When Paul in 1 Corinthians 11 excoriates those who do not discern the Lord’s Body, he is not just talking about seeing t...
06/16/2026

When Paul in 1 Corinthians 11 excoriates those who do not discern the Lord’s Body, he is not just talking about seeing the Lord’s Body in the Mysteries, but also about looking to the needs of our brothers and sisters, those who with us form Christ’s Body the Church, in the specific case of 1 Corinthians 11, of those who are poor and hungry.

And how indeed can we, in communion, receive with love and true devotion the poor man of Nazareth, if we neglect the poor man of Lafayette, the Lazarus who lies daily at our doors, as St Jerome says.

The relationship between the eucharist and love towards those in need is famously set out by St John Chrysostom, althoug...
06/16/2026

The relationship between the eucharist and love towards those in need is famously set out by St John Chrysostom, although his words are often misquoted; Chrysostom says that ‘He Who declares and declares truly, “This is My Body,” declares also, ‘What you have done to the least of My brothers and sisters you have done to Me.’

We cannot rightly honour Christ here in the church, Chrysostom says, if we ignore Him when He is outside naked and hungry.

The great exemplar of the man who uses his riches rightly is, of course, the righteous Job. How rich a man he was, ‘the ...
06/15/2026

The great exemplar of the man who uses his riches rightly is, of course, the righteous Job.

How rich a man he was, ‘the greatest of all of the men of the east,’ yet one who can boast: ‘I delivered the poor that cried out in need, and the fatherless, and him that had no helper. I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. I was a father to the orphan and the widow blessed me for my generosity.’

And, of course, Job is a type of Our Lord Jesus Christ, here as in so much else, the Lord Jesus, Who though He was rich, as St Paul says, yet became poor to make us rich.

Love is also the theme of the Gospel reading in which we hear of how the rich man, Dives he is sometimes called, or Dive...
06/15/2026

Love is also the theme of the Gospel reading in which we hear of how the rich man, Dives he is sometimes called, or Dives, although that is just the Latin word for rich, how the rich man because of his lack of love towards Lazarus, the rich man was cast into hell. Had he but fed Lazarus, had he but clothed him, had he but taken him into his house, he would, this rich man, have dwelt himself also in the bosom of Abraham. For it was not for his wealth that the rich man was condemned – for Abraham, too, himself was rich, weighted down by riches, the scripture says – but he was condemned because he did not use his wealth to help the poor.

Address

726 N 119th Street
Lafayette, CO
80026

Telephone

+19703911576

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