Second Sunday after Christmas 2026

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Today is the eleventh day of Christmas. But even the readings in these twelve days of joy don’t let us get too comfortable. The birth of Jesus causes Herod’s horrific malice to explode. This malice is a power at work in the world, malice which will never end and never weaken until the day of judgment [Schmemann].

The Epistle for the Second Sunday after Christmas prepares the disciple of Jesus to face this malice. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” St. Peter is writing to the newly baptized. He’s saying, “Don’t be surprised when trouble comes! The demons, and those captive to demonic desires, hate Jesus, and they hate those who follow Him.” …

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Best Books of 2025

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In 2025 I finished reading 48 books.

Best Book

Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, by Megan Basham. Published in 2024, Basham chronicles the efforts of American Evangelical pastors and church influencers leading churches to embrace leftist causes and soften their doctrine. Steeped in money (often) from non-Christian sources, they utilize “toxic empathy” (see the book by the same title, listed below) to transform churches away from Scriptural teaching. Basham carefully details the sad decline of once stalwart evangelical pastors and thinkers.

 

Notable Mention

Two other books stood out for me this year. David P. Scaer’s The Sermon on the Mount: The Church’s First Statement of the Gospel was a reread for me, as supplemental material for a class I’m teaching at church. I also profited from Patrick Henry Reardon’s 2012 book The Jesus We Missed: The Surprising Truth About the Humanity of Christ. Reardon, an Orthodox priest and scholar, is always worth reading.

 

Other Books Finished in 2025:

  • Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany (St. Augustine)

  • Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious Landscape (Andrew Stephen Damick)

  • The Late Show (Michael Connelly)

  • Total Power (Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills)

  • Changed Into His Likeness: A Biblical Theology of Personal Transformation (J. Gary Millar)

  • Demons: What the Bible Really Says about the Powers of Darkness (Michael S. Heiser)

  • The Lutheran Difference: An Explanation and Comparison of Christian Beliefs (Edward A. Englebrecht, ed.)

  • Broken Signposts: How Christianity Makes Sense of the World (N.T. Wright)

  • Wool (Hugh Howey)

  • The Bad Weather Friend (Dean Koontz)

  • The Secular Creed: Engaging Five Contemporary Claims (Rebecca McLaughlin)

  • Two Kinds of Truth (Michael Connelly)

  • Armored (Mark Greaney)

  • An Explanation of the History of the Suffering and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Johann Gerhard)

  • What God Has to Say about Our Bodies: How the Gospel Is Good News for Our Physical Selves (Sam Allberry)

  • The Spirit of the Liturgy (Joseph Ratzinger)

  • The Spirit of the Liturgy (Romano Guardini)

  • Demonic Foes (Richard Gallagher)

  • Killing Floor (Lee Child)

  • Shift (Hugh Howey)

  • Relentless (Mark Greaney)

  • Dark Sacred Night (Michael Connelly)

  • Mike (P.G. Wodehouse)

  • Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America’s Future (Jean M. Twenge)

  • Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI (Ethan Mollick)

  • The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)

  • Three Treatises on the Divine Images (John of Damascus)

  • Just Keep Buying: Proven ways to save money and build your wealth (Nick Maggiulli)

  • Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person (Panayiotis Nellas)

  • The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (Robert Louis Wilken)

  • The Trial (Franz Kafka)

  • On Christian Doctrine (Augustine)

  • Sierra Six (Mark Greaney)

  • Enemy at the Gates (Kyle Mills (Vince Flynn))

  • Prelude to Foundation (Isaac Asimov)

  • Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ (Rosaria Butterfield)

  • Oath of Loyalty (Kyle Mills)

  • The Night Fire (Michael Connelly)

  • Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion (Allie Beth Stuckey)

  • Fair Warning (Michael Connelly)

  • Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (Anna Lembke)

  • The Law of Innocence (Michael Connelly)

  • From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life (Arthur C. Brooks)

  • Code Red (Kyle Mills)

  • Burner (Mark Greaney)

Best New Music of 2025

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Album of the Year

Concerti per violoncello by Hanna Salzenstein & Le Consort.

Runners up

  • Stygian Wavz, Envy of None

  • Mark Lettieri Group Meets WDR Big Band at Studio 4, Mark Lettieri, WDR Big Band

  • Abracadabra, Beatrice Berrut

Other notable albums of 2025:

Ambient

The Reverent Sky (Steve Roach)

Classical

Guess Who? (Olga Pashchenko)

Ravel: Fragments (Bertrand Chamayou)

J.S. Bach: The Art of Fugue (Phantasm)

Sleep Circle (Max Richter, Louisa Fuller & Max Ruisi)

Shostakovich: The Piano Concertos & Solo Works (Yuja Wang, Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons)

Classical Crossover

Peter Gregson (Peter Gregson)

The Summer Portraits (Ludovico Einaudi)

Downtempo

Scapes (Data Rebel)

Chrome Ocean (Data Rebel)

Jazz

Barn Sessions, Vol. 1 (Four80East)

New Age

Where the River Widens (Erik Wøllo)

Smooth Jazz

Fasten Up (Yellowjackets)

The Name of Jesus

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In Numbers 13, Moses lists the names of the twelve men he sent as spies into the land of Canaan. Each represented one of the twelve tribes of Israel. After each man is listed, and the name of his father, then we get this interesting detail. There is no explanation or elaboration, it’s just dropped there, like a little Easter egg waiting to be discovered:

“These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua” [Num 13:16]….

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The Feast of the Holy Innocents

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“These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.” This day’s liturgy applies those words to the little children of Bethlehem cut down by Herod’s sword. “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.” The little children suffered the great tribulation. But it is not limited to them. The great tribulation is a vast span of terror, from the babies Pharaoh ordered thrown into the Nile, to today’s little children dismembered by the billion-dollar abortion business….

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Christmas Midnight 2025

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And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him….

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Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols 2025

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“If you do not like sentiment and symbolism, you do not like Christmas; go away and celebrate something else.” G.K. Chesterton wrote this in his 1908 essay Christmas. “If you do not like sentiment and symbolism, you do not like Christmas; go away and celebrate something else.”

Chesterton was responding to early twentieth-century rationalists, who wanted to celebrate a holiday without all the old “superstitions” of a virgin birth, angels, and wise men. I’ll admit, Christmas is something I’ve struggled with…

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Thanksgiving 2025

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When resources are scarce, anxiety is over food. Jesus asks, “Why do you worry about what you will eat?”

There’s no scarcity in America. But there’s still anxiety. And the anxiety still often connects to food. We eat our feelings. Or drink our feelings. Or find other ways to make ourselves numb – doomscrolling, binge watching, cyber shopping – something to distract us from our meaningless lives trapped on the conveyor belt, ending in a nursing home reeking of urine and loneliness.

“Do not be anxious about anything,” the Epistle for Thanksgiving says. How? Anxiety is our daily bread….

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