A three-year journey through the teachings of Jesus Christ — one Gospel passage each week, for one hundred and fifty-six weeks. Encounter, then discipleship, then communion.
Three volumes, and a hundred and fifty-six Gospel passages — one for each week of three years. Each week gives the passage in full, what the Greek is doing that the English cannot show, how the Fathers read it, and one practice to carry through the seven days.
Every royalty builds a church
All three volumes are published for one purpose. Every royalty goes to the building fund of St Porphyrios Orthodox Mission in Clayton, Ontario — a parish with a congregation and no building, which meets in rooms it borrows.
Not a share of the royalties. Not the profit after costs. The royalties. That line is printed on the back of every volume, where a buyer sees it before deciding.
Two men asked Jesus of Nazareth where He was staying. He answered with three words, and they went and spent the day with Him. People have been walking out of ordinary lives on that invitation ever since.
Fifty-two of His sayings, one for each week of the year. Every passage in full, with what the Greek actually says, how the Fathers read it, and one practice to carry through the week. It ends where He asks: who do you say that I am?
Book One was the invitation. This is what happens after you say yes.
Fifty-two weeks on what Christ actually asks — prayer nobody sees, money He will not stop talking about, forgiveness with no ceiling, enemies you are told to love. He tells a man to count the cost before he builds. He watches another walk away rich and sad.
The mercy is what makes it survivable: the son who came home with nothing, the Samaritan who never capped his liability, the tax collector who said seven words and went home justified.
Book One was the invitation. Book Two was the cost. This is the part that is not done by effort.
Fifty-two weeks on staying — the vine, the buried seed, the kingdom growing where nobody was watching — and then, in His own words, who He is.
It does not stay gentle. The lamps run out. The servant buries what he was given. Neither side recognises Him at the judgement, and both have to be told. It ends with Peter, restored on a beach, turning round to ask about somebody else — and being told: What is that to you? You follow Me!
Fifteen complete weeks, free, before you buy anything
Five weeks from each volume, exactly as printed — the passage in full, the Greek, the Fathers, and the practice for the seven days. Not samples or excerpts: whole weeks.
They began with a question, and it is the first thing Christ says out loud in the Gospel of John.
Two men have started walking behind Him. They have declared nothing and understood almost nothing. They heard John the Baptist say Look, the Lamb of God, and something in them moved, and they followed. He turns round and sees them, and asks: What do you want? — ti zēteite, what are you seeking.
They answer with a question of their own: Rabbi, where are You staying? He does not give them an address. He does not ask them to understand anything first, or settle an argument, or pass a test. He says: Come and see.
They go, and they stay the rest of the day, and the Gospel keeps the hour — about four in the afternoon. Decades later the man writing it down still knew what time it was. Most hours vanish into all the other hours. A few divide a life into before and after.
That is where the shape of these books came from: three things Christ said, in the order John's Gospel gives them. Come and see is His first invitation there — the answer to two men who had asked only where He was staying. Follow Me comes the next day, to Philip, and it costs a great deal more than a day's visit. Abide in Me is from the last night, said to men who had followed for three years and were about to find out what that meant. Encounter, then discipleship, then communion.
Why a week and not a morning
A page for the morning is read and forgotten by lunch. A week is long enough for a saying to become inconvenient — long enough to run into the person you are supposed to forgive, or the money you are supposed to be less careful about, or the silence you said you would keep and did not.
There are no calendar dates anywhere in the three volumes. You can begin in any week of any year.
Why the Fathers are in it
The Church has been reading, praying over and arguing about these passages for the whole of her life, and it would be strange to sit down with them as though nobody ever had. The order they are read in here is this book's own; the reading is not. So the Fathers are here — St John Chrysostom above all, who preached his way through Matthew and John sentence by sentence and is quoted more than anyone else in these pages.
They are not brought in for decoration. They are there because they are frequently better than the modern reading, and occasionally because they contradict it — and when they do, that is printed too. There is a place where Chrysostom quotes a man as saying something the Greek does not have him say, and a place where a Father's own copy of the Bible plainly differed from ours. None of it is hidden. It is some of the most interesting material in the books.
Printed in full, so nothing depends on remembering it or looking it up. No verse plucked out of its paragraph.
What the Greek is doing
The places where the English cannot carry it — a tense, a word with no equivalent, a phrase that is sharper or stranger than it reads.
How the Fathers read it
Chrysostom above all, quoted rather than summarised, including where he disagrees with how we would read it now.
In the modern world
What the saying actually asks of someone with a job, a family, a phone and a mortgage.
One practice
A single thing to carry through the seven days. Not a programme. One thing.
Nothing invented
Where a well-loved story could not be verified it is not used — and where a Father's own copy of the Bible plainly differed from ours, the book prints that rather than smoothing it over.
If you would rather just give
Buying a book adds to the building fund a royalty at a time. A direct gift reaches the mission straight away, and nothing passes through this site or is taken out along the way.
