Thanksgiving is a time for families to be together and thank God for everything. We play games and feast on fall food. God helps us in all our work. This year our family is very happy to be going to our grandparents house for Thanksgiving for the first time in years! Continue reading
Saints Lives Alongside the Daily News & Toys
As our time in Russia comes to a close, I think most about the day-to-day providences that surround us in this vast land of Third Rome. They are divine providences that even a whole century of atheist communism could not break or expunge from the people’s memory. And they are founded on an interdependence between church and state, between Christ and culture whose foundation extends a whole millenium to the very Baptism of the people in the 10th century. Continue reading
Our younger daughter’s reflection on the Feast of all Feasts…
O Pascha has come! Joyous feast, rejoice, O earth! The heavenly hosts sing: holy, holy, holy, hosanna in the highest. Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace toward men. We start with lighting our candles, then we circle the church outside, singing a Paschal song. The Priest knocks on doors three times because Jesus rose on the third day. The doors crash open. And we proclaim, “CHRIST IS RISEN” in all kinds of different languages.
Eve of Great and Holy Saturday, 2014
In the tomb with the body, in hell with the soul as God, in paradise with the thief and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, wast Thou O Christ, filling all things with Thyself. Bearing life and more fruitful than paradise, brighter than any royal chamber: Your tomb, O Christ, is the fountain of our resurrection.
–Priest’s words at the Great Entrance during the Divine Liturgy
Since Pascha is the Feast of all Feasts, it is easy to miss all of the rich liturgical portions offered by Mother Church directly before the Easter extravaganza and directly afterwards. For me, especially dear is the service which acts as a kind of proto-Pascha, the Vesperal Liturgy usually chanted on the morning of Great & Holy Saturday, a service similar in content and purpose to what in the West is called the Easter Vigil.
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We fast for forty days. And here are all the Sundays: Orthodoxy, St. Gregory of Palamas, The Cross, St. John of the Ladder, St. Mary of Egypt, Palm Sunday and Pascha. We have Presanctified Liturgies on Wednesdays and Fridays. We use Palms on Palm Sunday and alms we give. Alms to the poor, blessings to all people blessings from God, And let all say Amen. Amen.
We go to church at nine o’clock to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. It is a happy day to all the people that pray. Joy and happiness to all the world. On Bright Monday our church has a traditional picnic at Auburndale Cove. A cove is a protected park next to a river. We play games and feast on Paschal food.
I ran this post last year around this time and was just listening to the audio plays again this morning as part of preparations for Holy Week. Our priest always challenges us to read the Gospels all the way through, if possible. But those who prefer to listen on an MP3 player or CD might find the following dramatic presentation a helpful bridge to the story of the Gospels.
Just before the beginning of Great Lent, I was thumbing through my library wondering again what would be the best thing to read in this season of the fast. It is a good and pious practice during the forty days of fasting not only to increase prayers and attendance to church services but to practice some form of media fast and engage instead in one good spiritual book that will help one reflect on the life of Christ and repent of sinful habits. It was then that I came across an article which highlighted the book or rather set of plays that C.S. Lewis frequently read during Lent. This and the name Dorothy Sayers both caught my attention. Sayers is popular for her saying that “the dogma is the drama”; i.e., contrary to popular opinion that learning right doctrine is for dull and doltish people who like dusty libraries and don’t know how to have a good time, the dogma of the Church, relating first and foremost to the identity and work of Jesus Christ as He reveals the worship of the All-Holy Trinity, is rather for those who wish to engage in the greatest of all dramas. Continue reading
Love this post about the importance of healing from the trauma of sin written by my boss. It is a very Orthodox reflection emphasizing sin’s destructiveness to God’s likeness within us; how it isn’t just about disobeying the rules. Very good for Lent!
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Listen here online:
This morning I’m not going to talk so much about sin as I am going to talk about talking about sin. So often, sin is something we don’t talk about – at least not much – which is a loss because the “grammar” and “vocabulary” surrounding sin contain great capacity for healing.
But I don’t want to begin there. First, I want to go back to November 11, last Veterans’ Day. Last Veterans’ Day, NPR told the stories of several different veterans from several different wars. Though all the stories moved me, the one that touched me most was the story of Coast Guard veteran Joe Williams, who was part of “Operation Tiger,” a dress rehearsal off the coast of England for the Normandy…
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Forgiveness Sunday- The Beginning of Great Lent
“O, sweety, there is nothing to forgive.” How many times has our attempt to make amends with another we have offended end in this kind of dismissive, shrugging off of responsibility which is supposed to help the offended party feel better? Yet, when any of us takes a deeper look at ourselves, what the twelve steppers call making a “searching and fearless moral inventory”, we find that not only are we filled with sinful thoughts, inclinations, motives and actions, but ignoring and sweeping them under the rug of forgetfulness will only make matters worse, not better. Those not practiced in the Christian art and divine gift of forgiveness may be tempted to dispense with it as a necessary step to restoring peace in human relationships, but this morning’s Gospel lesson makes it clear that it is a non-negotiable. Continue reading
The secret is out or at least it should be. Those of us celebrating Christmas on the Old Calendar (O.C. January 7) are still very much within the season, the 12 appointed days of celebration after the event, which makes it a total of 24 if you count somewhat the 12 days celebrated after December 25. So if you are the type that thinks Christmas comes and goes too quickly, think about visiting a Russian, Serbian, or even a Bulgarian Orthodox Church on the Julian Calendar. Then hold on to your tree, keep up those decorations, and don’t throw away that fruit cake because the O.C. gives us another 12 days to party! Continue reading
Like Mendicant Monks... 