Category Archives: Memorials

An American C.S. Lewis

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This memorial is long overdue as we fast approach the 4th year memorial this coming fall of the late Professor Thomas Howard. I recalled him recently as I read an article he wrote about sanctifying your home as a holy place. The article referenced a whole book he wrote on the subject of sanctifying our ordinary and humdrum habitations. As I reveled in his perky writing style, it struck me again how much he reminds me of one of my other great spiritual fathers, C.S. Lewis. Then I remembered how many times in my life I was blessed to enjoy the company of this would be American Oxford Don.

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First Round of Mom-isms

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Been spending a lot of time the past week with extended family and sharing memories of our newly departed +Vickie Elizabeth+. The lighter side of our memory of Mama Vickie is all the colorful phrases she used. Being the daughter of unknown ancestors which mom referred to as ridgerunners, she would often use phrases that could only be defined and understood in the context of how they were used. Below is an attempt to bring some formal definition to some of these mom-isms:

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Honoring Our Domestic Queen

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Grandma Vickie attending
the birth of a grandchild

Thanksgiving Day
Thursday, November 23, 2023

What a whirlwind of activity surrounded the death of my mother this past Monday. The official obituary and announcement of her upcoming funeral went live just yesterday. She died peacefully in her sleep sometime early Monday and by the evening she was whisked away to the local funeral home to await her funeral and burial next Thursday as an Orthodox Christian.

Just yesterday my father and I finalized plans with the funeral home, and the director gave us the best gift: allowing us to visit with mom! She was not yet arrayed in the splendor of her maternal office, but a warm and colorful quilt was draped over her. Mom was a classy lady, so I am sure she will look smart for the funeral next Thursday. But for this more intimate visitation, I cannot think of an object more fitting for this domestic queen who lay in state before us.

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A Man of Few Words But Many Deeds

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Remembering today the passing of a great pillar and subdeacon of our local parish. He was a man like my own father who can not abide long to hear conversation when action is required. As the celebrant at his funeral remembered, he employed half the parish, especially men like yours truly who needed a few side hustles as we worked primarily for the church. He was not your average contractor, beginning all his projects with prayer and devoutly dedicating all of his labor to God. His love for serving in the holy altar spilled out fully into his worldly labor. He never artificially separated them into sacred and secular.

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Making Firm the Foundations

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For the prayers of parents make firm the foundations of houses.

Wedding Service of the Holy Orthodox Christian Church

This prayer best describes my feeling towards a man who gave me not only his daughter to wed but a firm foundation of prayer and life in the Church. This picture from our wedding contains my father, my father-in-law (that most antiseptic of English terms for relations), and me embracing in a “cord of three strands that cannot easily be broken.” And now that one of us lives on the other side of this vale of tears, I proclaim with the Divine Apostle that the cord remains unbroken.

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A Living Link to the Apostles

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June 30, 2020: 6th anniversary of the repose of Fr. Herman Podmoshensky

“And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to Reliable men who may also teach others.” St Paul’s letter to Timothy

The famous saying that Christian Life is caught not simply taught relates to this injunction from the apostle to his disciple. I remember a time in my life when I had just graduated college that I eagerly desired to receive such a transmission. Oh, to be entrusted with the sacred kerygma of the living and saving Gospel of Jesus Christ from someone in that line of succession: a man who had heard it from a man who had heard it from another all the way back to the Lord himself. My own fathers In the flesh had all but denied this possibility. A writer of the book called The History of the Evangelical Association, a German pietistic confession that my ancestors followed in the mid-nineteenth century proclaimed about the historical apostolic succession “There remains an unbridgeable chasm between the Roman Catholic Church and our own Protestant one, and who can bridge this unbridgeable chasm?”

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+ Fr. Isaac Crow +

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This is a remembrance from our Boston Byzantine Choir Director, Charlie Marge about a dear friend and priest recently reposed.

It is with great sadness, but with the hope of the resurrection, that we inform you of the passing of Fr. Isaac Crow, pastor of Sts. Peter & Paul in Potomac, MD and father of our BBC alum and composer, Basil Crow.  From our early days, Fr. Isaac was a strong supporter of the Boston Byzantine Choir and offered our ministry much encouragement over the years.  He was a kind and gentle man, full of faith and wisdom.  He battled cancer on and off over the past few years, which had just returned three weeks ago.  In the words of his Khouriyee, “He died a true Christian.  With every pain and tribulation he would say ‘Thank God.’”  We will miss him dearly.

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Newly Illumined!

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The following is the text of a toast I gave in honor of my parents’ reception into the Holy Orthodox Church on Sunday, May 12, Third Sunday of Pascha in honor of the Holy Myrrhbearers and American Mother’s Day. My father was received by Baptism and my mother by Chrismation at Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church in East Syracuse, NY.

20190512_093841“Nobody knows the trouble I seen. Nobody knows but Jesus.”

These simple, yet profound lyrics from an old negro spiritual express the longing of many a Christian lost in the multitude of denominations and confessions of the Church in this country and in the world. This family alone has experienced not less than 15 in our collective lives. But when I first witnessed the Orthodox Church I could see a church where, “Every generation chanteth hymns of praise to Christ.” Everyone from the smallest infant to the oldest great grandmother, all gather together in one Church. Today this prophecy has been fulfilled in your eyes: Not in a church designed principally for the youth, not in a church designed principally for the elderly, but in the Church where family integrated worship has never gone out of style. Continue reading →

Savior of the Bulgarian Jews

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The following is a commemoration sent to our Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese by Diocesan Metropolitan Joseph on the occasion this Sunday of the 60th anniversary of the death of the Bulgarian Exarch Stefan I (1878-2017). May his memory be eternal.

THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

exarch-stephan1On May 14, 1957, exiled in the village of Banja, Karlovo, died the Bulgarian Exarch Stefan I. The clergy and laity of the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada and Australia, with prayer and in good memory, will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the falling asleep of this great spiritual elder of Bulgarian Orthodoxy.

Exarch Stefan is a well-known name in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. We all know him as a high-ranking Bulgarian Orthodox cleric, who during his life left a deep imprint in the troubled 20th century history of our Church. He is known as a teacher, writer, eloquent speaker, international ecclesiastical figure, bold defender of the Bulgarian Church and our national interest at home and abroad. He supported the conversion of the Pomaks, who were newcomers to Bulgaria from the lands added after the Balkan wars. He survived the horror of the church bombings as he was leading the memorial prayer service in the church of “St. Nedelya” on April 16, 1925. He gave his blessing for the establishment of the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of America and Canada. Continue reading →

Remembering Pastor Jim

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0b0ef12A good and godly spiritual father of mine passed this morning. The thoughts and good wishes of so many of his spiritual children have been flooding the internet already, and I wish to add my remembrances to the growing chorus.

My parents and I met Pastor James M. Riccitelli at a moment of deep spiritual crisis, when the church that we had been attending gave my parents an ultimatum that drove them out of the fellowship. It was unfortunately not a new experience for us. I was in college at the time, and by then, my family and I had been a part of not less than 10 different churches. But this loss felt different than the others. I remember that I had a key to this church because I had become a member of her, not merely adhering to my parent’s wishes. When it was clear that we were not going to be able to go back, I looked with weariness toward the next fellowship of believers in Christ. What would they be like? Would we be welcome with all our brokenness and failed dreams?

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