Liberating our imprisoned heart turns chaos into harmony The inevitability of death is particularly difficult to face for most Americans, as we’ve become a people that eschew traditional funerals, preferring to “celebrate the life of our loved one, while disposing of the body, and banning any sign of death from
Category: The Morning Offering
An angel who is sleepless and cannot be deceived According to Saint John Climacus, in his The Ladder of Divine Ascent, when we feel sweetness or compunction at some word of our prayer, we should dwell on it, for then our guardian angel is praying with us. This angel, who
Kissing the hand of the priest is not about the man The kissing of the hand of the priest is not about the man, but rather about Christ. It is much like the kissing of an icon, which is not about the veneration of paint and wood, but about the
The Orthodox practice of standing for worship Standing before God has been the only acceptable posture for Orthodox Christians from the earliest of times. We recognize that a faithful servant would never sit before his master, for the faithful are all servants of the Lord, whom we worship as we
Our sin is a pervading sickness According to Saint Ephraim the Syrian (306 – 373), “The Church is not the assembly of saints, it is the mass of sinners who repent, who, sinners though they are, have turned towards God and are oriented towards Him.” As a people whose focus
We are not compelled to love God We are not compelled to love God, having been created with free will. God does not, nor can He, compel His creatures to love Him. Mutual love requires, by it’s very nature, freedom to either respond in love, or not. Yet when we
The tradition and meaning of the Royal Doors The iconostasis represents the Christian continuity from the veil of the Temple in Jerusalem which separated the people from the Holy of Holies that housed the Ark of the Covenant. Normally, the iconostasis has three doors in it. The two single doors
The significance of the veil in Orthodox churches I recently had a protestant Christian ask why we Orthodox still separated the faithful by closing and opening the veil that separates the Altar from the people. When I explained that we follow, as did the Ancient Church, the tradition of showing
Entering into the Silence All Orthodox Christians are aware of the importance of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, in our journey to God. These three practices are at the heart of the four major fast periods of the Church. Prayer is our way of communicating with God on a daily basis,
We must refrain from the life of the “super correct” Driven by fear, there are people who leave the Church and head into schism. In Greece there are at least eighteen “Old Calendar” Orthodox churches who claim to be THE Church, not recognizing each other as canonical. In the United