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Ancient Faith Blogs presents a select group of writers and thinkers who regularly post on matters of theology, culture, art, parish, and family life.
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Faith Encouraged
Better to Not Be a Fool!
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“Smiling faces, smiling faces, sometimes, they don’t tell the truth, smiling faces, smiling faces, tell lies, and I’ve got proof…” The Temptations did this song in 1971 and it’s a favorite. But it’s message is all too familiar. Sometimes, a friend turns out to be no friend at all. Sometimes, the smiling mask someone wears hides an evil and jealous intent. And too often we learn about this the hard way. It…
The Morning Offering
The Disposing of Pride
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Our quest for humility begins with the disposing of our pride Struggling with our pride, we must focus on bringing our will into conformity with the will of God. Recognizing that false humility is almost wholly the product of self-righteous hypocrisy, we must dedicate ourselves to a truth which is absolute, and which transcends our personal opinion. It is precisely…
Raising Saints
Our Private Pascha
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I have been working on Virtual Sunday School lessons and lists of ideas for Holy Week and Pascha, and on materials for my own parish as we gear up for what promises to be a very different celebration. Today, as I’m working, every time I get to Pascha, I start tearing up. For weeks I have quietly grieved the idea that my own family’s Pascha experience will be different, but today I…
Faith Encouraged
Better To Live On The Roof!
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Drama! I confess, I am not a fan of drama in my house. And here I am living with three women! I guess the joke’s on me! OK, before I get in real trouble here, let me say that I have noticed the older I get, the more I like quiet and smooth sailing. And yet, I’m a parish priest of a growing congregation filled with dynamic people, the head of a…
The Morning Offering
Feast of the Annunciation
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Like the Mother of God, we must give birth to God within ourselves As we continue our Lenten journey, this is a time when the Church puts much emphasis on the role of repentance. We strive to go to confession more frequently during Great Lent, just as we’ve increased our level of fasting, and frequency of attending the services. Holy…
Shepherding our Little Flock
Make a Joyful Noise
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Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the…
Faith Encouraged
Better to Be Poor Than A Liar!
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Why is it I keep having to learn wisdom the hard way? I mean, it isn’t like I haven’t had wise men and women and friends who have offered wise counsel. I’ve seen how bad choices can really wreck a life and then I’ve watched myself make those SAME BAD CHOICES! What gives? Well, what gives is our common, human struggle. Our will, our “want to” is weakened by fear and death.…
The Morning Offering
Golgotha
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Collectively ascending Golgotha together The difficult time all of humanity is experiencing, is painful. However, it is perhaps all the more painful for we Orthodox Christians, because we are being deprived of the Eucharist. Most of the pious believers of the Orthodox world can not participate in the Divine Liturgy, as well as the many other services we traditionally attend…
Nearly Orthodox
Practicing Resurrection
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We’re okay. Even when life around us is most definitely not okay. And suffice it to say that these past few months have been a whole barrel of not okay. This morning I woke, fuzzy-headed, as is usual these days. I always begin with remembering what day it is, as though I was stranded on a desert island and had to keep a calendar to keep my sense of time and season.…
No Other Foundation
The Outstretched Arms
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After Israel was brought out of Egypt and as they journeyed to the foot of Mount Sinai, they faced a multitude of dangers in the howling wilderness. They faced the threat of starvation as they slowly trudged southward through the west side of the Sinai peninsula, and in response God provided for them through the provision of manna. They faced the threat of dying from thirst, and in response God provided for…
The Morning Offering
Suffering
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The role of suffering in the salvation of humankind Elder Ambrose of Optina Monastery said, “We should not forget that in our age of ‘sophistication’ even little children are spiritually harmed by what they see and hear. As a result, purification is required….You must understand that Paradisal bliss is granted to no one without suffering.” A person walks on the…
Eastern Christian Insights
Retreating to the Desert for Our Salvation This Lent: Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church
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Hebrews 9:11-14; Mark 10:32-45 Today we commemorate Saint Mary of Egypt, a person whose remarkable path to spiritual health resonates with our struggles during this most unusual Lent. She spent almost fifty years in complete isolation in the desert as she embraced Christ’s healing of her soul from the ravages of sin that had beset her as a sex addict. She obviously did not attend church services during that time…
Glory to God for All Things
A Different Pascha - 1928
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This year, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Churches will be unable to gather in the usual manner for Pascha. This has happened before in a variety of places and circumstances. In the 1920’s, the Bolshevik’s were unleashing their persecutions. This wonderful account, from Butyrka Prison on Pascha of 1928, is a sober reminder that our “light momentary affliction” is a small thing. It also serves to remind us that the joy of Pascha…
The Morning Offering
Spiritual Benefits of the Pandemic
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Let us make this Covid-19 pandemic the basis of a renewed foundation in our spiritual life For all of us, this pandemic can serve as a good jumpstart for our faith. Since most of us can not attend services in our parishes, this is the perfect time to build up the domestic church. Since we can’t take our children to…
Father Bill's Blog
175. How to make a confession without making a Confession
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Next week’s title will be How to make a Confession. Explanations to follow. Let’s lead into this with this Sunday’s saint, Mary of Egypt, who shows us Repentance and what it requires. I’m sure this is why the Fathers placed her here, a week before we go into Holy Week. For she reminds us to repent of our sins before Pascha – to clean up our acts so we will know not only the…
A Lamp for Today
Disinfecting the Conscience: The Fifth Sunday of Lent
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Hebrews 9:11-14, Leviticus 16, Jeremiah 31:33 In the midst of Great Lent, we are also in the midst of a people (understandably) obsessed with quarantine and disinfecting whatever we can. Our reading from Hebrews for the fifth Sunday of Lent takes us back to the time of the Torah, when both cleansing and distancing were a significant part of the ritual for atonement. This annual time of ritual purification for the Hebrew…
Faith Encouraged
Forget Your WHY; Lose Your Way!
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If you’ve spent any time with me at all, you know I’m a big fan of asking the “WHY” question when it comes to our motivations for living. In fact, I’m convinced that no one sticks with a pattern of life that is effective without really understanding WHY it is effective. Getting to your “WHY” is at the hearts of being able to be motivated enough, consistent enough, and faithful enough to…
The Morning Offering
Is the Hospital Closed?
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How do we find healing when we think the hospital of the soul is closed? Orthodoxy offers a very precise way in which to enter into communion with God. It is a way that must be learned, for simply “becoming Orthodox” will not lead the seeker into an inner life that will transform, and enlighten. Membership in the Church is…
No Other Foundation
What Good Are Religious Leaders?
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I have just received by email a very nice brochure from the Canadian Council of Churches entitled, Hope, Gratitude, and Solidarity: a Message from Religious Leaders in Canada in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic. It is well-produced, with a lovely yellow flower adorning the cover and lovely photos within of a sun-drenched field, a young family of four, a doctor in a surgical mask, an elderly woman looking at her relative through…
Glory to God for All Things
Magic, Superstition, and the One-Storey Universe
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Over the years, in thinking about the here-and-now presence of the Kingdom of God, I have pondered about what it actually looks like. Its nemesis, the modern version of secularity, is easy to picture (we unconsciously do it all the time). That picture is of an utterly material world, governed by material laws, with possible (and rare) interventions by God. Mostly, the things that belong to God dwell in the rarified atmosphere…
Faith Encouraged
Eternal Perspective Makes Joy Possible Anytime
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Fr. Alexander Schemann once said “The greatest charge against a Christian is that he has no joy.” Frankly, the normal Christian faith is incompatible with a life without joy. It is specifically joy, regardless of the outward circumstances that should be the “normal” Christian life. Now I know what you’re going to say: “But father, we will be accused of being unrealistic if we are joyful all the time.” Well, sure we…
The Morning Offering
The Power of the Cross
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The tradition of posting a cross on the doors of Christians In the mid eighth century Saint John of Damascus said, “We venerate the Cross of Christ, by which the power of the demons and the deceit of the devil were destroyed.” From the time of the Early Church we Orthodox Christians have celebrated the cross as an emblem of…
Orthodox Reformed Bridge
Paul’s Letter to Philemon and the Book of Sirach
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One of the shortest books in the New Testament is the Apostle Paul’s letter to Philemon, a Christian who lived in Colosse. Philemon owned a slave named Onesimus who ran away. In the course of time, Onesimus met the Apostle Paul and committed his life to Christ. In the social world that Paul lived in, slaves were considered the property of the owner. So, as much as Paul wanted Onesimus by his…
A Light So Lovely
Being in Communion: Time to Remember the One Thing Needful
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Staying positive in this crisis can be difficult. Not because there is a paucity of good in the world. No, there are many who are astounding me with their creativity and their ability to make a good thing out of a tragedy. What worries me is how many Christians seem content with quarantine-worship at home, as though it were enough. Add to that some very odd assertions about the Church being merely…
Walking an Ancient Path
Contemplatives in Confinement: Be Careful What You Pray For
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Nothing, whether it is good or bad, happens to a person by blind chance. There is a provident God who steers the affairs of the world, and with each one of us there is a Guardian who does not miss anything, and whose watchfulness never relaxes or grows weak. — St. Isaac the Syrian Possibly my favorite book in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia series is The Silver Chair. In this…
Faith Encouraged
I Will Help You, Says the Lord
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Nelson Mandela once said “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” This is so true. I’ve found too many people who think that because they feel fear, they are not courageous. This isn’t true. Feelings come and go, but it’s what you do in reaction to feelings…
The Morning Offering
Charity
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The importance of promoting the welfare of others With thousands of Americans losing their jobs, due to the Pandemic that has descended upon our land, we are witnessing what some are seeing as another Great Depression coming our way. For those who have not lost their income, it is important for them to remember that such times offer a great…