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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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The Morning Offering
Sunday Off?
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Let us not, out of laziness, miss the Sunday Liturgy It seems we all go through periods in our lives when our church attendance drops off. Work and home life can seem hectic, and we fall into the trap of letting ourselves feel overwhelmed. Given the fast pace of our active lives, and feeling like we just don’t have enough…
Eastern Christian Insights
It Takes a Person to Overcome Paralysis: Homily for the Second Sunday of Great Lent and the Forefeast of the Annunciation in the Orthodox Church
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Hebrews 1:10-2:3; Mark 2:1-12 Even as we continue our Lenten journey, we prepare to celebrate tomorrow the Feast of the Annunciation, which commemorates the Archangel Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that God had called her to become the Theotokos, the Mother of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ. When she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your…
No Other Foundation
Advice to the Confused
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I suppose that most pastors have had the experience of a young parishioner approaching them privately and confiding in them their suspicion or decision that they were gay, bisexual, or transgender. Such confusion is in the air, has the Nihil Obstat of both secular culture and governmental sanction, and also bestows a kind of odd popularity, making the person part of a privileged minority of the nobly oppressed. Adolescence has always been…
A Light So Lovely
J.R.R. Tolkien, Fairy Tales, and Cultural Renewal
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Recently I was having an animated conversation about literature, hagiography, and storytelling. (Yes, I do have a lot of those). During the course of a lovely evening, someone suggested that we need not more Lives of Saints, but more living examples of sanctity. “No one reads the Lives anyway,” he said. Perhaps he is right. A living, breathing saint should be a far more convincing inspiration than the (sometimes) idiosyncratic retellings of the…
The Morning Offering
Overcoming Disinclination
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The soul requires discipline to overcome disinclination My soul suffers from a certain blindness when it comes to itself. In its desire to be more relaxed, indolence, insensitivity and deceit rule the soul. In my refusal to master the work of salvation, complacency sets in. Since no one can enter into my inner life but me, I am the only…
A Light So Lovely
The Sins of the Scientific Method
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When I wrote the first version of this post almost five years ago, my friend Jonathan Pageau brought my attention to an unusual event. Pope Francis, during an appearance at the Papal Palace in 2014, had two children release two “peace doves” of purest white. What was initially an “awwww” moment turned suddenly grisly. A black crow attacked one of the doves almost immediately, and in front of everyone. When I first…
Father Bill's Blog
111. The Icon, Part One - Judaism, Early Church
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Did you ever watch a classic iconographer paint (“write”} an icon? This requires many layers of egg tempura paint, each properly prayed over. The iconographer begins with a plain board, correctly shaped and prepared. (I’m omitting much of the process here.) Along the way a layer of clay earth tone is used, then later white on which the outline of the person is sketched. After this come layer after layer after layer…
Faith Encouraged
Will You Weary God?
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I don’t know why I was so nervous. After all, I’d met the boss before and was fine. But this situation was different. We were at an event when not just my boss, but his boss, and his boss were present, and I was the most “junior” man in the room. I confess, I was intimidated and had a million scenarios running through my head about how I was going to react…
The Morning Offering
Closed Communion
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Closed Communion in the Orthodox Church When a stranger approaches the Holy Gifts during the celebration of the Divine Liturgy it is the norm in the Orthodox Church for the priest to ask the person to “kiss the chalice”. Not knowing if the person is Orthodox, or whether they are in good standing with the Church, the priest can…
Faith Encouraged
Your Guilt is Taken Away
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The word “holy” stumps most folks. They think they know what it means, but, in the end, they really don’t. So, when you hear the word “holy” what pops into your mind? What does the word “holy” mean? I won’t keep you in suspense. Here’s the key to understanding the word “holy.” It literally means “set apart for a specific use.” This is a big deal! And I really can’t emphasize just…
The Morning Offering
The Journey of Joyful Sorrow
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The journey of joyful sorrow in the expectation of the Resurrection The main reason Christianity spread so rapidly following the Resurrection of Christ, was the power behind the resurrection. The truth of Christ’s resurrection empowered believers to joyfully embrace martyrdom, knowing that they would be joined in eternal bliss with their resurrected Saviour. Although their martyrdom would involve both mental…
Glory to God for All Things
When Icons Became Windows
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Some thirty years ago I was doing doctoral work at Duke University under Geoffrey Wainwright. I was drawn to Wainwright on account of his commitment to liturgical tradition and practice as the ground of theology. A course that became a turning point in my studies was on the nature of language in theology. Like all work in the program, it was not a course filled with answers, but a careful discipline of…
Behind the Scenes
Time and Despondency: Yes, it is about you!
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This was to be a book about other people. Not about me. I am an Orthodox Christian with a strong tendency to get involved in activism. Being a woman with children, my special interests are women and children. Let me tell you some of the things that keep me awake at night. We are seeing unprecedented rates of anxiety and depression amongst children and teens. Porn use is sky high for boys…
Faith Encouraged
Woe to Those Who Call Evil Good
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In front of the Supreme Court is the statue of “Lady Justice.” This is an ancient symbol of the purpose of a law-based society. Notice the “Lady” is blindfolded. In one hand she holds the scales and the other a sword. The symbolism is clear. The application of the Law will be blind and won’t show favoritism AND the law will be enforced. So, let me ask you an honest question: Do…
The Morning Offering
Our Journey
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Our journey to God begins with our first step The Church has guidelines governing the many periods of fasting, but we all need the discernment that can really only come from having a close relationship with our confessor or parish priest. To move beyond the standard fasting rules, the importance of keeping a prayer rule, and reading the daily scripture…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The Hosts of Heaven
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As modern people, when we think of the sun and the stars, we think of masses of incandescent gas; gigantic nuclear furnaces in which hydrogen is transformed into helium at, literally, astronomical temperatures. When we think of the moon, we think of a large dusty rock which orbits around the earth every 27 days. At some level, we are aware that ancient people did not think of them this way. We believe that our modern understanding is superior because it is based on mathematics and scientific observation. Ancient explanations and descriptions are viewed as quaint folktales and myths now supplanted by real knowledge. This creates a difficulty for modern readers of the holy scriptures, as those scriptures are quickly seen…
Faith Encouraged
The Delusion of Riches
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Lech Walesa was the Polish electrician who helped found the Solidarity Trade Union in 1983. This was the first independent trade union in the old Soviet Union and became the political movement that drove communism out of Poland. While visiting the United States after having become the 2nd president of a free Poland he commented on the wealth of the US: “You have riches and freedom here but I feel no sense…
The Morning Offering
Incense
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Let my prayer arise as incense before Thee. Psalm 141:2 From Old Testament times believers have burned incense as an offering when worshiping God. The ancient temple in Jerusalem even had priests whose sole duty was to keep the censer burning twenty-four hours a day. Ancient pagan kings were often escorted with large fans of peacock feathers and burning incense…
Faith Encouraged
It's Time To Prune The Vineyard!
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It wasn’t that I didn’t try. I did try. I read how to do it. I got some good advise. I bought the right fertilizer. I weeded. I hoed. And the garden still crashed and burned! Hey, I guess I’m not very good at gardening. Kind of like I am at fishing. Oh well, some of us have talents in other places. But there was one gardening principle that caught my attention;…
The Morning Offering
Attaining a Healthy Soul
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During the Lenten Fast we must work for inner peace During the Great Lenten Fast, each day brings on new challenges regarding the health of our soul. Trials and temptations, especially during this fast period, confront us. But we must struggle to bring about a peaceful heart, and bring forth the healing we need, that our soul gain spiritual strength.…
The Morning Offering
Becoming Like Christ
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What does the Lord require of me? As we examine how we live our lives as Christians, we look to those who leave an impression of goodness, kindness, and humility, as examples of the person we would like to become. That saintly person, by their every example, exudes the humbleness of the Lord, and love seems to be palpable when…
Eastern Christian Insights
Embodied Holiness: Homily for the First Sunday of Great Lent (The Sunday of Orthodoxy) in the Orthodox Church
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Hebrews 11:24-26, 32-40; John 1:43-51 Some people think that the point of religion is to strengthen families and societies by giving people a motive to be moral. They want to put the fear of God in us so that we will do the right thing and make the world a better place. As laudable as those goals are, they are not why our Lord died on the Cross and rose on…
Glory to God for All Things
Truth, Lies and Icons
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As verbal beings, we live in a world of icons. We experience the world in an iconic fashion. A major difficulty for us is that we have lost the vocabulary of iconic reality. We have substituted the language of photography. The dissonance between reality and our photographic assumptions has led us to doubt both. Man is an iconographer and needs to re-learn what that means. +++ Franz Kafka famously wrote: “The Lie…
No Other Foundation
A suggestion about baptism from St. Gregory the Theologian
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In the debate about baptism with which we are all familiar, we may note a set of binary alternatives: either one baptizes an adult candidate on the basis of their mature decision to repent and believe or one baptizes an infant on the basis of promises made by his or her sponsors. These alternatives usually wear the theological labels of “believer’s baptism” and “infant baptism”. Usually this binary involves another binary, with…
The Morning Offering
The Great and Holy Lenten Fast
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Modern science sees the value of the Church’s tradition of fasting From Old Testament times, the people of God prepared for holy occasions with fasting and prayer, and the New Testament continued with this holy tradition. The Lord Himself fasted for forty days before beginning His earthly ministry, demonstrating the importance of fasting before starting any spiritual task. Christ even…
Father Bill's Blog
110. The Triumph of Orthodoxy
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The Triumph of Orthodoxy? That sounds brash and prideful, as if we think we Orthodox have beat everybody else out in this “religious game”, that we have all the truth and others have none because we’re so smart and everybody else is so stupid (sounds like modern politics), or that we’ve taken over the world or something. That is not at all what we mean. Let me explain. But first let’s go back…
Faith Encouraged
God or the Snake?
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“She made me do it.” This was the “excuse of my daughter when I asked her why she hit her sister! Wow, that’s a lot of power to give to someone else! It seems we humans have a particular gift for shifting the blame to someone else when we make mistakes. We also seem to be particularly good at excusing or justifying our choices even when those choices turn out badly! …