Father Bill's Blog
152. The Divine Liturgy - 2
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Before we plunge into this Post: May God grant you a blessed feast of the Holy Angels today, and of that wonderful Saint Nektarios tomorrow. And praise Him for sending them to help and assist us. [P.S. on Friday evening. I forgot to add: Go to Post 91 to read the life of Holy Nektarios.] The Preparation, Part Two We’re still looking at what I called “The Hidden Liturgy”, the part of the Divine…
No Other Foundation
Are You Comfortable?
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Recently I was reading a foreign-language newspaper (well, the English part of it) and there was an article in it about the church. My eyes were first attracted to the article by a photo of an old priest in a stole, having a long white beard, and holding a prayer rope (not the photo at left). The article accompanying the photo read as follows: “The monk priest Fr. (name withheld) came from…
Glory to God for All Things
A Royal Nun Sees Her Angel
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In the service of Holy Baptism, the priest specifically prays that God will assign an “angel of light” to the life of the child being baptized. In Matthew 18:10, Christ makes reference to the guardian angels of children who “always behold the face of my Father.” Their role is the guarding of our salvation. It is the work of God’s “secret hand” in our lives. That secret, however, is sometimes seen openly.…
Faith Encouraged
Bind on Earth; Bound in Heaven!
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I’ve heard this so many times: Why can’t I find love? What’s wrong with me? The expectations of some fairy tale notions wound us and wound our children. And that, dearest, is precisely the evil one’s intentions. Because the end result of these fantasies is the depressing lie that there is no such thing as love and that always leads to “there is no such thing as God.” Game, set, match kingdom…
The Morning Offering
Stop Complaining
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Complaining weakens our resolve If we are always complaining about how unfairly we are treated, we will have failed in our imitation of Christ, Who was abused by His enemies unto death. We should strive to reign with Our Lord by loving our enemies and never complain. Christ looked towards His Heavenly Father and when we are tempted to complain…
Glory to God for All Things
A Patient Joy - Finding the True Self
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Among the weakest things in the world of social relations is the truth. That might seem to be an odd statement. However, the weakness of the truth is the limitations placed upon it by its very nature. It cannot say just anything, nor can it ever pretend to be something that it is not. Those restrictions are not shared by lies. It is the nature of a lie that it can assume…
Growing the Church
2. Management/Administration: 2.5.2 Preparation of Worship Space
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From the vision of properly prepared worship mentioned in the previous post, it becomes clear that we need a suitable place in which to celebrate the Liturgy. Being able to prepare that venue involves our understanding of sacred space, beauty, and the language of architecture. If all the world has been created by God and exists in Him, then all of created space is in some sense sacred. There is no part…
Faith Encouraged
Taste Suffering SO THAT You Can Taste Glory
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Sometimes, the scriptures say things that really unsettle me. But I’ve learned when that happens, that’s a clue that I am approaching a place in my own heart that needs attention. And it’s beginning to dawn on me that most of the time I am unsettled by the wisdom of the Faith it’s because this wisdom is touching on suffering. Take, for example, this quote from St. Isaac the Syrian: If you would…
The Morning Offering
Misplaced Priorities
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Our laziness and misplaced priorities Our laziness and misplaced priorities regarding the Sunday and holy day services, keep us from our obligations to God, and endanger the soul, for in keeping ourselves away from God’s temple, we remain afar from the cure that comes from participating in the Divine Mysteries. Saint Gregory Palamas tells us that we “may remain uncured,…
Praying in the Rain
Holy Embezzlement
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Luke 16 contains one of the most difficult to understand parables of Jesus. It is commonly called the parable of the Unjust Steward. For most of my life the parable offended me. Like the Pharisees in 16:14, I want to deride Jesus for telling a parable that, on the face of it, advocates embezzlement. The servant in the parable gets sacked for “wasting” his master’s goods, so the servant decides to earn…
Walking an Ancient Path
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
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As predictable as a pile of unwanted catalogs in my mailbox, November brought with it an ad for a community “Holiday Celebration.” Which holiday? Is it possible that my Denver suburb will be celebrating Pancha Ganapati, the five-day Hindu festival in December honoring Ganesha? Possible, but unlikely. A choir probably will not be singing pagan Yule or Saturnalia songs at the event, although they might devote a tune to Hanukkah amid the…
Faith Encouraged
Freedom from Anxiety
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Well, the truth is I was worried (OK, actually worried and scared). I had never faced anything like this before and all I had ever heard was this situation was serious. And it was. But as I stood there waiting to face the music I so dreaded, I noticed something. My anxiety and fear were making things worse. These emotions and feelings were clouding my judgment, and that was dangerous. You see,…
The Morning Offering
Authentic Orthodoxy
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We must take Orthodoxy beyond the external We must guard against noticing when another parishioner seems careless in the making of the sign of the cross, while we go about demonstrating for all around us, the proper way. Making sweeping signs of the cross that are done in such a way as to be almost a caricature, following up with…
Faith Encouraged
Your Hunger Reveals Your Heart
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“You are what you eat.” So goes the saying that has at times served as a means to get people to have better diets, and a way for philosophers to reduce the human person to merely a thinking animal, and even to theologians trying to have folks consider the profound teaches of the Eucharist. For the vast amount of history, before the modern industrial revolution, the search for food and “daily bread”…
The Morning Offering
Together
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We are all in this together As we struggle in this life, it is good to remember that we are all together. We find our place of silence, where we encounter God, but even in this place set apart, we are together. In our journey to God, our common goal is the acquisition of a humble and contrite heart, and…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
What Would Happen If God Just Showed Up?
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The Whole Counsel Blog
The Bread of Heaven and the Blood of the Covenant
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The Eucharist has always stood at the center of the life and worship of the Christian Church. The sacrifice of the Eucharist is the preeminent act of Christian worship, the central focus of Christian life, and the constituent element of the church as community. Sacrifices are meals, meals shared together by the community with the community’s God. Several past posts have focused on the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist and its nature as a meal. There is also much to be said about the elements themselves, the food which constitutes this meal. Beginning by at least the seventh century and especially in the West, there has been considerable discussion and debate as to how the body, blood, and indeed the…
Faith Encouraged
The Temptation of Misplaced Trust
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Say what you will about the old TV shows: They were naive. They weren’t completely honest. They were sentimental. All of that may be true, but at least they attempted to foster the best of our hopes and dreams rather than pandering to our lowest desires. One such show was “Father Knows Best.” Robert Young played the dad and the comedy was gentle, but the show focused on a good-natured father who really…
The Morning Offering
Monasteries
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Centers for prayer and spiritual healing Monastics are an integral part of the Church and should not be seen as independent of the Church Universal. Monks are bound by the same Gospel as other Christians and need to avail themselves to the missionary and pastoral needs of the Church, as needed. Although a primary role of monasticism is to be…
The Morning Offering
The Great Gap
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The need to reunite a society divided by age There are two major populations within our society that are seeing a statistical rise in the number of suicides. At a time when a growing body of research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power, our nation’s youth, and the elderly,…
No Other Foundation
The Real Roots of Universalism
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For gaining a deep insight into the minds of cross-sections of the populace, you can’t beat blogging. People will say in the comments section of a blog what they really think about certain topics (sometimes on topics only minimally related to the actual content of the blog piece), and often what they lack in civility they more than make up for in candour. Providing one’s skin is thick enough, reading the comments…
The Morning Offering
Imitating Christ
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What does the Lord require of us? 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…
Glory to God for All Things
Slowing Down for the Necessary Thing
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I make a weekly visit to a nursing home about an hour away. I have a dear parishioner who has been in that place, or similar places, for about eight years. Our conversations center around the past week, her life and mine, with occasional forays into deeper matters. One of the difficulties of life in a nursing home is the sameness: one day differs little from another, making time seem to stand…
Father Bill's Blog
151. The Divine Liturgy - 1
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The Service of Preparation, Part One No clever “catch line” to introduce this Post. The Divine Liturgy is too serious a matter for that. But “serious” doesn’t mean dull. I hope you’ll find this interesting, informative, even enlightening. Why this series? Because we Orthodox have attended the Liturgy so many times that we can easily take it for granted, not think about it, let our minds wander while we’re in church. I…
A Lamp for Today
Carrying Your Creator: The Dismissal-Resurrectional Theotokion in Tone One
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Genesis 1-3, 1 Chronicles 16:8-36, Genesis 22:18 This week, we have had several feastdays, including October 31st, a day to remember the Hieromartyr John of Chicago. His hymn, in tone one, leads to the dismissal-resurrectional Theotokion in tone one, as well. What a mysterious, provocative and joyful hymn this is! It brings to life that great icon, frequently placed prominently over the apse, and commanding our attention. This icon, which typically includes…
Faith Encouraged
The Dead End of Comparison
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“Excellence” is a term we hear a lot in sports and in business. And that ties the word to an idea of achievement or progress. But there is also an application of “excellence” when it comes to your relationship with God, and that has little to do with achievement or progress and everything to do with growing in love for God and others! Look at our lesson today in 1 Corinthians 12:27-31; 13:1-8…
The Morning Offering
The Internet
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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly There is a lot of good that can be discovered on line. A number of years ago I was charged by my archbishop with the task of addressing our Diocesan Pastoral Conference on the subject of Fasting According to the Early Church Fathers. Only after having agreed to the task of preparing such…
