Faith Encouraged
Fr. Barnabas, WHERE ARE YOU?
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Greetings and Happy New Year. First off, let me say how grateful I am that so many have wondered where the audio devotional has gone. Even though we tried to telegraph this change starting back in September of this past year, it isn’t surprising that some folks didn’t know what was coming. Sorry. Starting in January of this year we have dropped the daily audio portion of the daily devotional. The challenges…
Glory to God for All Things
The Final Destruction of Demons - Holy Baptism
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“Final” is not a word you often hear in Christian teaching. Most Christians leave the final things until, well, the End. But this is not the language of the fathers nor of the Church. A good illustration can be found in the Orthodox service of Holy Baptism. During the blessing of the waters the priest prays: And grant to [this water] the grace of redemption, the blessing of Jordan. Make it the…
Father Bill's Blog
160. The Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather of God, the Foster-Father of God, the Brother of God
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I know I promised an article about the Magi this week, but between regular Church worship and activities, Christmas gatherings, the New Year, presiding at Saint Basil’s Liturgy on my Name Day the next morning, and a wonderful family visit…I just wasn’t prepared. But I had this Post almost ready to go. So let’s hold the Wise Men off till next year. (Maybe they can wait for a year in Edessa or somewhere?) In…
Faith Encouraged
Make Jesus KNOWN in 2020!
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Christ is born! There was a day when I actually worked as a “promotions director” for a leading media ministry. My job was to make sure the religious media consumers knew about our radio, TV, and print materials available and to get folks to watch, listen, and read our stuff. I was even a member of the Public Relations Society of America for a short time! Nowadays, it seems that “getting the…
The Morning Offering
The Abuser
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No one is required by God to remain in an abusive relationship The best way to respond to another person’s anger is not to withdraw, but to move towards them with kindness. There are times when distancing yourself from someone who is angry, is necessary, for there is absolutely no good reason for you to move towards another, when they…
Behind the Scenes
What Is Your New Year's Resolution?
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Growing the Church
2. Management/Admin.: 2.6 Distribution/Presentation
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In the world of the marketplace if you have products to sell you will, of course, have to make them known and available to potential customers. Commercial enterprise refers to this as Distribution. This is marketing proper and it involves advertising and branding, tools used to disseminate information about the products being made available. A brand is a combination of visual (logo), verbal (catch phrase), and personal (the CEO) information that allows…
Faith Encouraged
Are you "Born Again?" You Should Be!
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“You must be born again.” Hey, where I’m from, that scripture is as well worn as John 3:16. In the ’70’s fad of the “Jesus Movement” (anybody who was paying attention at all to the culture of the early ’70’s knows this) being “born again” was all the rage. Billy Graham wrote a book about it and Jimmy Carter, running for President, made being “born again” a household phrase. I remember even…
The Morning Offering
Resisting an Unbelieving World
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We must resist this world that has collectively slipped into madness In this secular society there are many Orthodox individuals who’ve found themselves sharing their lives with non-Orthodox friends and family members. Sometimes these people are not even practicing Christians, so the struggle to keep to the traditions and practices of the Orthodox Faith can be difficult. Even the blessing…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
16 Realistic Observations about Orthodoxy Online
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Glory to God for All Things
The Holy Name of Jesus
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In 1913, a small Russian fleet landed a contingent of soldiers who forcibly removed a group of Russian monks from Mount Athos. This action came at the end of a stormy controversy surrounding the name of God. The monks were known as the Imyaslavsy (“Name worshippers”) and were following ideas that had been promulgated in a text published in 1907. That work, On the Caucasus Mountains, written by the staretz, Schemamonk Hilarion,…
Faith Encouraged
The Whole Fullness of Deity Dwells
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Christ is born! And Happy New Year! There’s no getting around this. The identity of Jesus Christ is the crux on which human history rests. He’s either merely an itinerant Jewish rabbi that fell afoul of the Roman occupiers; a gifted religious teacher and philosopher and “ascended master”; a figment of the imagination of gullible people; a “great prophet” that had some good things to say; or He’s actually what the Historic…
The Morning Offering
Quietude
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Quietude, silence and prayer It is in keeping constant vigilance, guarding our senses, and living a life of repentance and self-rapprochement, that we can hope to gain control of our passions and enter into true communion with God. The basic element of such a life has got to include quietude, for it is in states of calmness and inner reflection…
Faith Encouraged
Another New Year! Thank God
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Most of us will never travel the world to share the message of Jesus Christ to others in foreign lands. In fact, statistics tell us that most Americans will only travel to 8 states in their lifetime, and some Americans will live and die in the state where they were born. And yet… Look at this note we received recently from someone in China: “Thank you,Father, I want to attend your church…
Faith Encouraged
Endings And Beginnings
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Christ is born! No matter how long any of us live, there’s something about the changing of the calendar that invites us to look at ourselves. Benjamin Franklin once said “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” Great quote. And here we are at the end of one calendar year and the beginning of another. Some of us…
The Morning Offering
Other Peoples Sins
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If we are to win the battle we must focus only on our own sins When we take our eyes off our own failings, shortcomings, and sins, we notice the failings of others. As the sins of others get our attention, our focus turns away from our own struggles with the passions, and we begin to fall further into sin,…
The Whole Counsel Blog
The New Year
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This week, most of the contemporary world will celebrate the beginning of a new calendar year. In the ancient world, a variety of calendars were used by different peoples to organize time in a manner held to be sacred. This produced different beginning dates for the annual cycle in addition to years of different lengths and often, as with the modern leap year, periods of time inserted as corrections. In ancient Israel through the Second Temple period, two overlapping calendars are in evidence and both are described in the Torah as well as in the practice of the people throughout the era. Corresponding to these two calendars are two different beginnings for the annual cycle. There were, in essence, for…
No Other Foundation
The Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive Us our Trespasses”
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We come now in our series on the Lord’s Prayer to the petition, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. This rendering could perhaps use a little help. It might be more accurately and literally rendered, “Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors”. It is a brief enough petition, but within it hide two bits of counsel for us as we strive to live…
Faith Encouraged
Give to God What Belongs to God!
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Christ is born! NASA released the largest picture ever taken. It’s made up of 411 snapshots from the Hubble telescope of our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. The picture is 1.5 billion pixels and takes 4.3 gigs of disk space to load. It’s big. But as large as the picture is, the scene it shows is even more incredible. It shows over 100 million stars and peers 40,000 light years away from…
The Morning Offering
Hospital of the Soul
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The Church is the hospital where we can find healing Our Orthodox Faith defines sin as an illness that is in need of healing, not as a crime that requires punishment. The Church is a hospital for the soul whose therapists (priests) first sought therapy and then became the therapists. As a healing institution the Church is the place for…
The Morning Offering
The Workplace
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The workplace can be a place for spiritual growth Balancing the spiritual life with the workplace can be quite challenging. Our work day should begin with prayer, and should be planned with the help and guidance of one’s spiritual father, priest or confessor. If we have children, we should get up an hour early, so we have plenty of time…
Glory to God for All Things
Entering the Mystery of Christmas
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Orthodox Christianity is deeply associated with the word “mystery.” Its theological hymns are replete with paradox, repeatedly affirming two things to be true that are seemingly contradictory. Most of these things are associated with what is called “apophatic” theology, or a theology that is “unspeakable.” This same theological approach is sometimes called the Via Negativa. This is easily misunderstood in common conversation. An Orthodox discussion takes place and reaches an impasse. Inevitably,…
The Morning Offering
Monks
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The Original Men in Black The monastic vocation is a special calling from God that is all about relationships. It is a relationship that involves community (the monastic brotherhood), but primarily revolves around the monk’s relationship with God. Monks are not holy men who are living lives set apart from the world, but men who are seeking holiness by entering…
A Light So Lovely
Favorite Books of 2019, Looking Forward to 2020
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Ah, the season of retrospectives! Be honest with me, can you resist them? I tell you, I get some of my best reading done during December and January. The best book recommendation lists, the best articles of the year (I can’t wait for the annual Sidney Awards from David Brooks), the best this, the best that… For me, ’tis usually the season of realizing just how exhausted I am, just in time…
Father Bill's Blog
159. Five Christmases
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Christ is born! Glorify him! 1. Secular Christmas Some of our Christmas customs are fairly modern by Orthodox reckoning (we’ve been around for a long time): Christmas cards and gifts *, special family traditions, candy and cookies ( I can still taste the anise Christmas cookies my German grandmother made). “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”, and all the rest. These lovely customs and many others help draw people together in love. They are…
A Lamp for Today
Lamb in our Snow: A Western Carol to Treasure
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(Link to the music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-W1tRHQLdY) Edward Caswall (1814-1878) penned buoyant words concerning the birth of the God-Man in 1858, after he had seen much sorrow. See Amid the Winter’s Snow is a stirring carol that goes brilliantly with Salvation Army band music, as I first learned it. Its range of expression, from the contemplative to the celebratory, works well with the full range of brass instruments, from mellow flugel and alto…
Faith Encouraged
St. Stephen and Stiff Necks
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Christ is Born! “That boy is so hard headed he wouldn’t even notice a rock hitting him between the eyes.” My grandmother had a way with words, but I’ve known people like this; so set in their ways that not even plain evidence would move them to change their ways. They were frozen in their thinking. But that kind of attitude can create some real problems for people, especially when they ignore…
