The Morning Offering
How to Forgive
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We must put aside all resentment The decision to forgive another person a wrong done to us begins when we decide to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge. To forgive someone does not mean that we forget what they did to us, for this may be impossible. The memory of the hurt might always remain with you, but…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Extra-Biblical Literature in the Orthodox Church
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This blog has often, and will continue to, make reference to extra-Biblical literature. The two most important categories of this literature are Second Temple Jewish literature and early Christian writings such as the Apostolic Fathers. Second Temple Jewish literature reveals to us the religious world and mindset of the first century AD from which Christianity emerged. It shows us the theological lens through which the apostles understood the revelation which came in the person of Jesus Christ. The Apostolic Fathers, and the Fathers of the second and third centuries as well, in particular, show us the continuity with, and transformation of, Second Temple Judaism that came to constitute the Christian religion. Not only is the New Testament rife with allusions…
Faith Encouraged
The Purposeful Discipline of Generosity
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As someone who has spent most of my adult life either as a police officer or in the nonprofit world, I can tell you, generosity is both addictive and life giving. It really is. Studies have shown that there are real psychological changes in someone’s behavior and mood when they are generous. And it seems we Americans are more generous than ever, but our generosity is changing. In the past few years…
The Morning Offering
Crucified to Self
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I am crucified with Christ In our life, every undertaking, every action, every thought, must be a reflection Christ in our life. The Lord will grant us the strength and ability to accomplish good works and attain holiness, if we cooperate with His grace. Prayer alone is not enough if we do not reflect moral improvement. Change must take place…
No Other Foundation
Jewish Evangelism: The Religion of Israel as Preparatory, Not Final
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In my last blog post I looked at the patristic project of commending the Christian Faith to one’s Jewish neighbour, and concluded that the project, though fraught with potential for misunderstanding, was still worthwhile. Here I would like to suggest that the religion of Israel was clearly preparatory, and was never meant to be God’s final word to Israel or to mankind. In discussing Israel’s religion it is important to differentiate the…
Eastern Christian Insights
To be Healed by the Good Samaritan: Homily for the 8th Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church
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Luke 10:25-37 It is tempting to use religion to help us feel better about ourselves. Too often, we want to make God in our own image and let ourselves off the hook from anything that challenges us to do something different from what we want to do. It can be very appealing to try to use God for purposes other than the healing of our souls. That is the attitude that…
The Morning Offering
Correcting Myself
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And amendment is made to a small part of the Church Whenever we hear of problems in the Church it is our natural inclination to want to read all about it, and root out all the details. Yet if we really want to benefit our soul, we should take the advice of the Saint Paisios of Mt. Athos. His advice:…
The Morning Offering
My Countries
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I pray for America, and I pray for Russia I am not a Russian, and I’ve sometimes felt like a stepchild in the Russian Church, not because I’ve not been welcomed, but because the ethnic identity, as well as the language, of many of my brothers and sisters is not something I share. As a man whose roots are in…
Father Bill's Blog
91. Saint Nektarios - his life, death and what happened after that
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His Death On November 8 in 1920, Saint Nektarios the Wonderworker died. The miracles began immediately. Today he is the most revered Orthodox saint of the 20th century. Bishop Nektarios had been ill, so he was taken from the monastery on Aegina to a hospital in Athens. The intern at first could not believe that such a simply dressed man was really a bishop. He was diagnosed with incurable cystitis and placed…
Faith Encouraged
A Stranger They Will Not Follow
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I was a nervous wreck! A 15-year-old teenager with his best buddies was sneaking into a movie theater without paying! I can hear the voice of my mother in my head “Young man, you carry your family name. That should make you think twice about doing things you know you shouldn’t!” We didn’t get caught. We loved the movie. We laughed, and we congratulated ourselves for our stealth and our “courage.” And I…
Orthodox Reformed Bridge
Orthodoxy’s Official Response to Calvinism -- The Confession of Dositheus (1673)
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The Orthodox Church has made two major responses to the Protestant Reformation. The first response was to Lutheranism when the Lutheran theologians of Tübingen and Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople exchanged letters from 1573 to 1581. The exchange ended in an impasse due to irreconcilable theological differences. See the “Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue in the Sixteenth Century.” The second response was to the Reformed tradition almost a century later in 1672 when a…
The Morning Offering
Hammi
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Our beloved Norwegian Forest Cat Our beloved Norwegian Forest Cat, Hammi, was most happy when the entire monastic brotherhood gathered together with him in our library/community room. We all considered him an important member of our community, and Hammi was the only cat I knew who had his own facebook fan page, started by a woman who’d met him on…
Raising Saints
How the Old Testament Can Put Christ Back in Christmas
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One of the really amazing things I discovered about Orthodoxy is that we understand the Old Testament differently than most Christians. I grew up reading the Bible with the understanding that the New Testament was about Jesus, and the Old Testament was a history of God’s people which conveniently offered morals to live by. When I became Orthodox, I very slowly started to realize that we were understanding those stories in a…
The Whole Counsel Blog
4 Maccabees: Martyrdom and Reason
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As is the case with 4 Ezra, 4 Maccabees is a Biblical text that lies at the very edges of the Old Testament canon in the Orthodox Church. In later Greek manuscripts, 4 Maccabees is included in an appendix. In older Greek manuscripts no such distinction is made, though 4 Maccabees is often found at the end of these manuscripts rather than following 3 Maccabees, along with Psalm 151 and the Prayer of Manasseh, two liturgical fragments. It is present in Old Georgian Old Testaments and was for a time, though no longer, in the Romanian Old Testament. Due to their relegation to the ‘apocrypha’ in most English Bibles, 1-3 Maccabees are not well known to most English readers. …
Behind the Scenes
Save the Date! Tuesday, November 27
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Dear Friends, We’re growing! This year, Ancient Faith Radio added 5 new podcasts, 16 new specials—featuring conferences, symposia, seasonal programming, and diocesan assemblies—and 2 new live shows. We also hosted our first Grow-A-Thon, broadcasting live for most of 2 days to celebrate our growth and the move into our new studio headquarters! This year, we’ve also reached the point where it’s time to set up more remote studios. Remote studios are high-tech broadcasting equipment like…
Faith Encouraged
Made Perfect!
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The word “asceticism” is something of a mystery to our modern way of life. We have lived with such plenty and such amazing comfort and ease for so long that now we assume that all of life is meant to be pain (and even effort) free. Just consider our attitudes towards marriage. We assume that marriage is meant to “fulfill us” or “complete us” as if the Hollywood version of romantic love…
The Morning Offering
The Banquet of the Lord
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The importance of preparing for the Divine Liturgy That the Church requires us to prepare to receive the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, prior to the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, by saying the Pre-Communion Prayers, is a given. The Church also requires us to fast from midnight on, abstaining from either food or drink, until…
Glory to God for All Things
What Happened That Day in the Library
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It is occasionally the case that we remember precisely where we were at a point in time, in which everything is before or after that moment. It is a Kairos, a particular moment that changes everything. There are collective moments of that sort: victory in Europe is announced; a President is shot; the Challenger explodes. There are also personal moments: the birth of a child; the death of a parent. There was…
Faith Encouraged
To Whom Much is Given…
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Listen to what St. Theophan the Recluse says in his brilliant “Unseen Warfare”: “Refuse to listen to the devil when he whispers to you: give me now, and you will give tomorrow to God. No, no! Spend all the hours of your life in a way pleasing to God; keep in your mind the thought that after the present hour you will not be given another and that you will have to render…
The Morning Offering
Avoiding Despondency
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Despondency is the tool demons use to distract us from the goal It is often the case that we fail to keep God’s commandments and find ourselves despondent, unable, as it seems, to make progress in the battle over our sins. When the same sins constantly plague us, despondency is our enemy. Despondency is the tool demons use to distract…
Walking an Ancient Path
Burned Out on Church with Nowhere to Turn
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Should I give up on church? For several years I wrestled with this question. The short answer was “no.” I wasn’t angry at God, I wasn’t angry at people, and I knew that Christians are not supposed to forsake “assembling ourselves together” (Hebrews 10:25). But my church experiences left me unsatisfied. My husband and I dragged our children to one type of church, then another in our quest for…something. We met wonderful…
Faith Encouraged
Called To Be Free! S. California, Here We Come!
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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
The Three Disciplines
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The Three Disciplines: Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving Jesus Christ called for a thorough conversion of our heart and mind, and a complete turning away from the old man (our fallen nature). The main act that begins this conversion is metanoia, which means thorough change of mind. This happens when we become aware that we have sinned, and that we are…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Chosen to Bear Fruit
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Though it may at first seem counterintuitive, the most important Biblical text for understanding the Christian Gospel as St. Paul proclaims it is the book of Deuteronomy. The book of Deuteronomy sums up the Torah, the Pentateuch, in presenting the Prophet Moses’ great final sermon to the people of Israel before his death and their entrance into the land promised to their forefathers. It is, in condensed and pointed form, the covenant document granted by God to his people Israel. In the ancient world, the type of covenant document, ‘berith’ in Hebrew, which is represented in the Old Testament is a particular type of ancient suzerainty treaty. When a king conquered a new city or territory and took possession of…
No Other Foundation
Jewish Evangelism: “To the Jew First”
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I have just finished reading a wonderful book by the late scholar Louis Feldman (d. 2017) entitled Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian. In it, he mentions the patristic attempts to convince the Jews of the truth of Christianity by citing examples of Old Testament prophecy fulfilled in Jesus, and he remarks that Jews in those days could hardly have found such Christian arguments…
Faith Encouraged
When I Could Bear It No Longer
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As a boy, I loved the old Popeye the Sailorman cartoons. Every afternoon, we’d come home from school and my grandmother would let us watch the Popeye Club on Channel 5. It seemed each episode would have the patient and good Popeye put up with some shenanigans from Bluto. But then Popeye would say his famous line: “That’s all I can stands; I can’t stands no more!” Then Bluto would get what…
