The Morning Offering
The Orthodox Church
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The Ancient Christian Church in the modern world We are part of the worldwide Orthodox Church – the oldest Christian Church in the world. This is not a theological statement, it is an historical one. In every part of the world there are Orthodox churches, missions, and monasteries. They are found in traditionally Orthodox countries such as Russia, Greece, Romania,…
Faith Encouraged
The LawGiver Obeys the Law!
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“Do as I say, not as I do!” I remember thinking “Well, that’s not very convincing.” How can someone who refuses to follow their own advice have any credibility at all? My mom drove that point home to me as I watched her follow her convictions when it would have been temporarily easier for her to “bend” her convictions to bring her some temporary comfort. She just pressed ahead with what she…
The Morning Offering
A New Year
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And a new beginning Today we celebrate the beginning of 2019, a New Year, and with it a chance to recommit ourselves to working harder at making changes in our lives that will lead to spiritual growth. The Lord’s patience never runs out, so we always have the invitation to renew our commitment to Him. The New Year is that…
Glory to God for All Things
Hiding in Plain Sight
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In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble. (Wisdom 3:7 RSV) ____ The story is told of St. Macarius that he was falsely accused of fathering a child by a young woman in the village. After being beaten and humiliated by the people there, he returned to his cell and gathered all of the mats and baskets he had made and gave…
Faith Encouraged
What Belongs to Caesar
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NASA recently 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 us. Breathtaking! Fascinating…
The Morning Offering
Rekindling the Missionary Mind
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We Orthodox are Duty Bound to Share the Faith As we usher in a new year, we Orthodox Christians are duty bound to share our faith with others. Christ is for everyone, but with all the bad press Christianity has been getting during the past decade, it is especially important that we approach evangelism in light of the historic Church.…
Eastern Christian Insights
Joseph the Betrothed, a Model of Obedience: Homily for the After-Feast of & Sunday After the Nativity of Christ in the Orthodox Church
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Galatians 1:11-19; Matthew 2:13-23 Christ is Born! Glorify Him! As we continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world, we should acknowledge that we are probably so familiar with the Christmas story that we often imagine it happened in a world quite different from our own. We tend to make His Nativity a sentimental event that we celebrate yearly with various cultural customs before going back…
The Morning Offering
Thank You!
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I am humbled by your feedback I am humbled by the feedback I’ve received from so many of you, telling me you are blessed by my blog articles and podcasts. “The Morning Offering” was born out of my deep love for all of you, and my desire to share the joy I experience in my life in Christ, and my…
Time Eternal
7 Orthodox Books to Read in 2019
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Christ is born! I took a break from the blogathon over Christmas, so welcome back! Just a few short days until 2019, and a little more than a week until the Feast of Theophany! For the next few posts, I’ll be talking about some of the things I do to get ready for a new year. In this post,…
No Other Foundation
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church: What Does the Word “Church” Mean?
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Every Sunday the Creed is said in Church in which Christians say the words, “I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church”. It many ways it is an odd thing to say. In the Creed we confess things that are matters of faith, things contestable, maybe even controversial. Thus we confess that God the Father almighty made the heaven and the earth, including all things visible (such as animals and men)…
The Morning Offering
When Pain and Sorrow Rule
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Without winter there will be no spring Like many of my readers, I’ve experience much pain and sorrow over this past year. But a beloved bishop friend gave me this sound advice: “The grass is greener where the manure is thickest.” The devil, warring against us, would have us believe the grass IS greener elsewhere, but we must always remember…
Walking an Ancient Path
Three Takeaways from the Protoevangelium of James
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During December’s twenty-four days before Christmas, blog readers joined me in reading one “chapter” a day from the Protoevangelium of James, which functions as a sort of prequel and addendum to the gospel accounts of the Nativity. What are we to think of this poetic, mystical document? Scholarly debates about its origins and historicity are way above my pay grade, and the purpose of this devotional exercise was not to debate, but…
Father Bill's Blog
98. The History of Everything from before the Beginning till after the End - Part Two
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Christ is born! Glorify him! The point of last week’s Post, and of the Old Testament (as Christians call it) is that Christ did not arrive “out of the clear blue”, without warning. There had been long centuries of preparation – indeed from before the beginning of time. Saint Paul wrote that Christ came in “the fullness of time” Galatians 4:4 – that is, at the right time, when all things were…
Faith Encouraged
Being Thirsty is Good!
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Christ is born! Glorify Him! My doctor looked at me and said “Father, your body is thirsty! You need to drink more water!” What I mistook for hunger was actually my body being thirsty! Wow, what a revelation. So, it is with our lives. We can mistake our thirst for God as a thirst for safety or security or even fame. All the while we act on these mistaken ideas and we…
The Morning Offering
Christ is in Our Midst
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As the Living Word, God was born into our midst As the Living Word, God became one of us, taking on the condition of our flesh in every way, yet remaining sinless. In doing so, God has invited us to come out from the darkness that is our fallen nature, and which leads only to death, and enter into communion…
Faith Encouraged
Marvel
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Christ is born! Glorify Him! I always wonder at those who constantly insist “You can’t judge me.” I don’t need to judge you. We always judge ourselves. Our words, our actions, and our thoughts all contain all that is needed to “judge” rightly the true state of our souls. It is also why the Last Judgement and our constant Orthodox prayer “For a Christian end to our lives, peaceful, without shame and…
The Morning Offering
Mercy and Love
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Where the temporal and the eternal are connected We can be rich in liturgical correctness and wealthy in traditions, but if we do not have love and mercy, we are in reality bankrupt. Our Lord Himself made love and mercy the chief criterion whereby we will be judged on the Last Day. The fulfillment of the law is love, not…
Faith Encouraged
Out of Egypt Have I Called My Son
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Christ is Born! Glorify Him! The Christian Church has been around a long time! And the place it’s existed the longest is the place where it first sprang up. The Church is, at it’s heart, a Semitic Faith, an Eastern Faith. And that’s because the Christian Church is the fulfillment of the promises made by God to Abraham, the father of the Faithful. So there are a lot of Jewish elements in…
The Morning Offering
Taste the Presence
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Taste the presence of Christ within you We all need a good dose of silent prayer each and every day. Finding that perfect place in your home that can become your cave, or prayer closet, will afford you that sacred space where you can go deep into the heart and connect with God. That place where you can close off…
The Whole Counsel Blog
Stephen, Rabbi and Saint
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St. Stephen is remembered in the church as one of the first deacons chosen by the apostles (Acts 6:5) and the first Christian martyr following the resurrection and ascension of Christ (7:58-60). The church has also, however, maintained and handed down a great deal more information about this important saint. Like St. Paul, St. Stephen had been a student of the rabbi Gamaliel, a figure who appears briefly in the New Testament (5:34; 22:3), but becomes a massively important figure of authority in later Talmudic Judaism. The Mishnah, in particular, is composed primarily of the statements and opinions of famed rabbis on particular topics of the Torah, and Gamaliel’s opinions are featured prominently. While St. Paul’s level of rabbinical, as…
Eastern Christian Insights
Shocking, Holy, and Humble Love for the Whole World: Homily for the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ (Christmas) in the Orthodox Church
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Christ is Born! Glorify Him! Galatians 4:4-7; Matthew 2:1-12 We gather today to celebrate the birth of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ for our salvation. The details of His Nativity are important and shocking. The Child Who was born in a cave that functioned as a barn and had an animal’s feeding trough for His crib is fully divine and fully human. He did not appear with worldly…
Faith Encouraged
The Christ IS Born!
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Christ is Born! “Where did she go?” As a father, that question sent chills up my spine! Our youngest had wandered off and I couldn’t see her. It was a crowded area and all my police training had me imagining the worst. Not knowing where she was was a terror I don’t think I had ever felt. And I have been shot at! By God’s grace, she was found just moments later…
Orthodox Reformed Bridge
Christmas 2018
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Today Christ is born in Bethlehem of the Virgin. Today the Beginningless doth begin, and the Word becometh incarnate. The powers of heaven rejoice, and earth is glad with mankind. The Magi do offer presents, and the shepherds with wonder declaim. As for us, we shout ceaselessly, crying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards men. (John of Damascus) From Divine Prayers and Services,…
The Morning Offering
Christmas
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December 25th or January 7th? Regarding the Church Calendar (also known as the Old Calendar, or the Julian Calendar), I am grateful that our monastery is part of a jurisdiction that has remained true to the Traditional Calendar. The move to the Papal Calendar was, to my mind, divisive, and it is my prayer that the whole of the Orthodox…
Time Eternal
Becoming the Cave: Merry Christmas from Time Eternal
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Dear Time Eternalites, Just a quick note in between baking and cleaning to wish you and your families, friends, and enemies a blessed and meaningful Feast of Christ’s Nativity. Wherever you are, whatever this Christmas looks like for you, I pray you encounter the manifested love of God in our humble, earthly realities. May we and all creation endeavor…
Glory to God for All Things
The Christmas When Everybody Was There
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The soldiers were scattered across Europe with the loneliness of war. The world was caught up in a total struggle. Women had gone to the factories; children were collecting scrap metal. The “war effort” was universal. In many places, food was rationed. The madhouse of consumption belonged only to the war; everything else could wait. And there was Christmas. Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley were part of the effort as well, cranking…
Faith Encouraged
Let Us Go To Bethlehem…
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Tonight’s the night! And my girls are absolutely thrilled to go to bed after Liturgy this evening! Why? Not because it’s bedtime, but because after Liturgy in the morning, we’re going to “mawmaw’s” house and that means chocolate cake AND presents! It really is the most wonderful time of the year on many levels! But, for me, it’s the prayers, the liturgy, and the worship that captures my attention and joy. Most of…
