One sometimes hears of Orthodox Christians converting to Roman Catholicism.  In my experience, they usually do not leave Orthodoxy for Roman Catholicism because of their delight in the Novus Ordo post-Vatican II Mass, nor out of infatuation with the current Pope Francis, who has proved such a problem for RC traditionalists that they seem to employ an army of spin doctors to photoshop his comments, such as those about homosexuality when he…

I know a man in Christ who prays for Marilyn Monroe every day as a part of his prayers for all the departed.  He doesn’t pray for her under her stage-name of “Marilyn” though.  He prays for her under her real name of “Norma Jeane”, the name given her by her mother and under which she was once baptized by (of all people) the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson while under the foster…

Many people from around the world have kindly contributed to my parish of St. Herman of Alaska in Langley, B.C., helping us and saving us from financial catastrophe as we struggled to build a new church temple on our property, striving to overcome many unforeseen obstacles and problems.  Recently we reached another architectural milestone, in that we finally, after many, many delays, crowned the building with a large cupola.  The cupola weighed…

One would not have guessed that the question of whether to receive a person into the Orthodox Church by baptism and chrismation or by chrismation alone would be a hot issue given the history of reception into the Church.  Both methods have been widely used in the ancient and recent past and continue to be used in the present. This is not something in the order of magnitude of (for example) the…

There is today in the Orthodox Church a cult of personality—or, more precisely, of personalities, in the plural.  That is, there are a number of men, mostly monastics and wearing the badge of “elder” who have set themselves up as judges and arbiters of Orthodox praxis.  Most of the hubbub is over matters of ecumenism.  Drawing upon the Fathers (often ripped from their historical context) these men declare that outside the Orthodox…

We conclude our series examining St. Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament.  Today we look at his citation of Isaiah 40:3, which reads, “A voice cries, ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of Yahweh!  Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!” In its original context the oracle referred to the return of Yahweh to Zion after the exile.  He was coming from Sinai through the wilderness to rescue His…