For you are a good God and love mankind, and to you do we give glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, always, now and forever, and to the ages of ages. (Orthodox Great Vespers liturgy) When we speak of God, it’s important that we remember always that he [...]
In Speaking Carefully About God and continuing in How to Speak of God I explored some of the things I try to keep in mind about God whenever I speak or write. In this final post, I want to explore what it means that the uniquely Christian God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one [...]
The Visitation is a Western feast that began in the 13th century and is currently celebrated on May 31. It celebrates the visitation of Mary with her cousin Elizabeth when both were pregnant as recorded in Luke 1:39-56. This is the meeting in which Mary, with the Holy Spirit upon her, prophesies what has become [...]
This feast, another of the twelve Great Feasts in the Orthodox liturgical year and a feast in the Western Church falls on March 25th. While the Western church will move the feast if it falls during Holy Week, the Eastern Church never moves it. This feast celebrates the events of Luke 1:26-38, when the angel [...]
This feast, celebrated on December 8, is called the Feast of the Immaculate Conception within the Roman Catholic Church. The feast in both traditions celebrates the conception of Mary. However, it’s not one of the twelve Great Feast in Orthodoxy, but it is a Holy Day of Obligation in the Catholic Church, which [...]
In this post I want to look at one of the best known Marian prayers in the West, the prayer known simply as Hail Mary. It’s a prayer that’s so widely known and recognized that even those who weren’t raised Roman Catholic are often familiar with it. I learned it when I went to Catholic school [...]
This series of reflections is on The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer that Tunes the Heart to God by Frederica Mathewes-Green. For this section, Khouria Frederica draws from a treatise, About the Jesus Prayer and the Lord’s Grace, by Archbishop Anthony Golynsky-Mihailovsky (AD 1889-1976). Abp. Anthony suffered greatly under Communist rule. He was sustained [...]
This series of reflections is on The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer that Tunes the Heart to God by Frederica Mathewes-Green. Khouria Frederica mentions something I believe it’s important to expand. Experiences which we call miracles remain common within the Orthodox world. However, I think miracles in a Christian sense are deeply misunderstood in [...]
This series of reflections is on The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer that Tunes the Heart to God by Frederica Mathewes-Green. It’s not possible to delve very far into Orthodoxy without encountering the concepts of essence and energies. The development of that language goes all the way back to at least the fourth century, [...]
This series of reflections is on The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer that Tunes the Heart to God by Frederica Mathewes-Green. If you read or listen to almost anything about the Jesus Prayer, you will also often encounter the phrase, prayer of the heart. They sometimes seem to be used almost interchangeably, but they [...]