During the exchange of the Peace in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy it had been my custom to greet those around me by saying, “Christ is in our midst!”, expecting the reply (and giving as the reply when the greeting was given to me) “He is...
Church historians know that the Council of Nicea held in 325 A.D. clearly and emphatically proclaimed the full divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and that prior to His birth at Bethlehem on that first Christmas Day He pre-existed from all...
On December 14, 2025 Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia was the scene of yet another Islamic terrorist shooting. During an afternoon Hanukkah celebration attended by about one thousand people, two gunmen opened fire killing fifteen...
I would like to invite you to come with me on a journey of imagination that may help us to understand what it was like to live in “Bible times”. To make this journey you will need to leave behind absolutely everything you know about...
The term “the donation of Constantine” refers to a medieval forgery, long used to support the claims and authority of the medieval papacy. According to the document, the emperor Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor,...
Recently the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople met at the ancient site of Nicea (presently Iznik in Turkey) in a show of commitment to unity on the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea. Such was the hype in the media...
At the ordination of a priest or deacon the following ritual is observed: some of the serving clergy take the candidate to be ordained into the nave (in the case of a diaconal candidate, two subdeacons; in the case of the priestly...
Yesterday I was listening to a song by Ruth Hughes (now Ruth Hughes Finlay; see inset above) from her 1976 L.P. Awake North Wind, a song paraphrasing Psalm 104. I remember buying the album from her personally, showing up at the side door...
On October 31 parts of the western world celebrated Reformation Day, giving thanks for the Protestant Reformation. (I am tempted to observe that on the old Julian calendar, Reformation Day was on Thursday November 13.) Here I would...
It seems to me that reading some online Orthodox forums is a lot like reading the old tabloid Weekly World News (see inset image) which regularly featured reports of “Batboy”, Elvis sightings, and alien abduction. It is hard to take...
Tucked well away in the Divine Liturgy in a prayer that the priest says silently for himself we find a significant title of Christ. The priest offers the prayer as the people sing the cherubic hymn but because it is not a prayer of the...
People sometimes ask me “What is the strangest question you were ever asked in all your years of Orthodox ministry?” I can recall many strange questions (such as “Did Adam have a belly-button?”) but perhaps few were stranger than the...
Quite some years ago a parishioner of mine was going through some very deep waters, a terrible time of darkness, a long tunnel with seemingly no light at the end. It was for this person that I wrote the Akathist Jesus, Light to Those in...
Needs within the Church change with the times. Take, for example, the need for theological education: in older days parish priests in Greece did not need to have any formal theological education, nor were there any institutional...
The term “schism” is not much used in ecclesiastical literature these days. That is partly because referring to a church group or person as “schismatic” is considered a form of profanity in these ecumenical times and also because...
