The event scheduled to be held (at time of writing) in Crete this coming Pentecost and usually termed “the Great and Holy Council” is sometimes referred to in terms that suggest that it will be the Eighth Ecumenical Council. Pundits...
Those for whom ancient history is irrelevant and who equate “old” with “out-dated” (or better yet, “medieval” with “barbarically primitive”) will have trouble appreciating the Fathers of the First Council of Nicea, since they met and...
Every time the Divine Liturgy is served, priest and deacon stand before the Table of Oblation/ Prothesis and prepare the bread and the wine for the coming Eucharist. In the case of the bread, this involves taking five loaves (in the...
I am a great fan of the BBC series “Call the Midwife”, which features a group of Anglican sisters working among the poor in a London neighbourhood as midwives. Their order is fictional, but is based upon the actual order and London...
As I continue to age, I find increasingly that a generation gap opens up unexpectedly at my feet. The first time it happened was in my first (Anglican) parish, in 1980. I had just heard that John Lennon had died, and I shared the news...
In a previous blog I examined the issue of whether or not the Orthodox Church should introduce (or in some cases, continue the new practice) of having girls serve the altar as the female equivalent of altar boys. As may be recalled, I...
Lately I was reading a very interesting essay on “The Hermeneutics of the Use of Early Liturgical Practice for Modern Liturgical Reform” by the German scholar Basilius J. Groen. I enjoyed its many insights, but was particularly struck by...
From the prophecies of Isaiah: “It will come about also in that day that a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were perishing in the land of Assyria and who were scattered in the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord in the...
In the services of Bridegroom Matins in Holy Week we hear of a woman who anointed Christ just before His Passion. In the first Kathisma Hymn for Great and Holy Wednesday, she is described in this way: “The harlot came to You, O Lover...
In the Western liturgical calendar we find the feast of “Christ the King” (often changed to conform to the draconian canons of political correctness as “The Reign of Christ”). Someone once asked me if we Orthodox kept such a feast, and I...
Most Orthodox churches of my acquaintance in North America are served by “altar boys”—that is, by boys of pre-pubescent or adolescent age, vested in a sticharion robe and helping the priest by holding a candle, fetching the censer, and...
I remember Elmer. Elmer was an elephant, whose image adorned the backs of our notebooks when I was in public school, and whose face flew on a flag on our school flagpole. Elmer was “the Safety Elephant” whose rules we were encouraged to...
Especially in advance of the much-anticipated Great and Holy Council scheduled for later this year, there has been much talk about the importance of our ecumenical connections, including the possibility of recognizing the baptisms of all...
Recently, on the first Sunday of Great Lent, we read the Synodikon in church. Well, actually just a tiny snippet of it, the bit about the legitimacy of icons and that this faith had established the world, and offering a heartfelt “Memory...
In the ongoing debate about universalism or the assertion that eventually everyone will be saved, proponents of universalism have often referred with an almost kind of hushed reverence to a volume written by Dr. Ilaria Ramelli, The...
