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LiveJournal for Orthodox Christianity.
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| Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 |
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Just had to share this, because it concerns holy relics: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wir ~Xenia |
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| Monday, April 28th, 2008 |
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| How would you, or how should an Orthodox Christian, respond to a support letter from a family member requesting money and prayer for a Protestant mission trip? | ||||||
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I have heard that there are some traditions that will react in various ways to the priest reading St. John Chrysostom's Paschal sermon. If your parish does something (shout, stomp feet, etc.) would you please tell me about it? And even better, if you could post a Youtube video of it... Christ is Risen! ETA - tell me what jurisdiction/ethnicity your church is! |
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| Sunday, April 27th, 2008 |
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Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death And upon those in the tombs He is bestowing life! |
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| Friday, April 18th, 2008 |
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I recently posted something about Notes from underground: Best Orthodox Christian Blogs. There have been some questions about what belongs on such a list and what doesn't. My answers, for now, are that to qualify to be on the list the item concerned must: 1) Be a blog or web journal, with a blog name, not an ordinary web page 2) Be written by Orthodox Christians, and have at least some posts about Orthodox Christianity 3) Must have the name of the blog (not the URL) in the list name field 4) Must have a clickable link to the actual blog, so that people can see what they are voting for (or against). I removed some that didn't qualify -- they either had a name with no link to the actual blog, or they had a URL in the name field, which also did not link to the actual blog. The question that was more difficult to answer, made in a comment on my other blog over there, was that one of the entries was a political site rather than an Orthodox one, and was mainly concerned with attacks on political parties and politicians. How does one deal with that? My (provisional) answer is that people are entitled to express their political views, and people don't always agree about politics (to say the least!). I've expressed political opinions in my blogs, and many others do as well. So I could not remove a blog from the list just because I didn't agree with the political views of the blogger. If I thought they were badly expressed or intemperate I could vote it down on the list, but not remove it. Where does one draw the line? In a personal blog, that is clearly a personal blog and doesn't claim to represent the Orthodox Church generally (by, for example, having words like "Orthodox" or "Orthodoxy", or the name of a saint in the blog title) there can be widely divergent political opinions quite vigorously expressed. Where there is a claim to represent Orthodoxy, then it should be more circumspect about expressing partisan political views, and be careful not to equate support for or opposition to certain politicians or parties with support for or opposition to Orthodoxy. It is one thing to say "I, as an Orthodox Christian, oppose such and such a policy..." It is quite another to say "If you support such and such a politician or party you cannot be Orthodox and are a traitor to the Orthodox Christian faith." That, for the moment, is where I draw the line. What do others think? One little addition: The reason I created the list is that several people have asked "Where can I find a list of Orthodox blogs?" Those people were often non-Orthodox, wanting to learn more about Orthodoxy. So it was partly for the benefit of such people that I created the list. At the same time it must be recognised that the list mainly shows popularity rather than quality. The blog at the top of the list is not necessarily the best, it is only the most popular for those who voted for the list, and those who vote are not necessarily Orthodox Christians themselves. There is a related list of The Top Theological Blogs where one of the best ones (not Orthodox) is right at the bottom of the list, presumably because of malicious voting. That is the weakness of such lists -- they can often be seen as a popularity contest, where people express partisanship, vote for their friends and so on. Nevertheless, I hope that the better-quality blogs will rise to the top, and that the list will be useful who want to learn something about Orthodoxy. So check the list here: Best Orthodox Christian Blogs. |
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| Monday, April 14th, 2008 |
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If any of you are vegan, I'd appreciate your thoughts on this matter. I'm wondering what you abstain from during fast periods, and what goes in your Pascha baskets.:) Thank you! |
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| Saturday, April 12th, 2008 |
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This morning I went to a presentation by an agency that sends missionaries to central Asia - Turkey to Pakistan. We heard a missionary from Chechnya along with a convert from Islam from a country that ends in "-stan". (We were asked to be very vague about the details about the convert on the net.) The missionary mentioned that the North Causcaus mountain nations were not converted to Islam until the 1700's*, and based on his experience, he questions if there was a significant Orthodox presence in that area because there is virtually none left. I asked if he knew the stories of the saints who evangelized that area, or the story of how the Moslem conversion took place. He knew neither. Other than St. Nina of Georgia, Equal to the Apostles, I don't know the saints who took the gospel to central Asia. Can anyone suggest a source for details about that area? Is there a source for information about martyrs from the Black Sea region? Thanks! *Several sources I've read this afternoon contradict that timing, most suggesting that Islam moved in far earlier, one source saying as early as the 7th C. |
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| Friday, April 11th, 2008 |
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I've started compiling a list of Orthodox Christian blogs and online jounals. You can read read about it here and either add to the list or vote for those already on it. |
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| Monday, April 7th, 2008 |
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Привет всем! ;) With your participation, a leading The list should be arranged thus: Author, name of the work, publishers. PS. Please don’t give titles of periodicals, only books. |
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| Monday, March 31st, 2008 |
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The English version of the Official web site of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is now available on http://orthodox.org.ua/eng. Its English-speaking readers can get unbiased and qualified view of the Church situation in Ukraine from the primary source; learn about various aspects of the church life in Ukraine, its place and its ministry in the modern Ukrainian society. There are interviews with the Church hierarchs, pastoral words and homilies; various documents, outlining the principles of its canonical structure, as well as its policies and strategies of development and cooperation with the state and society. The news is updated daily. Your are welcome! |
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| Sunday, March 30th, 2008 |
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Hi. I'm new here. To give a brief introduction, my name is Mike. I'm a 26 year old Catholic from Kentucky. I am interested in learning about Orthodoxy... Anyway, I was wondering if anyone could recommend to me some good Scriptural resources from an Orthodox perspective....I recently bought the Orthodox Study Bible and I also have the Orthodox New Testament, but I was wondering if there are any other resources out there (study Bibles, commentaries, etc.)? I would especially appreciate resources with commentaries drawn from the early church fathers. Thanks. |
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| Friday, March 28th, 2008 |
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This is going to sound like a really odd question, but here goes: My husband and I are active in a historical recreational society and we play Byzantine gentry from Capadoccia. As such, we are Orthodox in character as well as out, and so we carry a box of prayer items, such as a book, incense, a diptych, and charcoal. I'd like to decorate our box, so that it's obviously not just another bit of the household "schtuff," but I'm stuck on whether or not it would be inappropriate to print out an icon of Christ and apply it to the box, as well as other symbols, as well as painting it, perhaps with a bit of leafing. I'm not sure what would have been "correct" for decorated boxes, as we have so little left of common household items, and I don't want to do anything that is offensive. Some decorative elements include geometric designs, and some more organic designs, but as that seems to be rather common for ordinary household items, not special things. Thank you. |
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| Thursday, March 27th, 2008 |
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| Does anyone know where I can find articles on body modification from the view of the Orthodox Church? Any information is greatly appreciated. Thanks. | ||||
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| Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 |
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This is what I get for not bookmarking it when I found it. I am looking for a blog of an Orthodox missionary in Uganda. The writer, who my poor memory is insisting is a woman, posted most recently about a man who worked for her as a "houseboy" expressed an interest in becoming Orthodox. Does this ring any bells for anyone? Thanks! |
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| Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 |
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| I have a question about Orthodoxy (I am a catechumen). What does the Orthodox church teach in relation to the death penalty and war? Any help is appreciated. | ||||||
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| Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 |
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The following was written by Mr. David Jepson, Dean of High School St. John's Academy.) On Saturday night (March 15th) I got home from choir practice rather late, and stayed up much later than normal as I had a very late dinner. I had finished eating and was reading a book ("Brothers" -- it's about Bobby Kennedy's search for the truth about JFK's assassination) at about 11:30 p.m. when my roommate came in and asked if I knew why the Cathedral bells were ringing. He had been in his bedroom, which like mine faces the street and has a view of the Cathedral a block away. In the kitchen, a couple of rooms away, I couldn't hear the bells, but I agreed that it seemed strange for them to be ringing at that time of night. I went to bed about a half hour later and thought nothing more about it. At church on Sunday, we were all shocked to hear that Metropolitan Laurus, the leader of the Russian Church Outside Russia, had died. Our priest got a telephone call from a former parishioner just before the service started at 9:00 a.m. Metropolitan Laurus was 80 years old and was living at the ROCOR seminary in Jordanville, NY. He had come to the US from Russia after World War II. His most important achievement occurred in May last year with the official reunification of ROCOR with the Russian Orthodox Church within Russia, healing the split in the Russian church that had developed after the Bolshevik Revolution. We heard about the chronology of events later on Sunday from the wife of one of the Cathedral priests, whose son is at the Seminary in NY. Sometime on Sunday morning, when Metropolitan Laurus was noticed to be absent, someone went to his house and discovered that he had died in his sleep. The police were called, etc., and people there began notifying the rest of the world. No one here in SF knew about it until 8:00 or so on Sunday morning (11:00 a.m. New York time). As the day went on, word about his death continued to spread. Russian leaders Putin and Medvedev made statements about it. People here were discussing going to the funeral in NY on Friday. As we talked about these events, the issue of the bells came up. Others living near the Cathedral had heard the bells ringing late on Saturday night. When they came to the early service at the Cathedral (it starts at 7:30 a.m.), they found the bells tied up in the normal way, which seemed puzzling. Someone had to have gotten into the locked place where the bells are (they are not up a church tower as in England), untied them, rung them (very beautifully, my roommate said), and tied them back up, all in the darkness of near midnight. No one in the group I was talking to, which included the wives of both Cathedral priests, knew who could have done it. But then as we were talking, we also learned that the NY police estimated that Metropolitan Laurus had died between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. That's between 11:00 p.m. and 12:00 midnight here. And then everything seemed obvious. (I attest that I had just begun reading the pre-communion canon's when I heard bells....Orthodox Bells...ringing with the melodies familiar to us at the Cathedral. I first thought it was my CD player...when I checked, I found that it was off. David was reading in the kitchen and I went and asked him if he was playing music. We wasn't. Others in the vicinity heard the bells at the same time, roughly the time which Vladika Metropolite passed away. Note the bells are behind two locked security gates and everyone who has access and who knows how to properly ring the bells have all sworn that they did not ring them.) |
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I remember there being a discussion about what kinds of explanations of the service to include in wedding programs (especially where many of the guest are not Orthodox), and I think someone posted the text they used in theirs. Anyone remember this? Either way, I'd love to hear any ideas for wedding programs, what you did with yours, what you think would be helpful, etc. Thanks! |
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| Thursday, March 20th, 2008 |
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| Has anyone here read Christ the Eternal Tao? I hoping it could be a good way to get my Eastern-mystical-religions-leaning father to understand Christ in a way that is not the Christ of the health-and-weath megachurches he is so turned off by. But I'd like to know a little more about it before buying it for him. | ||||||
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| Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 |
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In the most emphatic fashion, the Church of Greece’s Holy Synod yesterday declared its opposition to the government’s bid to give unmarried couples greater rights by stating that any form of relationship other than a couple married in an Orthodox Church is tantamount to “prostitution.” The Synod’s reaction signals an about-turn for Archbishop Ieronymos, who last week appeared to accept that changing the bill was beyond the Church’s sphere of influence. However, this was completely overturned yesterday when the Synod issued a statement saying that it did not approve of the government trying to make its proposals part of the country’s legal framework. The new law is set to allow unmarried couples to make their relationship official and legally binding by signing a simple notarial contract. This would give each partner the same rights as if the couple were married. The Synod said that the draft law constituted a “catastrophic bomb” being placed under the foundations of Greek society. “The Church accepts and blesses the established wedding, according to Orthodox traditions, and considers any other type of similar relationship to be prostitution,” the Synod said in a statement. Sources said that Ieronymos had wanted the Synod to adopt a more moderate approach in line with his comments last week but most of the other 12 members of the Synod seemed to favor a more outspoken stance. “That was the opinion of one person, this is the opinion of 13,” said Bishop Anthimos of Thessaloniki, a member of the Synod, explaining the difference between Ieronymos’s position last week and this week. |
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| Sunday, March 16th, 2008 |
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| We got word after the Liturgy today that Metropolitan Laurus (ROCOR) has died. | ||||
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LiveJournal for Orthodox Christianity.
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curious.
3rd Week of Lent.