Most of us have heard about Christmas in July and the annual sales many stores host six months before Christmas. Yet it is unlikely you have heard of New Year’s Day in September. Well believe it or not that is when the Church celebrates the New Year, on September 1. So what is going...
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Each year during the first fifteen days of August our Church honors the Mother of God in a special way. The time period is known as the Dormition Fast. It begins on August 1 and concludes on August 15 with the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. During these two weeks the Church observes a...
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From the Orthodox Study Bible… “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks , He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body which...
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I will sing and make music to the Lord, Psalm 27.6 Did you know that over forty psalms contain the word, sing in them? That means that singing is one of the themes in almost thirty percent of the psalms. When you stop to consider that the psalms were ancient Israel’s book of prayer...
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Part I A friend recently explained to me that he did not find the worship of the Orthodox Church relevant. For him, it was boring, out of touch with twenty-first century life, and simply one “branch” of Christianity’s “take” on how we should worship. In response, I explained that true worship comes from God...
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“This food we call Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives according to the way Christ handed down to us (Justin Martyr, First Apology).” These powerful...
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In this article, which is party of a series dedicated to the Mystery of the Eucharist, I will discuss how the bread and wine (the gifts) become the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In this passage, I must be careful not to say too much. There are many things...
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In a previous article, I wrote about a friend of mine who questioned why Orthodox Christians couldn’t just get back to the Bible and use it as a means for agreeing over what Christianity truly is. During that conversation, my friend asked another question that is intimately related to the first: he wanted to...
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A couple of weeks ago, a new family attended a worship service here at St. Catherine for the first time. Over the past few months, I had gotten to know them fairly well through the Introduction to Christianity class that I teach on Wednesday evenings. In that time, I had come to appreciate their...
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