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One of the highlights of the Paschal liturgy:

If any man be devout and loveth God,
Let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast!
If any man be a wise servant,
Let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord.

If any have laboured long in fasting,
Let him how receive his recompense.
If any have wrought from the first hour,
Let him today receive his just reward.
If any have come at the third hour,
Let him with thankfulness keep the feast.
If any have arrived at the sixth hour,
Let him have no misgivings;
Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore.
If any have delayed until the ninth hour,
Let him draw near, fearing nothing.
And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour,
Let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.

For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour,
Will accept the last even as the first.
He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour,
Even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour.
And He showeth mercy upon the last,
And careth for the first;
And to the one He giveth,
And upon the other He bestoweth gifts.
And He both accepteth the deeds,
And welcometh the intention,
And honoureth the acts and praises the offering.

Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord;
Receive your reward,
Both the first, and likewise the second.
You rich and poor together, hold high festival!
You sober and you heedless, honour the day!
Rejoice today, both you who have fasted
And you who have disregarded the fast.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously.
The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith:
Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Let no one bewail his poverty,
For the universal Kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one weep for his iniquities,
For pardon has shown forth from the grave.
Let no one fear death,
For the Saviour’s death has set us free.
He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion
Unto ages of ages.

Amen. 

Metropolitan (Archbishop) Jonah rocks!

We really enjoyed this podcast with Father Stephen Freeman. He is one of our favorite bloggers, podcasters, and priests. This is what it is to believe that God loves the world.  This is what it is to be truly human. This is what it is to realize the gospel.

Part 1: Ancientfaith.com – Lent 1

Part 2: Ancientfaith.com – Lent 2

*In case the links above aren’t working: Lent 1 & Lent 2

Thanks,
David Feliciano Sent from my iPhone

Here is an excellent podcast on C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox understanding of salvation: Illumined Heart

From: http://oca.org

The season of Great Lent is the time of preparation for the feast of the Resurrection of Christ, It is the living symbol of man’s entire life which is to be fulfilled in his own resurrection from the dead with Christ. It is a time of renewed devotion: of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It is a time of repentance, a real renewal of our minds, hearts and deeds in conformity with Christ and his teachings. It is the time, most of all, of our return to the great commandments of loving God and our neighbors. 

In the Orthodox Church, Great Lent is not a season of morbidity and gloominess. On the contrary, it is a time of joyfulness and purification. We are called to “anoint our faces” and to “cleanse our bodies as we cleanse our souls.” The very first hymns of the very first service of Great Lent set the proper tone of the season:

Let us begin the lenten time with delight … let us fast from passions as we fast from food, taking pleasure in the good words of the Spirit, that we may be granted to see the holy passion of Christ our God and his holy Pascha, spiritually rejoicing. 

Thy grace has arisen upon us, O Lord, the illumination of our souls has shown forth; behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the time of repentance.
(Vesper Hymns)

It is our repentance that God desires, not our remorse. We sorrow for our sins, but we do so in the joy of God’s mercy. We mortify our flesh, but we do so in the joy of our resurrection into life everlasting. We make ready for the resurrection during Great Lent, both Christ’s Resurrection and our own.

There is a really interesting post on love and asceticism from Fr. Gregory’s blog that I’d like to share (my comments following Fr. Gregory’s post):

For several years I served as the chaplain for students at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. This left me free on the weekend to serve different parishes in western Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio in the absence of their priest.

One year, I was at a different parish every Sunday for the entire summer. From May through August, I served Liturgy and preached at parishes in all the different jurisdictions: Greek, Antiochian, Ukrainian, Serbian and OCA.

And in each parish, my sermon was some variation of the same theme: Jesus loves you.

And in each parish for the whole of the summer, I got the same two responses again and again from multiple parishioners: (1) “Wow! That was the best sermon I ever heard!” and (2) “I never knew Jesus loved me.” As you can imagine, the first response was gratifying—like everyone else, I enjoy hearing I did a good job.

But my joy was mixed with sorrow. It bothered me that some many Orthodox Christians simply did not know that they were loved by Jesus Christ.

I spent the better part of the next 2 or 3 years thinking about why people didn’t know they were loved by Jesus Christ.

The conclusion I have come to, and I found this above all In St Augustine’s own struggles in the Confessions, is that sign of our fallenness is not, primarily, that we do bad things. No I know that we are sinners when we realize that we are in the grip of grief, that we do not know that we are lovable, loved and able to love. To escape that grief, to hold it a bay, even momentarily, there is very little that we won’t do.

How then do we put this grief behind us and become sensitive to love?

In a word, asceticism. As the newly elected primate of the OCA, His Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah, argued asceticism, which is “the root and the foundation of our whole life as a Christian” is nothing more or less than the  awareness of the presence of God. It’s what the Fathers called the “remembrance of God”, and it doesn’t mean that you’re remembering it in your head that God is present, it’s that God’s presence is a fundamental part of your own awareness. You know that He is present, and when we can bring that awareness of His presence by stilling our minds and stilling our hearts, then His love overflows through us. And transforms us. And that experience of sanctity isn’t just limited to when we walk into or church. It isn’t just limited to when we venerate the icons or go before the relics of the saints. That experience of sanctity is with us everywhere, all the time. We have to do the one without forgetting the other.”

Through prayer and fasting I begin to still my own egoic strivings for power and control. And over time I become in God and after God I become an authority for myself. The fruit of asceticism, the goal of asceticism, is for me to become the author of my own life rather than to live the life that is written for me by others who use (often unintentionally) my own transitory desires against me.

For this reason, again to quote Metropolitan Jonah,

We need to have spiritual discipline. And the disciplines [are] not in ends in themselves, but [serve our own growing] spiritual awareness and transformation and conversion of our souls, in order to do the act of ministries. Otherwise what are we doing with the act of ministries, they become some kind of projection of our own egos. And that’s not going to help much, if anybody, least of all myself.

In my view, it is the bitterest of ironies that the more I turn my life and desire for happiness into a project of my own ego, the more happy alludes me and the more I lose control over my own life. Autonomy and happiness are the fruits of an ascetical self-denial that aims not only at the eradication of vice but the cultivation of the life of virtue that lies just below the surface of human sinfulness.

My comment (from Fr. Gregory’s blog):

It’s interesting that your answer to understanding Jesus love is asceticism. I suspect that if you preached the same sermon (i.e. Jesus loves you) to a similar spectrum of Protestant Evangelical Christians their reaction would be very different. You might have made less of an impact because “Jesus loves you” is the central message of their tradition. My guess is that you’d get a very different (negative) reaction if you made the connection between Jesus’ love and asceticism to the same group of Evangelicals. 

Your definition of love is very different from the “Jesus loves you” catch phrase that we hear so often in our culture. I wonder what the people in these parishes, who didn’t know that Jesus loved them, “heard” in your sermons. Did they hear the pop culture message of love, or did they hear about the love that calls them to Christian asceticism. Love is a word with lots of baggage that needs to be clearly defined. My guess is that the pop “Jesus loves you” message would be very foreign to them, but the idea of asceticism and love (what you’ve written about here) would be closer to their hearts. I’ve seen something very similar with the pop notion of “relationship with Jesus.”

New pictures from our parish feast day: http://picasaweb.google.com/saintlukesoc

Fr. Stephen has a wonderful post on personal salvation and Orthodoxy (from Jason’s blog) . I have to quote his article here because it is very good. From Fr. Stephen’s post (my thoughts follow):

Perhaps the most difficult theological truth to communicate in the modern world is that of personal existence. Modern English has taken the word person from the realm of theology and changed it into the cheapest coin of the realm. Today it means that which is private,merely individual. As such, it becomes synonymous not with salvation but with our very destruction. Life lived as a mere individual is no life at all but a progressive movement towards death and destruction.

Thus there is always something of a hesitancy when someone asks (in newspeak), “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?” If only we would, it would be truly significant. But in our modern street-wise theology, Christ as personal savior becomes synonymous with Christ as private savior, and as such is no savior at all. For no one and nothing can save the false existence we have created in the privacy of our modern existence. We were not created for such an existence.

In the story of Genesis – the first appearance of the phrase, “It is not good,” is applied to man – in an existence that is private. “It is not good for man to be alone.” We do not exist in the goodness which God has created for us when we exist alone. The most remote hermit of the Christian desert does not live alone, but lives radically for others and to God. Of all men he is the least alone. No one would take on the radical ascesis of the desert for themselves alone: it is an act of radical love.

And thus the personal God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, determined that salvation for humanity could only take place as we lived fully and truly into the existence for which we were and are created: the Church. In the Church we do not exist as mere individuals but as members of the Body of Christ. My life is the life of Christ. What happens to me is essential to what happens to all the members of the Body and what happens to the members of the Body is essential for what happens to me. Their life is my life.

Thus when we approach the cup of Christ’s Body and Blood, we never approach it for our private good but as members of the Body. We are thus enjoined to be in love and charity with our neighbor and to forgive the sins of all – otherwise the cup is not for our salvation but our destruction.

The salvation into which we are Baptized is a new life – no longer defined by the mere existence of myself as an individual – but rather by the radical freedom of love within the Body of Christ. To accept Christ as our “personal” savior, thus can be translated into its traditional Orthodox form: “Do you unite yourself to Christ?” And this question is more fully expounded when we understand that the Christ to whom we unite ourself is a many-membered body.

After the resurrection, Christ appeared to the Apostle Peter. Their dialog must have been the most profound dialog ever to take place between man and God. “Do you love me?” Christ asked Peter. Peter hedged his answer. But Christ responded, “Feed my sheep.” For to love Christ and to feed His sheep are not two things but one. For Peter to finally know this was indeed his personal salvation. It is ours as well. Glory to God.

This is what really struck me: “Do you unite yourself to Christ?… We understand that the Christ to whom we unite ourself is a many-membered body.”

What a radical departure this is from the theology of salvation I learned as an evangelical in bible college. I was very familiar with St. Paul’s statements about being “in Christ” and being “seated in the heavens with Christ” but we understood these to be “spiritual” truths. These were statements of faith about who we were in God’s eyes, not who we were in a real, holistic, and tangible sense. These were spiritual, as opposed to actual, real, this-worldly, truths.

If salvation is being united with Christ, and being united with Christ is being united to his many-membered body, then being in Christ is a very real, this-worldy thing. To have this view of salvation, and to reject the false doctrine of private salvation, is to have an ecclesiology (theology of the church) that is catholic. That is, to believe that the Church is a real, visible entity established by Christ and preserved in the Holy Spirit even today.

I cannot be united to Christ’s invisible body. I cannot be in communion with people invisibly. I cannot be saved with people I do not know and do not interact with in the real world. The gospel is about what is real. Salvation has to be about my communion with the visible body of Christ. This cannot be actualized at the local level only. I cannot be united to Christ with a group of people (and a bible) who are disconnected from the rest of the believing world. My faith community cannot exist as an individual. I must be united with Christ’s many-membered body at the local level, as well as the global and historical level. To be “in Christ” is to be in communion with Christ’s body: the Church.

Fr. Michael gave a wonderful homily the Sunday before last on three stages of Christian life. He would want me to give proper credit, so I should say that this came from Father Zacharias (Zakarou) who is the spiritual child of Elder Sophrony, the spiritual child of St. Silouan of Mt. Athos.

I don’t remember what he called the first stage but it is usually the shortest of the three. This is the “just got home from a retreat/camp and I’m really ‘on fire’ for God” stage. This is the stage that we often mistakenly think is the stage we should be in. This is a trick the devil likes to play on us to make us miserable all the time. 

The second stage is the stage that most of are in. It’s the stage where we stand before God in faith and often times there is no emotion or feeling to give credence to our faith in Him. We go through the ups and downs of life, spiritual fervor comes and goes, but we continue to pursue the Kingdom of God because everything else is just insane. The devil lies to us and tries to make us think that we need to go back to the stage one, when we were on fire for God, but the truth is that we can’t go back and we shouldn’t. In other words any emotional confirmation that comes along with our faith is simply grace and we shouldn’t pursue it because it will become an idol. We should simple try to believe what we believe.

But there is a third stage. It is the stage that few people make it to in this life. This is the fullness of salvation where God’s will is totally and organically our own will. Isn’t this what salvation is all about? It is us becoming by grace what Jesus is by nature. We become participants in the life of God. I struggled for so long to understand what salvation was all about. It finally clicked for me when I realized that salvation is not about God pretending that we are something we’re not so that one day we’ll get into heaven. It clicked for me when I realized that God becoming man means that He has raised us out of our tombs and enabled us to become what He is; truly human. So salvation is that process by which I am transformed into the image of God and I discover that this is the truest image of myself. 

This is what got me the other day. I was thinking about what being saved, becoming a saint, really means and I asked myself if I really want it? Am I cooperating with God in this process of transformation? If I’m not then I am not being saved. Do I even want my will to be God’s will? Just questions I was asking myself. All I know is that I want to want that. I want to want to cooperate with God to become who Jesus is. Lord Jesus have mercy on me. Blessed Theotokos help me to be someone who wants to say yes to God’s will.

Jason Zahariades has a great post that is the first in a mini-autobiography on his family’s faith journey. What a lot of people don’t know about Jason is that he has written many articles and was a contributing author to several books on the “emerging church” and “spiritual formation.” It’s so cool to be a part of his story and see something as unexpected and wonderful as Orthodoxy become the home he is journeying towards. Check it out: Journeying Home (1) — From Evangelical to Emerging Church

 

I have to bring something out of the comments because it strikes a chord with me. From Debbie’s Khouria friend (arabic for priest’s wife):

“I think that is the best possible way to come along together in this great adventure of finding out about our full Christian inheritance – because that is what I think the Orthodox church is. Some of what you know from your past is God-given and you keep it. Some of what you know from the past is probably just wrong, and you leave it behind. But mostly, I think, Orthodoxy fills up the empty spaces and makes a whole fabric out of what used to be patches.”

Debbie Says:

That makes so much more sense to me than just reject what we have learned, completely. We are actually finishing a big quilt or puzzle that has had some missing pieces. Some of the pieces that we did have in, are not quite right and need to be replaced but some of the pieces are just as rich as the new ones we are receiving. Does that make sense to you? I like to talk in picture form. It helps my mind grasp concepts.  I just love the way that she put it.

Don’t they say it beautifully? I totally agree with them. Of course I could have never worded it that way. I have this terrible tendency to say things as directly and harshly as possible. In my mind I am trying to make sure that there is no mistaking what I am trying to say. But people react to the directness and are often offended (and rightly so) by my over zealous (and often over exaggerated) attempt at clarity. : )

I love how Debbie likes to talk in picture form. Isn’t that what Jesus did? Christ is Risen! And maybe I can do a better job concerning myself with what people hear rather than what I want to say. Lord have mercy!

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

I am really excited because our good friends, the Zahariades’ along with my Dad and Step Mom, are taking steps toward Orthodox Christianity. Please take a few minutes to check out their blogs:

Mark Feliciano
Barbara Feliciano
Jason Zahariades
Debbie Zahariades

Their experiences are causing me to think more deeply about the possibility of other friends and family taking similar steps. Let me explain…

When I began looking into Orthodoxy myself, I was surprised to find out that my fellow Evangelical/Protestant friends and family weren’t upset by it. I thought to myself, I am coming to the point where I will need to reject the Christian tradition I was raised under (to see it as deficient) and embrace something that seemed very foreign, if not opposed, to my former faith tradition. But it seemed that friends and family did not make this connection. Let me explain…

When my best friend Rico told me that he was going to “convert” to Eastern Orthodoxy, I was offended. I was offended that he thought he could convert without upsetting all his Protestant friends and family. Because if he felt he needed to convert, then he must have felt that we needed to do the same (at least that’s what I thought). Rico’s response was very gracious as he simply tried to communicate why he believed God was calling him to take this step. I still took Rico’s decision very seriously and of course Nicole and I eventually followed Rico in conversion. 

As I told friends and family about our own decision to convert they did not react the same way. And even though this surprised me a bit I began to feel that Orthodoxy may not be for everyone. That is, maybe they just weren’t dissatisfied with their Christian tradition like I was. Maybe Orthodoxy is just too foreign for some people. So this leads me to my reason for writing this post…

What if my initial reaction to Rico’s conversion was right? Maybe it was something that should have been offensive to me as a Protestant Christian and maybe his conversion (or any Orthodox conversion) should be interpreted as a call for others to do the same. I don’t want to go too long with this post, but I’d like it to be a spring board for more posts to come. The point of all of this is to say that I have experienced such joy in Orthodox Christianity, in a way I am not able to explain, and now my family and friends are experiencing that same joy (and blogging about it!). My own experiences and beliefs about this living and ancient faith/tradition is that it IS for everybody. It is only foreign in the sense that it is radically Christian and holy, and I believe that it truly is the fullness of the gospel (i.e., the fullness of Jesus’ message and tradition).

That’s all I have for now. I will follow up on this soon.

Christ is Risen!

This past Sunday was our fifth Easter as Orthodox Christians. Now we are in Bright Week and I am left with this “bright sadness” because lent is over. Over the past month or so we have spent more time in church than we have at home. I love this time of year. I love to be in church. I am left exceedingly full and grateful every year. I am grateful to be a part of this living Tradition and I am grateful that I have journeyed with Christ and my friends to the cross and to the empty tomb. 

Each year I look forward to St. John Chrysotom’s homily. Here’s my favorite part:

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion
Unto ages of ages.

Amen.

The following is from Fr. Thomas Hopko’s commencement address to St. Vladimir’s Seminary this past spring (I’m steeling this from Rod Dreher’s Blog). It’s kind of long, but worth it.

We cannot be human beings — still less, Christians and saints — by ourselves. We need God and his wise and faithful servants. We need God’s commandments and living examples of their fulfillment. We need the Church’s scriptures, sacraments, services and saints. And we need one another. As Tertullian said centuries ago, “One Christian is no Christian.” And as the Russian proverb puts it, “The only thing that a person can do alone is perish.” Like it or not, we are “members of one another” in God. If we like it, it is life and paradise. If we reject it, it is death and hell.

So, in the end, because everything is about the true God and Christ and the Holy Spirit, and the Church’s scriptures, sacraments, services and saints, and God’s love, wisdom, truth and power, so too, therefore, is everything about the most important and Godlike reality of all, what St. John Climakos called “thrice-holy humility”: the humility of God himself that cannot be defined but can only be seen and adored in the crucified Christ, and in those who, by faith and grace, are co-crucified with Him.

Thus, if we have become convinced of anything at all as Orthodox Christians, we are convinced that human beings are not autonomous.
The proclamation and defense of human autonomy is the most insidious lie of our day, especially here in North America, and in the Western and Westernized worlds generally.

Humans beings are by nature heteronomous. Another law (heteros nomos) is always working in our minds and members. This “other law” is either the law of God, the law of Christ, the law of the Holy Spirit, the law of liberty and life that can only be recognized, received and realized by holy humility, or it is the law of sin and death. (cf. Romans 7-8) When the law within us is God’s law, then we are who we really are, and we are sane and free. But when that law is the law of sin and death, then we are not ourselves, and we are insane, enslaved and sold to sin.

More than fifteen hundred years ago St. Anthony the Great declared that “a time is coming when people will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us.’” (Saying 25)

It may well be that the time that St. Anthony foresaw is now upon us, or at least is rapidly approaching, at least in the West. And because of what we have learned, we know what we have to do about it. The same St Anthony, with all holy people, has told us. I urge you, and, if I could, I would command you, to read St. Anthony’s thirty-eight sayings in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Everything we need to know in order to live is there for us in its simplest and clearest form.

Abba Anthony first tells us that when we are plagued by whirling thoughts (logismoi) and worn down by an overwhelming sense of meaninglessness and futility (akedia), which we will be in this sinful world, we must simply and diligently work and pray, by pure devotion and sheer obedience. We must pay attention to ourselves and mind our own business. We must do our work, and let God — and other people — do theirs.

He also tells us that whoever we are, we should always have God before our eyes; and whatever we do, we should always do according to the testimony of the Holy Scriptures; and wherever we are, we should not easily leave that place. He further tells us (with his friend Abba Pambo) not to trust in our own righteousness, not to worry about the past, and to guard our mouths and our stomachs. He tells us to take responsibility for our own behavior, and to expect to be ferociously tempted to our very last breath. He tells us that there is no salvation for us without trial and temptation, and that without being tested, no person can be healed, illumined and perfected. He tells us that each one of us has our own unique life, that no two people are the same, and that each of us has to be the person that God made us to be (as Fr Paul Lazor, my dearest friend, so often says) where we are, when we are, with whom we are, from whom we are, and such as we are, according to God’s inscrutable providence.

Anthony also tells us, as do all the saints, that our life and our death begin and end with our fellow human beings. He insists that if we have gained our neighbor, we have gained our God, but if we have scandalized our neighbor, we have sinned against Christ. He says that all of our ascetical disciplines, including our scholarly studies, are means to an end; they are not ends in themselves. The end is discernment (diakrisis) and dispassion (apatheia) and the knowledge (epignosis) of God through keeping His commandments, the first and greatest of which is love (agape). And he teaches that our only hope to escape the countless snares of this world that seek to enslave us is found in one thing alone: Christ-like humility, with “a broken, contrite and humble heart,” as the psalmist says, being our sole “sacrifice acceptable to God” (Psalm 51.17).

My thoughts:

This reminds me that salvation, the purpose of our life, is not something that happens in spite of our actions. We do not hope that the good things we have done will out weigh the bad things so that one day we may be worthy to “go to heaven.” The problem here isn’t about faith vs. works. The problem is that the faith vs. works debate is sometimes based on a misunderstanding of salvation (& heaven). Fr. Hopko (making reference to St. Paul) says: “When the law within us is God’s law, then we are who we really are, and we are sane and free.” It seems to me that this is the beginning of a right understanding of salvation. Our purpose is to become who we really are (or are called to be), to become sane and free, living according to God’s law. This is salvation (& sanity), to become a person who is filled with this “Christ-like humility” and to fully share in the life of God; to become partakers of the Divine Nature (II Peter 1:3-4). Heaven is the fullness of this purpose.

To be a Christian is to believe that God’s law is life, and we are called to live according to it (the law of liberty and life) not because we will get into heaven if we do, but because living according to God’s law is heaven; it is what enables us to be “sane and free.”

So we’ve had Frisbee for a little over a week now and it’s become very clear to us that we need to figure out some way to train him. We bought a few books including “the Complete Idiots Guide to Puppies” as well as a few beagle focused magazines. These haven’t helped much. So Nicole decided to go to Borders (bookstore) to try and find something that would address our needs a little more specifically. This is what she found:

How to Be Your Dogs Best Friend by the Monks of New Skete! This is awesome! Check out their website: www.newsketemonks.com. They are a monastic community in New York that trains dogs and they have a TV show on Animal Planet called Divine Canine: With the Monks of New Skete. This is too cool. They started out as a Franciscan Eastern Catholic Monastery which has since gone the Orthodox way. I guess Frisbee was part of God’s plan for our life after-all.

Loads of pictures to share from Pascha (Easter) and Bright Week. We had the cooooolest feast day at the Timothy’s followed by 4 days in New York with Rico, Sara, & Baby Diego (our godson). The pictures say it all. Isn’t Nicole a great photographer? Click me to see more pictures.




Check out Diego’s website here. Comments anyone??

Truly He is Risen!

Praise the LORD! O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever!

O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen.

Praise God! What a joyful and blessed journey through Lent this has been to the glorious and ever joyful light of Pascha; the resurrection of Christ our life and our God.

Today is the first Sunday of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, commemorating the restoration of holy icons. Each year the whole Orthodox community in Southern California (and around the world) gathers together to celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy Vespers. We enjoy this service because it is the one time each year that we get to worship with Orthodox Christians from different Archdioceses (Greek, Russian, etc.). This year the Sunday of Orthodoxy was celebrated on Saturday night at the J. Paul Getty Museum in commemoration of the Holy Image, Hallowed Ground exhibit. It was incredible to process with 600 Orthodox Christians (lay people, nuns, priests, and Bishop MAXIM) through the Getty Museum proclaiming the Triumph of Orthodoxy. It is an awesome exhibit and it was an awesome night.

More about the Holy Image, Hallowed Ground exhibit.

We had dinner in Little Ethiopia after the service.

Today is the first day of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church. Yesterday was Forgiveness Sunday which was the final partially fast free day before Lent. Forgiveness Sunday is one of my favorite days of the year because of Forgiveness Vespers. I thought about trying to describe the service here but I found this post on the Internet that sums it up well:

I don’t know 98% of the people at St. Seraphim’s. But let me tell you dude, putting my forehead to the floor before every single person, asking their forgiveness, kissing them on the cheek, receiving their forgiveness – even if neither of us had sinned against each other – all of it was incredibly humbling. I felt stripped and washed clean. And then, after having gone through the whole line, bowing before [my wife] and the boys… it brought me to tears. [My four year old] had been following me around the whole line, so he knew what to expect and how to do it. But when it came time for me to bow before him and ask his forgiveness, he resisted. He didn’t like Daddy seeking his forgiveness. He reacted the same way when [his mother] bowed before him. I think in some small way he is learning what it means to give, and receive, forgiveness. Receiving can be the hardest part sometimes, even for a child.

It was so freeing to be there, in the church, everyone busily bowing and kissing and asking forgiveness, paying no mind to anyone or anything else except the person in front of them. I’ve just never been at a church service like that whose very purpose is to clean the slate and reconcile with one another. It was just so total, all-encompassing, and freeing. I felt safe.

Well we never came through on our promise to post more about the trip. That’s alright, I think most of you have heard plenty about it already. Nicole, Ana, and I were able to share pictures and stories from our trip at the Fellowship of St. John gathering on Friday night. We had a fun time sharing with everyone.

Today is Sunday and we were both very blessed by Father Michael’s sermon. Today we commemorate St. Thekla. Her life is one that makes us want to read the lives of the saints lots more. Read about St. Thekla’s life here.

The following is from Nathan and Lynette Hoppe’s website, PrayforLynette.org:

Dear friends, supporters and loved ones:

We will post more information as it becomes available. Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, and support for Lynette and her family.

Please read Nathan’s diary from August 24 & 25 and continue to pray for Lynette and the Hoppe family.

The following is from Fr. Michael’s blog on our parish website, www.stlukesoc.org. We were blessed to meet Nathan Hoppe and his kids in Albania. We were also blessed to receive Lynette’s awesome book about the resurrection of the Church in Albania. Please visit their website and please be praying for Lynette.

Beloved faithful in Christ at St. Luke’s,

You may recall that we were visited several years ago by Nathan and Lynette Hoppe and their children, who are OCMC (Orthodox Christian Missions Center) Missionaries serving in Albania. I beseech your prayers especially at this time for Lynette – see below:

http://www.prayforlynette.org/

This is our last night in Tirana. I don’t have to say that we have had a wonderful time here. We had our last night with the Russell’s and we are going to miss them very much. We are so glad that we were able to spend this time with you guys. We want to say falemenderit shumé to the Russell’s for everything. We also want to say thank you to Melanie for allowing us to use her apartment here in Tirana. We’re sorry we weren’t able to meet her. We are very happy we were able to meet Pauline and Christopher and spend the last few days with you both. Thank you Driko and Christine for your hospitality and the delicious meals. Thank you to everyone at St. Vlosh. We love you guys and we’ll miss you! If the Orthodox missionaries around the world are anything like the missionaries here in Albania then God is doing something awesome behind the scenes! We look forward to praying for and helping to support the missionaries in Albania and we look forward to coming back soon.

We fly back to Rome in the morning and then take the train up to Siena. Albania has been soul nourishing. We’re excited about the rest of trip but it is hard to be leaving this portion of it behind. I’m not sure how frequent our posts will be in Italy because I have no idea what access we will have to the internet. In Albania we have had constant high speed access at our apartment. We’ve been spoiled here. Here are today’s pictures.

Today was another great day. We settled in a bit and got a taste of Albanian life. We started the morning off at the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy at Annunciation Cathedral in Tirana. Archbishop +ANASTASIOS presided and we were blessed. It was amazing to be in Albania(!) and be able to follow the liturgy and worship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We were also blessed to experience the reverence of the people here coupled with the sense that the people were very comfortable and at home at the service. After the service Nicole and I headed to the Sofra for lunch. After lunch we all took a long nap and then Nicole and I walked the around downtown Tirana for a an afternoon shi-titi-ay (just walking around for walking around’s sake). After the walk we met back at the Sofra for dinner with George, Pauline, Christopher, and Maddie. After dinner we headed back to the Russell’s for hanging out and coffee. What a blessed feast day! See our pictures here.

It’s Saturday night and we are actually on our 3rd day in Albania. There is no way I can cover all the awesome experiences we are having here on this website. I’ll try to give a little information about what we’ve been doing and post as many pictures as I can. Yesterday was awesome. We got up and had breakfast at Stephen’s Center which is an American style breakfast place in the heart of Tirana that is frequented by the missionaries in town (they also have WIFI). After that we brought food to the government orphanage in Tirana. Next we headed to the Orthodox Cathedral. After that we picked up a van and headed back to the airport to pick up an OCMC missions group. It included a few people from St. Barnabas and St. Paul (local Orthodox parishes in Orange County). We took the group to St. Vlosh which is a seminary, children’s home, and church about 10 miles outside of Tirana. St. Vlosh was beautiful and heart warming. After St. Vlosh we headed back to Tirana to have dinner with George. After dinner we walked around a popular district of Tirana and listened to live bands and closed out the night with desert at the top of the tallest building in Tirana. That’s it. As you can see, we’re hardly doing anything. : ) Day 2 pictures are here.

Now for day 3. We had a crazy freak lightning storm that kept us up much of the night. I jumped about 4 feet and knocked heads with Nicole when a bolt of lighting scared me half to death. We started the day in the soup kitchen with George. It was an incredible experience. The kitchen works like a well oiled machine. Nicole and Ana were guest servers and had lots of fun. My job was to take pictures. Next I fixed George’s computers and hooked his office up with WIFI while Nicole and Ana shopped in downtown Tirana. Next we had a unbelievable meal at the “Turkish Sofra” (a Turkish restaurant near George’s house). Kevin – Albanian food is good! There is a lot of Turkish and Greek influence (yogurt, lamb, etc. – no hummus). After lunch we headed back to St. Vlosh because we all wanted to see the kids again. We stayed for games and then Vespers (evening prayers) and then had to leave. It was very hard to leave. We’re hoping that we go back again before Tuesday. That’s it. We opted out of dinner tonight because we’re all a little tired. It’s hard to write about the day we had but the pictures say a lot. See the day 3 pictures here.