Month: April 2021

As you all know, the first services of Holy Week (after Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday) are the Bridegroom Orthros services, which we celebrate in the evenings.  But wait a minute, you’re probably saying, isn’t Orthros (a.k.a., Matins) a morning service?

As we read the concluding words of Jame’s letter, we hear about sickness and healing, confession of sins, the prayers of the righteous, and bringing people back to the Way. But how should we understand all this?  Is anointing related

I think most of you know that my presvytera was born in a suburb of Minneapolis and that she lived there for a number of years during her childhood. In addition, I spent my undergraduate years at the University of

Life isn’t fair. We all know it—we can see the unfairness around us. But, why is it that some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth while others are born into abject poverty? And, why is it

Translations are good in that they help us read something we wouldn’t otherwise have access to. But, unfortunately, they can sometimes be misleading. Previously, we talked about how translators can impose their will on the text by what words they

Each week during Lent, as you know, I’ve been writing about the rich depth of our Orthodox spirituality. A few weeks ago, I talked about how fasting opens us up to others (click here), and, last week, I spoke about how

One of the tricks to hearing and understanding scripture is to be able to hear it as a unified whole. In other words, it helps to have a macro understanding of what’s going on.

 When we understand scripture in this