Father Bill's Orthodox Blog – Orthodoxy from the Third Coast
A Variety of Topics: Saints, Seasons, Society, the Moral Life, plus Travels mostly to Greece, and more, by Father Bill Olnhausen
Years ago an Episcopalian professor friend of mine was considering Orthodoxy. * He told me the defining “test issue” for him would be: What does the Orthodox Church officially teach about the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Was she taken bodily into Heaven or was she not? I responded: “Well, … …” which […]
Read More »But first: Ukraine This is an Orthodox issue: one Orthodox nation making war against another Orthodox nation, bringing shame on the Orthodox world. I dislike preceding the glorious topic of the Transfiguration with such a dreadful subject as this. However, the US war on Iran has captured the headlines. Ukraine and its 25 million Orthodox […]
Read More »Hang on. We are now about to be counter-cultural. 1) Who is wealthy? Answer: Probably we are. The average annual personal income in America is about $65,000, and the average annual household income is about $85,000. The average annual income (adjusted to American dollars) in Haiti is $2010, in Nigeria $1360, in Afghanistan $390. 2) […]
Read More »Saint Mary Magdalene …whose feast day we celebrated last Wednesday, July 22. This is a reprise, slightly improved, of a post from a couple of years ago. (I’m getting lazy. Well, it’s summertime, and we have family visiting.) _____________________ I thought writing about Mary Magdalene would be simple. It wasn’t. I discovered that there is […]
Read More »I’d like to point out again that those of us who have apparent strange experiences with saints or directly from God should not go around bragging about it. No, quite the opposite. God sends us these things because He wants something from us, and we’re not bright enough or spiritually advanced enough to figure it […]
Read More »