Father Bill's Orthodox Blog – Orthodoxy from the Third Coast
Saints, Seasons, Society, Sins, plus Travels mostly to Greece and who knows what next? by Father Bill Olnhausen
Holy Wednesday evening Matins and Holy Unction For most of our history the Holy Wednesday night service was Matins/Orthros alone, which continues the Holy Week narrative. However, beginning a few hundred years ago in Greek and Antiochian churches, Matins began to be replaced by Holy Unction. The Anointing was used as part of the preparation […]
Read More »Holy Tuesday evening Bridegroom Matins Before we get into the Gospel story … Tonight we hear the Hymn of Kassiane, a ninth century nun and hymnographer. She was Irish, but her family moved to Constantinople, where she was one of several young women interviewed by Emperor Theophilus as his prospective bride. The story says […]
Read More »It will help if you read the Gospel passages before you read this Post. Holy Monday evening Bridegroom Matins Gospel Reading: Matthew 22:15-46; 23:1-39 In tonight’s Gospel, the confrontation between Jesus and the authorities continues. They must stop this man. Killing him was the last option. The better way, the cleanest way was still to outwit […]
Read More »This week I’ll post articles daily to explain the services of this blessed Week. This is especially for the benefit of those who can’t make it to church. It will help if you first take out your Bible and read the Gospel lessons as noted, since I’ll do a lot of paraphrasing of the actual text. […]
Read More »Lazarus Saturday There had been fake Messiahs here and there before. The authorities had always been able to discredit them, and their followers had disappeared into the woodwork. But now here was this Jesus at Bethany only two miles from Jerusalem, still going strong – pulling off this ‘fake miracle”, this supposed raising of a […]
Read More »
