520. Holy Monday night: Bridegroom Matins

Exaposteilarion at Bridegroom Matins, sung on the first three nights of Holy Week: “Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, but I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul, and save me.” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgK0Fc8QUOs   Pat Tsalgakis at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFrdWVEVKYE Chanted in Arabic […]

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518. Palm Sunday Night: Bridegroom Matins

Introduction In our parish churches, Matins/Orthros is normally sung in the morning. So why, you may ask, are we now suddenly having it in the evening? Also and equally odd, why during Holy Week do we have Vesperal Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts (obviously an evening service) in the morning? I’m really sorry you asked […]

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506. The Occasional Virtue of Not Fasting

Or, to take a another angle on the subject,  this might be titled “The Sin of Fake Fasting”. Publicans and Pharisees In next Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 18:10-14), which I suspect you could almost recite by heart, we hear about a man who fasted diligently but was condemned by the Lord, and another man who […]

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504. The Church Fathers on “The Seven Deadly Sins” and their Results

These days when people are breaking the “Seven Deadly” publicly and unashamedly and even proudly, I thought this might be a relevant topic. Brief Introduction What is “sin”? In the New Testament, by far the most common word for sin is “amartia / ἁμαρτία”, an archery term which means being “off the mark” – the […]

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