541. My First Trip to Greece, Part Two – 1) Popular Orthodoxy. 2) The Face of Saint Nicholas.

  Pray for the suffering people of Ukraine and Gaza. _________________ A Week on a Greek island The conference ended and with my wife’s leave – I have a wonderful wife – I had something I had long wanted: a week to bum around on a Greek island. I felt prepared. I had learned enough […]

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540. My First Trip to Greece: Part One – at the end of which, Saint Nicholas begins to make his move.

  Pray for the people of Ukraine and Gaza.   I’m old, now. I won’t see Greece again. Nevertheless, I often still go there. On my trips I kept a daily travel journal. I wrote one time: “Why am I keeping this journal? So when I get old and can’t travel here any more, I’ll […]

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497. Nicholas: the Saint who doesn’t seem to have been but actually was and now definitely is

 Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker Bishop of Myra December 6, 343 Saint Nicholas was Bishop of the city of Myra on the south coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey) in the Fourth Century, back in the days when the Greek-speaking world stretched across much of the eastern Mediterranean. * He is perhaps the most popular, most […]

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432. I love secular Christmas. Mostly.

As surely you have noticed, most of our American Christmas customs have nothing to do with the Birth of Jesus Christ. They’re secular – that is, without any specific religious connotations. That doesn’t mean they’re evil. Many of them are good or lovely or fun. But first, there’s one thing about secular Christmas which I […]

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400. How Saint Nicholas founded Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, USA

I know…  Some of you have heard these stories before. But some of you haven’t, and you really need to hear them.  Besides, the good old stories always deserve re-telling. That’s why the Church year repeats itself, year after year after year. We’re doing two weeks on Saint Nicholas. Last week we covered the life […]

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