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
Please pray for the innocent suffering people of Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, and Iran. Christ is risen! Truly He is risen! __________________ I had arrived on Crete and was staying in Heraklion overnight. I got up early and went around the corner to the Church of Saint Titus to say my prayers. […]
Read More »Before we begin: Please pray for the innocent suffering people of Ukraine, Gaza, the Palestinian West Bank, Iran and Sudan. Χριστός Ανέστη! Αληθώς Ανέστη! As I said last week: I first wrote this teaching about war and peace for our Saint Nicholas Church newsletter ‘way back in 2003, not long before the second US invasion […]
Read More »Matins in the evening? 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 […]
Read More »This story has always captivated me, for reasons I can’t explain. The Monastery of Saint Savas (Mar Sabas) in the Palestinian West Bank down below Jerusalem is one of the oldest continually functioning monasteries in the world. In the late Fourth Century monks from Mar Sabas spent much of Lent alone in the desert. A […]
Read More »The theme for this Fourth Sunday of Lent is Saint John Climacos (of “the Ladder”) so called because of his book The Ladder of Divine Ascent, one of the most popular books in the ancient world. More about him in a bit. A Wandering Introduction to the Ladder of Saint John Climacos Two stories: 1 […]
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