Saints, Seasons, Society, Sins, plus Travels mostly to Greece and who knows what next? by Father Bill Olnhausen
James died, a martyr, on October 23, AD 62. His titles puzzle some people. Those who believe Mary is “ever virgin” wonder: How could Jesus have a brother? Those who think bishops were a later corruption of the Gospel, ask: Why do we call James “Bishop of Jerusalem””? Well… the Orthodox Church was there […]
Read More »If you hate statistics, you may want to stop reading now. Come back next week. However, a better choice: If you want to find out what’s going on, you can do so the easy way. I’ll begin each section with a headline. Read those, at least. And out of the goodness of my computer, I’ll […]
Read More »“And now for something completely different.” Or maybe not – since Saint Francis didn’t lend money. He didn’t possess any. Usury: lending money at interest I was visiting family this week, so I took this an as easy topic: I’d just find the Scriptural and Patristic references to Usury and copy them here. Wrong! I found […]
Read More »What was it Francis “almost made”? He “almost made it” onto the calendar of the Orthodox Church. Why didn’t he? 1 Because he missed the deadline! It was not Francis’ fault, of course, that he was born in 1182, but unfortunately the year 1054 is the cut-off, the officially accepted date for the split between […]
Read More »These are my own stories. I often think how blessed I was to become Orthodox during the era of these four great men – and even more blessed to have met all of them. (I mean, I was pastor of only a little parish church in the Midwest.) One I knew only in passing, and […]
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