Orthodixie

The First Week of Lent … I ended up attending my first meeting of Fasters Anonymous. It’s a 12-step group that meets in the basement of a local Catholic church. This year, since Orthodox Easter is way later than the Catholics – and everybody else, for that matter – the group had already been meeting for 5 weeks. But, given my circumstances, I had to go …

My sponsor told me, on the way there, that some of the folks at the meeting would be Roman Catholic or Episcopalian – but, now that Lent had arrived for the Orthodox, the majority of the participants would be, like me, Orthodox struggling with First Week.

As we pulled into the parking lot, I understood what he meant …

There were several cars with bumper stickers saying things like:

The Episcopal Church Welcomes You

Hate is not a family value … and stuff

Then there was:

Abortion stops a beating heart

Pray the Rosary daily

and

Mary is my co-pilot

And then I saw them … our people … bumper stickers sporting things like:

Honk 40 times if you’re Orthodox

My Church is Older than Your Church

and, of course:

Orthodoxy: Christianity, just harder

Anyway …

There were probably 50 people sitting round in a circle; I recognized a few. We began with a welcome from the leader … then, this group sang a Fasting Song to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song …

The Orthodixie Podcast on Ancient Faith Radio.

What is the Sunday of Orthodoxy?

A yearly thanksgiving is due to God on account of that day when we recovered the Church of God, with the demonstration of the dogmas of true religion and the overthrowing of the blasphemies of wickedness …
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Metropolitan PHILIP, 1984:

Once every year, on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the Orthodox people in America emerge from their ethnic islands to celebrate the triumph of the Orthodox Faith over the iconoclastic heresy. This victory happened in the year AD 787, 1197 years ago. I am proud of our history; for those who have no past, have no present and will have no future. There is a difference, however, between contemplating history and worshiping history …

We are no longer a church of immigrants; the first Orthodox liturgy was celebrated in this country before the American Revolution. Many of our Orthodox young people have died on the battlefields of various wars, defending American ideals and principles. We have contributed much to the success of this country in the fields of medicine, science, technology, government, education, art, entertainment, and business.

We consider ourselves Americans, and we are proud of it—except when we go to church, we suddenly become Greeks, Russians, Arabs, and Albanians. Despite our rootedness in the American soil, our Church in America is still divided into fifteen jurisdictions, contrary to our Orthodox ecclesiology and canon law, which forbid the multiplicity of jurisdictions in the same territory …

Read all of Metropolitan PHILIP’s historic Orthodoxy Sunday Sermon.

St Patriarch Tikhon, 1903:

Holding to the Orthodox faith, as to something holy, loving it with all their hearts and prizing it above all, Orthodox people ought, moreover, to endeavor to spread it amongst people of other creeds. Christ the Savior has said that “neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candle stick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.” (Matthew 5, 15) The light of Orthodoxy was not lit to shine only on a small number of men. The Orthodox Church is universal; it remembers the words of its Founder: “Go ye into the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Luke, 16, 15), “go ye therefore and teach all nations.” (Matthew 28, 19) We ought to share our spiritual wealth, our truth, light and joy with others, who are deprived of these blessings, but often are seeking them and thirsting for them …

Here is the entire text of St Tikhon’s Sunday of Orthodoxy sermon.
Thanks to FWD from Jean-Michel.

As the Prophets saw, as the Apostles taught, as the Church has received, as the Teachers express in dogma, as the inhabited world understands together with them, as grace illumines, as the truth makes clear, as error has been banished, as wisdom makes bold to declare, as Christ has assured, so we think, so we speak, so we preach, honouring Christ our true God, and his Saints, in words, in writings, in thoughts, in sacrifices, in churches, in icons, worshipping and revering the One as God and Lord, and honouring them because of their common Lord as those who are close to him and serve him, and making to them relative veneration.

This is the faith of the Apostles; this is the faith of the Fathers; this is the faith of the Orthodox; this faith makes fast the inhabited world …

Read the Synodikon commemorating the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

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This coming Sunday morning, March 16th, His Grace, Bishop BASIL of the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America (AOA) will join Their Eminences Archbishop DMITRI of the Diocese of Dallas and the South (OCA) and Metropolitan ISAIAH of the Metropolis of Denver (GOA) for a concelebrated Hierarchical Divine Liturgy at St Seraphim Cathedral (OCA) in Dallas, TX which will begin a joint celebration of the feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

Not sure about the “dinner on the grounds” part, but …

Then, later that evening, all three bishops will join with all the priests and deacons of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and their congregations for the Vespers of the Triumph of Orthodoxy and the formal proclamation of the Synodikon at Holy Trinity Church (GOA).

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Signed copies available through the PayPal button in the side margin of this blog (at left), or multiple copies through Regina Orthodox Press.

And now …

on AMAZON.

Sin is not merely making evil choices, but in fact the result of an inability to make rightful — or righteous — choices. It is the state of captivity to compulsions or passions, where one is quite literally passive and not subjective, controlled and not creative, fallen and not free. It is subservience to the force of hardened habit. In contemporary language, it is called addiction. If I drink or eat whenever I like or whatever I want, I do not gain my freedom but in fact forfeit my freedom. For, in that case, I am constrained by the tyranny of passion, identified with the instinct of my nature. My “life is held captive; it is enslaved by the fear of death” (Heb.2:15).

Yesterday I posted some quotes from the same source.

Here’s another quote …

Humanity stands at the center of creation, serving as a bridge and a bond between greatness and lowliness, between sacredness and frailty, between heaven and earth. As such, the human person acts as a mediator. Yet the way of mediation, otherwise known as the process of deification (divinization, or theosis in Greek), is long and arduous. It is what the Church Fathers call the journey from the divine image, as a gift from above, to the divine likeness as the realization and fulfillment of this initial endowment.

Who’s the author?