Orthodixie

Today is Valentine’s Day, the day on which we celebrate love and especially romantic love. This day is linked to Greco-Roman February holidays devoted to fertility, in particular, the festival of Lupercalia. The romantic overtone of the holiday is in commemoration of St. Valentine, a Roman priest who was martyred on February 14 in 269 A.D. It’s worth noting that there are many different Christian martyrs named “Valentine,” and until 1969, the Catholic Church recognized 11 different Valentine’s days.

Thousands of couples will exchange gifts signifying their affection for one another, including chocolate, flowers, and of course, greeting cards. One hundred eighty-eight million Valentine’s Day cards will be given today, making February 14 the second most popular card-giving day of the calendar year, finishing right behind Christmas.

The tradition of exchanging love notes on Valentine’s Day originates from the martyr Valentine himself. The legend maintains that due to a shortage of enlistments, Emperor Claudius II forbade single men to get married in an effort to bolster his struggling army. Seeing this act as a grave injustice, Valentine performed clandestine wedding rituals in defiance of the emperor. Valentine was discovered, imprisoned, and sentenced to death by beheading. While awaiting his fate in his cell, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with the daughter of a prison guard, who would come and visit him. On the day of his death, Valentine left a note for the young woman professing his undying devotion signed “Love from your Valentine.”

Stolen from The Writer’s Almanac (2/14/08).

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The following comment, sent in by a blog reader, concerns yesterday’s post about the new Orthodox Study Bible:

I still wonder if this is really good. I mean, yes, having a Bible in hand that will motivate one to read it is good. But, like so many other scores of particular, niche market-driven study Bibles out there, I wonder if this isn’t just another evangelical/Protestant thing us converts are doing to Orthodoxy. I’ve seen what can happen when a group tries to promote their ideas using bad reasoning and logic (see the Reformation Study Bible and notes), and I’m wondering if we aren’t trying to “systematize” the Church Fathers by putting them all in tidy little notes at the bottom of each page of our Bibles. Is it really a good idea to have concise commentaries at the bottom of the page of every text? Is that really the Orthodox way?

I ask because I’m inquiring into the Orthodox faith right now, and this has been on my mind. I’ve seen what Protestants do with their Study Bible notes, and most of the time it isn’t good scholarship OR Christianity (New Interpreter’s Study Bible, NRSV, and again, the Reformation Study Bible). If you want to see how someone can manipulate the text in such a way that it just looks silly, read some of the notes in the Reformation study bible that try to reconcile some of the narrative differences in each of the Gospel accounts of Christ riding into Jerusalem on a donkey/mule/ass, whatever it was.

Blog reg Keith sent me an NPR story about Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s continual biblical references and his audience’s lack of understanding. Well, call it coincidence but, though Huckabee may lose, this dilemma is just in time for a remedy …

First, excerpts from the news story:

In November, as Huckabee surged in the polls, a student at Liberty University asked him what was driving his startling success. Huckabee responded, “It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people.”

We played the tape for Leitha Anthony, who was waiting to go into the Washington Monument. Did she know what he was talking about?

“That’s when Moses … had to feed all the people, the multitude of people that left Egypt,” Anthony hazarded. “That’s what it was?”

“Half of Americans can’t name any of the four Gospels, and that includes the Christians,” Prothero says. “And half don’t know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible. Those are much easier questions than things like, you know, ‘What’s the loaves and the fishes story?'”

It is, indeed, here. I saw the new OSB — OT & NT — yesterday at church. I’ve not had time to study it. (Okay, I haven’t even bought a copy yet.) But your comments are welcomed.

This week’s Podcast is taken from the book, One Flew Over the Onion Dome – any similarities to your own parish, bishop or jurisdiction is purely intentional. Orthodoxy not available in all states. In your area, it may only be available in a foreign language – in which case, your mileage may vary …

The following two images are of my e-pal, Jean-Michel, reading — in Belgium — One Flew Over the Onion Dome (2006) and Defeating Sin (2008). Oh, by the way, as the second pic reveals: Prayers coveted for his speedy and full recovery.

No updates on this blog till week’s end as I shall be attending the annual Clergy Retreat of the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America in Wichita, Kansas.

Last year’s lectures (HERE) are now available in print …

“THE HIDDEN MAN OF THE HEART consists of a series of presentations on the place of the heart in the spiritual life of the Christian, with special reference to the Hesychast tradition of the Orthodox Church, including two of the most influential figures in contemporary Christianity: Saint Silouan the Athonite (1866–1938) and Elder Sophrony of Essex (1896–1993). Delivered in Wichita, Kansas at the 2007 Clergy Brotherhood Retreat of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church, each lecture (divided here into chapters) is published in full together with its corresponding Questions & Answers. The author is a disciple of the Elder Sophrony and a member of the Monastery of St. John the Baptist, England.”

Price: $19.95

Published by: Mount Thabor Publishing

This year’s event features: CHRISTOPHER VENIAMIN D.Phil. (Oxon.), a spiritual son of Elder Sophrony of Essex and Professor of Patristics at St Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in South Canaan, PA, who will speak to us on the theme IT IS GOOD FOR US TO BE HERE: A Patristic Initiation into the Mystery of the Saviour’s Transfiguration.

Prayers coveted.