Orthodixie

UPDATE: The books have arrived and will be going out in today’s mail. Thanks for your patience & support!

In the spiritual struggle in which all of us must engage on the path to salvation, one of the greatest challenges is to crucify daily the many passions that war against us from our youth. Specifically, we must replace the seven deadly passions – pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice, and sloth – with the virtues that enable us to become like God.

Fr Joseph Huneycutt’s book, DEFEATING SIN, presents a detailed examination of the sinful passions and their corresponding virtues, a guide for repentance and confession, and meditations that encourage both an understanding and a realization of spiritual growth.

This text is an excellent spiritual guide for the individual Orthodox Christian who truly seeks to grow in theosis and a template for retreats and workshops that focus on this very important subject on the parish, deanery or diocesan level. A creative and inspiring approach that is both Scriptural and patristic-based, I wholeheartedly recommend this work for clergy and laypersons alike.

— Very Rev. Michael G. Dahulich, Ph.D.
Dean of St. Tikhon’s Seminary

Some of you are too young to remember … But. There was a time when what you looked like held no bearing on your popularity – your “making it” — as a singer. It was only with the advent of MTV that we became a video obsessed world.

But, face it, in reality you don’t have to be good looking to sing.

Besides, faces not only reveal a lot, they can also hide a lot!

One of my seminary instructors used to say: “By the time you’re 40, you’ve got the face you’ve earned!”

Wow.

Now that’ll make one take a double-take in the ol’ mirror … “By the time you’re 40, you’ve got the face you’ve earned.”

But …

Is that really true? I mean, hey, are you talking about my morning face? The one at mid-afternoon? Or the happy, cheesy, plastic one reserved for Olan Mills and pictures at Christmas?

Exactly WHICH face are you referring to?

I have the pleasure of serving with two wonderful priests: one younger, the other older, than myself. I mentioned to Fr Joseph the older, one Sunday morning: “You know you’re getting old when you refuse to look in the mirror for about the first hour of your day.”

He said, “Oh no …”

Listen to the Orthodixie Podcast on Ancient Faith Radio.

Passions and virtues – words not generally used in everyday vocabulary in the 21st century. Yet, who of us has not seen lives ruined or exalted as a direct result of one or the other of these words and their implications. This book provides meaningful and practical insight into the significant “opposites” that affect our lives both here and hereafter. Fr. Joseph takes us to that fateful garden where the first Adam, the first Eve and the first tree set a course for death and destruction. But he also takes us to a hill where the second Adam, the second Eve and a very different tree changes that course for eternity. Read this, go to confession, and then read it again.

John Maddex, General Manager, Ancient Faith Radio

VATICAN CITY, OCT 8, 2007 (VIS) – From October 8 to 15, the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox is holding its 10th plenary assembly in Ravenna, Italy, according to a communique issued by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

This session is the second to be held since the reactivation of dialogue during the 2006 plenary in Belgrade. The commission was established in 1979 by Pope John Paul II and Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I, and held its first assembly in Patmos-Rhodes in 1980.

The document to be analyzed by the commission at its current gathering is entitled “the ecclesiological and canonical consequences of the sacramental nature of the Church – conciliarity and sinodality in the Church.” The study of this document, the communique reads, “was part of the program agreed at Patmos-Rhodes in 1980” but was “suspended to make way for questions concerning the relationship of Orthodoxy with the Oriental Catholic Churches following the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. With the plenary of Belgrade, the commission reactivated its normal theological agenda.”

The commission is made up of 60 members, 30 Catholics and 30 Orthodox, and is jointly presided by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and His Excellency Ioannis (Zizioulas), metropolitan of Pergamo. The Catholic members are cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests and lay experts in various fields. The orthodox members represent – in the order indicated by Fanar – the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Patriarchate of Moscow, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Serbia, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Romania, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Bulgaria, the Orthodox Church of Georgia, the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, the Orthodox Church of Greece, the Orthodox Church of Poland, the Orthodox Church of Albania, the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and of Slovakia, the Orthodox Church of Finland, and the Orthodox Church of Estonia.

Source

Thanks to FWD from Fr Miguel GraveDePeralta.

UPDATE: Russians Leave Ecumenical Talks in Rift with Constantinople

More here.

A Priest friend says the first question that need be asked when an icon is found to weeping is: “Okay, what did you do to make her cry?”

I’ll have to ask him how to word it when the subject is a tree …

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas – An acacia tree that started sprouting a foamlike substance on its branches after its owner died is drawing hundreds of people a day to see what some believe is supernatural ice.

To the naked eye, the white stuff about 20 feet up in the tree looks like ice braving the South Texas heat.

Not likely, say insect and tree experts who viewed photographs of the substance. They said the “miracle ice” is probably nothing more than a spittlebug nest.

“It looks like spit, basically,” agreed Paul Johnson of the Texas Forest Service …

Here’s the story from The Dallas Morning News.