St. Gregory, Illuminator of Armenia

September 30, 2008 in Eastern Orthodox Christianity
Tags: Armenian Church, Chalcedonian Christianity, Christianity, Eastern Christianity, Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Ethiopian Church, miaphysitism, monophysitism, non-chalcedonian christianity, Orthodox Christianity, Orthodox Church, orthodoxy, pre-chalcedonian christianity, religion, Syriac Church

For most of my life I have driven past a church dedicated to someone I have recently learned is, by tradition, an ancestor of myself and most of us with Western European ancestry, St. Gregory, a royal Parthian, Orthodox Enlightener of Armenia, the first state in the ancient world to adopt Christianity as its official [...]

Orthodoxy on CBS-TV tonight (Mon., early AM Tues.)

September 30, 2008 in Eastern Orthodox Christianity
Tags: Christianity, Constantinople, Craig Ferguson, CSI, Eastern Orthodoxy, Greek Orthodoxy, media, Melina Kanakaredes, Orthodox Christianity, orthodoxy, pope, religion, Rome, TV

If the CBS Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson hasn’t aired in your market yet, or if you have access to the West Coast feed, Melina Kanakaredes (there to plug CSI) spends her whole 7 minutes explaining to Craig about Orthodoxy and how she was part of the delegation that met with the Pope of [...]

The sinlessness of the Mother of God

September 22, 2008 in Eastern Orthodox Christianity
Tags: liturgy, prayer, worship, orthodoxy, Orthodox Christianity, Eastern Christianity, Russian Orthodoxy, Christianity, religion, salvation, Eastern Orthodoxy, sin, Scripture, Bible, Patristics, doctrine, saints, monasticism, Orthodox liturgy, temptation, Theosis, Divinization, Fathers of the Church, Divine Energies, Divine Energy, Hesychasm, spirituality, glorification, deification, asceticism, Mary, Theotokos, Mother of God, women saints, Blessed Mother, Early Church Fathers, mysticism, ascetic theology, religious controversy, apocryphal gospels, early Christian writings, Temple (Jerusalem), Second Temple, hymns, Immaculate Conception, Mother Mary, Blessed Virgin Mary, Mary of Nazareth, mother of Christ, mother of Jesus, religious doubt, religious questioning, Orthodox Tradition, Scripture and Tradition, St Gregory Palamas, Gregory Palamas, Palamism, free will, grace, Uncreated Energy, Uncreated Energies

I know nothing about the recent controversy over this, referenced at the beginning of this article from St. Tikhon’s Monastery in Pennsylvania (anonymous), and was surprised to hear about it.  But this article seems to address it well, briefly, and Orthodoxly.  It also highlights the misinterpretation or misunderstanding of Patristic writings that is possible unless one [...]

Glorifying God

September 18, 2008 in Eastern Orthodox Christianity
Tags: orthodoxy, Orthodox Christianity, Christianity, religion, salvation, Eastern Orthodoxy, Theosis, Divinization, Divine Energies, Divine Energy, Hesychasm, glorification, deification, purification, Gospel, Anthony Bloom, Antony Bloom, glory of God, illumination, saved, God

More from Metr. Anthony Bloom:
…we must remember that ‘to glorify’ in Greek does not mean what we understand so often – to praise or applaud; it means that his splendour, his unutterable beauty is revealed….
So how do *we* glorify God?  Preliminarily by struggling to unite with His Uncreated Energies, His Glory, through all the means [...]

Liturgy as Theurgy

September 18, 2008 in Eastern Orthodox Christianity
Tags: Anthony Bloom, Antony Bloom, church services, Eastern Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy, liturgy, Orthodox Christianity, orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, worship

I thought I made up that word, but apparently not!  In any case, I mean it literally as “Divine work,” just as Liturgy means “people’s work.”  But I just read this from the late Metropolitan ANTHONY (Bloom) of Great Britain:
…in eucharistic terms we are easily led astray by what we see. We see a celebrant [...]