Posts Tagged ‘icons’

What’s a Patriarch?

if you’ll permit me, I’ll start off by saying that an Orthodox Patriarch is not normally a “little Pope” whose word is law among those whose Patriarch he is.

I just learned of the demise last year of the Milan Synod’s St. Hilarion Monastery in Texas, and of their website, odox.net.  This group was not in communion with the Orthodox Church, but the Wayback Machine seems to have stored at least their images of Western Saints icons, which I have always found edifying.

Bishop JOHN (Berzins) of Caracas, (temporary) administrator of the Diocese of South America, of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, is one of ROCOR’s newly-elected and -consecrated hierarchs.  Many Years, Master!
Interestingly, as their news release with lots of interesting photos mentions, he was consecrated a couple weeks ago at, and according to, what I believe is [...]

The homepage of St. Paul’s now reports that although the Theotokos has stopped weeping, St. Nicholas has started, so they’re continuing twice-a-day Paraklesis with hymns to him also.
Recall that the original instances in 1960 were also in quick succession, as they mention.
This icon of “St. Nick” demonstrates the Orthodox experience that even store-bought print-icons (mounted [...]

On Sunday – Pentecost, Trinity Sunday - it’s reported that an icon of the Theotokos, the Birth-Mother of God, began weeping myrrh at St. Paul Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Hempstead, Long Island, NY, after a hiatus of some years.  Read all about it!  It’s one of two icons of the Virgin Mary there with a history [...]

One proposed bumper sticker in this compilation of Orthodox humor!  Alot of oldies-but-goodies (What else? We’re Orthodox – even Geek Orthodox [sic]!!), but one or two I hadn’t seen before.  Funny, wise, ironic, self-deprecating, it’s all there!
Some are insiders, like the last one about the (mostly-Lenten) Liturgy of St. Basil the Great.  The actual text [...]

Archimandrite Sebastian (Dabovich) (1863-1940) was the first person ordained to the Orthodox priesthood who had been born in what was, at the time of his birth, United States territory, to wit, San Francisco, California, the son of Serbian immigrants.*  He was one of the pioneers in the service of the Moscow Patriarchate to Orthodox immigrants of many ethnic backgrounds in [...]

Italy’s former Orthodoxy is attested by the ancient icons and Greek icon-style murals and mosaics to be found in many old Latin churches there to this day.  Rome itself has at least one icon said to have been painted by St. Luke the Evangelist (like a few in Orthodox hands, or rather, graced to Orthodox [...]

This Washington Post feature story will become unavailable to those of us without the money to sign-up (ironically). But the quoted remark of a museum curator in Russia in favor of Russian tycoons buying-back the nation’s Orthodox Christian religious heritage, including Holy Icons, from abroad, where it had been taken, stolen, or sold after the [...]

6th-century hermitess and foster-mother of saints,* Ita (Ida) of Killeedy in Southwest Ireland, was born into the ruling clan of the regional kingdom of Decies in Munster Province (Irish Deise Mumhan), which at its height covered roughly County Waterford and much surrounding territory. (Killeedy is actually in County Limerick, well northwest of The Decies.)
Weirder yet, [...]

I offer this one from Fr. Stephen Freeman not because I get it, but because I don’t get all of it. Let me ponder it….

What follows is an extended quote (from pp. 9-10) from Women and Men in the Church, a 1980 work/study by a committee of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). I’m still wrestling with all its implications, myself, but thought I’d offer it here as an example of an Orthodox approach to questions and issues:
Sacraments and [...]

is the name of this entirely Orthodox icon.

If she kind of looks to you like Jesus’ twin sister if he would’ve had one, you’re not far off! The “IC” and “XC” at the top are abbreviations for Iesous Christos, Jesus Christ in Greek, meant to leave no doubt as to the iconographer’s intentions. But why [...]