Who Am I Now?The Vows and Vision of BaptismDeeply momentous in one’s life — even echoing into eternity — is the Mystery of Baptism. The Holy Spirit descends to do His transfiguring work. Vows are made and a vision is given to the newly-illuminated warrior of Christ.To help us recall the glory to which we are called, here are excerpts from the Baptism andChrismation services:From the EXORCISM"Look ...

A Cleansing ConfessionA Practical GuideWhen fellowship with God and each other has been broken by sin, the Church — since its earliest days — provides a way to restoration: the Sacrament of Confession (or, much better, Reconciliation), in which we experience forgiveness from God, unburden the soul, and restore fellowship with God and each other.Why confession? Because sin separates us from God — o...

Conflict in Christ: Walking the Road Toward Peace TogetherIf you’re fighting with another person, you’re ultimately fighting the wrong battle, “for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and powers and world rulers of this darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens” (Ephesians 6:12).Yet, our Lord Jesus was realistic: fallen people in a fallen wor...

Orthodox Christianity teaches that a clear distinction exists between the uncreated God and the created world. God is good, and because God created the world, the world is good; but it is also fallen, and as a result we face additional distinctions: between old and new 1, death and life 2, profane and sacred 2, all the degrees of shadow and the very Light Itself 4. Salvation may be understood as t...

Orthodox Christian worship of God is an experience that engages both the mind and the body with all its senses. Visitors notice many Scriptural texts “come to life” during their visit – our use of music, psalms and other Scripture texts, incense, icons, and sacraments, call to mind the liturgical worship of the early Church. These material expressions of spiritual worship are “copies of the true” ...

The Bible is the sacred written record of God’s involvement with His creation – a record received, written down, transmitted, protected by the Church for all ages, and proclaimed for the salvation of the world. The word of God that is Holy Scripture – Old and New Testaments – is distinguished from the Word of God who is the Christ, the Son of the Father and the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. T...

by Frederica Mathewes-GreenWelcome to the Orthodox Church! There are a number of things about our worship that are different from the services of other churches, whether Roman Catholic, liturgical Protestant, or evangelical. In an effort to help alleviate confusion, here are twelve things I wish someone had explained to me the first time I visited an Orthodox church.1. A Sense of HolinessIf you ar...

Salvation is both an event and a process. The event of our salvation is the historical reality of the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ; the process of our salvation is the growth of a person from being the “image” of God to becoming the “likeness” of God (Gen 1:27). In baptism is our nature reborn; in obedience is our nature perfected. We are saved not only by ...

Icons – sacred art portraying Christ and those persons made holy by – flow from a proper understanding of the Incarnation. God, who is Spirit, became Man, who is Flesh, and the material world will never be the same again. If God used material creation to reach for us, we can use material creation to reach for Him (John 1:1,14; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:1-4). Icons have been part of Christian w...

Notice how, in John 20, Christ breathed upon His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” That’s one example of a principle of Christianity: physical acts carry spiritual power. The greatest physical act filled with spiritual power is The Incarnation. The Incarnation – when a spiritual God became material flesh and blood – is like a stone thrown into the pond of the universe: ripples of grac...

“Orthodox” describes that Church that understands itself to be the living continuity of the faith and life established by Jesus Christ, given to His apostles, described in the Bible, and practiced and passed on by those Christians associated with the ancient centers and earliest centuries of Christian history.More ancient than Protestantism (16th century) and Roman Catholicism (11th century), this...

Becoming Orthodox in Spite of the Internetby Richard Barrett, The Word, May 2005, Volume 49 No. 5 : Page 17The Internet provides an unprecedented amount of information on virtually any topic, all at the click of a mouse. Fly-fishing, comic book collecting, the history of woodcarving, how to knit sweaters for your dog – it’s all out there. Some of it is even useful. Not only that, it so happens tha...