“Someone asked Abba Anthony, ‘What must one do in order to please God?’ The old man replied, ‘Pay attention to what I tell you: whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy Scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved.’” (Sayings of the Desert Fathers)
An important (but lesser-known) quality necessary for spiritual healing and growth is geographic stability. God calls un to be his disciples in specific places.
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An Akathist Prayer is sacred poetry, consisting of thirteen segments. The word “akathist” means “without sitting,” indicating that these prayers are meant to be recited standing up.
The earliest and best known Akathist is to the Mother of God. A contemporary Akathist that has captured the hearts of Orthodox faithful throughout the world is the Akathist of Thanksgiving, also known as “Glory to God for All Things” (St. John Chrysostom’s final words.
The Akathist of Thanksgiving is the 20th-century composition of a Russian Orthodox bishop, Metropolitan Tryphon (Turkestanov) who died in 1934. A copy of the text was found on the body of Father Gregory Petrov after his death in a Soviet prison camp. In the midst of that man-made hell, Fr. Gregory found solace in the words of this hymn.
I was recently asked to provide offer a quick overview of the beliefs and practices that make Eastern Orthodox Christianity different from the Western Christian confessions. This is no easy task; to get it done you need to paint with a pretty wide brush. With that said (and for what it’s worth) here’s my response…
To start off, it needs to be stressed that these are generalizations only. There are many different Western Christian confessions and Orthodoxy overlaps here and there with a lot of them. But the differences are significant and some of the big ones are as follows.
First, we understand salvation as being healed from a life-threatening wound, not getting a reprieve from a death sentence. The Church is a hospital, not a courtroom.
Second, becoming a Christian is not about making an intellectual agreement to a specific set of principles; it is about entering into a living relationship with Jesus Christ, through his Body on earth – the Church.
Third, there is more to reality than what we can see. The unseen world is real, it has an impact on us and we can impact it. And we connect with the unseen world through symbols, icons, and liturgy (ritual).
Finally (and I’ve saved the big one for last), we believe that heaven and hell are the same place. Actually, they are not places at all but reactions to, or experiences of, God’s Presence. At the end of this age everyone will be in the presence of God, some will like it and others won’t – that’s heaven and hell.
Again, these are only generalizations, but if they’ve piqued your curiosity at all, feel free to reach out and I’ll be happy to delve into them a little deeper with you.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the use of incense in worship and personal prayer holds profound symbolism. There are two significant meanings attached to the fragrant smoke that fills our sacred spaces.
First, incense symbolizes is our prayers rising to heaven, as we read in Revelation 8: “And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne…” We also find this petition in Psalm 141: “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!”
The other symbolic meaning of incense has to do with the Temple in Jerusalem. On the Day of Atonement, when the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies, he would carry a bowl filled with much incense. The smoke served as a filter to protect him from the Divine Glory sitting on the mercy seat. In II Chronicles 5 we read that the priests couldn’t serve in the Temple when the Lord’s Glory descended upon it. And in Isaiah 6, when the prophet is given a vision of the heavenly Temple, he says “the house was filled with smoke.” Incense, then, also indicates our entrance into the Presence of God when we gather for worship.
Eastern Orthodoxy 