Podcasts from Mother Gabriella

I want to take the time to highlight some podcasts from Holy Dormition Monastery on Ancient Faith Radio.
I especially want to highlight the talks from Mother Gabriella which I have found helpful during this Great and Holy Lent:
Acquiring the Virtues (I found this one particularly good–especially with my background in ancient philosophy and ethics)
Thirst for [...]

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Forgive Me

I just returned from our Vespers service. It is a very special service in that it is the Vespers of the Sunday of Forgiveness. On this Sunday, during Vespers, we Orthodox recall to mind the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden and our deep, indeed desparate, need for the healing forgiveness [...]

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Irish Lent!

Irish Lent!:
An Irishman moved into a tiny hamlet in County Kerry, walked into the pub and promptly ordered three beers. The bartender raised his eyebrows, but served the man three beers, which he drank quietly at a table, alone.
The next evening the man again ordered and drank three beers at a time. Soon the [...]

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Great Podcast from Kevin Allen and The Illumined Heart

[All the sarcasm from the previous post aside . . . ]
Kevin conducts an interview, Pascha and Personal Experience (mp3 file), with His Grace Bishop JOSEPH, Bishop of the Antiochian Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the West. It is a great interview.
Some quotes from His Grace on which to reflect:
The greatest of these [personal] experiences [...]

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More Orthodox Than Thou (A Protestant Convert to Orthodoxy Rant)

At the risk of engaging the passions–not a good thing to do at any time, let alone Great and Holy Lent–I want to take on this notion going around the Protestant-convert-to-Orthodoxy blogosphere in which Protestant converts to Orthodoxy are criticizing fellow Protestant converts to Orthodoxy about things such converts are doing that just aren’t Orthodox [...]

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The Table in the Wilderness

And they spake against God, and they said, Cannot God prepare a table in the wilderness? (Psalm 77:19 [78:18])
Psalm 77 recounts the murmuring of the Israelites, tired of the provision of God in the manna and the water from the rock, how they tested God. They demanded of God a table for their appetites and [...]

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The Mystery of Our Condition

I do not know what it means to suffer. But if I could imagine what might be among the most difficult kinds of suffering to undergo, it must surely be that sort of pain which the fracturing of our human relations with one another brings. In his inscrutable wisdom, God took the betrayal [...]

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Enoch, Trust and the Unfathomable Abyss of God’s Love

Now Enoch lived one hundred and sixty-five years, and begot Methusaleh. After he begot Methusaleh, Enoch was well-pleasing to God for two hundred years, and begot sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Thus Enoch was well-pleasing to God, and was not found, for God translated him. [...]

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Great and Holy Lent 2008

Today marks my first Lent as an Orthodox Christian. I am already finding the experience qualitatively different than any of the previous five Lents which I’ve traversed as I made my way into the Orthodox Church. It is, in all ways except for the bodily, far more difficult than anything I’ve ever [...]

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Your Forgiveness

For all those whom I’ve caused offense, pain, or scandal, forgive me, a sinner.

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