How-To Orthodoxy: A Practical Guide

[Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] is oh [Music] god bless everybody christ is risen one last time before the end of the possible season tonight we will be addressing in our orthodox extended orthodox extended podcast many as many as we can get to in an hour and a half practical matters of our spiritual life for those who are struggling and orthodox for years and for those who are new catechumens and even for inquirers [Music] we're glad you joined us and we hope tonight's session will be very helpful very practical down the earth and also insightful in certain ways perhaps that you've not considered and so we're going to be giving a little bit of theoretical background of course to a lot of what we're talking about tonight but most of it will be focused on the practical day-to-day spiritual struggle how do we live how do we act how do we go deeper so let's get right into it and bring up our image on the screen here how to guide a practical guide to orthodoxy uh again we obviously cannot address uh everything that that we're gonna be living as orthodox christians but we can get into the a lot of the basics how to commune how to confess uh how to do kolova this is some of the things we'll be discussing tonight as always our aim here at orthodox ethos is to follow the holy fathers now a lot of the stuff we're gonna be talking about today doesn't necessarily have some uh great patristic treaties written about it but it's coming down to us from the holy tradition we're taking it from our fathers in the faith we're talking also about our own experience a bit uh close to the holy mountain of athos and around the fathers uh in the monasteries uh in america and the contemporary elders that we uh follow that we knew uh and so hopefully this will be uh an insight into uh the contemporary orthodox struggle for a lot of orthodox christians but always and in everything we seek as you see here to follow the holy fathers and only in this way can we come to know the truth uh of the gospel and the life in christ as it's as it is lived and had passed down by the holy fathers so the first thing we're going to address tonight is again it's gonna be a lot of basic stuff some of you will be like oh i already knew this but that's all right we'll double down we'll go back we'll refresh and we can help others who may have not considered these things previously before we go further let me just say again your questions are welcome especially tonight i'm sure you'll have a lot of questions and things i won't cover and that's fine that's i'm looking forward to your questions as much as i can help you on those other practical issues that i cannot address in the time allotted to me you are welcome to submit your questions now if you're in uh coming to us through facebook or youtube you can flag there my good friend and assistant here tonight john and just uh say uh you know all caps question for father peter and he will uh save those and and and tag me on those at the end so that we'll get your questions and if you don't hear the your questions at the end submit again and try your try it that way uh if you're over at crowdcast as usual uh as usual we will be taking your questions and if we don't get to them tonight we'll get to him on thursday which also leads me to remind everybody as well as our newcomers especially that we are uh every thursday together with all of the patreon crowd all of the oe orthodox ethos uh patrons supporters over at uh crowdcast we're every thursday 5 p.m fielding your questions and i think and most thursdays were between 30 and 40 questions we try to get to and at least give a basic answer so if you have questions more questions about the orthodox faith more questions about life in christ then uh by all means uh join us every thursday over at patreon as a patron.com frpr uh and join us there you can give one dollar a month if you like i really don't care but that's the patron platform that we're using we are hoping in the near future to begin the process finally of getting everything under the orthodox ethos umbrella so that we can have a membership site and everything can be much better organized than we are able to do right now through patreon so patreon so you know join us and then when we transition over to the orthodox ethos membership site it should be a no-brainer for everybody all right so the first topic uh we are going to address tonight is the basic sign of the cross now if you're a inquirer or a protestant or someone who has been led to believe that this is some error and should be thrown aside we have saint syria of jerusalem from the 4th century who gives us a witness from early christians as to how important sign of the cross was and had already been well established obviously from the times of the apostles so uh that is uh what we'll we'll lead with let me just want to make sure that everybody is connected we're looking at a poor connection for some reason on my end and i hope that we're not having problems but if we are john let me know give me a little heads up here in the in the private chat so i i know that uh you know things are things need to be looked at all right so how to make the sign of the cross well there is the orthodox way and then there's other ways done by uh non-orthodox in the west especially so it's important for people to understand not only the how but the symbolism as well uh but first let's hear from saint cyril he says let us not then be ashamed to confess the crucified be the cross our seal made with boldness by our fingers on our brow and on everything over the bread we eat and the cups we drink in our comings in and our goings out before our sleep when we lie down when we ride up we are in the way when we are still let the cross be there continually on everything i think a lot of us probably limit the sign of the cross to i shouldn't say a lot but i think this is unfortunately a practice among some who are less aware maybe less zealous they keep the sign of the cross only for the time in church or maybe when they go by a church or maybe just when they're saying a prayer but you can see here that the saint is saying everything you do let the sign of the cross go before you and bless it great is that preservative it is without price for the sake of the poor without toil for the sick since it is also it is als since also its grace is from god it is the sign of the faithful the dread of the devils for he triumphed over them in it having made a show of them openly for when they see the cross they are reminded of the crucified and they are afraid of him who are br who bruise the heads of the dragon despise not the seal the sign of the cross because of the freedness of the gift out for this the rather honor your benefactor so this is an honor to our benefactor it is a dread of devils is a sign that we are belong to christ the crucified one it is a tragedy a great tragedy that we have millions of people who call the name of christ but neglect and even disdain the sign of the cross how that came to be is a long story uh it is undoubtedly through a scandal that they fell into the trap of in other words turn away as people who call themselves christians to turn away from the sign of the crucified one can't be but a diabolical trap and a terrible development now how do we make it physically as orthodox christians obviously we take uh our hand as you see on the screen here and we have the symbolism we have the three which are that's actually showing yeah the three that's correct three who then indicate the holy trinity and the two here they indicate the the human and divine natures of jesus christ and we make this sign of the cross from the brow to the chest to the right and then to the left in the in the west of course they make it in a different manner uh so this is the way the orthodox make the sign of the cross you can see here in the symbolism uh the uh the sketch below how it needs to be all the way down and all the way across some people who have not been properly initiated or properly formed they make it very haphazardly and you can see this especially among people who are kind of culturally orthodox they just kind of play as we say the banjo or something with it which is not a good idea because you're not showing respect you're not actually showing that you are a faithful and who understands the power and the si and the and the implication and the uh the the symbolism of the holy cross so if you're going to do it do it right and don't have the demons laughing at you because you have no respect for the very sign that you said that you are supposedly honoring but if you do it in a haphazard way a thoughtless way without prayer without concentration well then uh you're you're uh not uh going to get the benefit and you're not going to honor the benefactor as saint cyril says and by the way there are many quotes that we could bring up bring up from the ancient church saint john damascus has quite a bit on the sign of the cross and uh but this should suffice for us tonight so that's our first little four way into the sign of the cross what about the candles these are going to be all again tonight we're looking at practical matters but a little bit of theory but mostly practical issues so again if you have issues questions this is the night to bring them up if you have thoughts about different practices that you've seen you don't understand uh start you know write down your questions and send them along why do we like candles saint siemian of thessalonica the great liturgist from the 14th century uh has this to say and there are different symbolic interpretations we'll give you two tonight as the candle is pure and of course we're talking about pure beeswax one of the problems we have in the modern world is because we have this ability to basically fabricate things that were pure and blessed and going back generations upon generations with various uh modern uh technology we have the uh paraffin uh the the fake beeswax from from uh oil from uh from from a non-pure uh let's say uh source uh which doesn't have the symbolism that you're going to hear so this is we're talking about pure beeswax right there is a meaning there's depth to this it's it's not just an accident that we use the pure beeswax so as the candle is pure so also should our hearts be so this can be symbolic uh but also real right this is pointing to the reality that we all need to live it's it's a simple and external that points us to the internal so as you see the pure beeswax you should think about the purity that your soul and your heart needs to be and as the pure candle is supple as opposed to the paraffin so also should our souls be supple until we make it straight and firm in the gospel in other words supple meaning soft and receptive to the word of god to the shaping uh in the spiritual life by our lord who's constantly reshaping and shaping us and teaching us how to live so that's another example as the pure candle is derived from the pollen of a flower and has a sweet scent paraffin does not have a sweet sin so also should our souls have the sweet aroma of divine grace as the candle when it burns mixes with and feeds the flame so also we can struggle to achieve theosis mixing with the divine grace becoming one with god god's by grace god's by grace as the great athanasius teaches us and as the lord himself says ye are gods by grace by his restoration of our image and likeness right so this is the theosis this is what theosis means to be restored to his image and likeness and to be continually in communion with him as number five the burning candle illuminates the darkness so must the light of christ within us shine before men that god's name be glorified so another message here when we look at the pure beeswax candle that this burning candle illuminates the darkness so should we so should we if we are in christ illuminate the darkness by our life and our words and our example and as the candle gives its own light to illuminate a person in the darkness so also must the light of the virtues the light of love and peace characterize a christian the wax that melts symbolizes the flame of our love for our fellow men did you ever think that there was so much symbolism in a simple candle have you paid attention the fathers saw much in every little thing that the lord has passed down to us in the holy tradition now here's a reflection of my own which you can take it or leave it it's not worth that much but uh it does seem to jive with what the saints say so that's why i'll offer to you when i was i remember when i was visiting just after not long after my baptism some 26 years ago i was visiting the monastery in essex and i remember thinking about the candle that was burning there and as a symbol of my life and that the lord who has been ignited in me and has brought his grace and the flame of his divine energies is burning away all of the sins and passions of the old man and the whole process of my life is that i decrease and the light increases that the sins and the passions are burned away and yet what's brought forth is the light of christ by that burning away until finally the life is over and the candle is burned down and what remains is only christ that's the goal for us all so a short reflection for what it's worth saint nicole musta haggarites tells us the same and gives us the following symbolism it tells us more of the same and the following symbolism to glorify god why do we like candles to glorify god who is light as we chant in the doxology glory to god who has shone forth the light to dissolve the darkness of the night and to banish away the fear which is brought on by the darkness to manifest the inner joy of our soul to bestow honor to the saints of our faith imitating the early christians of the first centuries who lit candles at the tombs of the martyrs to symbolize our good works the lord said let your light show shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father who is in the heavens the priest also gave us this charge following our baptism so everyone who's baptizing the orthodox church hears this charge this is what we should be and of course the light that shines is not ours it's not us but it's christ in us he and the works that he brings about when we decrease and he increases that's what's glorified and that's what is seen before man he and only him and through us and uh with our synergy our cooperation and finally to have our own sins forgiven and burned away as well as the sins of those for whom we pray so lighting candles has always been a pr a part of the life of the church it is something that was obviously practical not only symbolic over time the church through its experience sees and attributes much to the practical life and for for us to always see christ and for christ to be all in all but obviously there's many practical things that the church was doing uh from the get-go lighting candles would have been an obvious one having oil lamps would have been obvious when that was the only way of course the church was lit and so that practical need is not seen simply on the horizontal plane so to speak only as a human effort but it's seen as now taking on a divine human reality significance and seeing christ in everything and seeing the symbolism which is not any less real some people think well symbolism is just something made up or something actually it's pointing us and is a part of the reality of things how do we greet an orthodox priest or bishop how do we greet an orthodox priest or a bishop i will receive a blessing because that's how you agree when you greet an orthodox priest or bishop immediately you're not just before someone who will say hello and shake your hand but you're before someone who is in the place and represents a type of christ and that's part of what it means to be ordained to be come a priest according to christ the order as it says the order of melchizedek he is the he is the high priest and we participate and we our hands now become his hands and we essentially are standing in and he's doing everything through us and so those hands of the priest uh that bring forth the holy gifts in the holy altar but bring forth the blessing and the good word from heaven those hands are to be respected by every orthodox christian so we approach with reverence to every priest we meet not because of the sinful priest obviously but because of the the role that he plays in our salvation and the representation that he has so how do you do it practically then we'll look at the theoretical understanding of why we kissed the priesthood but first of all what are we doing we approached the priest here's an eye here's an image by the way not of a priest but of a monk the great saint paicios but you see even the people were overcome with love for him and they would kiss his hand which is a norm in the christian society we'll talk about that in a second so you cup your hands in front of you take your hands and you put them together like this and you cut them and put them in front of you out and you extend them to the priest you push place your right hand over your left you turn your palms to face upward you approach the priest you bow slightly at the waist and say father or master if it's a bishop bless or your blessing because you're saying greek your blessing you're pro you're you're uh or or just blessed asking for a blessing lets the priest our bishop know that you wish to greet him and he will bless you with the sign of the cross again everywhere and always the sign of the cross extend his hand to you and place it in your cupped palms and so in some cases in some cases we have in the russian tradition we have um this is a second uh more a more formal let's say slightly more formal than the greek uh where the priest will make the sign over you as you make the sign over yourself just in the same way so from your forehead to your chest and across the way and then he will put his hand in your hands for you to kiss his hand in the greeks practice a day-to-day practice you don't see such perhaps such formality and so it's more just a very quick that you know and so not not a big difference but a little less formal you kiss the back of the priest or bishop's hand this kiss serves as both a greeting and an acceptance of the blessing the priest or bishop has given you and by the way that's something that would happen both on seeing the priest or bishop and then departing from the priest or bishop that's how you greet him in both ways and you would you would do it departing and coming ask his blessing so let's talk about that why do we do that you can see here on the left in the corner uh that we have that little symbol of how the priest normally would give his hand and so he makes this symbol here and this you can see you can see this is the yota the i and the c or sigma and then the he and then the sigma again what does that stand for is chris jesus christ so even when the priest is blessing it's it's all about christ christ is blessing he's the one who's giving the blessing from god through the priest and so even in the way that the hand is formed we're pointing to christ everything christ all and all and everything we do so you can see here just what we mentioned before the bishop is coming and the man is coming to get the blessing uh and he's extended his hands and the priest has put his hand or the bishops put his hand in his and he kisses the hand now kissing the hand of a priest is not an exceptional thing whereas in the west unfortunately because it fell out it lost touch because of their rebellion against holy tradition unfortunately it became exceptional for people to kiss one another's hands but that's not the way it was it even of course is up to this day in many orthodox lands but certainly would have been far more common across the whole world that is a sign of respect and uh and communion so it's a remnant of what was once a perfectly normal custom showing reverence to our elders by kissing their right hands the kissing of the hand was the normal and expected way to show reverence not only the clergy but the parents grandparents godparents and others in authority over us or holding a revered position in our lives so far from being some kind of clericalism this would have happened across the board in fact i lived this in the village where people would go to the older generation on big feast days people meaning the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren they would pass by the grandfather or grandmother and always kiss the hand before communion so this was not something reserved just to the priest in fact in many places in my experience in the old country in greece and the villages they'll kiss the hand of the presbytera the matuska as well so it's not reserved only for the priest but how much more for the priest who has is the type and the place of christ in the community and brings the blessing of the priesthood so it's not something strange at all it's the christian norm the disappearance of this custom is part of the disintegration of traditional christian society which was based on hierarchy humility and respect and based of course on love which does not exist without respect so far from being some kind of diversion from christ it's a fulfillment of the love and respect for christ in our neighbor and in our those who have authority over us and that is very much basic to the christian outlook on life it's a hierarchical and very much a question of um of order uh the older generations that they come before us the respect we pay to them to receive and pass on the life and the tradition of the church when we kiss the hand of the bishop or priest we are not showing respect to the person of the priest but to his sacred office i would say that i would change the sign and say we're doing both actually because we we're doing it across the board with grandmothers and grandfathers but it is far more important in the priest case that we that we understand it as going to the higher just like when we kiss an icon we don't kiss and venerate per se the wood or the paint it's not where the honor goes not where the respect goes not where the veneration goes but the person is depicted same thing here the the priest is an icon he's a image of christ in the community through the passing on of the the priesthood the apostolic secession that's how god wants it that's how christ ordained it he said that that which you bound under bind on earth will be bound in heaven he's the one who gave them the ability the apostles and all the successes apostles of uh of this power uh and and the the power for sins to be forgiven not through the apostle priest or bishop of course but christ working through it in his church so obviously the priest is a sinner like all of us uh but he represents christ he's an icon of christ and though his hand is unworthy yet it touches the most holy things the precious body blood of our lord furthermore despite his unworthiness in holy ordination he has received the grace of god to impart spiritual gifts and blessings why would we deprive ourselves of the blessings of the lord himself by not seeking the priest's blessing that's a question all of us who are still hung up in a protestant prison of rationalism and yet trying to become orthodox trying to embrace the tradition trying to crucify the old man and the intellect and the rationalism we need to ask that question why are we doing this why are we depriving ourselves of blessings you can be sure that every attempt to be humble every desire to humble ourselves before christ and the person of the priest will not go unrewarded and all be transferred to christ himself so when would we ask for a blessing again a little repetitive here but just to read the card entirely we typically seek his blessing whenever we greet and bid farewell to our spiritual fathers we kiss the right hands when we receive the prayer of absolution at confession or in other prayers but during holy communion obviously we're not going to kiss his hand because then we have the holy chalice and that's not the time to kiss his hand now a little a few words on ecclesiastical etiquette in church ecclesiastical etiquette in church these are just select matters there's much more that one could talk about and of course if you're new if you're a catechumen if you're in choir if you're somebody who doesn't know a lot and still learning uh you'll have to go to your spiritual father your priest your bishop whatever and learn more so i'm just touching the service some of the more problematic perhaps in our society so first and foremost we must arrive on time to church now you might say well that's kind of obvious father but unfortunately it's not obvious in many places in the orthodox church there is this tendency to go late to church among certain groups i won't name names and that is to their own spiritual detriment and it's also a sign of less than the greatest respect for the holy liturgy and not having the zeal to want to be in the temple of god and pray we should struggle to go from the very beginning of the divine services and only when we have some serious obstacles for instance you're a mother you have five children for instance okay obviously we understand there are exceptions to every rule but as a rule if you have no obstacle then you should be there at the beginning you aim to be there at least for the matins gospel if it's if divine liturgy is preceded by matins on sunday morning as it is in most churches except uh in the russian uh tradition we have the vigil service on most feasts and and uh and sundays so we're doing vespers and matins saturday night that could be three four hours depending on how extensive the the service is uh and so you have those combined they're on saturday night and but then you're gonna be going you're gonna be struggling to go to the whole vespers and hole of mountains on saturday night very important and very good to do very beneficial spiritually to a no matter if you have the visual service or not to be there in church on saturday night or before the feast day for vespers very important spiritually if you're going to make progress it's not there unfortunately there's this idea well i just go in the morning not the best not going to make a lot of progress spiritually by doing that uh if you begin your sunday with vespers five six o'clock at night seven whatever it is and you spend the next 24 hours mindful prayerful celebrating the feast of the resurrection every sunday your whole week will be blessed your whole day will be blessed of course and you will make much more progress than if you end up showing up at church late on sunday morning well you're going whatever you give you'll get you know if you invest a little you'll have a small investment in return so the best is to go from the beginning of matins at least get there by the matins gospel do not walk in the church after the evolution many the blessed is the kingdom it's not going to be the way to do it as a rule of thumb don't commune if you have not arrived by the gospel put that as a basic rule that's the extreme now if you have a good reason obviously that you have been forced not to get there because there's been a car accident or there's been some just some reason that's out of your control well that's a different case right there are always exceptions however if you choose to go late and then approach the holy mysteries with that kind of approach to the bond liturgy the benefit is going to be limited you may even have a negative uh return on your investment put down some basic rules i will not approach the holy mysteries if i'm not there if i have children i'm going to make an effort to get there before the gospel this is a basic rule it obviously would be much better if you go from the beginning of matins much better if you get there before the gospel latins much better if you get by the doxology of matins all of it is an increase in your your investment and therefore your return and so you're only going to be serving your salvation but this should be at least there should be some basic minimum that you put and you say i'm not going to commune if i don't do x y z now we'll talk about how to prepare for communion a little bit but this should be a wake-up call to anybody who walks in and still approaches the i as a priest i would not allow people who came after the gospel to commune uh if i if there's any reason that i knew or saw or somehow people some of my church wards and told me this person i would say do not commune i would not commune them and people really didn't like that but that was a way to wake them up and help them to get serious about the higher things in life and i hoped that i helped somebody i don't know maybe they just got angry it's possible it's their choice right it's their choice but i as a priest and charged to protect and guard the holy mysteries it is my role to be faithful to that uh that what i was given at ordination and so there has to be some basic boundaries here or we're going to lose control and that's often what happens in some places so god help us never cross your legs in the church never ever ever cross your legs in church you might say well what's the big deal about crushing legs it is a sign of disrespect in the orthodox church in the orthodox countries and it is just far too casual for the holy temple it's not a serious position crossing legs does send a message that i'm just hanging out here i'm spending time maybe i'll i'll have a coffee here shortly that's not how you comport yourself in the holy temple the way we're in the holy temple is word fear and trembling and love and devotion and prayer and mindfulness and watchfulness over ourselves sitting and crossing your leg is a sign of the opposite so beyond that in many orthodox countries simply crossing your leg in any time in some places is a no-no so how much more in the temple you won't see that happening in an orthodox country and if it is happening that's another sign of disintegration so maybe that's a total news to a lot of you because the earth the culture we live in doesn't see anything wrong with that of course but that is how it is in the traditional orthodox uh country and and way of of of living and and moving within the temple if your baby cries excessively and and goes on for a long time take him out of the holy temple until he calms down there are some people have this idea no matter what happens i will stay in the temple because this is my father's house and there's there's absolutely truth to that and we're at ease and we're not people move around people venerate people in and out i that's not always the best but we're in orthodoxy we're not caught up on a lot of that we don't have pews we shouldn't in the holy temple and therefore there's movement there's people venerating these people coming there's people you know doing whatever they need to do so on the one hand babies crying is not a problem in the orthodox church but if it's excessive if it's the distraction that goes on for an extended time then now you have you have need to depart and let people pray and let people be attentive and don't stay in the temple until maybe you know they the baby is able to calm down so take the baby out until he calms down then come back with a calm baby another these are just hit and miss there's a lot of things we could talk about i'm just giving you a few things that i think are a little more necessary stay and tell the dismissal do not depart after holy communion unless there's some service that you're going to cert to give to the church you might have to go and prepare something in the alt in the in the hall you might have some other thing to do with the meal fine anybody who has a blessing to the part that can depart but if you have no blessing you have no other work you're not supposed to be anywhere else but in the temple stay until then even if you have not communed obviously you're going to stay in that case to receive andideron right and israel is that bread that's been blessed over the holy gifts in the holy altar by the priest and is given out to all those who do not commune so number six receive andidaron only if you have not communed do not receive anderon if you have communed in russian churches thankfully they've maintained the so-called zapifca which is simple bread and fine with a lot of water warm water which they take after communion those who commune simply to wash down the holy communion that's not and that's not blessed bread in the same way that the iran is blessed and it's not of course anything like communion so it's it's taken by those who have communed obviously if that's the case there's no reason for you to go up if you're in a russian tradition and you do the zabeefca which i think is an ancient tradition that the greeks unfortunately got rid of or haven't continued among the faithful among the lady it's still done in the in the altar by the priest but it's not it's been stopped for whatever reason among the lady it should be returned it's a good thing to come back to every orthodox church that's how the priests do it in the altar they don't take and their own they take blessed bread or black bread rather whether it's indeed or not it doesn't matter but it's usually not and the um the uh wine and uh and the uh zeon which is the hot water that's used that's boiled and used uh in the communion so they have leftover xeon which is not blessed they drink that along with wine and that's how they just like the zapitaka for the lay people so that if you if you've been commute you've communed you don't take andiro now you might say in some greek churches or places they don't have zapitka and so they give out and these are on to those who've committed fine that's a situation where uh they're giving it out as as if it's in the place of something like zapicca it's not at the end when the priest gives it out it's right after communion or should be but at the end of the mind liturgy when ended or has been given out it's given to those who could have but did not commune so that goes to number seven and dithering is not to be given to non-orthodox to those who are not initiated to those who are catechumens or or or or inquirers strictly speaking i know it happens in a lot of places and they don't have any problem with it i'm telling you the eclivia here i'm telling you what i understand to be the proper uh you know most proper most strict observance of these things and it makes sense andi instead of the gifts so it's the those who could have commune but did not that's why you don't take it if you commute and obviously if you cannot commune if you're not initiated you're not baptized you're not charismated you can't commune so therefore andidone is not for you you might say well father it's a very nice thing that we do people feel good about it uh maybe some people say this is a konomiya i don't know i don't know every priest is of course and bishop can decide for themselves if they think that's a good idea i personally think that we should be strict on these things and it helps people and it keeps the boundaries and it's good for those who are not communing and not initiated to understand the boundaries we don't need to blur the boundaries to help them come to orthodoxy rather the opposite the fact that they understand the boundaries will if they're sincere and seeking christ will only in encourage and inflame the desire to be a part of the cynocity of the faithful and that's another thing that we could talk about but this is a little bit off topic and that is that the it would be very good if parishes and priests and bishops went back to the ancient church's practice of having the catechumens and all the non-initiated depart from the temple the main nave at least and go to the narthex or the exonarthix after the catechumen prayers and when at this point we're in the liturgy of the faithful after the gospel after the catechumen depart prayers and we begin to cherubic him at this point we're in the liturgy of the faithful and that is for those who are preparing the commune that's what this is all about that's why we do everything we do after after that point it's all about communion that's what's happening so if you are not going to participate in the communion your presence in the temple is not the same as the other person or the other people's presence in the temple we have we have something that's now becoming a little bit how can we say that i mean we do it all the time people all over the world do it i understand that but i'm not sure if we're thinking about the implications always but is it become almost pietistic i don't know i don't know but it could be that for some people where they're not going to commune they're not communing on a regular basis but they're there to pray now that might have got a lot of spiritual benefit but the meaning of what's going on after the catechumenate is to commune so at least those who are catechumens or or are visitors who are not initiated that's what happened in the ancient church they departed from the nave of the church at least and this is an opportunity for catechumens for inquirers for non-orthodox to be approached by the church to be talked about and taught the faith during this time period 30 40 50 minutes whatever it is and actually go deeper because what they can't do it in the diamond liturgy to commune is not going to be that beneficial for them in other words if they're exposed to that and they can't commune there's not a lot of benefit where there could be more benefit if they're catechized they're taught by a catechist or by a deacon or whatever it costs them to be in the hall or wherever it might be and then to be at their level at their place on the path to initiation to be approached and taught and benefited but if you just like anything if you are exposed to something before its time when time comes to be initiated the the value of it is much less imagine obviously the church teaches and condemns premarital sexual relations there's a reason because that's not the context that isn't a blessing that's not time and place those things matter there's there's a place and a time that's blessed for those relations it's after the marriage the blessing of the lord and the time now uh has come for this this the relations and the union to take place the order of things have been followed now it's time to be open to preparation that best context the church says sexual relations are a blessing outside of that they're not they're not a blessing they're not given by god for uh the purpose is not meant out of that context it's something similar with the communion which is the most intimate thing that happens in the church it has a context it has preparation there's a place and a time for that if you're not initiated into the faith of the church the life of the church you've not been baptized chrismated you can't commune and if you do commune it's it's a it's a spiritual error of the first order it's not going to be beneficial so if we can get back to some of the basics of our church order you're going to see these things are going to be they're going to help tremendously spiritually all of us the anded on the the the whole meaning if we can get back to the meaning of these things and practice them and go back to the accrivia of the church we're going to be benefited spiritually i'm convinced that now whether that happens or can happen or will happen in each parish that's of course totally out of my hands and out of your hands but i think that's the goal now let's go on to another matter that is sometimes a controversy especially in non-orthodox countries but not much one if you're in uh many traditional orthodox lands and that is the head covering of women in the temple uh at least in the temple although if you look at the patristic witness it's not really talking about in the temple that's what it's come to be but it would be in the society generally we go back all the way to the beginning of the church uh the in the new testament with paul who clearly says in corinthians 11 2-16 that women should cover their heads when in prayer there's no dispute that that is what paul is teaching some people want to say well that was then this is now but that's not what the saints said even uh the saints this day and our day they teach this they encourage it they bless it but in tertullian's time in the third century 300 250 years after paul or 150 200 years after paul the apostle paul said this he says the same thing uh and he and he and he says now the only question that was somewhat debated throughout church history is is there an exception because of the age of of the woman in other words non-married children uh you know in their five 10 15 year olds should they be wearing a head covering uh it's pretty much been in practice come down to us that all women and are wearing head covers and there's a very good practical reason why that's the case if you do not in this day and age from a young child exercise this virtuous act and this this this this fulfillment of the symbols and the icons right this has a lot to do with uh honoring god and reflecting god's authority and all the rest which i'm not going to get into tonight am i going to get into the why so much but just what we do in church um it's very well explained online you can find a number of things that are explaining why this is a blessed and traditional practice that's come down to us from the apostles and the teachers of the faith but we have it going back from the very beginning the only question is is there any exception in terms of age now what's come down to us is there are no exceptions that women of all ages wear the head covering and again it's very good if a young girl begins at a young age to wear a head covering then she'll probably do it all her life in this day and age with the intense secularization that we are facing it's less and less likely if someone is only starting to wear a head covering at 15 or 20 that she's going to do it with all the pressure against it so it's just a wise uh pastoral practice for this to be uh done across across the board with all the agents uh but it's it's it's witness to in an ancient in the ancient church as well as you see here the apostolic tradition by saint politos uh even for the catechumens of course he's catechizing and he tells them that let all the women have their heads covered with an opaque cloth etc so there are many witnesses i'm not including them you can find the online articles that i've listed you can find more quotes from futuristic authors but this is a practice that is given is really not challenged at all in places like in russia or romania or in uh traditional lands traditional monastic monasteries in uh in greece uh that's the tradition if you would have gone to my village when i was in greece uh the village uh i talked to the old-timers about this and they said pretty much through the second world war into the early 50s women across the board wore head coverings what happened was a secularization of europeanization the younger generation basically just following after the secular examples and the european examples that they were they were inundated with american and european prototypes and so they essentially bought into the propaganda that that's my grandmother and mother that's not for me and so they just without any kind of uh change in teaching or any kind of change pastorally they just started to abandon it and become more secularized so there really is no basis for the orthodox church today anybody in north america say this is not a traditional practice it's not blessed so women wear the head coverings when they enter all the holy places today they they pray with it and this is a uh a practice that is ancient and it's beneficial spiritually i think if you talk to people who understand it and practice at women uh you'll see that they come to under to live it and to and to appreciate it and actually be spiritually benefited but there's a whole apologetic which i'm not going to get into tonight for why we do this i mean if you just look around any icon in any orthodox church of a of women you're very rarely maybe one in a thousand one in 500 you're going to find a woman who's not doesn't have her head covered saints i mean uh there might be a few exceptions but that proves the rule so that's that is a practice that goes back to the ancient church and is done in orthodox churches and unfortunately as i said the only reason it's not is because of a secular ization of the church and a secular spirit that's crept in let's talk about the prayer rope the prayer rope which is and should be in everybody's hand in every orthodox church and should be a part of their daily prayer life and prayer rule what is the prayer rogue well basic definition here the prayer rope uh is what you see on the screen here obviously it's a loop of knots made of black dyed wool which symbolizes our repentance the blackness and the wool they are used to keep track of the number of prayers set by moving along each knot so here are my little prayer rope here 33 33 prayer rope so lord jesus christ have mercy on me lord jesus christ have mercy on me lord jesus christ have mercy on me most this is very very basic it's only the only reason why you would have this is for prayer if you have it is it looks nice and it's so so you know i just love to have it there and people think i'm biased if i have that there then you are unfortunately in delusion it's not for anything else but to use to concentrate in keeping the name of jesus christ on your lips and in your heart continually in response of course to the admonition of the apostle paul to pray unceasingly in 1 thessalonians 5 17 to pray unceasingly now there are different ways to pray unceasingly but this is the one that has by far been adopted from the earliest days and been embraced by the saints throughout the ages because it's the most factual shortest and most uh scriptural i mean the there are many examples of those calling out jesus son of david jesus son of god have mercy on me the basic petition of every believer so lord jesus christ have mercy on me there's a longer version lord jesus christ son of god have mercy me a sinner in my experience in my understanding at least on athos the shorter version is much preferred because at this point you want to focus and you can you can focus better with less words essentially the same prayer the other two portions a sinner and son of god are not uh if you if you remove those they're not removing the essence of the prayer whereas if you moved obviously jesus christ or mercy that would be a different prayer uh but this is one that is preferred uh to be able to be said more and more attentively and and quickly so uh in my experience that's the uh most common for uh version lord jesus christ have mercy on me the prayer robes vary in length it's not just one you see here in the corner uh the 33 to the right the 100 to the left up in the corner is the 300 and then the other one again is a hundred the most common of course is the hundred but you'll see in monastic communities and others who are saying the prayer much more they'll have the 300 prayer rope so there is obviously symbolism to all of the numbers uh 50 represents pentecost there is also a 50 by the way but not very often you don't see that as much uh the third the age of christ and then the numbers really serve uh to their their you'll see that a lot of prayer rules you'll see them have a three to one ratio in terms of prayer so we'll say 300 jesus jesus prayers 300 of them and then 100 to the mother of god mostly we'll talk about that in a second but so that's the most uh that ratio is three to one is usually what you'll see in terms of prayer rules how many uh each each should be said uh there's also a 500 prayer rule uh a prayer rope but that's very rare and i don't obviously rarely see that at all in even monastic communities so let's talk a little about a little bit more about the how and what it's all about now i'm taking from a introduction to a little booklet you see the uh in orthodox people.com praxis composing up here on the right-hand corner that's where you can go to read the entire booklet it's produced by the holy monastery of considerable tamil and monath it's been translated into english it's on this website and um it's a basic introduction to the prayer room so if you want to learn more and you should you want to start to if you never don't know anything about it you've never used it this is a good beginning go to orthodoxinfo.com proxies called biskini as you see in the right-hand corner and and this text that i'm going to read you here is the basic is excerpts from the introduction by the abbot of the monastery considerable elder archimandrite joseph who i have a picture of here on the left uh and he writes the following the prayer rope is not intended to be used only by monks you hear that occasionally oh that's for monks we don't use the prayer rope or even the prairie's dangerous i don't know how people get this idea that prayer was dangerous of course it can be if you're if you're proud and arrogant you don't have a spiritual father but there are things you need to do to do it right but in and of itself it's not dangerous to pray but it can also be used by layman he says and generally by anyone who wants to pray to god the prayer rope is not some kind of amulet with magic or exercising powers like those given to simple-minded people by magicians two simple-minded people by magicians or mediums worn on the wrist or around the neck on the contrary it is a purely orthodox holy object used only for praying and nothing else we use the prayer rope in order to pray secretly in other words he wants to say you know in our closet in our room we don't go around flounting it and say oh i pray that i hear my prayer rope and i pray the jesus prayer you know we don't it's not something you want to do it's going to nullify your prayers because it's filled with pride right we don't make a big deal about it we don't wear it so everybody can see it it's not a good idea because you're going to have secret pride and it'll nullify the spiritual benefit of the prayers that you're that you're offering if you're sitting in pride and arrogance about you being a special uh prayer warrior or something right so not a good idea you want to avoid that all right so at this point we have to note the elder says something very important there are many books that refer to the prayer however before we start following any rule of prayer we must necessarily ask for the advice the blessing and the spiritual guidance of a spiritual father the priest to whom we confess our sins now that of course is a pretty much a given and it should be expected unfortunately as my experience was talking over the last three years with many of you and others writing me many of you don't have spiritual fathers you you don't have somebody you go to regularly unfortunately you're in a remote area you're in a place that you for whatever reason can't get to or it's just not uh really in your best interest because of a variety of delusions that exist today and so you don't have the spiritual guidance that you need should you not say the jesus prayer ideally no you shouldn't begin any kind of me you know serious rule of the jesus prayer in reality however to wait for that may be a long long time so the royal path in this case because the elders talking about greece where nearly everyone can get to a spiritual father they have many monasteries in these exceptional times and exceptional places out in the middle of canada or america or australia or south africa or wherever you are and you don't have ready access to a confessor uh my suggestion would be and you could take it to leave it is to begin very slowly and and not do a great rule of prayer but simply and with your voice in the most humble and simple way at the lower stages let's say of the prayer rule to begin to pray to jesus prayer and then to pray as much as possible throughout the day do not do anything much more than that without more spiritual guidance don't try to get into massive rule of prayer or you're going on for a long time or whatever it might be you need spiritual guidance to make any real quantitative leaps right that's not a good idea but if if you stay humble and simple and you use for more limited way we'll talk about numbers in a minute but if but it is going to be for some of you very problematic and hard to get to that spiritual father who will guide you in the spiritual life and give you a rule of prayer for the for the jesus prayer fortunately there are priests and others who don't want you to do the jesus prayer for whatever reason they're afraid what like might come of it they're not they don't feel themselves in a position to guide others in the jesus prayer and so therefore they're not flesh but so you have the situation which is really hard and unique as a rule it's what the elder says of course there are exceptions and i think the exceptions we have to really you know try to find a broad path and go step by step and that's what i would counsel you because i get a lot of you who write me and say what i just told you and i know you're going to ask that question at the end of the night well what about me i don't have a spiritual father what should i do that's how i would approach it do not make any serious you know jump into this prayer and do all kinds of long you know long hour-long prayer rules that would be a problem but to start little by little humbly i think is not out of the question now going on he says that is what the holy fathers have taught us for centuries in order to avoid delusion and thus not to lose the right orthodox breath absolutely and you have to be very careful uh before we make any you know major uh leap into jesus prayer there are two ways we can pray using the prayer rope number one at any time of the day when we have free time without being seen by anyone secretly we hold the prayer rope with our left or right hand and move not to not with our thumb whispering simultaneously or meditating upon the prayer lord jesus christ have mercy on me or most holy theotokos save us um so just so people don't misunderstand the elder he's not talking about eastern meditation he's not talking about western meditation this is not some technical term he's just talking about focusing on the words of the prayer at the time of our regular prayer this is the most important at the time of our regular prayer when we pray following a rule of prayer that our spiritual father has told us to follow we hold the prayer rope with our left hand between the thumb and the index finger and move from not to not at each knot we simultaneously do two things with our right hand we make the sign of the cross over ourselves lord jesus christ have mercy on me and we say lord jesus christ have mercy on me when we finish with all the knots of the prayer rope we continue following the same procedure for as many times as our spiritual father has told us to do so he's saying that especially for mayors but even many months to begin their prayer rule every night they'll do this they'll be they'll say with their mouth and they'll make the sign of the cross simultaneously as they say the prayer lord jesus christ have mercy on all right that's uh to focus as much as possible use everything at your disposal to focus on the prayer and to pray with a contrite heart a broken heart a sincere heart ask god for that brokenness ask god to see your sins ask god to enlighten you and to see yourself because that's key you're going to make any progress the humble meek obedient soul who's struggling to keep the commandments is the one who's going to make progress in the prayer somebody who just looks at it as some kind of method in which they can make themselves holy is deluded they're not going to make progress you've got to have a life according to the gospel and prayer to god those two things are inseparable they're assumed when you turn to christ you're going to try to keep his commandments and everything and that's when the prayers start to ascend and we have humility obedience and we're struggling to be faithful to his commandments all right so that is a few words but you can read much more orthodontial.com practice i suggest you all go there download it read it and get the basics of the prayer rope and the prayer rule you know how to go about praying the jesus prayer now what is a prayer rule let's just talk about that for a minute even though again you need a spiritual father i'm not your spiritual father you need a spiritual father guide someone to say here's what you need to do you know you could go to a monastery an elder you can go to a spiritual father who you might not see very often you might see him once or twice a year that's fine that's not a problem you can write him and communicate with him uh through through email whatever it might be but you need someone who's gonna say to you okay here's what you need to do here's how you need to pray here's how much you need to pray that's very important that shows obedience and that humility will protect you from delusion now a prayer was a prayers that is said every single day without fail let me repeat that a prayer rule that you should receive from your spiritual father your spiritual god your confessor your priest is said every single day without fail as a rule it is said in the morning that's the vast majority of people say their prayer rule when they get up in the morning and ideally before sun comes out ideally before there's any commotion ideally before there's ruckus and there's people asking you for this so before all that would be the ideal now if you don't get there and you wake up late and you want to do your prayer rule and there's some people mulling around go for it do it don't leave it but it's better if you can get started earlier so in the morning first or nearly the first thing we do in the day when you wake up immediately turn to christ turn the icon in quarter and say lord christ mercy first things out of your mouth it should the prayer rule should also include evening prayers as a rule right you're going to get a rule how do what do i do on a daily basis and include the evening prayers as well and usually in the greek context anyway you have a comp line you're saying the service of comp line with or without the activist him the head of this me they say greek to the mother of god uh it depends on your time your family how many kids you have what kind of things you can do but in the monasteries they included every compline a cannon or a akathist hymn to the mother of god but if that's not possible do the comp line at least now other traditional russian orthodox tradition they don't do the comp line service as much as but they have a long a a fairly large group of prayers and other you know i think psalm 50 et cetera says songs and prayers that are said every night as well so that also could be the case with you if you're in uh following the jordanville prayer book whatever that's usually what people are going to do in the evening but you're going to have a morning prayer rule you know in the morning you're going to get up and you're going to do the prayer rule we'll talk about michael do it and in the evening as well before you go to bed now in my experience and i think this this was ideal that jesus prayer should be at the heart of the prayer rule again with the analogous spiritual direction from the priest or or spiritual father in your community and the jesus prayer should be cultivated intensely throughout the day so that you are constantly in the presence and the and you're mindful of god uh it is usually preceded by of course the sagium prayers the 50th psalm the symbol of faith right these are basic things that are said before you begin the prayer rule in the morning you might also add prayers to the holy fathers you might also commemorate some people who you want to pray for there's other things that people add in many people begin their day by reading the epistle and the gospel very good or they read the lives of the saints very good or they read from some very good important spiritual texts like the ever to get the nose uh or the saints of their fathers or your own decon calling me holding greek or john of the mask john of the latter or any number of other books that are going to be very profitable uh to read throughout the year there's also books like the where the pilgrim which is a tremendous book i've read multiple times keep coming back to it very inspiring for the jesus prayer so one could go on and talk about a whole no whole whole library of books that could be read on a daily basis as a part of your morning rule now the number of times that the prayer is recited will depend on a variety of factors it'll depend obviously on your spiritual father's guidance and his blessing but it'll depend on some practical matters right if you're a beginner you're going to have far far less number wise than others who are more advanced uh if you have a lot of things that are duties and you don't have the ability to say as much spending a time in the morning that's also something that might affect how many times you say the prayer whatever the case is you receive that number and you try to keep that even if it's a small amount it's really important or if it's a large amount whatever it is you have to struggle to keep that rule every day it's very important if you keep the rule you will have great spiritual benefit and your day will be blessed the day will be filled with grace if you are faithful in those things god will make you put over other things and you'll have more responsibility and you'll have more grace to fulfill those duties so it all is important it doesn't matter how big it is what matters most of all is that you do it every day and you're faithful and then of course you're going to take that throughout the day you're going to start your day of the day and then you're going to keep that throughout the day when you're in your car and go to work lord jesus christ have mercy when you're walking the street when you're doing some kind of work that doesn't require a lot of concentration uh if you're more your work is more manual you can pray the prayer continually throughout the day of course we're gonna be praying before the meals that's a part of our prayer rule before the meals after the meals do you pray after the meals there's a prayer after the meals as well do you pray different prayers in the morning or the noonday prayer and the evening meal there's different prayers for that in the prayer book and we should learn that by heart so in everything of course the aim is to be always in the presence of god to be united to god right that's the goal that's what it means to be in christ to live for christ to already have one foot as it were in the kingdom of god is that we're always in the presence of god we're mindful of his will and we're mindful and and our gaze is in heaven it's to the right hand of the father to jesus christ the prayer rule as such is to be kept in your cell so to speak right your prayer clause is not to be done in front of other people maybe maybe if you're married with your wife you might be in the same room it's fine but generally it's not the case you try to avoid that you're going to be alone with god um and as our commander right sergius of saint econ says it's important to remember that we never have time for god but rather we must make time for god if you think that you're going to have time it's just going to happen without an effort without violence like he says the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force you have to force yourself many times you'll have to force yourself to pray you won't want to pray you'll be tired you'll have inclination to go to sleep whatever it is and you need to force yourself but guess what the good news is that's when prayer really has a lot of value even if you don't feel it god sees the struggle and the demons see the struggle and they fear that philotimo struck right they feel that love that says even though i'm tired i'm distracted i'm i'm i'm worried i'm anxious i don't care i'm gonna pray i'm gonna turn it to pray to god too many people think they're gonna have to have a great desire already before they turn to god turn to pray that's not the case the saints struggled the great elders struggled no one has not struggled against the old men and forced themselves to pray no one there's not one person in the face of earth that didn't have to force themselves at some point in and perhaps many many times so let me give you as a example it's not for you to do obviously it's an example just to get a sense of numbers and what people might do in different places i'm going to give you an example of a beginner monk a novice monk somebody who's just starting out at mount atlas and they want and they're doing a prayer rule uh and you know number wise now again numbers are not that important and this there might be somebody at the same numbers for 10 20 years doesn't matter that's not the most important thing if you if you can and you increase the numbers and you have a blessing fine that's a blessing it's wonderful if you can pray more and more throughout the night as some of our great saints did of course that's a blessing but if you do it if you increase the numbers and you have no concentration you're not well trained you're not then you're going to end up burning out you're going to end up offering a lot of vain repetition because your heart is not there you're not progressed you're not able to concentrate so step by step but to give you a sense here on the page you see some numbers you might see for a novice beginning monk on mountains he might do 900 to 1200 prayers to jesus christ that means lord jesus christ have mercy on me with the sign of the cross vocalized that's how he'll begin his prayer rule uh most likely i mean again it could be less it could be more i'm just giving you a ballpark figure of what in my experience what what might be the case for a novice monk of another there might be other monsters that have less there might be other monsters have more so don't take this as some kind of standard it doesn't exist standards don't exist spiritual fathers and the particular person exists but i'm giving you a sense of things right so you can understand now people say well how can they do a thousand times it seems like it's crazy insane how can they do it actually the prayer could be within a minute or two right lord jesus christ have mercy can be said within one two seconds and the more you pray the quicker it gets the more you're focused the the quicker you're done with 300 300 uh not prayer rope so it seems like a lot for those who don't have experience of it but actually if you pray and you spend time praying over time you realize that it's not actually that much i mean that could be done within a half an hour certainly uh by most people who are praying and struggling on methods 600 to 900 prayers to jesus christ without the sign of the cross said within without being vocalized would be a part of the prayer rule and then 300 because we're always keeping a three to one ratio usually with a prayer 300 to the theotokos with the sign of the cross and then 100 prayers and they'll talk us without the sign of the cross we're talking about the most holy theotokos and then maybe 100 maybe 150 prostrations maybe 200 prostrations it really depends on the physical condition of the monk or the novice and the person who's doing it might be more it might be less but i would think that most novices are going to be doing a 100 or even 150 or 200 prostrations each evening and they're in good shape and they're struggling there on monopoly so that gives you a sense a little bit about the numbers but most of us especially beginners are going to be doing 300 to jesus christ one hundred the mother of god and that's it and then doing twenty thirty fifty frustrations it really depends on the person but that would be a beginner somebody one just wanna get started i wanna get started right now i've never done this before i would say the max they would do in the first you know a long period of time first months or something depends on the person again in their life would be 300 to jesus christ and concentrating right so you're going to be concentrating on those words lord jesus christ have mercy trying to have a prayer that comes from your heart and with compunction uh and then 100 the mother of god something like that might be for a brand new never done before you know beginner now there's some questions people ask me and i thought i would throw this in here but again this is not a standard i think there's their numbers here are just indicative probably they're more more uh in in more monasteries these numbers look low to me in my remembrance of this question from years ago when when i learned about this but i think it it definitely is you know changes depending on the monastic and the father there is this ability and this does happen in some cells in minneapolis especially where you have one or two monks who don't have a spiritual who don't have a priest monk with them or even those that do but they don't want to do the services uh they'd rather do it on the prayer rope and they just come together for the hours in divine liturgy so they'll do the services on the prayer road so instead of vespers they'll do for instance 600 which i think is probably not enough in most monasteries they'd be doing more but maybe this is more uh ideal for layman so for canonical hours for preparation for holy communion and other services in some monastic communities and some beyond alphas they replace these with the jesus prayer a specific number of times dependent on the service that's being replaced so in this way even without service books uh without the priest monk obviously uh somebody who's not literate um whatever it might be there's a way to keep the prayer services of the church in this way and some places do it as they said because they prefer it they're hesitant oriented and they really want to say that jesus prayer and you will see that in the lives of some of our contemporary saints so for instance saint joseph's killi i don't remember them ever doing matins except on big feast days i think they did the jesus prayer throughout the night and they would come together with the hours in divine liturgy now i might be mistaken but that was my recollection but there are kellya who do exactly that in fact some of the monsters in greece that we would go to frequently they did not have matins at all most days if it's a feast day they do but on a daily basis and they would do the jesus prayer then they would come together if they didn't have a priest and do the paraklesis the canon to the mother of god so there are a variety of prayer rules a variety of conditions and you're not strapped in in the orthodox church but you need blessings you need guidance but there are a variety of solutions for each person but you can see on the screen here some of the numbers that might be said of the jesus prayer instead of divine services so instead of the entire psalter which is rarely i've never heard this actually been done six thousand jesus prayer uh one kathisma of the psalter 300 prayers 100 free stasis the minute off is 600 matins 1 500. the hours without the inter hours 1000 the hours within the hours 100 seems a bit high vesper's only 600 but the hours are a thousand so these numbers you know they're they they're not written in stone by any stretch of the imagination so grant compline would be more than best birds that seems a little bit off and then uh small conflicting uh 400 in any case uh that's gives you a little sense if you can't get the church uh and you want to pray just pick up the jesus prayer and start praying a few 100 300 uh whatever it might be for your particular case and be in the presence of members of god that's the aim how about the orthodox prayer corner everybody has an orthodox prayer corner right everybody knows about the prayer corps in our house as you can see here in an old picture from the pre-revolutionary russia this was the corner of their living room and they have there the analogy on before the massive collection of icons these would have been icons made by hand in those days i don't think they had any kind of mass production of icons that was a treasure in the house i remember when when when i was reading about the uh population exchange when all the greeks from asia minor and pondos and all those places were forced out and forced to to march across asia minor and to go to greece of course what they took with them was the holy icons they were the treasure of the family they were the things they wanted to pass on to their children and the holy icons the most important icons they took with them when they were thrown out and run out of their homelands and the same with russians who were fleeing the communists so uh it is i for all of us to have icons they're hand painted that's what we should be saving up for putting money aside have hand-painted uh icons would be the ideal now many of us can't do that we don't have the money so of course it's perfectly blessed to get icons that are made uh in other ways like paper or other there's other ways they make icons today that are more akin to painted icons but it shouldn't we shouldn't necessarily be satisfied if we fill our house with all kinds of paper icons and then we say well that's it it is blessed and it is desirable for us to purchase from icon iconographers hand icons which then become treasures to our family we have them in the you know special place and it's it's uh it's really i think beneficial spiritually so let's talk about the prayer quarter the prayer corner obviously most of you should know this i hope is a physical place reserved for personal and family prayer in the orthodox countries the faith will call it the front corner the beautiful corner the holy icon corner whatever god's place whatever its name this prayer corner is the spiritual heart of the home this reminds me of a prophecy by one of the elders in the 1940s i think it was uh i think it was the ukrainian saint i want to say lazarus but i can't remember actually if that's his name it just escaped me he talked about the box that will come and it'll have horns on it and it will replace the prayer corner and this will be a way that the antichrist will guide and and trick the masses to follow after him of course he's talking about the television he's talking about modern way of communicating just like we're doing right now that this box will become the center of the home and the icon corner will be forgotten and what a tragedy the 20th century saw with communism and secularism and capitalism and all these isms which have refocused people it's it's very different home and i've said this many times i'll say it again it's a very different home to walk into when the icon corner is the center there's no television in that place and people sit down and look at each other face to face and they don't look at a screen all day so if you have a television and that's the center of your family and you want to be an orthodox christian take that throw it out into the garbage and replace it with your icon corner and begin to make that the center of your house and it would serve as a constant reminder to pray instead of i'm going to sit down and lose myself and have no benefit whatsoever i'm going to watch some television show no no i'm going to sit down i'm going to find myself and find my god and be in communion with him and that will be the prayer corner will be the place that will draw you in to remind you right should be a sanctuary for you and your loved ones a place where you can rest and renew yourselves as you live in this world that's the basics of the program now here are some examples that i'm giving you and we'll talk about some of the things we see here so obviously you can have one central icon corner but in every room ideally you could have an icon corner as well something very simple like you see in the middle of the page in the bottom we have just three icons on a shelf with a beautiful cloth and flowers around it that would be in the corner of the room your bedroom or the the bedrooms of the house uh even in the kitchen you could have an icon or two um like the one you see here on the left which is just a small corner with a shelf and a icon oil lamp i should say before the icon not just this massive icon corner you see on the top left which would be in the center of the house but all these these smaller ones could also be in each room and it is very common to have before the icons like you see on the far right this is from the holy cross monastery in west virginia in the visitors house there they have these icons and then they have this analogy and in front of that they have the prayer book they have what looks like the priest book the blessing book then you have the scriptures and you have the cross uh and then it looks like you have some other service prayers there in the paperback or in uh photocopy and that is very common so when you go to the prayer corner of course you're going to want to have a table or on the actual shelf you're going to want to have a sensor your incense you're going to have the oil you're going to want to have the tool tool whatever you need there the oil down below you want to have all the things there that you can maintain the prayerful atmosphere you're going to want to pray before the icons with the oil lamp etc all of this you can learn online i don't need to go into a lot of details there's plenty of articles on it but i think you could you could uh follow the link that i have underneath the title here and you could just yourself and find out more about what goes into a prayer corner but obviously you're going to have the icon of christ you know the icon of the mother of god like you see in the middle here you have christ on the right right and the mother of god on the left and you have looks like maybe the patron saint in the middle uh and you have the oil lamps before them which is very good very basic so you're going to be you have to be buying obviously a lot of olive oil because that's what we use in the in the lamps now there's other kinds of oils but the tradition is olive oil and that's as saint paisu said we give the best to the lord and we offer that up to him so that should give you some basic sense of what an icon corner should be about now what else can i say before we depart whatever i'm not saying you can ask me in the questions uh if you have some particular questions about this but here's where you're going to say your prayers before communion here's where you're going to say uh you're act you're complying in the evening you're not going to necessarily say you're there rule here unless you live alone because that's what you want to do in your own bedroom or wherever you have that you can be alone with god and this is going to be more communal all right let's talk about how to prepare for confession how to prepare for confession so before we ever get to the confessor to say our sins there's a few things we need to be doing on a daily basis whenever we fall into something uh i just saw somebody ask it should it be going to the east yes we always pray to the east we always pray to the eastern orthodox church whether it be in church whether it be the prayer corner whether it be even our own little prayer roo you know closet we're going to try to face the east ideally now if it's just impossible for whatever reason then be it but that we should struggle to do is to face the east because that goes back to the very very beginning of the church uh from the very beginning we have witnessed in the early saints that we pray to the east always and saint basil talks about that that this is not something that came down uh in written form but in oral holy tradition and it is a rule that the church never doubted and never undermined all right so immediately brothers and sisters whatever happens you fall into a evil thought you fall into an evil practice you do something that is not god's will you immediately repent you don't wait to go to confession this mystery of holy confession is two-part repentance and confession before you go to confession you should have already been on the path of repentance and and and reorientation back to christ and a hatred of that which disoriented you right that's sin i hate the sin we don't hate the person but the sin that which takes us away from christ so we repent immediately for whatever has and then we keep a little book especially if you begin in the beginning of the spiritual life you've only been orthodox for a while you're a catechumen uh you haven't really worked on yourself spiritually you've never been really systematically to confession with the spiritual father all of these categories means you need to have a little booklet it goes in your purse or in your pocket and in another book you're going to do a daily recording of your falls of your thoughts your temptations your struggles your questions for the spiritual father you might not do that for the rest of your life but you should do that for a long time a couple years till you get to the point where that becomes something now you've made much progress in self-knowledge you've made progress in mindfulness you've been made progress and watchfulness you understand the nature of the temptations you've seen it you go then to your spiritual father ready you don't have to think about it you know oh it's been weeks and months since i saw my future father what am i going to tell him bad place to be not a good place to be you're not going to have a lot of profit out of that spiritual counsel he's going to give you because you're not going to give him a good picture when you go to the doctor he wants a full report what did you do what didn't you do what were you suffering from right and then he can make a good judgment on what happened what caused your sickness i was just at the doctor yesterday for my son he had fallen down he asked all kinds of questions then he said okay here's what i think it is right so you're going to go to the spiritual father and you're going to say uh well i did i was really proud uh i was i was lazy that's not gonna help much of course you're gonna confess all that if you know that's uh but he needs more hands-on details what's going on you're not gonna go into details if they're fleshly sins no we don't do that but everything else we can say here's what happened yerroda i was with this person i said this to her and she said this to me and then i got angry and and that and he's gonna and then i see a pattern here i did this again the next day and the third day and look and you go there with a full x-ray of your soul and of your behavior and what happens and what you didn't do writing what you did do right now sins are not just what you did wrong it's what you didn't do right what you neglected to do you got to write that down you got to go there so if you want to make a good confession the good confession begins the minute you end your previous confession that's when the good confession begins weeks and months or whatever it is until you go again to your spiritual father you're recording you're giving us a picture a very detailed picture of your soul and your struggle all right very important again because we need help to see ourselves we use these guides to confession that exist online there's actually a link right underneath the title here orthodox info.com proxies guide the confession and go and check that out there's also uh a couple more aides on orthodox.com that i highly recommend so check those out as well do a little search there on orthodox info.com for help me with confession right how do i make a good confession and you're going to want to use those guides because they're going to help you to see yourself there's going to be things you don't really think about there's sins that we commit we don't realize there's sins or there's habits that set in or whatever right so those guides are going to help us a lot to come to a self-knowledge which is essential we prepare for holy confession by praying by praying to jesus prayer by the akathist hymns of the lord jesus christ or the canon of repentance these are all beautiful ways to prepare for confession as you grow more and more you may not have such a great need to pray every time before confession but certainly for a couple years in the beginning when you go to confession it's really good if you can say the can of repentance before you go to confession say the akathist to lord jesus christ say more prayers to our lord in different ways and that will help you to make a good confession with a broken heart now prepare also for confession by collecting your questions you don't just go to tell your sins and leave you have questions and if you don't have questions there's something wrong you're not working on yourself you're not being mindful you're not asking questions about the spiritual life you're not trying to go deeper so you should go with a list of questions for your spiritual father ideally at least in the greek tradition the monotheist tradition you would see your scripture father it would be a good chunk of time allotted to speak to him and talk to him about your spiritual life if you're going every friday or every rather saturday vigil you only got five minutes then i would ask the spiritual father of the priest for time outside of that to sit down and talk about your life and about what you're doing mainly your spiritual life but even other big decisions we go to our spiritual father for big decisions because we need discernment about things many times we're doing things we're making decisions and they have spiritual implications and their own lies they bring about bad consequences if we had gone to our spiritual father with those questions we may have gotten a much better result and maybe have avoided a lot of problems so prepare your confession not just by telling your sins but by bringing your questions about the whole nature of the spiritual life and about whatever it might be that that affects your life in christ to your spiritual life ideally arrange to see your spiritual father when he has time to guide and counsel you so what we just said plan for confession before major feasts and days when you will be preparing for holy communion so you know there's a feast coming up we got the feast of pentecost is coming up uh if you haven't been to confession for a good amount of time you should be calling your spiritual father and saying can i come to confession next week don't go the last minute don't go on the eve of the feast if possible don't make it hard on the priest don't don't come during divine liturgy in some places they do this i don't think it's a very good idea but anyway don't do that go early get in early and be prepared for holy communion let's talk about how to prepare now for holy communion obviously if you're going to be communion on a regular basis you need to be fasting the fast of the church are not optional we don't say oh i'll fast maybe i won't fast maybe i'll commute anyway no that's the part of our life in christ and we need to [Music] um fast if we're commute on any regular basis on wednesday and friday we don't fast uh from all what the church says we need to fast then we need to go to our spiritual father and say this is my life this is how i live and ideally he's going to say well here's how often you can commune and it won't be that often it won't be as often as you may have been used to because that's not profitable for us if we're we're setting aside the basic struggle and the cross and the crucifixion that the lord says we have to pick up but then we still want the spiritual benefit of communion well that's not going to happen we're not going to have a lot of benefit if we're putting aside the basics and the commandments that come down to us through the church it's a pious practice arising from the monasteries to keep a fast and the strictness varies from spiritual father to spiritual father the day before we go to holy communion now this is not a part of the canons of the church it's not a part of any kind of requirement there's nowhere in the canon state we have to commune in order to i'm sorry to fast in order to commute on sunday this is a bias and very broad in my experience at least in greece tradition and practice among many spiritual fathers because they saw the benefit of this it doesn't have to be a cannon not everything is in a cannon in an ecumenical council it's not necessary when our spiritual fathers our elders the saints show us here's what's profitable we should wisely say let it be blessed and many spiritual fathers say it's profitable it's very good if the night at least the night before we commune we should fast from you know everything but oil on saturday as you'll see when we get there in a bit uh we don't fast on saturdays from oil but we could fast from other things that's certainly possible it's not required but it's possible so many spiritual fathers have their spiritual children fast either from the very beginning of the day or the midday meal or the evening meal depending on the person the spiritual father and how he understands things there's a variety of different ways to approach this but there is usually something on the eve before we go to communion we're not going to eat meat we're not going to eat dairy we're going to fast from those things in order to prepare ourselves in a better way be more mindful and lighter when we go to pray and that's very very much at the heart of the aesthetic struggle if you eat a good-sized meal and then go to prey that's going to be much harder to concentrate you're not you're going to be distracted your stomach is going to be growling you're going to be uh maybe you're going to you know have stomach pains whatever it's not a good idea so the same thing implies when we're going to communion we want to pray we want to go to the vigil we want to go for the in the morning we want to be light we don't want to be thinking about our stomach and we don't want to have distractions like this so that's one reason why spiritual fathers find it profitable to fast on the eaves before communion but you need to have a spiritual father and you need to consult him and ask his guidance on what kind of fast you should do number three go regularly to confession and receive the blessing of your spiritual father as to how often you can commune we don't go to communion anytime we want as as we like but we get a blessing from our spiritual father our spiritual guide and he tells us here's how often you should commune given your lifestyle giving your prayer rule given your ability to do fasting and all the rest right you're not if you're if you're going to be for whatever reason you're more lacks you want to have uh you know eat whatever you want you want there's gonna you don't want any limit to if you're married relations or whatever it is that you don't want to struggle well and not you're gonna commute analogously you're gonna commune less you're not gonna commute as often that that's generally the approach of most most spiritual fathers in my experience as i said you abstain from relations before you go to holy communion that's very much common elder cleopa of romania taught this the saints and that i the contemporary saints from greece teach this contemporary elders it's very basic at least in the old world relations in marriage are abstain you're abstaining from relations two three days at least two nights three nights usually most spiritual fathers will say three nights before holy communion and the day of holy communion for sure you're abstaining from uh relations uh in marriage and this is consistent with the what the apostle paul says he says fast abstain come together let you not be tempted et cetera it's a it's a there's a rhythm in the church that we follow and everything fits in beautifully and when we follow it humbly and obediently we have great profit i talked about this in uh one of these shorts that we put up on uh youtube and uh instagram we talked about this in an interview i did a couple months ago we reposted it last week about the need for this rhythm and this spacing and this abstention it's very good for the family it got the uh good for the marriage and the very good for the longevity of a healthy marriage people who abuse that and and they give no boundaries to any of the in terms of relations they will grow apart quicker than those who do not and you might think that's counterintuitive but that's the experience of many spiritual fathers when there's no limit on something you get sick of it when you eat whatever you want to eat day in and day out you don't respect the food you don't like the food after a while you become you know indifferent you become whatever you don't actually have a greater respect and and and you don't uh you you go sick of it right if you eat ice cream every day you're going to get sick of it and it's the same thing with relations and the same thing with generally with fasting uh the more we have a rhythm and we we we maintain that the more we're going to not only be benefited spiritually but the things themselves are going to be more enjoyable and profitable for us again number five now pray the pre-communion prayers the canon on the evening beforehand usually a comp line we say the canon and the psalms and the prayers on the morning of before matters now you could do the whole thing in the evening that's possible if you're getting up late you're going in the middle of the service you're going late to the service and you don't have time in the morning because you get up late well do the whole thing in the evening in any case we have the canon psalms and prayers that's what we pray prayers before holy communion before we go to holy communion every time unless for some reason rarely we're commuting one day after the other then there might be uh you might the second day you might not do the entire rule uh maybe just the prayers uh for example that that's gonna be decided by your spiritual father number six fast from everything from the time you wake up or at least six hours before holy communion we don't eat anything in the morning before we go to church now if somebody said well i take pills and i'm sick and then i of course there are exceptions depending on your health if you take pills and you drink water that's not breaking the fast that's taking care of the body that's not an issue of you know not caring not having obedience not having fear of god that's something that this has to be done and it's not a disposition of of not caring and not trying to keep the commandments so that's an exception if we're in good health and we have no need to eat anything uh for some you know health problem or no pills to take obviously we should be fasting all morning if the vinyl energy for some reason is not in the morning for instance it's a vigil in the middle of the night or it's divine liturgy of pre-sanctified gifts um then at least six hours more people should do eight hours pre-sanctified gifts in my experience in spiritual files that i know they would say from the morning if not even earlier so it depends of course on your spiritual father and your ability to fast but certainly six hours is the minimum absolute minimum that you would you must not eat before you go to holy communion that's the way it is that's how we've always done it that's the profitable spiritually for us it's good for us not to eat before we go and pray et cetera et cetera et cetera so number seven stay until the end of divine liturgy listen to the post-communion prayers if the red and you're parish in many places they do read them after the end of the service but stay until the end of the service do not leave divine liturgy unless you are going to serve for some reason um the community or wherever you might be let's talk about prostrations in our kili we do prostrations in the orthodox church on a daily basis it's a part of our prayer rule for the vast majority of people unless there's some physical problem now there's older men for instance who their knees are shot right they got to get knee replacements or older women obviously they're not going to do literations in that case you replace the prostrations you would normally do with the jesus prayer so if you did 100 prostrations or 50 prosecutions you would do maybe another 100 or 300 depending on your spiritual uh condition whatever you would add uh instead of those prostrations you would do the jesus where you wouldn't just say oh i'm old now or oh my knees are broken i don't have to do anything no you continue the struggle in a different way but let's just talk about the basic practice it goes back to the ancient church of course say basil the great says each day by practicing frustrations to the ground and standing up again we show that through sin we felt of the earth and through love of mankind of our of our creator we were recalled to heaven so the prostrations are not some simple physical exercise there's a spiritual phenomenon here the spiritual aspect of this which is very beneficial it shows forth our salvation and it creates in us combuction and contrition but we have to do it prayerfully so how many we're going to do that depends on your spiritual father and his guidance how we do it though we pray doing it we don't do it physically it's not just a physical exercise we say the jesus prayer when we do it lord jesus christ have mercy on me lord jesus christ have mercy on me right uh and we pray doing the prostrations and then obviously we're going to be doing the prostrations toward the east and toward the icon of our lord jesus christ so this is a part and parcel of our prayer rule now what about just physically how do we do prostrations people oftentimes ask that and it's fairly straightforward we're going to lean forward slightly bend our knees extend our hands to the ground either with our hands like this and we put our this part of our our hand we put on the ground i know it sounds like it might hurt but after a while it doesn't hurt at all it actually helps you to do it more quickly or we can have our hands open like this and do it that way that's fine too i find that that is harder and takes longer but it's up to each person put the hands out and then essentially they bow down and they put their hands on the ground and then their knees hit the ground and then their forehead touches the ground and then they repeat that all right so that's how we do the frustrations we do it and eventually you'll get to the point where it becomes a rhythm very simple and easy and you can do those prostrations um you know there are aesthetics on athos back in the day i don't know if this is still happening but in the day of st joseph the hesics they were doing not hundreds thousands of frustrations a night it seemed invisible to us but they were there were times when they would do that i would say that hundreds is far far more common if not um really all that happens today but maybe i'm wrong i don't know there might be some real super aesthetics somewhere who are praying throughout the night and doing frustrations all throughout the night all right let's talk about the day of the lord and how we live it the day of the lord being sunday many people unfortunately are under the mistaken impression that we kneel down and do prostrations on sunday we do not there are several canons of the church that forbid this and there are church fathers from the earliest days that witness to the reality that we do not bend our knee on sunday we do not and let's hear from them and the canons as to why that is but first before we get to that let's just talk about the fact that we don't fast on sundays ever and if it's a fasting period we'll always have a relaxation of the fast and eat oil that's true on saturday and sunday right so saturday and sunday are always going to be days where we eat oil the only exception is great and holy saturday when the lord was crucified and put in the tomb in hades on that day we passed even oil all other saturdays and sundays will have at least a little oil on our table even if we're fasting strictly from meat and dairy if that's our if that's our rule or choice uh but we will eat a little bit of oil at some point during the day that's just the rule from the ancient times and it's the wisdom of the holy fathers so if we do it we'll understand why i think if we do it if we stand in contempt and say well that sounds dumb to me well okay then you stay with your your bright-eyed and uh you know smart uh thoughts but you'll miss the prophet uh that the holy fathers have taught and experienced for 2000 years um so the 66th canon of the holy apostles this is in the second and third centuries if any clergyman is found to be fasting on a sunday or on a saturday except on great saturday he should be defrocked so no more priesthood on that basis alone if anybody fasts completely from oil included on a saturday or sunday now maybe there's some special cases and very rare some great ascetics that have done this i don't know i i've heard such things but i think that for the vast vast majority of us 99.9 of us let's keep that rule of the holy apostles saint peter of alexandria says this in his canon 15. as for sunday on the other hand we celebrate it as a joyous holiday because of him who was resurrected on it on which day we have not even received instruction to bend the knee so we do not bend our knee this is from the early fourth century peter of alexandria or late uh late force in let's see early late third century rather saint basil the great says in his canon 91 we offer prayers on the first of the sabbaths he means sunday that's what that term is in a standing position we do not bow uh or kneel down at all on sunday that's another church father from nature now again enough more more witnesses to the fact that we do not bend the knee on site the practice of not bending the knee on a sunday is a symbol of the resurrection through which we were delivered by the grace of christ both from our sins and from the death which was put to death by christ himself that's saint irenaeus 4th century canon 20 of the first ecumenical council this is the 320s right stipulates because there are some persons who kneel in church on a sunday and during the days of pentecost in church we're talking about in church not in our not in our cell not in our kili not alone with god but in church because some people are doing that in church we give it back in this holy council because we want uniformity in the parishes not everybody doing whatever they want but it'll be uniformity in terms of the divine worship of the church prayers should be offered to god while standing right so we do not bow now we have another witness canon 90 the sixth ecumenical council says specifically we have received it canonically from our god-bearing fathers not to bend the knee on sundays when we honor the resurrection of christ since this observation may not be so clear to some of us we are making it plain to the faithful that after the entrance of those in holy orders into the sacrificial altar on the evening of saturday he means that the great entrance invest on saturday let none of them bend the knee until the evening of the following sunday in other words great entrance of sunday evening so from vespers to vespers no bending of the knee when after the entrance investors we bend the knees again and begin to offer prayers to the lord now the feast of pentecost is coming up and you'll find in many parishes which i find not the best practice personally they don't and it's i understand it's it's helpful practically but it's it's it's somewhat problematic many pairs will have the vespers of the next day in other words sunday night for the day of the holy spirit which is monday they'll have it immediately after divine liturgy on sunday morning so it's vespers so i suppose technically we're not violating this canon but it is sunday and we've moved up vespers to a time when we never have for practical reasons for people who can't come back to church et cetera et cetera but you see that it's at vespers and not in the divine liturgy of the morning of pentecost that we have the kneeling prayers uh for uh calling down the holy spirit on the day so great day pentecost uh well actually the holy spirit which is the next day so for in as much as we have received it that in the night succeeding saturday was the precursor of our savior's rising we commence our hymns at this point spiritually ending the festival by passing out of darkness in the light in order that we may hence celebrate in mass the resurrection for a whole day and a whole night all right so i think you've got the point and now from going forward no matter what happens in your parish you don't kneel on sunday now they're going to be people who say well my paris does that everybody kneels it's okay go stand in the corner keep keep the cannons this is give we've given you three different patristic witnesses two two economical councils fortunately a lot of ignorance people don't understand and they don't live the day of the resurrection in that way it's unfortunate uh i know people say well they're piously kneeling yes i understand that but the things are done properly in an order according to the holy fathers not according to my personal piety it's not a quote of what i want to do and how i want to express myself in the church we don't have those kind of things right we do that in our kili far from the eyes of other people in the church we are one man one mind and one heart and we're we're following and commuting and praying together right we're almost done let's talk about about qualify and then we're going to talk one more thing and then we'll open up the questions so get your questions ready if you're interested in asking questions uh wow we've got a lot of questions i just checked out the questions over there and we got 16 over there all right sounds good we'll get to them in about five minutes so hang on let's talk a little about koliva everybody know about koleva i know some places don't do it don't have as much only on sql on saturday of the souls but in the pre-orthodox athletic tradition they have called you up very often could have it almost daily in some places so what is koliva koliva is a dish consisting of boiled wheat and other ingredients which are used in the orthodox church for commemorations of the reposed what you see on the screen here are two different plates of kolivo one is from mount athos and it has an icon that they've done with essentially food coloring they've created this icon and this there's a whole layer of i guess sugar and then they have the image of the the apostle andrew uh which will you know this will be chopped up and the whole pan will be eaten by all the pilgrims but it is food it's kollipo usually it's like what you see on the top left-hand corner that's the kind of plate you'll see for memorial services and you know the commemoration of saints uh kolima is blessed during funerals and memorial services performed at various intervals after a person's repose so the third ninth fortieth one year right when we do all the memorial services as well as on special occasions such as the saturday of the souls in greek uh you know we also have qualified for the saints and it's there's a prayer read it's not the same thing at all in the sense that we're not praying for the repose of the soul of the saints the saints we have understood by god's revelation and by the faithfuls uh you know pious response and and veneration they are in god and there's no need to pray for the repose of their soul but the koliva is still they're still calling but it's offered like you say here in commemoration of the saint and there's a prayer red and then that's distributed for consumption and that's very common on monothose on the feast days so the 40 days 48 martyrs of sabas for instance at siropotamo monastery where i would go to those vigils every year uh during land they have a beautiful plate with the 40 martyrs 40 it's very difficult icon they would have made for the feast all right let's talk a little bit about history and symbolism of koliga color was derived from the classical greek word kolivos a small coin or a small gold weight in the hellenistic period the neuter plural form of the word coliva took the meaning of small pies made of boiled wheat we have of course this whole tradition beginning with the miracle of saint theodore of tyre kolivo was introduced into the practice of the church after the miracle of the saint which happened about 50 years after his repose that would be in 360s when julian the apostate was emperor the apostate was wishing to mock the christians and he ordered the governor of constantinople to sprinkle all the supplies in the food the blood sacrificed idols so he wanted to mock them see look you're eating the blood sacrifice idols he did he of course was doing this secretly and he didn't want anybody to know but he ordered the the governor to do this and it happened to be the very first week of great lent the emperor knew that the christians would be hungry after the first week of strict fasting in case you don't know the tradition of the church going back even to the fourth century was that there would be a strict fast no food whatsoever for the first three days some places even the first five days uh but definitely for three days so christians would be hungry and would go to the marketplaces of constantinople on saturday to buy food so it looked like they were fasting all five days saint theodore appearing in a dream of archbishop of tokyos of constantinople 360-70 commanded him to warn christians not to buy from the market but rather to eat boiled wheat with honey not long after this the feast of the miracle of this great barter saint theodore was scheduled in the calendar on the first saturday of great lent so they they had a special day shortly after that to commemorate him and this in this miracle on the first saturday and to this day we have that commemoration and for that literally on saturday uh so that happened in 381 to 397 just 20 years later from then until the day on the first saturday of the great length remembrance of the dead and the commemoration of saint theodore the tyre are celebrated the symbolic use of calling on our church services also shows that the man may also be regarded as a seed so here's the symbolic interpretation of theological spiritual intervention that we ourselves like i see that the fruit of the earth is now sowing itself on the earth like wheat we go into the earth that person dies goes into the ground right to again be resurrected by the power of god rising in the life to be and bringing himself alive and perfect in christ so that's the kohli was like a seed that goes into the ground and you have to die in order to rise and this is the symbolism for as any seed is buried in the earth it will upon rising bringing forth much fruit it's also a human being you know the earth through death will rise again into eternal life and saint paul says some are showing the parable uh of the sowing in the gospel now here is a recipe you can screenshot it whatever you want to do i'm not going to talk about it but here's a recipe for koleva from the the website from the from a store of a friend of ours uh nicholas saporiz who has a has a store in uh in daphne and manatos and he is giving you a monastic recipe for koleva so there you go you can screenshot that and use it now last topic for tonight before we open the questions and i this is a dear one to me and i wanted to add it in here for all of our priests and anyone else who's going to be somehow involved in the baptism how do we baptize babies it's to come down to this nowadays we need to focus on this and teach this because unfortunately many are not doing it in the orthodox manner what is a baptism entails it means immersion body of infant child or adult or whatever it is is immersed fully three times in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit each time by an orthodox priest and not sprinkled or water poured over the head that's not how it's done in the patristic orthodox way right clement of alexandria says famously and he says much more this is a very small quote when we are baptized perfectly we are illumined illumined we are we will be adopted adopted we will finish and finished we are immortal anyway there's much more to the quote i probably should give in the whole quote but the point here is that it matters it matters that we keep the proper baptism now that's that's how you do a child how about an adult these are some of the pictures of how adults should be properly baptized down in the right hand corner you see the great missionary to zaire cosmos of grigoril baptizing everyone there and he baptized a lot of people we're talking about almost i think it was something like 9 000. it was thousands of people in his it was a short stay 10 12 years 15 years he was there he's baptized in the river as is commanded by the strict observation of the church possible but also here from africa you see this what they build in africa in africa the missionaries build proper baptismal fonts in north america in australia in canada in the uk why can't we build and have proper baptismal fonts why is that not a priority in our parishes why can they do it in africa but we can't get it together and there are many pictures of african being baptized in such a font in the form of a cross one simply needs to search online and they'll find several and there's many more in the greek language i've seen them myself in the various journals and that's how you baptize properly here is father eustein from utah here in the left baptizing in the middle of this parish there he's got a huge horse trough and that woman is going to be totally immersed so you might say well father don't be legalistic no no no you you if you if if i said to you well let's do divine liturgy with some grape juice and crackers and you said no no father that's not right would i could i call you a legalist for insisting not to do that no i don't think so you'd say that's just the way it should be done that's how the lord wants it and we should be faithful here's how not to baptize there's two examples of how not to baptize and unfortunately this is more and more common around the orthodox world we're baptizing like people protestants we're abusing distorting the mystery and there are people who say it doesn't matter it does matter and god help you and all of us to observe interested teaching all right there is a short uh intense review from about a thousand feet up of some of the basic some of the more basic practical issues i'm sure there are many more that we could cover and you have many questions so let's get to it and let's uh let's go to your questions now we'll start at the top of the list here byzantine ladybug you mentioned last tuesday that orthodox christian women should not not wear makeup i don't wear a lot of makeup i do wear a prescription tinted sunscreen could father peter elaborate on this statement i realize this is a tiny issue but i see women at church wearing makeup uh yes so um the the answer is fairly straightforward and simple and i think you will receive this answer as i did i've heard it from spiritual fathers and elders in my life and i think it's fairly straightforward one of our main enemies if we're going to be united to christ is the what we call in greek philastia philaftia which means a love or a obsession or a kind of passion over ourselves of ourselves we love ourselves we're constantly concerned about ourselves we're thinking about ourselves we're mindful of ourselves right in a sick way and this is an obstacle to communion when you have total self forgetfulness in a healthy way because you're focused on the person of christ or your neighbor that's when you can give yourself in your heart to the person and love them if you're mindful of yourself you are you're in a way that's sick you're obstructing that kind of devotion and intention and communion ultimately so this is an enemy and in all the patristic literature saint john of the latter that's the one of the main enemies is and so when you're cuddling yourself when you're pampering yourself when you're constantly concerned about your self in excessive ways there's many ways a that this dia there's many ways when this society feeds love of self and so makeup is one of them so that's a basic expression of philosia of love of self excessively and caring about what other people think it's also not a spiritually mature virtuous stance right carrying what is what are they going to say about me i want to look good i want to impress them right it's not spiritually beneficial saints don't do that they're not mindful of themselves in that way also there is a sense of correcting god right god gave us this body he gave us this this face and we're going to make it pretty it's not pretty right that's why we're putting makeup on to make it pretty but it is pretty it is beautiful god's made you beautiful he's given you he's given you what you need everything he does is good so you don't need to improve on that and it's an arrogant stance to say i'm going to make it better i'm going to make it more beautiful it's ugly so that's that is all all these things are an example of the sickness of the soul that needs to be corrected so makeup is not a something you want to do you want to slowly get rid of it you want to distance yourself from it you want to be simple mindless in the good sense of your appearances and you look and looking for other people's praise and all the rest which usually almost always goes along with these kinds of you know practices uh focused on the exteriors focus on the superficial and not the essential and the spiritual that's a short answer if you read the patriotic literature they go on for pages and pages about the sickness of philatelia which could be applied in many other ways like makeup is just one example it just happens to be a more systemic problem in our society because they're so focused on the externals and may and try to impress people okay next question why do orthodox christian priests marry i'm new and learning okay thank you very much for your question so if you go back to the ancient church you go back to the apostle peter who was one of the two chiefs of the apostles right with apostle paul apostle peter and he of course is called upon by the papal protestants as the great pope who supposedly uh had a kind of supremacy over the others which is a mistake uh but it's interesting in the west that i think around the 900s maybe earlier they start to adopt this um they start to adopt this idea that priests should be celibate and they have to be celebrated to be priests and so that is an innovation in the west that never was applied in the east the apostle peter was married and there's no reason to believe that he uh dissed his his wife and his children certainly as an apostle he had his calling and he left and he did the apostle but nobody disdained the marriage nobody has ever disdained the marriage and many saints bishops up until about the fifth century maybe later were married saint gregory the theologian's father of course his father a bishop was married so there are married saints who are bishops not just priests there are many many saints who are priests and married and have been throughout the 2000 years of orthodox christianity so you have to be married before you're ordained there's no blessing for somebody to get ordained and then go look for a wife that's not possible in the orthodox church for good reasons pastoral reasons but if you're married you can certainly become an orthodox priest and that's how it's always been and the apostles themselves some of them were married as well so not a problem it's a problem for catholicism that they uh in a very undiscerning way impose that upon every single person who would be a servant uh not to say that it's not something that's desirable saint paul certainly thought it was desirable for someone not to have the the uh concerns of of marriage to serve christ without that but it cannot be imposed and there's been times when the church has said that in council and resisted that temptation unfortunately catholicism fell into it and has imposed it across the board uh although they have now these various byzantine slash union uh eastern right people who who obviously are married and they accept that but the latin right doesn't accept it next question what should we be thinking or how should we be praying as we light candles thank you alex for your question uh any prayer on behalf of our neighbor that's usually why we're lighting candles when we light we take the candles and we go to light them we're going to be usually the practice in the old country at least was you'd take maybe two candles or four candles and they'd have to be two for the proposed two for the living right we might have specific people in mind uh we might just light two and then say a variety of prayers different practices different people but some people buy a whole bunch of the candles and they they have one person one candle and they pray for that person so usually that's it's an intercessory prayer but it could be for any issue at all um and it is uh like anything in the church it's an offering to god right we have incense we offer to god we have koleva we have uh arthur plessia the bread of pine and oil that's a big feast days all these things are offering sacrifice for the love of god for the glory of god and for the salvation of other people so that's it's you can pray for anything you like but that's usually what people are doing when they light their candle next question why do we have toll houses and theosis in our lifetimes if we are we'll be deemed worthy of it in heaven at the final judgment okay you lost me on this question why do we have thousands of theosis two different totally different different things tall houses are the temptations and the demons that will tempt those who have the soul is of the body and they're ascending as it were to heaven right to be judged uh and there are demons on the path that are seeking to bring that soul into hell if it's given the rights so to speak spiritually uh so that's toll house is the one thing we could talk a whole night about toll houses and what it really means and how it's been distorted and why people are some people opposed to it in any case then there's theosis which of course is the aim of our life to be united to become gods by grace that's the point of the incarnation the point of the church the whole end of our life in christ is to be totally united and restored so totally two different things and you say if our in our lifetimes what does that mean in our lifetimes i'm not sure what that means if we will be deemed worthy of it in heaven at the final judgment well if you don't enter in are we losing there we go if you don't enter into communion with god here and make progress on the path of theosis you won't have it eternally right if you do not love christ and want to be with christ and are not united to christ before your soul leaves the body then there's no basis to believe you will have that in the next life so i'm not sure what you mean if you have it in these why do we have it in these this life if we're gonna have it then it's a continuum we enter now into the kingdom of god we enter now into communion the whole aim of our life is to unite ourselves now and to have the kingdom is christ himself in communion with christ is to be in the kingdom of heaven if you enter into it before your opposed death becomes a doorway you open up and you continue in that eternally so it has to be here if it's going to be there those two things go together question about reading lives of martyrs to young children that cenicarium can sometimes be gruesome in its descriptions of saints and sufferings should we avoid going into specifics when reading them to very young children to avoid scaring them or would this be disrespectful to the saint well i think you need to use your discernment you need to understand what kind of child you have before you what the age is how much they've understood how much they can accept generally i think you should give the spiritual meaning for sure whether you're going to give every last aspect and description of the torture or something that is going to depend on the age and the ability of the child you're dealing with some child are very sensitive others don't have any problems so it's going to be left to your discretion uh i don't think it's i don't think you always have to read every line i think you just need to be discerning but you want to communicate that this the essentials of the story right which was that they suffered for christ that they they went through terrible trials the patience you know you want to give them that for sure you might summarize the gruesome parts a bit if you have a sensitive child or very small child but eventually as they grow older that should not be the case right uh if somebody and it's ideal for for the children to be reading the lives of the saints as much as possible from ages let's say 6 to 10 or 6 to twelve those are the years that they need to hear a lot about the saints personally and i'm speaking for myself we don't do enough of that and that's that's a tragedy because we're really depriving our children of some great inspiration and deep and uh deep meaning and deep teaching as to the the whole point of this life it comes through the lives of the saints so as they grow older i would say that the more and more of the description should be read depending on their their sensitivities uh but i don't think it's a problem if you summarize for those who who you think that's it's over the you know five-year-olds or something obviously you're gonna be discerning on how you what you say um when i was a protestant i had this is a question i had when i was a protestant i had so much joy knowing that i was going to heaven why are we orthodox not as sure not as less uncertainty as the protestants are well i would say that the protestants are in grave delusion uh because they don't understand the nature of this struggle to the last breath i mean the lord says very clearly those who are patient until the end will be saved for just give you one example right take the kingdom of heaven is taken by violence and the violent take it by force that doesn't go with i'm already saved once saved always saved i'm going to heaven right how do you reconcile that it's obvious that there's a process salvation is a process so this this idea of the protestant is actually tragic uh because it's not based on anything why of course christ saved us of course christ is saving us and of course christ will save us the question is are we going to let him the question is are we participating with his salvific offering are we as stimulating the life of the kingdom are we growing in communion are we becoming solidified in communion are we getting closer and closer to theosis which means a total uh oneness with the will of god a total uh overcoming and trampling of the passions i mean this whole spiritual science and and the whole sociology of the fathers is absent in productivism that's why they can stand and believe oh i've been saved and i'm so happy that i'm saved but actually that's delusional because the question is what is salvation i mean they begged the question what is salvation is it something that's imparted to us we just passively accept it no that's the delusion christ on the cross and in the resurrection ascension the whole economy of salvation he saved every last human being pious or not from eternal death meaning eternal separation from his body everyone will rise and in that sense everyone is saved from what separation eternally of soul and body no one will remain in the grave that's salvation in one sense but that's not resurrection to life right because the lord says there are those who will be resurrected unto life and those are resurrected under judgment so obviously we have to use our own free will to embrace his salvation and embrace the cross and embrace purification from the passions and hate the sin and all the rest that we could talk about for hours the problem here is that there shouldn't be a self-satisfaction that's that's demonic saint anthony the great self-assurance i should say like i'm saved no he saved you from eternal death separation of soul and body whether you will have a resurrection unto eternity depends on your embrace of that salvation you're assimilation saint anthony the great who was the father of fathers the the greatest of the ascetics who every everyone in the world ran to and revered it's one of the great aesthetics of all time who clearly had been victorious over the passions have been freed of them through the miracles and all the rest that flowed from him and yet it says in the life as his soul ascended into heaven and the demons came and and and and craftily told him you have defeated us he didn't say yes i've defeated you what did he say not yet and why did he say that he never assumed anything even as his soul was ascending to heaven he never praised himself he never assumed he was uh you know in safety from pride safety from falling from grace so even then in all humility he didn't answer the crafty demons and say and say yes yes i i've i've defeated you so you see the whole problem here is the sociology of the protestants leads them to a delusion and the false sense of security and to not and and not understanding salvation as a continual assimilation and continue carrying it across a continual repentance repentance in greek does not mean one time i feel i feel bad now i i i changed my way and i embrace christ it's a continuous present in greek metanoite it's continuous it's a continuous orientation and a continuous simulation a continuous a ascent so that's the problem and god forbid that you feel this self's assurance and not feel that you have just begun saint cesarias the great ascetic who all feared he was faced with shine and when they asked him as his soul was the body holy father a word and he says i've i pray that i can make a beginning in repentance he's literally leaving this world and he says i hope i can make a beginning in repentance so this is the great ascetic witness of the saints with regard to this selfish self-assurance and and and idea that well i've arrived and i'm there and i don't need to repent it's totally different ethos uh the rogue court parrot question the rogue corps parish near me as in all slavonic and the sermon is in russian however the antiochus one is in english does it matter if i don't understand the liturgy well there's probably more to the question than just the language issue so if you wanted to ask me and give me a full picture of what's going on i could answer you just answering you on the question of language i think it's important you know the language absolutely i mean the father's the holy fathers thought it was important that you knew knew what was going on they didn't write things in a in a secret language nobody knew they didn't write things in you know aramaic and and and hope the greeks just go along with it everything was written for the edification of the faithful everything's written catechism their formation we chant services their catechitical nature they teach us as much as praise god so of course it matters but is that the only issue on the table are there other issues that you're not that also need to be considered i think there are i can't answer that and i can't answer i'm not talking about the antioch in jurisdiction or world court jurisdiction i'm talking about your personal you know situation on the ground with your parish or whatever it might be those things those are there's much more to it than just make a decision on the question of language alone but as it pertains to language of course we should understand what's going on in the church that's ideal and that's what we should shoot for might not be possible because of a variety of reasons might not be possible we need to be patient that's also a possibility it depends on the parish and what's going on in my parish some women cover their hair and others don't and even some of the women who cover their hair don't do it all the time why is this well i have no idea why those women don't do whatever they're doing i don't know why i can't answer why they're doing that it's kind of curious uh you think if they understand that they need to cover that they would always cover their head in church so why they do it sometimes in others that's a mystery to me too can't answer that do any orthodox church besides monasteries offer daily or vespers service i absolutely love vespers and would love to find a church that does it daily i'm antioch and i love my church but want more there are parishes they're probably rare but i know of them that they do daily services in greece and in america but they are more rare for a variety of reasons some of them are justified and some of them are not some of them are just priests don't do their their duty some of them that they really can't they're working full-time jobs or whatever it might be so it's really hard to say but it's a wonderful thing to want to be in church i hope you can find some place nearby i would say it's worth it to go to vespers if it's a parish that's not antioquia and you're antioquine i don't see why any priest would say don't go they're orthodox they're in communion we're all one church you should go to vespers next question if you see someone crossing their legs in church should you tell them yes absolutely how you should tell them is another question should you tell them yes now you might say a variety of things might prevent you from telling them immediately you might not have a very bold you know ability to hold with them you want to develop the relationship more you might want to you might consider a lot of things how you go about doing that but that we should help one another to be and understand piety that goes without saying we're going to bear one of those burdens we're going to pray for one another we're going to help one another if the people have great amount of pride and refuse to listen to a brother who's trying to bring in all humility and meekness trying to help them then you should be you should remove yourself i mean not yourself as a friend but don't persist don't insist right you're not the priest to tell her she has to not do that you're a brother in christ that wants to help her on the narrow path be tactful be discerning how you go about it but the question of whether we should help one another to understand the proper way to be in the temple of god absolutely it often times though it takes a lot of wisdom how to go about to do that and and that's very important is as important as telling them the truth about something father peter could you talk about the practice of general confession we see in some russian parishes right before communion versus having an in-depth long confession with your spiritual father well as has been shown in other texts written in previous days when that was more the case i think if you go back to the 60s and 70s and 80s my understanding is that this general confession phenomenon was even more the case and there were texts written in the those times against this practice many people call upon the example of saint john of kronstadt for this practice but there are exceptions and it seems to me his was a justified one first of all he was a charismatucos he was a charismatic elder he had gifts that i certainly don't have so to me for me to say i'm going to do what he did is rather undiscerning secondly he had a need he had a great need he had thousands of people that wanted to hear for him to the confession so when he did do that there was a grave need and so pastorally one could justify that but he also would call out people in the crowd and say you know occasionally you need to confess this i mean he had the gift from god we don't have that so his example is not a precedent for us so i don't know if that's what people are doing but that's not a precedent so generally it's been rejected as a general as a as a justified and good approach to the question of confession a general confession if we're talking about general confession in the temple where people are saying their sins that's one thing now there are there is a tradition even on athos for at certain times the elder to read the prayer of absolution over the whole brotherhood but where does that come from that comes from the fact that the brotherhood's the fathers are coming throughout the week to the elder and giving a what's called in greek exaggeracy a um revelation let's say of thoughts and of you know of things that's going on in their spiritual life so they're basically going several times a week to confess their sins and so then at the end of the time on a sunday usually he'll read the prayer over the whole brotherhood i think that's the origin of the athletic practice i don't think it's really a general confession in the same way that you're talking about so maybe there's been the confusion there i don't really know why and from where they're getting this idea that they should do general confessions when you could sit down with each spiritual son in most of these parishes they're not that big and you could confess them um so i don't know why if there's some massive political uh practical need i i would be surprised but in any case the ideal and the practice that i know is that you go to your spiritual father on a regular basis and confess to him and this is the way the church has done it and does do it and i think general confession is uh i don't know i don't know that much but i would say it's probably not it's not acceptable uh and it's not practiced by most saints in our day uh as a let's see question from keeping up with wd whatever it is as a as a catechumen do we confess every week or a long confession prior to your baptism okay so as a catechumen you don't go to confession on a regular basis in my understanding experience i've never heard that happening but you do make a long lifelong confession before baptism and that is essential and i've heard some places that doesn't happen that's not good that needs to happen before baptism and the prayer is read over you and it's one of these interesting practices before baptism which uh is is done in spite of the fact that the person is still to be initiated through baptism and it's uh it's it's done even for many people after baptism there's lifelong confessions given uh in different circumstances so that's my understanding um i if you were to go every week to your spiritual father and to confess i don't think that would be the practice that's done regularly i don't know why they would they would see that as desirable or necessary i mean you could go and talk to them every week and talk about your passions but to make it into a regular practice like you've already been baptized i don't see that my wife my son and myself and thrown home and eat it throughout the week that's very good that's very ancient and good practice my daughter has re has remained catholic hmm she also eats it as well well i would say that doesn't make any sense i mean you ask is she bringing condemnation on herself i would say the person at fault if there's going to be at fault here is the person who's orthodox and sharing it with her unfortunately and there's two reasons why i think it's a bad idea and number one is this false sense of being already accepted as an orthodox christian and participating in things that only orthodox christians participate in you heard me say earlier right instead of the gifts is for only those who could commune but are not communing so it's clearly not for somebody who's not in the church so we're doing something that's not traditional not practiced and shouldn't be done it doesn't make any sense because it's not for people who who are not community baptized not for those who are not baptized prismated communion in the church on a regular basis so it does it doesn't help her uh i think psychologically spiritually and it doesn't make any sense so why is she doing it um you should and i think this should be a frank discussion why are you doing this what do you think this is and why are you doing it and do you you know you should we would love for you to do this but to be an orthodox christian and that's that's what's presupposed here for the people who take antidote i know that's not practice in a lot of places today but there's no there's no real theological spiritual apology that i know of for a practice of giving unto their own orthodox i don't think there's much thought given to it i think it's done out of some kind of hospitality or something but spiritually theologically what is the justification i don't think there is one next question should we uh women only wear head coverings in church or technically are they meant for everyday life very good question thank you christina so this is a difficult uh one to answer because if you just go to the patristic text like saint john chrysostom in his day which i think it's a principle in principle it's applied throughout church history it's not something unique to his day i mean as i said you earlier people were in head coverings in the village in the 1950s and 60s and still do in many places in greece older ladies still do it all throughout the day they're very biased and uh in fact there's a couple books out uh ascetics in the world i think it is and you'll find some some women like this uh precisely like this they lived very pious they would wear their head coverings throughout the day as was the common practice up until so what i'm going to tell you is not something unique to saint john chrysostom's day when he interprets this whole passage and he talks about the passage of the apostle paul he does not make it only applicable in church and that was common common practice so if i were to say what is do you want to follow what saint john chrysostom says then yes you could wear it throughout the day having said that it's every good thing has to be done in a good way and the question is today in our society if you're working for instance at a corporation or you're working at a as a nurse or you're working whatever and your life is among all kinds of non-orthodox i think you could wear it i mean theoretically you could you could wear it and muslims wear it why couldn't the orthodox wear it but are you going to do it in a way that's going to be salvific what do i mean by that it's going to be a struggle it's going to be a ascetic struggle to wear a head covering throughout the day people will mock you probably orthodox christians among the first and they will be ironic about it and you will have thoughts inside you will be you know it'll be struggled spiritually and there's a danger that you could that somebody could fall into pride and say that i'm special i'm set aside i'm set apart nobody when you're the only one doing it in your community or your or your or your work or whatever it might be in your family it is a it is theoretically good but in practice it might be spiritually too much it might be too big of a struggle for you does that make sense i hope that makes sense i'm not i'm saying theoretically it's certainly possible it's praised by the saints in practice it's a something that will need a spiritual guide and you would have to you know come and you know talk about all your feelings and thoughts and all the rest to make sure that this is actually even though it's externally and theoretically correct in practice it's not a practice i mean every ascetic practice even though they're all theoretically good may not be good for you if i were to tell you uh you know it's really ideal that you do 400 frustrations a night or 200 or 150 and you say well father i can only do 20 and i said no no you have to do 150. that would be extremely problematic even though theoretically it's a good thing to do 150 frustrations so it's something similar in our day and age i don't say that you can't and i don't say that it's bad but i would say that it might be an aesthetic struggle that's too much for some people in our day and age and we need to be discerning about whether we can do it i don't think that should apply it to an orthodox temple i don't think there's any reason people should say well that same thing happens when i go to the temple then we're really stretching it here and we're talking about a secularization of the church that you know god help us in the temple it's very common among the orthodox around the world outside of secularized west to wear head coverings in church and it's very much possible and i think it's understandable i don't think anybody should doubt that but in the life daily it's a bigger struggle so you have to be up to the up to you know to the struggle uh orthodox freonisis i will keep names and specifics out of this what do i do if a deacon's son came to pasca in a dress prisoners were scandalized and i've already consulted with the priest do i just leave it now well first question how much prayer and pain of heart have you expended for this deacon's son who's wearing a dress that's the first thing secondly have you gone to the spiritual fathers and priests and everybody and what have they told you if they've told you that they've already dealt with it don't worry about it then i would say for the time being don't worry about it if they said there's nothing we can do and it's perfectly fine then i would say we got a problem a serious problem and it's indicative of things worse things that are coming down the pike and i would say that we need some spiritual heavy heavy hitters to come in and help us and maybe maybe you need to you know go to other people and start to i don't know there's a there's a variety of practical things you could do but it's going to take a lot of discernment if there's actually a defense of this or rationalization of this and people think it's okay then i i think we've got a problem i mean this it's it's one thing for me in my room to engage in sinful activity and to embrace a vision of an anthropology or a a an ethic which is unethical and unorthodox i mean i'm in delusion and i'm sinning and i need help but it's another thing for me to take that public and to the temple and to expect people to embrace that as perfectly normal i think now we have a level of pride and a level of delusion that needs to be addressed like there needs to be i mean certainly at that point we have an approach to the church into the community which is unacceptable and there needs to be correction but i'm not the priest and you're not the priest so it makes it difficult for the non-clergy who are in charge of the parish to do a lot of in you know direct intervention what you need to do is to make it clear that this if this is actually being defended you need to make it clear the priest that this is unacceptable that you are not in agreement and you need to um you know keep it an issue that needs to be dealt with not not um put under the rug uh but but the question of how precisely to deal with it that's really a question of discernment i can't speak to the specifics i don't know the situation but it needs to be dealt with if it's if it's being justified uh if they again if they said no we've dealt with it we've talked to them it's not acceptable then i would say go on and leave it you know you've done whatever you need to do pray for the person intently but you know intervene anyway i've seen also the greek practice of not confessing to their parish priests but only to the year of a monastery is that proper or not um in the greek practice in my experience in marathons in northern greece where i lived for 20 years the choice of a spiritual father is not determined by anybody but the person the parish priest does not get involved in directing the parish parishioners to go to this person or that person or to himself and no one no one supposes they could ever impose that on anyone so i don't see any reason why someone could not go to a monastery have a yard and go to confession to them the priest unless there's some grave issue that's being you know not been dealt with and it's affecting the community then i then he should get get in the car and go talk to the elder or go talk to the bishop or something but if the person just shows another spiritual father besides the parish priest that's not a problem i think the problem is when parish priests expect everybody to be their spiritual children that's a no basis for that and it's not healthy and nobody's going to do that it's good you have to freely choose the person right i want to be his spiritual side i it's a very personal thing and people search for years to find their spiritual father how could you ever impose that on anybody uh rita mcdonald's asked where do i go to get a spiritual father well you go to your parish priest if that's a one possibility of course to another priest in the area to a spiritual father from one of the monasteries in your area somebody who's far away it doesn't matter i mean i remember when i was looking as a new orthodox christian almost 30 years ago and i was looking for my spiritual father and i went to a wonderful bishop that i revered and i asked him to be my spiritual father and he said no and i thought wow what what's wrong with me like why can't i what have i done he said no no no it's it's just that i'm i'm not for you and i and i i don't know what information he got from above but it turns out that that was true and i found my spiritual father you know i'm not athletes but um so but i was searching for a couple years uh to find this with your father so it's not something you know automatic it doesn't you have to pray and ask god and search and visit visit uh monasteries that's often where people have the spiritual father in orthodox lands that's where people have their spiritual father they go to the monasteries in many cases i mean priests are also spiritual father for sure but it is very common for people who want to go to a monastery and have the spiritual father so that's what we got to do we got to search we got to search and pray and ask god to reveal it and visit and find somebody who's following the holy fathers who's on the narrow path who's living what he's teaching that's the kind of spiritual father you want don't go to just a parish priest because somebody said the parish priest has to be your spiritual father that may or may not be the case and nobody can impose that so keep looking pray and ask god to reveal somebody who is on the narrow path um doesn't have to be close to you not and it's not likely it will be in in many places in the western world today in english-speaking lands so we might have to accept that we're going to see him once or twice or three times a year or whatever and we'll have to write him letters and we'll have to call him up and things like that that's that's very very likely the way things are today question from uber n00b okay i was wondering because i'm new to it how is one select use myrrh oil at home what significance does it have to my spiritual struggle i use holy water but i'm also interested in myrrh okay so i'm not really sure which murr you're talking about there's two possibilities here the oil you say we have oil that comes from oil lamps of the saints we have oil that essentially is myrrh that comes from the weeping icons we have oil that comes from the service of the unction service where the oil is blessed and administered for the for during the prayers over the sick so i know which one are you referring to it sounds like you're referring to maybe the murder that's coming out of the various work wonder working icons and we put that on with our prayers when we have a special need when we want uh that we call upon the help of the mother of god we call upon the help of the saint of which the oil is coming from my father's ear from roses has oil from the oil lamp over his tomb or elder from here people are taking oil from his oil lamp over his tomb and they're there there's even on his tomb there's actually even a oil that you can take and dip and you can apply uh you know make a cross over your forehead people do that regularly so it's an extension of the veneration it's an extension of the way we ask god to assist us it's a physical like manifestation of that prayer and that and that associated with that saint or that icon or whatever it might be so you apply it to your forehead and you and you ask the prayers of the saint or the mother of god to assist you or god to have mercy on you and enlighten you so that's how you do that it's pretty simple uh do we conduct our prayer rule before divine liturgy on sunday absolutely except for the prostrations except for the prostrations all right no prostrations on sunday everything else we do father question from napalm platypus i love these names where people get these names father it is disrespect is it disrespectful to the cross to wear it during a workout or shower uh no i don't think it is no i don't see it as disrespectful unless it's going to be damaged then it's disrespectful but if you're just wearing it and you're doing your you know business or your whatever i don't think it's disrespectful now you might want to take it off from the shower just to protect it and not you know for whatever reason that's fine uh generally show respect uh if your conscience bothers you and you feel like you don't want to have it on when you work out or do it take a shower take it off i don't see it as you know problematic i think those things aren't sinful you know if they were sinful or if they were disrespectful or immodest then i would say yes but i don't necessarily see that's the case it depends you'll have to examine your conscience and how you're doing the workout or whatever okay can we prostrate on sunday in private prayer no we don't make prostrations on sundays in private prayer that's generally the rule i know that i haven't received and received from my spiritual fathers on sunday we don't do frustrations some people might say well what about the 50 days between pasca and pentecost we don't do them in services that's there's witnesses to that in the patriotic teaching i don't know of any witness to say specifically we don't do them at home but i know the opposite from spiritual fathers including elder ephraim when he would not want his monks going for a long period of time without frustrations because it becomes very difficult again after 40 50 days without frustrations first of all you're opening yourself up to bad things because prostrations are very good for you spiritually that let them go for 40 50 days is not a good idea in your private prayers that's my understanding there are people who say no you shouldn't do frustrations even at home during the possible season i don't have that teaching i do not receive that teaching from anybody including elder friend so i cannot embrace that but i'm not going to say that it you know it doesn't exist in the church just don't have it myself and don't see it as good a good idea uh what's the difference between the sabbath and sunday so the sabbath in the old testament was saturday right it was the day that the lord read his works it was the last day first after the sabbath sunday is the day of our lord and his resurrection so that's the difference in a nutshell between the two why why do we celebrate on different days than the jews well the jews don't celebrate christ and his resurrection and of course that's the fulfillment of everything ultimately right the resurrection from the dead is the trampling down of death and it's the victory over the devil and death and then it's cons it's confirmed so to speak in the in the ascension into heaven when the body that rose from the grave is now seated at the right hand of the father so they won't celebrate the resurrection obviously because they don't believe in christ that he's the christ and you go on i've heard sunday is named after the sun god well in english it is but in greek it's kiriyaki which is the day of the lord kirios is lord kiriyaki is the day of the lord all right so it's not named that in greek but in english unfortunately it was never changed from the pagan days before christianity came all right next question what is the greek word for the healthy self-forgetfulness hmm that's a good question i don't know if i can produce it for you on on the spot here um i don't know nothing comes to mind immediately but i don't know i i i made it in you see yeah maybe you know not having made this not having that's not really applying to yourself though so i don't know that's a good question i don't know if anybody else has an answer for that any greek speakers who remember nothing comes to mind right now for one term for that a weird question i was taught many years ago forgetfulness is a sin for someone like me who had adhd does that still apply uh so forgetfulness may be the result of a sinful lifestyle may be the result of a of a negligence of a mindlessness of a lack of prayer a lack of you know paying attention focused uh respecting people you know i i think it's i think it's uh not a good thing you know if i meet somebody and then five minutes later i can't remember their name that's not really a good thing is it so it's a missing of the mark in terms of brotherly love and mindfulness of my my neighbor uh i can justify it as many people do i'm forgetful but i don't think it's a praiseworthy i don't think it's a sign of regeneration it's probably a sign of a lack of love and a lack of attentiveness now having said that are there other reasons for forgetfulness that are not caused by people's sinfulness yes i think there probably is there's a variety of physical ailments perhaps and all the rest but i'm not a doctor so i don't know what to tell you about that but i would say there's two different ways that there could be sinfulness in terms of forgetfulness one is just the general fall and the effects of the fall and so in that sense it's not regeneration it's not theosis right god would can bring to bring the mind to many things if we have a very tight communion with him and the mind is uh you know extremely connected to the grace of god the wonderful things can happen but so in a general way one could say yes it's a result of a of sin in other words a missing of the mark of a fallen humanity that's different than say that my personal sins have caused this and i don't think somebody who has you know has some kind of ailment that that leads to forgetfulness for whatever reason they shouldn't consider it the result of their personal sins does that make sense one thing to generally we have results of the fall all over society right but it's one thing for me to through my own sins to bring about this that's a different thing so one could one could definitely not have done that and have forgetfulness through the general state of society and adhd could be the result of obviously factors that i didn't control or didn't want right through inheritance of things or the environment i heard a in a talk by bishop morpho bishop wells bishop neophotos of morpho that if you have fornicated you cannot become a priest is this true uh there is a canon in the church and a long tradition and it's observed by good spiritual fathers that if you are have been baptized chrismated and initiated into the life of the church and then fall into the sin of fornication you should not be made a priest yes that is a common teaching of many spiritual fathers uh if you if these sins happen before baptism no does not apply um i mean there are other aspects of this too we could talk about but that's the basic answer um there is a very minor view i think but does have some merit but i don't think it's the major view of most spiritual fathers and that is that the canon had in mind the canon that forbids people who've fallen into fornication to become priests had in mind that we were in small communities and this sin would have been therefore known and therefore the the legitimacy so to speak or the the the uh the honor and the prestige or the i don't know the right word here in english of the priest would have been damaged so he could not become a guide to the community if they knew and it got out that he had fornicated and followed this grave sin basically in other words the canon has to do with the witness to the people of god now it's been undermined by this sinful attitude the sinful activity and lifestyle and therefore this priest cannot stand as a father of these people he cannot stand to admonish them and to teach them so in this interpretation the main problem is the public witness and so some might say and i think this is the case in russia where they've done kind of a major economy uh for many who came out of communism they were baptized perhaps as babies secretly they didn't live the church's life at all they didn't even have any catechism they fell into fornication then when the church was legal they wanted to become priests and the bishops basically did a major economy and allowed them to become priests which is an unders it is somewhat understandable in terms of the economy but it is rather shocking that this could be a major like general amnesty that now becomes almost a rule i think that there's some danger there but it's a very unique situation in russia i mean frankly i i would be i if i was asked back then if i was a bishop in the church of russia i would say well were they really baptized or were they sprinkled let's go and baptize them and that would be one solution because many of those cases they were not properly baptized right it was very common in russia for them to be sprinkled or to have a little water poured over them they the latinization in terms of the understanding in the moscow patriarchate uh is my understanding is that it was pretty it was pretty extensive and also there was this major problem uh when they it became legalized the church became basically free again they were baptized in mass like hundreds of people and they would literally sprinkle them again not an orthodox practice in terms of baptism but i'm getting off the topic here so so there's that minor view that that that basically the problem is the witness of the priest and so if that is not known or if that was never known or if that was in some way totally not a part of the community where he's going to serve then it's okay for him to become a priest that's a minor view though and the vast majority of fathers i know say no it has to do with the sin itself and the state of the person um after this fall and so i mean elder philadelphus for instance says no under no circumstances should people who've fallen in fornication after baptism be made priests period and he even says something like you know if we're not a priest then it's the end of the world so be it i mean so there's there's kind of a fairly fairly strict stance in greek orthodoxy among the elders now among others in authority i think there's a general turning away from that patristic position and so there are many were many i hear bishops saying no problem will make you a priest even if you have fallen into fornication that's not the consensus of spiritual fathers and saints in my understanding next question does eo i guess that's eastern orthodoxy believe matthew 10 8 heal the sick cleanse the lepers raise the dead cast out of the devils freely receive freely give is it a command that should be obeyed by all bishops well which part of that is a command um i mean yes he's saying you will do this because of the grace of god and this will come out um but it begs the question is that something that's automatic because you're a bishop or priest or because they have the grace of god in abundance and by their prayers and all the rest so uh it should be it should be applied if one can and has that spiritual state but not every priest and bishop have the gifts to cleanse lepers raise the dead cast out devils is that something that's applied de facto with ordination no i've never seen that anywhere in 2000 years of christian history that it can be applied de facto in other words it's the synergy of the man with the grace of god that brings it about and the the apostles were in that synergy they were pentecost and all the rest they had they had the presuppositions it's not automatic you can't make automatically someone into a miracle worker right so in that sense when you say a command if that's what you mean that's not how things work in the spiritual life is it potential for that absolutely but one has to one has to work in synergy with the grace of god in their own life to become become worthy of that it's not an automatic it doesn't it's not like with ordination comes miracle-working that doesn't happen uh next question last week i visited saint john of shanghai san francisco but i didn't know how to pray to him as one properly praying to a saint so what is prayer it's communication it's opening up the heart and and and communicating with god so you're not praying to the saint as you pray to god as in other words it matters it matters what you consider the person you're praying to to be we don't consider saint john to be god but in god he's not god by nature but he's in god by grace right he's in the grace of god he lives because god is not the god of the dead but the living right everyone that is in god and lived in god and died and proposed as one in god continues in god and so he in god he hears our prayers in god he prays for us so you go to him and you ask him to pray you beg him to help you you you know draw close to him as if he was walking on the face of the earth right now and you were speaking to him that's how you approach him and you just like you ask for your brothers and sisters to pray for you you ask him to pray for you and we call it praying to him but not in the way we pray to god it's not the exactly the same way right it's obviously different anti-kimono different objects of of the prayer we do call it praying in the in use the same term but not exactly the same meaning i think that's how i want to answer that next question in is nationalism i think you want to say nationalism a sin seen jesus always said his kingdom is not of this world so i would say nationalism if we're going to define it as loving your your nation your people very close to patriotism is not a sin ethnophylatism is the term we use in orthodoxy where we have a destruction of the proper hierarchy and we have an elevation of the earthly identity above the the worldly or the uh otherworldly identity so we have we have i'm a greek orthodox right greek first second in other words there's a there's a destruction of the proper order of understanding ourselves as pilgrims in this world you can be a pilgrim in this world you can be you know in this this this valley of tears you can be passing by and understand yourself and live for the eschaton and live for the next world and love your nature nation people tribe those two those two things can co-exist as long as the hierarchy is proper the hierarchy is right so if you say is ethnophilism a sin yes it is because it's putting the messing up the hierarchy and putting first our worldly identity it's a secularization of the church not unlike the other kinds of secularization but if you say patriotism or nationalism if that's what you mean by it that's how i understand it usually then i would say no it's not a sin as long as the hierarchy is maintained does that make sense now if you want to say nationalism is the ethnophilism which is it's fine but it's just how do we define our term that's basically the question right uh drew says i've got a pentagram tattoo from my former life should i get it covered remove it or leave it you should remove it you should remove it as a sign that you reject that as a sign of repentance as a sign of cleansing that you will have this this this symbol carries with it some power it even in even in your thoughts alone it carries with it a power you remember the past and there was a time when you were beholden to this anti-christ reality and this symbolizes that and so you should reject that remove it repent of it and uh that would be a good thing for you spiritually next question uh michaia mikhail nikaya is that messianic uh thank you very much for the super chat very kind of you god bless you i've been orthodox since 2018 still new to the faith and i have a hard time with confession i'm a combat veteran i spent my adult years drinking and fornicating as a way to escape trauma how do i confess am i really repenting of it if i fall over and over all right so remember what we said there's two parts to the whole path to res to to restoring ourselves to communion with god it passes through repentance and confession so first and foremost we have to repent repent is not just remorse it's mainly a reorientation of our whole life so you have now reoriented yourself to a certain degree to being an orthodox christian you need to continue that reorientation you need to continue and it's going to take violence against the old man and if you were received i'm just going to go out on a limb here and say if you were received by chrismation well as you know as everybody should know by now i think that's an error in this day and age i don't think economy should be applied in the vast majority of cases because as i've said many times and i won't go into it there's no presupposition for economy when the baptism has been so uh undermined as and it doesn't exist among the heterodox either formally as a form as an external thing of course not essentially because mysteries don't exercise in the church so one issue might be unless you were received by baptism that that is uh that is uh that mistake is not going to assist you in your repentance i'm just going on a limb there and say maybe you were received by chrismation and that should be corrected maybe that's one of the reasons why you're having trouble not making progress i don't know um it now many people say economy is perfectly fine there's no problem and this idea that there needs to be the form presuppositions so therefore you know that's a bunch of nonsense father peter's saying because hey it's all the same okay i disagree but that's just one one one uh you know one person speaking but i think that's what the saints say and our elders say so consider that next the question is how much on the path of repentance are we what are we doing to remain on that are we helping ourselves or are we putting ourselves again in harm's way are we hating those circumstances that lead us to that sin uh you know are we going back again and again to the vomit if you're not actively praying fasting having a spiritual director going to him often it's very difficult to overcome those ingrained habits that we embraced with you know reckless with reckless abandon of course it's going to be a struggle of course it's going to take time and so but you need to have the full therapeutic program applied you've got to have the full 100 of the medicine given right so that's why i began with the question of baptism next spiritual father next fasting next or first of all prayer the jesus prayer this is a war against the passions in the old man of the devil who wants to keep you in enslaved so your path to health passes through deep and sincere reorientation return that's repentance and confession why is confession important because you've got to be humiliated to become humble you've got to become submit yourself to become obedient and like christ you've got to expose your wound in order to be healed you've got to be accountable and you've got to return and be accepted through the prayer of the priest the representative so to speak or the process who is angry of of god of christ and he's going to restore you not only let's say directly to christ but to the community to all the rest right confession is the doorway to return to communion and to be upon the one with the body of christ and one with not just christ but everyone else in the body of christ so it's two steps so to speak but it presupposes the whole therapeutic program if you rely on yourself and you don't take advantage of all the therapeutic methods you will not overcome the old man impossible you're too weak we're all too weak we have to have the grace of god and that's how the grace of god comes to us when we go through the whole therapeutic program including confession so confession is your ticket to health do not fear it expose yourself and you'll be healed as long as you hide that you don't give that over it you don't hate it you don't you don't you're not willing to humiliate yourself well that's pride and that pride is going to obstruct you from from having the strength to stand and not fall into fornication next question my wife and i have chosen to not have kids because of my wife's physical and mental health if i decide to become orthodoxy will this be an issue well first of all you will go to a spiritual father you go to an elder ideally and you'll submit that to him and you'll ask his guidance and he may give you a third way that you haven't considered he it may be that that'll happen and you'll continue on how you live with that again is going to be a spiritual father will have to guide you what will you do avoiding children and having sexual relations it's a bit of a problem in terms of community right you won't be able to commune often so those two things don't go together now if there's serious reasons physical mental and all the rest as you say then there is room for economy but this is a discussion you have to have a spiritual father you have to go to an elder in one of the monasteries or somewhere and and sit down and say here's my situation how should i live how should i approach spiritual life communion and all the rest given these things and i it may be though that if with the help of god with the grace of god the grace of the mysteries and baptism and the spiritual guidance that your wife may get better she might overcome any mental issues or physical issues that's what happens in christ miracles happen people change people have courage where they didn't have courage before they had anxiety now they have courage because of the grace of god and in god wonderful things happen but you've got to go with no preconditions but seeking god's will and trusting him implicitly in the church and in the spiritual fathers that's how people get healed and they're able to live differently you know and and and um have the blessings of the marriage the full blessing so i don't know what it is that's but i can't really answer all of it because there's much more to the question right much more of the situation than just yes or no there's no it's not a yes or no question here uh answer okay next question father peter can you explain to everyone that we do not refer to priests by their last name father here's but by their first christian name thank you very much yeah that's the tradition in the orthodox church for sure so you know father george father theodore that's how we talk in greek we don't say father zizis uh father theodore or these we don't say father the season we say father theodore um in english among anglicans i remember my father was an english priest for 20 years they do go by the last name but in orthodoxy we go by the first name in fact we also go by the first name for layman so they might say in english-speaking countries they might say mr johnson it's actually in greek kyrios you know if his first name was you know mark quirios marcos right mr mark is actually what we say it's not just priest it's also layman in greek now is it really bad that they call me father years not really not a huge problem but it's not the way that orthodox do things usually and i think it's you know preferable to keep the way the orthodox do things than just adopt whatever uh next question mark says should the word proud never be used in any situation outside is mean of the sin of pride so something like we're so proud of you according to orthodoxy um you know the context can every word is malleable right every word can have a double meaning you know uh but it is true that the vast vast majority of times i've ever heard it in the greek language it's negative there are people who say i'm proud of you in greek and they say right they say that they use the term pride and everybody knows they don't mean the sin of pride but they mean that i'm really happy i'm really enjoyed you know let's say something else though let's avoid that if we can let's say i'm very i'm overjoyed for you you've made me very happy i mean whatever there's a thousand ways we can express ourselves and not be misunderstood possibly by saying i'm proud of you right so yes i think it's it's preferable to avoid it if people use it in the right context it probably won't be misunderstood but it could be and so it's better to avoid it it's not a bad idea to avoid it can someone who has who was baptized in the methodist church as a child be baptized again in the orthodox church i had no confession when i was baptized no confession well as you may know we have many videos on this platform orthodox ethos where we talk about the question of reception of converts in the orthodox church and how that needs to be by baptism so the norm the accrivia the exactitude of the church especially when we were talking about uh all of these various heterodox confessions who have abandoned the form of of the mystery not now but hundreds and hundreds of years the west has abandoned immersion as the way of baptism that's what the word means baptism means immersion so just to begin with you weren't really baptized as a methodist because they don't immerse if you were immersed you're of great exception among the protestants of the methodist vast majority of them do what the papers do the papal protestants do and they pour a little war water over your forehead if you're a baby so that's not baptism baptism literally means immersion it means the plunge be plunged in the water you saw the images i showed you the way that one should be baptized that's not insignificant or unessential it's tied to the theology of the mystery it's essential for the mystery to be done in that way for the symbolism to be present and the meaning to be present we do damage and we do harm to our own understanding of the mystery when we allow for sprinkling and pouring over the head it's not what the church ever does not it doesn't make any sense to do those practices and to talk about regeneration death and resurrection that's not what's shown forth even aquinas admitted that the quan has said that's that does not it's not expressed in these other forms and then he says but doesn't matter well it does matter the orthodox it matters the orthodox we care we want the way the apostles and the lord taught us and the fathers did for 2000 years we don't want to depart from that we're undermining the whole thing when we accept such ideas such people in the church like methodists even baptists are only baptized with one immersion it's a departure from the form we do damage to the mystery and to the whole understanding of of the of the mystery of baptism and the people's life in christ when we ignore these things and receive them and call that baptism when it's not it's it's not baptism so of course you can be baptized as an orthodox christian if you've been sprinkled or poured upon as a methodist neither the form nor the spirit of god is was present in the methodist uh so-called baptism orthodox phronesis asked again i think second time if we were told not to do a lifelong confession because the baptism cleanses us of our sins should we still bring a lifelong confession to the priest so i will just have to answer you with the words of elder cleopa of romania of course you can go to live confession and multiple times and he encouraged people to do it multiple times and he saw the benefit for self knowledge after musia in a life confession and it it helped people to understand what they were who they were what they've become the for the spiritual father to understand better the ailments the spiritual ailments life confession before baptism is the norm and it can happen after baptism if the priest and the spiritual father uh you know bless it and accept it we have saints in our day who certainly brought believe that that was a good thing another question what advice would you give to someone who will be ordained a priest soon wow are we actually at three hours and 27 minutes i'm i'm amazed how quickly this live stream is gone unbelievable a lot of questions god bless you all for your questions it's good i think we're helping a lot of people out there who have similar questions so what would i give advice for someone who's going to be ordained of the priesthood well my main advice generally speaking as i've said on previous occasions is if you're going it's very good to become a priest and and to uh and to serve the church if you have a blessing or a spiritual father you don't have any obstacles to the priesthood you're prepared to be crucified by the world and by your own parishioners and their passions but i would say you've got to be ready and be determined to stay faithful and confess the faith in the in in in in the midst of these temptations and against the various isms of our day humanism violentism secularism uh you know formalism or you know these various isms that are that are affecting the church you've got to be prepared to be martyred to be confessor to be rejected uh make a decision that that's what i'm gonna do that's the role of the priest it's not going to be easy it's not going to be i'm not going to compromise for the sake of making secular worldly people happy now is there room for discernment always is there room for a you know uh retreating to the mountains at times and then coming back again uh to the field of martyrdom yes with a good spiritual guide you'll discern when that is when it's not but do not enter the priesthood today without a stark understanding of what we're facing and and a preparation to be crucified and to be rejected even by those in the church and that's the reality that we have today we have we're in a time that's not unlike the the time of iconoclasm or the time when aryanism ruled we have the rulers of this world and many of those bishops who unfortunately serve those rulers who are making imposing upon the people of god a strange and foreign mindset and heretical doctrines many in many cases so in that context in that in that in in this setting a priest who's going to save his soul is going to be one who's persecuted not one who has it easy not one who avoids conflict right so that's the main thing if you don't if you enter the priesthood today it's a good thing but don't enter it without a sober mind about what it means to be a priest today and be prepared to make the sacrifices and it might mean that you're going to be shoveled around to different parishes it might mean that you're going to be i don't know suspended one day god help us but if we confess to faith today and we stand again against the isms we will not be popular with certain people in the church and some of them are very powerful and that's just the way it is so that would be the main advice the other thing i would say is prepare yourself for the ordination just like somebody prepares themselves for baptism there's a process to prepare yourself before donation fasting before the ordination a few days intensified prayer uh setting aside as much as possible leading up to ordination you know things that are going to be distractions worldly pursuits don't justify yourself and say oh well before i'm ordained let's go do this you know worldly activity and things like that that's not a good way to prepare everything you do matters every little preparation every little prayer every little fast every little frustration every you know crying out from your heart all of it matters and it helps you to become a better priest and have a have a participation in the mystery of the ordination more intensely which will then aid you to be a better priest right it's all connected uh do not look at it legalistically or superficially but look at it essentially that you're before the throne of god you are going to petition before the throne of god for the souls and salvation of your flock and that that that means you need to be uh to have a certain boldness you know in prayer which means you're going to have to have an ascetic life and a fasting and prayer life that's going to be able to allow you that you know you're not going to stand bold if you're living in a worldly way and you know continuing a life that is fun and easy and blah blah blah right that's not that's not going to ennoble you embolden you to be able to new seed for the faithful uh and their salvation next question i know somebody who has walked away from the faith it has been a few years now ever since then he has been going through a lot of internal difficulties which seem to get worse each month advice well the advice has to be come back to your first love repent you need to be honest with him this is all related there's nothing an accident in life nothing is meaningless nothing is unconnected to the question of salvation everything is in god allows or he wills if you're wise and you're humble you'll see all these things as god's way of allowing you to fall and hit your head and break your face so that you wake up and come back to him nothing's an accident nothing's nothing's irrelevant so i would be very if i had the boldness and he allowed me to tell him i would tell him straight out what he needs to hear next question i think it's the last one from our brothers and sisters uh on youtube and facebook are we allowed to eat food other than prosper inside church buildings thank you for the question i'm glad you asked that uh no i would say that when it's not a question of allowing it's a question of is that a pious thing to do now occasionally there are special circumstances where that might happen but generally the only thing that i've ever seen people consume in the church building at the back of the church building i mean besides holy communion obviously is holy water coliva artoclassia all right things that are blessed in the temple can be consumed in the northeast or the exxon arthritics or the back of the church otherwise why would you sit in the church and eat food on what basis and why it doesn't seem to be a place for that doesn't seem to be a pious thing to do i think it's problematic all right we are done with those questions we have 21 other questions over at crowdcast but it's already three hours and 40 minutes so we're gonna have to postpone those questions to thursday all of you asked questions in crowdcast thank you very much we will get to your questions coming up this thursday so come back and be with us on thursday if not you can always jump in and and find them you know it's very easy it's a great thing about crowdcast and our question answer sessions is that you don't have to come back and listen to all the questions try to find yours you can go right to the question hit the button and it takes you to my answer that's a great thing you can find hundreds and hundreds of answers over the last two years through the crowdcast uh platform uh and so you know for what it's worth if you've got a lot of questions and you want them answered join our crowdcast platform our patreon platform and then go back and just go down the list of questions hit the button and you can hear your answer or at least some attempt at an answer based on our church experience god bless you thank you for your participation tonight i hope it's been beneficial and helpful for all of you look forward to your comments on social media i look forward to you coming over and joining us on patreon and generally uh spread the word and all the rest you know you know the usual stick thank you very much god bless uh we'll uh um see you on tuesday for our next installment of the book of revelation we're on number lesson 11 and we're getting into the middle of the second chapter and i look forward to see you on tuesday for that all of you who are following us for the book of revelation otherwise thursday night question answered god bless you thank you for joining us good struggles god be with you [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Orthodox Ethos

Views: 46,650

Keywords: Orthodox, Church, Christian, practice, orthopraxia, orthodoxy, confession, communion, repentance, elder, priest, baptism, memorial services, prayer, prostration, guide, spiritual father

Id: 4BV0SBo3bGw

Length: 217min 59sec (13079 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022