Gladsome Light Dialogues – An Orthodox Blog
A journey through our Orthodox faith as we live it every day
Beloved in Christ‚
Glory be to God!
I am very happy to let you all know that we have finished the text revisions to the Paraklesis to the wonder-working icon of the Theotokos Pantanassa from the Monastery of Vatopedi on the Holy Mount Athos.
The text’s meter was updated to better fit the various traditional prosomia. Additionally also find attached a Byzantine music setting‚ inspired from the traditional melodies.
May the intercession of the Theotokos Pantanassa always be with you.
Before we start, I want to qualify my words. This article is just a personal reflection, sparked by conversations I had with a few good friends of mine, to whom I am very grateful. It is not meant to convince anyone, nor to make a dogmatic or political stance, just my two cents for what they are worth.
The pandemic that has engulfed the world in its tiny viral claws has ignited a very vivid discussion in the Orthodox Church, regarding the way we distribute Holy Communion. As scientists, secular governments are attempting, in some places, to impose a change to our centuries old tradition of distributing the Body and Blood of Christ with a silver spoon, the Church is also trying to give a good response to this… Continue reading
The First Sunday of Lent, also known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy, celebrates the restoration of icons in their proper place in Churches and in the houses of the faithful at the 7th Ecumenical Council in Nicea (787). The question immediately arises: why is it not called the Sunday of the Holy Icons? What makes icons so special that their restoration is equated with the triumph of Orthodoxy?
I will first answer the question briefly: icons are Orthodoxy and Orthodoxy is an icon. Let me now explain.
Prior to vesting for Divine Liturgy, the priest and deacon take together the ritual of “kairos”, a ritual of preparation meant to transfer us from linear time, chronos, into the… Continue reading
“This is a great mystery, and I take it to mean Christ and the church”
(Ephesians 5:32).
Marriage is a beautiful thing. I have been married for 25 years and I cherish every minute of it. I know however that many do not share the same experience. Some say that marriage is what you make of it, but the Church insists that there is an intrinsic goodness in marriage. Marriage is good because not because we humans give it some value, but because God Himself presents it to us as good and useful: “man will leave his mother and his father and will cleave to is wife and the two should be one flesh.” This… Continue reading
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
Beloved in Christ,
Before we start discussing anything, we have to recognize that there is a difference, an enormous difference, between the state of Creation before the Fall and after the Fall. We also have to acknowledge that we only know, through our senses and through our rational knowledge, the formal, the fallen world. All we know about the state of the cosmos, before… Continue reading
“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’” (St. Anthony the Great)[i]
Beloved in Christ,
The raging war that is going on in our culture for some time has at its center the understanding of man and his relationship with the Divinity, if one even recognizes one. In other words, it is a problem of anthropology. To understand this, according to the well-known Christian Orthodox bioethicist, Tristram Engelhardt, of blessed memory, one “ought [to] acknowledge that the[se] disputes […] are located in a fundamentally religious conflict: a conflict between a traditional Christian… Continue reading
Every New Year countless resolutions are sworn into completion: I want to be more fit, I want to lose weight, I want to quit smoking, I want to speak Spanish, and so on. Most of these ambitious dreams, however, remain just that, dreams left behind together with the prepaid fee for the gym program that never happened.
I, for one, have always enjoyed taking the challenge of learning a new language and so I’ve been trying to learn proper Greek for a while but, somehow, the mastering of this tongue continues to elude me, despite my best efforts. I even prayed for it with no success, well, it was mostly my fault. See, many years… Continue reading
On Simplicity
A couple of days ago, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, a very accomplished Byzantine chanter, about the interpretation of various pieces of liturgical music. During our conversation he made a comment that stuck with me: it is actually easier to manage a virtuoso interpretation than to chant a simple, yet profound, rendering of the same hymns. The reason he said is that initially the chanter has a zeal to learn all the complicated items, to discover all the aspects of the music, but later on, when he understands that this is not regular music, but liturgical music, and, when he is finally able to join… Continue reading
In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen!
Your Eminence, Your Grace, Reverend Fathers, Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Before we start discussing anything, we have to recognize that there is a difference, an enormous difference, between the state of Creation before the Fall and after the Fall. We also have to acknowledge that we only know, through our senses and through our rational knowledge, the formal, the fallen world. All we know about the state of the cosmos before the fall is through the glimpses of revelations given to the prophets and the Fathers. What we know now as the world, however, is not all there is and, definitely… Continue reading
Lent is upon us and as we start cleaning our fridges of the food that we feasted upon until this point, we also start a much deeper interior cleaning of our inner being to prepare our souls for the joy of the Resurrection of our Lord.
Every year though, Lent looms over as a big and scary thing, mostly because it is something that stretches us to our limits. How much should I fast? How long can I resist standing? How many prostrations I should do? How many services are there to attend? Is it Pascha already? As thoughts like this pass through our minds we boldly move ahead with the discipline of fasting and the heightened rhythm… Continue reading