Category Archives: church

The first light and the first song.

November 7, 2024church, feastsArchangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers, Icon Reader, seraphim, St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Theophanes the GreekGretchenJoanna

Seraph – Fresco by Theophanes the Greek, 14th century

From the Akathist to Jesus Conqueror of Death, composed by St. Nikolai Velimirovich on Pascha 1923 — Kontakion Nine, “The Choir of Seraphim”:

“We are the first light of Thy light and the first song of Thy voice; all the angels’ tongues together cannot express the glory and light of the seraphim, just as we seraphim cannot express Thy glory and radiance, Thou only begotten One, Beloved of the Father and the Holy Spirit. Among seraphim Thou art Seraph, among cherubim Thou art Cherub, among angels Thou art Angel, among men Thou art Man. Thou art all in all; and since Thou art all in all, Thou art servant of all and Lord of all; therefore, we who rule countless worlds below us serve in humility amid the unburning flame of the Divinity of the Trinity, carrying Thy love downward to Thy creature and the love of the creatures upward to Thee, singing the triumphant hymn: Alleluia.”

Last year for the Feast of Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers, I shared the songs that St. Nikolai gives to the Angels and Archangels. But I’m not sure I’ve posted a link to this article before: “The Divinely-Revealed Appearance of Angels in Icons.” It is so full of the mystery and glory of angels, as they reveal God’s great love toward us, that my heart was near to bursting from considering a small part of it.

This is a good day to join with cherubim, seraphim,
and all the ranks of angels as they sing
praises to the Holy Trinity.

The falling asleep of Christ’s mother.

August 14, 2024church, feasts, iconsFeast of the Dormition, Theotokos, Virgin MaryGretchenJoanna

The truth of honey and grapes.

August 5, 2024church, nature, quotesbeehives, bees, Feast of Transfiguration, Fr. Ted Bobosh, honey, honey blessing, honeycomb, monasteries, smells, vineyardsGretchenJoanna

It’s eleven years !! since I wrote this post at the Feast of Transfiguration, and focused on honey and bees. Since then I’ve posted several times about various aspects of the feast, and now I’m going to return to this one focusing on honey, that marvelous substance in great abundance all over the earth. Who can believe it? Only God could have thought of such a food. I’ve updated the following with some bee photos of my own, and kept my favorite honey pictures:

My parish is lucky enough to have our own vineyard right behind the church. This is very handy on the Feast of Transfiguration; at the end of the liturgy we can process out the doors and around the vineyard, to bless the grapes. It’s traditional to bless grapes or apples or any fruit, really, on this day.

Earlier on the feast day morning people brought into the church baskets of fruit and herbs and flowers. I carried a wooden bowl of blueberries and peaches. While we sang and communed and focused on the main event being commemorated, the fruit waited. The incense was particularly sweet that day, and I didn’t notice the smell of the beeswax candles as much as I usually do. Though I could see basil in a couple of the baskets, I didn’t catch its aroma either.

At the end of the service, with the prescribed prayers for the event, our priest (and all of us) thanked God for all His bounty, and then he sprinkled holy water over the representative sampling.

He explained to us that this is not a superstitious rite we perform, using holy water to do magic on the fruit. When we bless anything in this way we do not make it into something other than what it is, but ask God to reveal it to be what it has always been.

Whatever created things we are talking about, they have always been meant by God to bring us into communion with Him. The service of blessing of fruit brings our thoughts back to Paradise, and the right and good use of the fruits of the earth that God has given us. We are reminded of how in the beginning God made Adam and Eve to be stewards over the Garden of Eden; human beings were called to exercise a loving and thankful dominion over the earth.

But we by our sin have instead caused destruction on the earth. Mankind more often than not has overused, abused and consumed in perverse ways the gifts of the Creator. Personally, I often gobble my food and eat without attentiveness to Him.

We have prayers for the blessing of bees and beehives and honey, too, usually in a separate service. Around here it’s August 1st, but I found pictures of honey blessings in Bulgaria where they do it dramatically on February 10 (see the bright cross picture down the page).

People like to take pictures of little girls and honey, I was happy to discover, and I am posting some of them here. The Russian ones are from Optina Monastery, and the Oregon photos from the Facebook page of New Martyrs of Russia Orthodox Church.

Father Ted Bobosh has posted a large photo collection of bees and other pollinators, along with quotes about bees and Orthodox prayers for them. Just looking at the pictures will likely make you burst into prayer, too. Here is one of the prayers he posted:

O God, who knows how to work benefits through human labor and irrational living things, You instructed us in your loving-kindness to employ the fruits and works of the bees for our needs. Now humbly we beseech Your majesty: Be pleased to bless the bees and increase them for the profit of the human race, preserving them and making them abundant. Let everyone hoping in Your majesty and Your boundless compassions, and laboring in the care of these living things, be counted worthy to receive abundant fruits of their labors and to be filled with heavenly blessings in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is due glory, honor and worship unto ages of ages. Amen.

The photo above is from my church on Transfiguration, baskets of all kinds of fruits of the earth waiting for the prayers of blessing. Some of them were inspiring in the variety and arrangement of items, but one of my favorite baskets is the big one in front, full of apples picked just that morning.I don’t eat much honey these days, but I get a whiff of it in the candles every Sunday in church, and I can imagine the heady scent emanating from these tables laden with jars and bowls and plates of honey.

Doesn’t it just tell you something about our God, how sweet He is, and how extravagantly generous, that He would give us something as intense and rich as honey? The bees, of course, are also in the business of pollinating the fruit. The whole Creation and its interconnectedness is reflected in the Church and in our salvation history, all of a piece and orchestrated in love by our dear Father God.

Ascension, looking toward Pentecost….

June 13, 2024church, feasts, historyAlbrecht Dürer, Ascension, Book of Jubilees, Jonathan Pageau, Pentecost, Peter Brueghel the Younger, podcasts, Richard Rohlin, Tower of BabelGretchenJoanna

Today was Ascension Day for the Eastern Orthodox. During his homily our pastor drew our attention to the fresco we could see behind him, of Christ ascending, with the disciples looking up at him, 40 days after his resurrection. He said that in our temple that event is depicted above the altar as a reminder that in the Divine Liturgy we also ascend to Heaven. The icon shows what St. Luke tells in the first chapter of the Book of Acts:

“The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. To these He also presented Himself alive, after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.

“And gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, “Which,” He said, “you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

“And so when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, ‘Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.’

“And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was departing, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them; and they also said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.'”

St. Paul mentions our own situation when he writes to the Ephesians :

“God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him
in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”

In our daily prayers, we no longer start with the Paschal Troparion, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life,” but replace that line with the Troparion of Ascension:

Thou hast ascended in glory, O Christ our God,
and gladdened Thy disciples with the promise of the Holy Spirit.
And they were assured by the blessing
that Thou art the Son of God, and Redeemer of the World.

In only ten days we will come to Pentecost, and return to the usual beginning, “O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth….” But for now, we are with the disciples, waiting for the Spirit, Whom Christ said would “come upon” them.

^“They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’

^“Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city.When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James.They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”

In anticipation of Pentecost, I might revisit the history of that feast in the Old Testament, and in the Book of Jubilees, which Richard Rohlin and Jonathan Pageau discuss in two podcasts, which are also about the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, and about the Tower of Babel. What — are all these connected? Yes.

Pentecost is traditionally considered an inversion of the curse of Babel. I heard some of these thoughts at the Symbolic World Summit I attended earlier this year, but it is a lot to stretch my mind toward. To consider how “the confusion of tongues is resolved,” explained by a philologist like Rohlin — I have to say, it reveals God’s glory, and His wonderful plan through the ages.

Here are the two podcasts, if you want to check them out:
The Tower of Babel with Richard Rohlin
and
The Tower of Babel Part 2 with Richard Rohlin