Last night we drove to New Jersey to visit Fr. Elias Bitar and the St. Vlad’s seminarians. Seeing them was great fun. Most of them I hadn’t seen since Antiochian Village.
I brought along a camera, but sadly I forgot it in the car. I did wind up with some shots of my fellow Tikhonarians, though.
Here […]

Here at the seminary, dorm students are required to attend church every morning. We can attend either daily liturgy at the monastery or “morning prayers” at the seminary chapel. Morning prayers starts later and finishes sooner. Someone reads a bunch of prayers, we sing a few troparia, we hear the epistle and Gospel. Most people […]

After church Sunday I had an hour to stroll around the grounds here and take pictures. At St. Tikhon’s, the seminary is on the lower side of Cortez Road, and the monastery is above the road. I started at the dorm:

From our doorstep, here is the view of the back side of the building where […]

I’ve been trying to add some posts, since I went so long writing nothing. For a few weeks I got carried away with a paper on St. John Cassian. It was supposed to be four pages, double-spaced, and my outline was five pages, single-spaced. I had about twenty pages written as of last week, and […]

καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν,
ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν.
The Greek of the Lord’s prayer is not “forgive us as we forgive,” but rather “forgive us as we have forgiven.” This is a harder word, recalling Jesus’ command about worship: “ἐὰν οὖν προσφέρῃς τὸ δῶρὸν σου ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον κἀκεῖ μνησθῇς ὅτι ὁ […]

Last weekend most of the Antiochians were at St. George Church in Allentown, where Bishop THOMAS ordained Andrew to the deaconate. Axios! I had the pleasure of taking pictures.

καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός Γενηθήτω φῶς.
εἶπεν δὲ Μαριάμ· ἰδοὺ ἡ δούλη κυρίου· γένοιτό μοι κατὰ τὸ ῥῆμά σου.
dixitque Deus fiat lux.
dixit autem Maria ecce ancilla Domini fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.
God spoke His Word and the world was made.
Mary spoke her word and in her womb was formed God the Word.
Upon His word the heavens […]