In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Today’s Gospel from Chapter 9 of St Matthew concerns the healing carried out by Christ through the expulsion of a demon. What can we learn from this Gospel? First of all, we should note that the healing performed by Christ in the
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“Ashes to ashes and dust to dust” – What About Cremation?
Cremation Introduction “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust” is a common phrase we hear associated with funeral practices. This first appeared in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer in 1549. The phrase “dust to dust” has some biblical origin from Gen. 3:19 and Ecclesiastes 3:20 but the words “ashes to ashes” do
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Low Cost Orthodox Funeral Options – Fr John
Christ is Risen! I wish to write you in the brightness of the Paschal season about the unfortunate topic of cremation. There doesn’t ever seem to be a “right time” to mention it, so I will take this season of joy to describe, in brief, our funeral practices, and to say that as an
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A Scriptural Defense of Cremation? – Fr. Stephen Powley
In the town where I live, funerals have become rather rare. I hear this is true throughout our country. People now have a “Celebration of Life” with lots of pictures of the deceased person and sometimes a cremation urn will be present. Cremation has become the norm for most Christians in our country. It
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Christianity is Materialist!
“My faith, finally, is that if I am canceled by the power death has in our world, then God’s greater power can overcome it.” (John Garvey, Death and the Rest of Our Life, p. 78) On my first visit to Armenia in 1990, I visited the home of Anahid and Kevork Oynoyan. They had lost their twelve-year-old
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On the Question of the “Toll-Houses”
Introduction. A number of poor scholars and pseudo-scholars alike have, over the past several decades, made a case against the Orthodox Church’s teaching on life after death, and especially the “toll house” image used by some Fathers and in many of our worship services. Misrepresenting the Fathers, ignoring liturgical and theological evidence, and overstating their
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What Happens The First 40 days After Death – St. John Maximovitch
Limitless and without consolation would have been our sorrow for close ones who are dying, if the Lord had not given us eternal life. Our life would be pointless if it ended with death. What benefit would there then be from virtue and good deed? Then they would be correct who say: “Let us eat
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PARALYZED ICONOGRAPHER SERGEI KOZLOV: “MY DISABILITY IS AN INVALUABLE GIFT FROM ABOVE”
An accident … Sergei is totally paralyzed except for his head, neck and shoulders. By our hero’s own admission, nothing remained for him but to learn how to do something with the muscles that still had some potential for movement. This desire proved to be enough to find his calling in life. His sole
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HOW WE TREAT THE LIVING ICONS OF CHRIST: HOMILY FOR THE SUNDAY OF THE LAST JUDGMENT
How would you respond to someone who destroyed or defaced a picture of one of your loved ones? You would probably be very upset with that person, for how we treat images of people indicates what we think of them. If we dishonor someone’s picture, we dishonor that person. But if we treat images with
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MIRACLE ON ATHOS: INCORRUPT BODY OF ASCETIC FOUND
A miracle has occurred on Mt. Athos—the body of a deceased monk has been found to be without any signs of corruption and not emitting any foul smell, a month and a half after his repose. The deceased monk Fr. Stephen labored in the skete of Kavsokalyvia for forty years. Fr. Stephen led an
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