Byzantine, Texas

They should have released this story for Halloween. Spooky stuff that reminds me of the lamp shades and other items made during World War II. LONDON ( CNS ) -- A book bound in the skin of an executed Jesuit priest was to be auctioned in England. The macabre, 17th-century book tells the story of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and is covered in the hide of Father Henry Garnet. The priest, at the time the head of the Jesuits in England, was executed May 3, 1606, outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London for his alleged role in a Catholic plot to detonate 36 barrels of gunpowder beneath the British Parliament, an act that would have killed the Protestant King James I and other government leaders. The book, "A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings Against the Late Most Barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit and His Confederates," contains accounts of speeches and evidence from the trials. It measures about 6 inches by 4 inches, comes in a wooden box and will be auctioned Dec. ...

On this feastday to the apostle Andrew I choose to pray for church unity. O Lord Jesus Christ, who said unto Your Apostles, "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you," regard not our sins, but the faith of Your church, and grant unto her that peace and unity which are agreeable to Your will, who live and reign, God, forever and ever. Amen. O God the Abba of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy division; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Creator of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and mouth glorify you; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Our kids generally love their icons. If we let them, I know of two who would sleep with them. See Daniel pictured with his. On the average day Daniel will ask for his icon to be taken down so he can can walk around and kiss it. On the bubble test scantron sheet of life I think I get 200 points in the obligatory section of "taught kids about icons" next to name, social security number, and school code.

The wife and I have a regular conversation about how to help the kids be open to the religious life. To that end we try to find movies in support of that theme. Two personal favorites are Lilies of the Field and The Trouble with Angels (which I type as the trouble with "angles" no less than three times). We also try to get as much exposure to religious as is possible. Our oldest two are "volunteered" for every choir, bell ringing, liturgical task that presents itself. Next week our girls will be going with their mother and a homeschool group to meet some nuns that are visiting the area. Then early next year I'll be taking our son to a Coptic monastery down south. All of this is nice of course, but I am often reminded that it is the example set by the parents that will make the most difference (St. Monica and St. Emily come immediately to mind). It's rather easy to act in religion like a stick shift. Vroom...it's Sunday let's get to church and light...

The grandparents did this for our kids. Go take a look here .

As promised, the pictures from the Metropolitan's visit have started to roll in. I remind the reader that we have five children that bumrush the nave every Sunday. As a result of either their cuteness or the congregation's charitable hearts our two youngest are more often with someone else than with us. The two year old has some favored families that she samples (walks, skips, crawls, spins) throughout the liturgy. The 11 month old gets handed around often as well. Here she is with one of those lucky few who gets some baby time along with the Metropolitan. :)

In writing about today's feast I defer to Abbot Joseph, superior of Holy Transfiguration Monastery (aka Mt Tabor Monastery), a Byzantine-rite Ukrainian Catholic monastic community in Redwood Valley, CA. His blog is Word Incarnate . Today we celebrate the feast that is known in the Byzantine tradition as the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple. Many saints of the Old Testament, and a few of the New, have entered the Temple in Jerusalem, but we don’t have feast days for any of their entrances into the Temple.What is it about Our Lady’s entrance that makes it special enough to merit a solemn feast day? I think we have first to understand what “entrance” means in her case. It’s not simply a matter of stepping over the threshold into the building. Thousands of people, both good and bad, have done that in past centuries, with no special effect or fruit of it, outside of what God might have done in a hidden manner in their souls. But Mary’s entrance has a deeper meaning. Let us ...

Looking at the saint of the day "Gregory the Decapolite" I wondered if he had lost his head (decapitated), sat on something strange (like a stylite), or lived somewhere in particular (Athonite). It seems he, somewhat of a letdown here, that he was from Decapolis. Wikipedia: The Decapolis (Greek: deka, ten; polis, city) was a group of ten cities on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire in Jordan Syria and Palestine. The ten cities were not an official league or political unit, but they were grouped together because of their language, culture, location, and political status. The Decapolis cities were centers of Greek and Roman culture in a region that was otherwise Semitic (Nabatean, Aramean, and Jewish). With the exception of Damascus, the "Region of the Decapolis" was located in modern-day Jordan, one of them located west of the Jordan River in Palestine (modern day Israel). Each city had a certain degree of autonomy and self-rule. Here is his history from the Gr...

In a more perfect world I would be posting a long treatise on the Metropolitan's festive visit to our parish (his first no less). There would be pictures abounding and I'd have to break it all up into multiple posts. Instead I managed (as I do every year before the holidays) to get sick. My wife and I are redoing our house after a failed heating element in our dishwasher slowly destroyed the entire kitchen, almost all the flooring, and a good deal of trim without our knowing it because the water flowed under everything. Only after it had made its way through the kitchen island did we notice and get immediately evacuated out of the house. With the house now almost finished we decided to sleep there overnight and I awoke after a night of ingesting dust and other particulate to feel like crud. So on Sunday morning my wife taped a funnel to my mouth and we started throwing medicine down my gullet willy-nilly in an attempt to medicate me into a vertical and ambulatory state. It wor...

Rome, Nov. 14, 2007 ( CWNews.com ) - Talks between Catholic and Orthodox theologians, held in Ravenna, Italy in October, produced a framework for agreement about the primacy of the Pope, according to a report in the Italian daily La Repubblica. The top Vatican representative at the Ravenna talks has cautioned that a 46-paragraph final document approved by the participants should not be seen as a dramatic step toward Orthodox acceptance of the Pope's authority, since it does not resolve questions about the nature of papal authority. Cardinal Walter Kasper (bio - news), the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, told a Vatican Radio audience that "the real breakthrough is that for the first time the Orthodox were ready to speak about the universal level of the Church." I still find it an amazing step forward that this happened; can't wait to read it. The 46-paragraph document approved at the Ravenna meeting-- which is due for release on November 15-- ...

BEMA (an excellent blog, but not updated nearly enough!) has some information on the upcoming fast complete with recipes and reminders on the days before the Nativity of Our Lord. When You Fast: Nativity Fast Traditions for Byzantine Catholics The Byzantine Catholic Church invites all to participate more fully in the central mysteries of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through her calendar of feasts and fasts. The feast of the Nativity of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ (Christmas, December 25) is one of the great feasts of the Church year, celebrating the coming or advent of the Messiah (which in Hebrew means “He who is anointed by the Spirit” or in Greek, Christos), Jesus Christ. Christ was born into the world through the Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary to offer us the wondrous gifts of salvation and theosis, our transformation into the likeness of God by sharing in His holiness through the energies of His grace. Through the mystery we celebrate in the Nativity, we too are invited to ...

The Chosen Keyboard amused me this morning. As someone who has to remember keyboard layouts for Japanese and Greek, it might be worth buying different keyboards with different sticker sets. :) The Chosen Keyboard sticker set is a real mitzvah! Just peel and apply to any gentile keyboard for the ultimate Hebrew hardware makeover. So easy, even my idiot son-in-law could do it. If you schmutz it a little, don't kvetch, they're easy to move. Warning: This keyboard does not work on Saturdays.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ec-home I just created a forum (with 4 members already). If you're a homeschooler or interested in homeschooling, please go take a look. Forum Description : A group for discussion about and support of those currently homeschooling or those interested in doing so. This group is targeted at Eastern Christians of virtually any flavor (Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East, etc.).

Notice that Mao is not looking down on us, but up at us. Washington DC, Nov 8, 2007 / 10:25 am ( CNA ).- Congressman Thaddeus McCotter(R-MI), Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, denounced a reported Chinese ban on Bibles during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. He introduced a Congressional Resolution condemning such government restrictions on Christianity and all religions. "As the world stumbles toward the communist propaganda extravaganza labeled the Beijing Olympics, somewhere Chairman Mao is looking up at us and laughing ," he said. In a Wednesday speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives the Congressman cited a Catholic News Agency report. "According the Catholic News Agency Bibles and all other religious symbols are among Communist China’s list [of] athletes’ prohibited objects due to security concerns." CNA initially reported that Bibles would not be allowed into the Olympic Village. A later report revealed contradictory policies ...

For those readers who have been with me for a while, you will remember that I teach some of my kids classes (namely: religion and Greek). On reading the sometimes hard to find Christ in Eastern Christian Thought by John Meyendorff last night I mentioned to my wife that the best way to teach kids otherwise boring material is to mention a heresy. She gave me that look; the one which requests prompt elaboration. All husbands are dutifully nodding with understanding. Some aspects of religious instruction bore children. To allay boredom you can give them little craft activities, but I have always found suspect splitting a child's attention with more engaging activities. One exception is doing activities that reinforce learning...paper armor of God, singing something related from the divine liturgy, finding an icon to color that deals with the same topic, etc. Another tactic is to give breaks. I find that boys want to keep talking about cartoons or arguments they had with their siblings...

So I've had a few moments to ponder the question raised in the last posting on whether the ideas found in the pyramid of fulfillment leading to happiness are kosher with the life of an orthodox Christian. After I have taken all the mental tangents, removed all the flowery scholastic prose, and prayed about it a bit, it comes down to this: A life seeking holiness - a taking on of the Holy Spirit, a following of the holy commandments, and a participation in the works of the Church - will lead to a happiness. I doubt very much it is the self-satisfied happiness of someone who sits on their couch watching the game with pants unbuttoned having finished Thanksgiving dinner, but it is a happiness that comes with a closeness to He who is beyond being and the good by which all good things merit their goodness. Self-actualization assumes that after other things have been met that a self-actualized person will have: morality, creativity, spontaneity, the ability to solve problems, a lack of p...

Alive and Young had that funny picture posted. It brings up a very complex topic. "Man has an internal, natural, drive to become the best possible person he can be." Two problems arise immediately to my mind. 1. We are a people. Not independent beings, alone and existing at varying levels of "healthiness." 2. There is an implication that fulfillment will naturally make people good. When I was in high school, the pastor gave a sermon to the student body on some undated Friday which I will summarize. "Many people think of children as little angels. They look at children and assume some sort of innate cherubic purity that time sullies. You'd be wrong. We have to push civilization into children. The bible asks us to raise our children up in the faith from an early age, and with good reason. Children will steal, hit, scream, and act in many many other unsocial ways unless directed to do otherwise." Do we have a right to happiness? Does happiness mark a per...