Byzantine, Texas

( ROC ) [machine translated] - At the meeting of the Holy Synod on December 29, 2022 (Journal No. 131), the texts of the following prayers were approved for home reading: to the Most Holy Theotokos about the soldiers on the battlefield; mother to the Most Holy Theotokos about a warrior on the battlefield; to our Lord Jesus Christ about a soldier wounded on the battlefield; mother to the Most Holy Theotokos about the healing of a warrior who was wounded on the battlefield; mother (relatives) to the Most Holy Theotokos about the deliverance of soldiers (warrior), in captivity of beings (existing); to the saints about the deliverance of soldiers in captivity; to the Most Holy Theotokos about the missing soldiers. *** Prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos for warriors on the battlefield Most Holy Theotokos, our warm Intercessor and Salvation to all who call on Thee!  Not imams of other help, unless you, the Lady, are you the only hope and our hope.  Do not despise our tears and do ...

( Pemptousia ) With His incarnation, His humanization, God entered the innermost core of our lives in the most obvious way. He entered our circulatory system, our heart, the centre of everything, the centre of the universe. After He’d been expelled from our world, our body and our soul through our voluntary sin, He returned, through His incarnation, to our world, our body and our soul, becoming completely human and working for us as a human being. He dwells in the world, and from the creation provides for the creation, sanctifying, saving, transforming it. The incarnation of God is the most earth-shattering event and the most radical upheaval on the earthly world and on all other worlds, because through it the wonder of wonders became reality. If, until then, the creation of the world from nothing was the greatest miracle, God’s incarnation as a human being surpasses its miraculousness. Then, at the creation of the world, the words of God were clothed in matter. Now, at the incarnation...

Νέος Αρχιεπίσκοπος Νέας Ιουστινιανής και Πάσης Κύπρου είναι από το πρωί του Σαββάτου ο Πάφου Γεώργιος #Cyprus #OffsiteNews pic.twitter.com/SloZVeyQ3b — Offsite News (@OffsiteCyNews) December 24, 2022 ( Greek Reporter ) - Bishop of Paphos Georgios was elected the new Archbishop of the Autocephalous Church of Cyprus on Saturday on Christmas Eve 2022. The voting took place at the Apostolos Varnavas Chapel next to the Archbishopric in the capital of Nicosia after Holy Mass. Archbishop Georgios was elected by the sixteen members of the Holy Synod of the Church of Cyprus by eleven votes. The bishop of Limassol Athanasios received four votes while one member of the Holy Synod chose not to vote. Following the election process, the Holy Synod headed to the cathedral of Agios Ioannis, where documents of the election were signed and the result of the voting was read out. In his first statement to the media after his election, Archbishop Georgios said that he will try to not fall short of ...

One of the first lessons you teach yourself in the priesthood is that there are things you do that benefit from constant innovation and tweaking and many, many more things that you do which you get right and then don't mess with again until there's a problem. For example, in Orthodoxy there are numerous cultural strains of "little-t" traditions that people bring with them when they become parishioners. It would be impossible to tell the Serbian family that you won't participate in their Slava. Conversely, the parish isn't a menu where people get to pick which liturgical tradition I draw from in the services. There's a line between being "Orthodoxy as a rich tapestry" and "Orthodoxy as a buffet table," which you learn as a priest only after making a few mistakes (and invariably offending a few people). So, when I started having catechumens I developed a system and used it without much alteration for years. No two people come into the chu...

( SOC-AEUS ) - On Friday, December 16, 2022, the Archdiocese of the Syriac Orthodox Church for the Eastern United States hosted the Pan-Orthodox Christmas Concert at St. Mark’s Cathedral. There were various choirs representing the Oriental Orthodox Churches gathered in celebration of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. His Eminence Mor Dionysius John Kawak welcomed all the Prelates attending the concert (His Grace Bishop David, and His Eminence Mor Titus Yeldho) and all the faithful. During the course of the evening, choirs representing the Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Malankara (India), Ethiopian Orthodox, chanted Nativity hymns. Our Archdiocesan Choir conducted by Very Rev. Fr. Joseph Chamoun prepared a beautiful performance from our traditional Syriac Christmas Hymns.

( ARTnews ) - Pope Francis has promised to relinquish three fragments of the Parthenon Marbles housed in the Vatican Museums, the Vatican announced Friday. The move is likely to increase pressure on cultural institutions still reluctant to part with their own collections of the contested sculptures.  In the announcement, the Vatican described the move as a “donation” from Francis to His Beatitude Ieronymos II, the Orthodox Christian Archbishop of Athens and all of Greece, and said it was “a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth.” The “donation” marks one of the highest-profile returns of the 2,500-year-old sculptures to their country of origin since the calls for their reunification gained global traction. The British Museum, which owns one of the largest collections of Parthenon Marbles, rebuked decades of appeals from Greece for their return, but has recently signaled a softening of its stance.  The Parthenon Sculptures are the remnant...

Interesting to see that commemoration of the patriarch is being suspended here and elsewhere. As an action (present at the parish, regional, and episcopal levels) this move has been perceived as a reasoned pastoral response by some and a unacceptable violation by others. It's certainly something that has happened before and will happen again, but it also always occasions strong reactions. It is one thing to remove commemoration from the diptychs for a time, it is another thing to toss a commemoration out because of disfavor. ( In Communion ) - Our parish in Deventer, belonging to the “Archdiocese of Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe”, so the “rue Daru” to keep it simple, is a very international congregation: about half of us are Dutch. Further we have Russians, Rumanians, Greeks, Serbs, Ukrainians, Macedonians, Syrians, Eritreans and Georgians. A few months after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, our region welcomed several hundreds of Ukrainians refugees, mostly w...

Some years ago I was between assignments and spent my weekends serving parishes of almost every jurisdiction. As a result, my trunk was a veritable library of not only Divine Liturgy texts, but service books of all kinds, books of needs, and prayer cards for every occasion. During that time the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Eparchial Synod of the Greek Archdiocese came out with a new English translation of the Liturgy around 2016. The trusty Holy Cross version was in use along with others based on metropolis and sometimes even personal preference. As with all new translations, the new EP version sought to become the de facto (not to mention de jure) text in use across the archdiocese. The first publication of it was not a joy to read. The text was uniform in such a way that the expected organization and formatting of a such a thing was missing. Additionally, there were several optional parts thrown in that further complicated its usage. As a result, I kept what I had and moved on. So...

Episcopal elections at any level are wild, unpredictable things. Sometimes the frontrunner wins, sometimes a dark horse, and times the will of those voting is confounded by a patriarch or synod. FanDuel should really get into this action as it's unpredictable as any sport ever was. ( Antiochian ) - Official Call to Special Convention This article contains important information for the Special Convention of the Antiochian Archdiocese in Dallas, Texas on January 13, 2023. Voting delegates will nominate candidates for the next Metropolitan-Archbishop.

( OCA ) - The Office of Pastoral Life is pleased to announce our winter Pastoral Life Synaxis online conference for the clergy of the Orthodox Church in America on Tuesday, December 20th from 2:00-4:00 pm EST. Father Marcus Burch from the Diocese of the South will be the featured speaker sharing experiences as a parish administrator. Don’t let the word ‘administration’ turn you away from this event! Come and hear helpful tips about how your brother clergy work smarter to make things work smoothly in the parish. You may also hear stories about what not to do that can be helpful as well. Click on the one-minute video link for a brief review of the topic. The registration link is below.  Although the conference begins at 2:00 PM, the Zoom meeting will be OPEN for fellowship at 1:30 PM. After the keynote presentation, registered participants will be divided into groups of four to six people and sent to breakout rooms to discuss how the topic relates to the participants and their parish...

( ROCOR Studies ) - From December 5–6, 2022, Moscow Theological Academy hosted the 2nd seminar of the Society of Canon Law Teachers and Researchers , which was combined with a specialized advanced training program in Topical Problems of Teaching and Studying Canon Law Disciplines. The event was organized by the Educational Committee of the Russian Orthodox Church, Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University of the Humanities (STOUH), and the specialized Department of Church Practical Disciplines at the Moscow Theological Academy. The seminar opened with a welcoming address by Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, chairman of the Educational Committee and Rector of Ss Cyril and Methodius Institute of Postgraduate Studies. The first day of the seminar included presentations on current issues in the application of canon law sources. Under this topic, the following presentations were given, accompanied by lively discussion: Drafts and Recent Documents Developed by the Inter-Conciliar Assembly of the Russian Ort...

Ukraine has a history of church persecutions dating back a while. Even if you just go back to the Soviet period, we find the Orthodox Church and especially the Greek Catholic Church subject to great pressure (torture, imprisonment, execution). Legion are the stories of priests hiding under floorboards, curling themselves into tight balls in car trunks, and rushing from sanctuary house to sanctuary house under cover of darkness to avoid being arrested. So who knew that anything that even remotely looks like maltreatment of a religious body in Ukraine would occasion bad press? It's a complete surprise. Moscow, December 13 ( Interfax ) - The Moscow Patriarchate has described sanctions imposed on the clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as repressions for a profession of faith. "Sanctions against citizens of one's own country are a practice which, mildly speaking, raises questions from a legal viewpoint in itself, but in this case, clergymen are persecuted by the secular au...

Eastern Christian Publications comes out with books that are rather high quality both editorially and in binding. The below video is the first in a series that walks you through using the book. ( ECPubs ) - This edition of The Book of the Hours  (Časoslov in Slavonic and Horologion in Greek) is an authentic and complete translation of the typical (official) Church Slavonic edition issued in 1950 by the Holy See of Rome for the Ruthenian Churches.  The contents, pagination and layout match the original and include: The Midnight Service            Matins The Hours                             Vespers Compline                              The Canonicon Troparia During the Year      The Menologion (Troparia of the Saints) The book is printed in red and black on medium-weight opaque paper, w...

International surrogacy is a dystopian ethical quagmire that invites abuse of women and children at the expense of profit. Surrogacy in general is problematic. No country should allow international child sale at the very least. Moscow, December 8 ( Interfax ) - The Russian State Duma adopted a bill in the third reading, banning foreign citizens from using the services of surrogate mothers in Russia. Under the bill, only a Russian citizen can be a surrogate mother. The ban, however, will not apply to cases when it is an officially registered marriage between a Russian citizen and a foreigner "in order to prevent discrimination against the rights of a Russian citizen because of the spouse's citizenship," the bill's co-author, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security and Corruption Control Vasily Piskaryov, said. An explanatory note to the bill said that one of the most important factors of the high latency of crimes against children in this sphere is that childr...

 The  Sheptytsky Institute  would get more traffic it weren't so darned hard to spell.

NEW YORK ( GOARCH ) – The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America is pleased to announce the official reopening of the Archdiocesan School of Byzantine Music (ASBM) and the beginning of online registration for the 2022 new year. Under the direction of Georgios Theodoridis, Archon Music Instructor of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, ASBM has been re-imagined in order to train competent cantors to better serve the contemporary musical and liturgical needs of parishes within the context of the divine services. With new leadership and fresh offerings, ASBM will now provide classes in a virtual setting, which will greatly improve access to students from all over the Archdiocese. Through a refreshed curriculum and an innovative virtual learning program, ASBM is designed to meet the various needs of its students regardless of their prior musical knowledge or experience, while still following the same model as traditional music conservatories in both Greece and the United States.  ...