When my wife and I brought our newborn baby girl home from the hospital earlier this year, we did not immediately strap her into a highchair, set a plate of roast chicken in front of her, and announce, “I will feed you once you can explain the value of protein and the mechanics of digestion.” We actually just fed her.

We feed her milk so that she can survive. We feed her so she can grow. We feed her because she is already part of the family, and families share life together at the table.

But in the modern West, we have adopted a very different approach when it comes to the table of the Lord. Across the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions, there is a generally held assumption that religion is largely a mental exercise. Faith risks being reduced to understanding data and giving an intellectual assent. Because of these assumptions, we delay communion until a child reaches a somewhat arbitrary “age of reason,” which varies from group to group.

We end up turning a holy meal into a math problem.

I grew up in a nondenominational evangelical Church with baptistic and dispensational emphases, and we definitely didn’t commune the little kids. But when I started running with Reformed and Presbyterian folks (and even Lutherans), I was forced to face the question of infant baptism, and by implication, infant communion (also known as paedocommunion).

I studied the issue closely, and by the time I joined an Anglican Church, I was already convinced that children belonged at the altar. And significantly, my Anglican parish functionally practiced paedocommunion. If the parents had approached the chalice with a baptized toddler, and he or she looked at the priest and offered a hearty “goo goo ga ga” unto the Lord, we basically accepted that as a credible profession of faith and gave them the Eucharist.

While it was a beautiful pastoral instinct, it was also a workaround; not really something from within the tradition of Anglicanism.

We were trying to hack a modern Protestant framework—to do an ancient Catholic thing in Anglo-Catholic vestments. It wasn’t until I really looked long and hard Eastward that I realized I didn’t need a workaround. The Orthodox Church is the only game in town that has been communing infants since the early Church—without interruption, and without apology.

There is no theological pop quiz at the chalice for the baptized. As I say over and over on this site and in our in-person classes, God’s saving actions are a rescue mission.

The Burial and the Promise

To understand why a baby needs the Eucharist, you have to understand what happens to a baby in the font of baptism.

We do not baptize children because they understand theology. We baptize them because they, like us, are trapped in the domain of death. In Romans 6, Paul does not describe baptism as a public declaration of a private intellectual ah-ha moment. He describes baptism as a grave: we are buried with Christ into death in order that we might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

You certainly do not need a PhD to die, and you do not need one to be resurrected.

When the Apostle Peter preaches at Pentecost in Acts 2, he declares that the promise of the Holy Spirit is “for you and for your children.” This wasn’t a new concept at all. It was the age-old structure of the covenant. In Colossians 2:11ff., Paul explicitly links the waters of baptism to the Old Testament practice of circumcision—and goes so far as to see it as a triumph over death and wicked authorities:

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, ¹² having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. ¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

Under the Old Covenant, male infants were circumcised on the eighth day. They were marked as members of the covenant before they could speak a single word, before they could make a choice, and before they could articulate the meaning of the Covenant. And when the time came for the defining meal of that covenant—the Passover—the children were not sent out of the room. They ate the lamb with the family. And the blood on the doorpost was a shield and protector for the whole house, while the meat on the table fed the whole family.

If the Old Covenant, which was merely a shadow, included infants in its initiating signs and its saving meals, it is unthinkable that the New Covenant—which is built on better promises—would suddenly cast them into the outer darkness until they could pass a Sunday School exam.

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The Invention of the Age of Reason

So, how did the West lose this? It wasn’t the result of a sudden flourish of biblical exegesis. Believe it or not, it was a medieval spilling hazard, and a curiosity of regional differences in practice.

1. First, in the West, Chrismation was performed by the bishop, whereas in the east Presbyters could perform the sacrament. This led to a gradual separation of the two rites in time, and since bishops’ visits are infrequent, kids were being chrismated older and older.

2. In addition, in the Middle Ages, the Latin Church became terrified of spilling the consecrated wine. Out of an understandable desire to protect the holy mysteries, they began withholding the chalice from the laity entirely, offering only the bread.

This created a stark, practical problem: a six-month-old cannot chew and swallow a dry wafer—and chances are that six-month-old was still waiting for the bishop to come and chrismate. So, by sheer logistical necessity, babies stopped receiving.

As time went on, theologians looked around and realized their children were no longer communing. Instead of fixing the practice, they retrofitted their theology to justify the accident. The Council of Trent formally declared that little children do not need the Eucharist because they have not attained the “use of reason.”

They turned a logistical accident into a standard practice of Western Christianity.

But the Orthodox Church never withdrew the chalice from the children; and we have been using the spoon for about as long back as we can remember. Because of that, our theology of the child remained intact. We leaned on the reality of what the sacraments actually do.

If baptism is the rescue from death, Chrismation is the personal Pentecost. We don’t just wash our babies—we anoint them for battle. The Holy Spirit gives to each person their unique, unrepeatable distinctness, and makes them into a full communicant member of the deified humanity of Christ.

They are in the Body and they need the Blood.

Discerning the “Loafness”

There is a fairly common objection at this point, and it usually comes with a furrowed brow and a Bible opened to 1 Corinthians 11.

Paul writes that whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the Body and Blood of the Lord. He commands a person to examine himself before eating, lest he eat and drink judgment on himself by “not discerning the Body.”

I get the fear here—I really do. The Eucharist is a consuming fire. Taking it lightly is dangerous, and if you read Saint Paul’s warning as a demand for intense intellectual self-auditing, it makes perfect sense to keep the elements away from a toddler who can’t even examine their own shoes.

But look at the context. Paul was not writing to toddlers.

Paul was writing to adult Christians in Corinth who were getting drunk at the Lord’s supper (1 Corinthians 11). They were feasting and hoarding the food before the poor (which included slaves who had become Christians) could even arrive from their shifts.

When Paul tells them they are failing to “discern the body” (vv. 27-32) he is not talking about the ontology of bread turned to flesh. He is talking about the unity of the Church. He is talking about the “loafness” of the community. Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body. The Corinthians were eating and drinking judgment upon themselves because they were fracturing the Body of Christ through their pride and gluttony.

Saint Paul’s solution to adults abusing the poor was not inventing a cognitive baseline that bars infants from the Lord’s Table.

The Medicine of Immortality

We have to get this right, because the stakes are definitely higher than a mere theological debate.

If salvation and grace require an “age of reason,” then the Gospel is disastrous news for the vulnerable.

• If you have to understand the mechanics of grace to receive it, what happens to the severely mentally disabled?

• What happens to the grandfather whose mind has been slowly hollowed out by the advancement of Alzheimer’s disease?

• If communion is a reward for cognitive coherence, the vulnerable are left to starve at the very moment they need the medicine of immortality the most.

But Christ unites Himself to our human nature, from the womb to the tomb.

In Mark 10, when the disciples tried to act as bouncers to kidlets, Jesus rebuked them. He did not say, “Let the little children come to me, provided they can pass a theological exam.”

He authoritatively said the kingdom belongs to them.

When you approach the chalice in an Orthodox parish, the priest doesn’t ask for your academic credentials. He holds the golden spoon, he calls you by your baptismal name, and he feeds you the life of the world. He didn’t ask for your intellect. He just asked for you.

You don’t need a PhD to receive God. You just need to be united to Christ and then open your mouth.

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In the Gospels, people are always getting to Jesus through something tangible. Water, mud, the hem of his garment, bread he breaks with his own hands. He breathes on the Apostles. He lays hands on the sick. He sends them out to anoint with oil.

The sacraments—what we often call the Mysteries—are how that same Christ still touches us now, in his Church, by the Holy Spirit.

Not magic tricks or bare symbols; they’re how he feeds, heals, forgives, joins, and sends real human beings in real places…and yes, in ways that look different from parish to parish. (I’ve been in the OCA, the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Greek Archdiocese; I can assure you, standards and styles vary.)

What I want to do here is walk through the “big seven” without pretending that grace only flows through seven pipes. We’ll keep it simple: what each Mystery is, what it’s for, and how it fits into a normal Orthodox life.

What a “Mystery” Is (And Why We Use That Word)

Orthodox Christians are often more comfortable saying Mystery (mysterion) than “sacrament.” That’s not because we enjoy being vague! It’s because the primary reality here is not a human ceremony—but Christ acting in His Body by the Holy Spirit.

In very simple terms: A Mystery is a concrete act in which Christ himself works, through his Church, to unite us to Himself and to one another.

That means:

• There is always a visible side (water, oil, bread and wine, hands, words).

• There is always an invisible side (grace, the Spirit’s action, forgiveness, healing, union) that you can’t measure with a lab test.

  • The point is not to treat the sacraments as spiritual vending machines, but as the places where the Lord of the Gospels still touches us.

The life of the Church is sacramental in a much wider sense—blessings, icons, funerals, monastic tonsure, holy water—but the “seven” give us a clear, catechetical set of central encounters to talk about.

So we number the sacraments at seven out of convenience, but the reality is that the Church herself is Sacrament and therefore all of her actions are sacramental in some sense.

Baptism and Chrismation: Birth and Seal

Baptism: Dying and Rising with Christ

If you want one biblical image for Baptism, it’s burial and resurrection. Saint Paul (Romans 6:3-4, ESV) doesn’t say we get a religious label; he says:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

In Baptism:

• We are washed—sins forgiven, including the whole backlog of our old life.

• We are buried and raised with Christ—united to his death and Resurrection.

  • We are adopted—no longer spiritual freelancers, but sons and daughters in a household.

While it is sometimes talked about as a mere rite of passage that “gets the baby done” or gives the adult a nice memory, but the deeper reality is that it is a spiritual crossing of the Red Sea, a real change of status and belonging, an escape from Egypt, and a true deliverance like the ark delivered righteous Noah and his family (1 Peter 3:20).

Chrismation: Our Personal Pentecost

Immediately after Baptism (or on its own, when someone is received by chrismation as a completion of their prior baptism), we are anointed with holy chrism. The priest says, “The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Chrismation is:

• Our personal Pentecost—the Spirit given, not as an external visitor, but as indwelling gift.

• A sealing—marking us as belonging to Christ, equipped for the life we’ve just been born into.

  • The moment when all the “you” commands of the New Testament start to make sense: we’re not being told to live this life alone; we’re given the Spirit to live it in us.

Baptism and Chrismation are the great doorway. Everything else—Eucharist, Confession, Marriage, Unction—assumes this new birth and seal are already there first.

Eucharist and Confession: Food and Medicine

Eucharist: Christ Our Food

In the Divine Liturgy, we don’t just remember something that happened; we enter into Christ’s once‑for‑all sacrifice and receive his Body and Blood.

Orthodoxy insists on three things at once:

• The Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Christ (not just a symbol, not just a mental prompt, and not just thinking really hard about Jesus).

• It is not a new sacrifice, but our participation in the one sacrifice of the Cross, made present to us. But it is absolutely a sacrificial meal.

  • It is the sacrament of unity: it both expresses and deepens the fact that we share one faith, one baptism, one life.

That’s also why we practice closed communion. It’s not a statement that “we’re better than you”; it’s a statement that Communion presupposes a shared faith and sacramental life. To pretend unity at the chalice when it doesn’t exist in belief and practice would be dishonest and, frankly, spiritually dangerous (see 1 Corinthians 11:30).

For those who are baptized and chrismated into the Church, the Eucharist is normal food. The basic expectation over time is: we prepare and come regularly, not as a rare treat but as our life.

Confession: Naming the Sickness, Receiving the Cure

If the Eucharist is food, Confession is medicine. In Confession, we stand before Christ and speak the truth about our sins in the presence of the priest, who is both witness and physician.

A few important distinctions:

• Confession is not therapy, though it may be therapeutic.

• The priest is not a prosecutor; he is there to help you tell the truth and to pronounce Christ’s forgiveness.

  • The goal is not to produce a perfectly exhaustive sin‑inventory, but to repent—to turn from known sins and ask for grace to begin again.

How often? That varies, depending on the jurisdiction or region, parish or individual. Some people confess before every communion, every few weeks, four times a year, and so on; others less frequently, some more.

The real question is: am I letting my sins harden into habits, or am I bringing them into the light regularly? Your priest can advise you how to find an appropriate rhythm.

Marriage and Ordination: Sacraments of Vocation

Marriage: A Shared Road to Holiness

In Orthodox terms, Marriage is not just a romantic upgrade with incense. It is a Mystery of union in Christ between a man and a woman, ordered toward shared salvation and, ordinarily, open to children.

So what makes Orthodox weddings unique?

• The couple are not just making a contract; they are being joined in a life that is now accountable to Christ and his Church.

• The crowns placed on their heads are both royal and martyrial: symbols of honor and of self‑giving love.

  • That’s why the Church doesn’t simply “host weddings” as venue rentals. To be married in the Church is to enter a sacramental state with real content and expectations.

There are edge cases—mixed marriages, previous divorces, complex histories—but those belong in personal conversation with a priest, not in a brief overview.

Holy Orders: Service, Not Promotion

When someone is ordained a deacon, priest, or bishop, there is again a laying on of hands, a prayer, a gift of the Spirit for a particular kind of service.

Ordination is:

• A sacramental configuration to Christ the High Priest: the ordained man becomes a visible icon of Christ’s pastoral care in that community.

• A call to sacrificial service, not a perk package.

  • A gift given for the sake of the Church, not for the private holiness of the man alone.

This is one reason (among many) why Orthodoxy doesn’t talk about “starting your own church.” The Church’s sacramental life is received, not invented.

Holy Unction: Healing Along the Way

We’ve already described this, but here’s the short form.

Holy Unction (or the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick) is rooted in James 5:14–15, where the apostle calls the elders to anoint the sick with oil and pray for healing and forgiveness. In the Orthodox Church, this is not reserved for the edge of death; it is a sacrament of healing in the midst of the journey.

In Unction, we ask God for:

• Physical healing of illnesses and infirmities,

• Spiritual healing of soul and mind,

• Forgiveness of sins—including those forgotten or unknown.

During Great Lent, many parishes celebrate a communal Unction service, often on Holy Wednesday. Everyone present (who is an Orthodox Christian) is anointed—not only those who look sick—receiving Christ’s healing touch as we step into Holy Week and Pascha.

It’s a very concrete way the Church says: this life of repentance we talk about is also a life of real, applied mercy.

Beyond Seven: A Life Filled with Sacramentality

At this point, you might be tempted to say, “Okay, that’s seven. Are we done?” The answer is: yes and no.

Yes, in the sense that:

• These seven Mysteries give us a clear frame:

  • Birth and seal (Baptism, Chrismation),

  • Food and medicine (Eucharist, Confession),

  • Vocation (Marriage, Ordination),

  • Healing (Unction).

No, in the sense that:

• The Church’s life overflows with sacramental actions:

  • Blessings of homes, vehicles, water.

  • Making or praying with icons.

  • Funerals and memorials.

  • Monastic tonsure and the monastic life.

  • The daily cycle of services, which bathe us in Scripture and prayer.

  • Much more could be said!

Some theologians will happily point out that the “seven sacraments” language came into Orthodoxy partly through Western influence and systematization. Fine. The deeper truth is that Orthodox life is simply thick with Christ’s presence. We don’t engage the Mysteries like a definitive checklist to complete; they are the main arteries in the circulatory system of the Body of Christ.

Standards and styles do vary—between jurisdictions, between parishes, sometimes even between priests in the same diocese. But beneath those variations, the same Christ is at work, through water, oil, hands, bread and wine, words and gestures, to save, heal, and unite.

If you’re new to all this, the best next step is simple: bring your questions about these Mysteries to your priest. Ask him to help you see how they fit together in your life, in your parish. The point is not to master a system, but to keep showing up where Christ has promised to meet you, again and again, until the day you see him face to face.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann in For the Life of the World (p. 102), writes:

A sacrament—as we already know—is always a passage, a transformation. Yet it is not a “passage” into “supernature,” but into the Kingdom of God, the world to come, into the very reality of this world and its life as redeemed and restored by Christ. It is the transformation not of “nature” into “supernature,” but of the old into the new. A sacrament therefore is not a “miracle” by which God breaks, so to speak, the “laws of nature,” but the manifestation of the ultimate Truth about the world and life, man and nature, the Truth which is Christ.

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Sometimes a single comment from a thoughtful reader can open up a whole new line of inquiry, helping all readers dig a little deeper into Scripture and into our faith. After the recent article on “Demystifying the Septuagint,” a comment was received that touched on several crucial—and often misunderstood—aspects of Old Testament textual history.

The reader’s comment was this:

The Septuagint is the oldest complete version of the Old Testament that survives today. We don’t have a complete original Hebrew anymore, and the Masoretic Text is NOT the original Hebrew. Many people don’t understand that, including Martin Luther. Also, the reason we use the Septuagint is because it clearly points to Christ in the prophecies. It’s the version Christ used in the gospels to talk about Himself. The Masoretic (Hebrew) was created in about the 900s to standardize the reading of the text, adding dots and dashes to serve as vowels where there weren’t any because Hebrew alphabet has no vowels - to make sure the prophecies wouldn’t point to Christ as they clearly do in the Septuagint.

This is a fantastic summary of several common perceptions, questions, and even accusations that have swirled around the Septuagint (LXX) and the Masoretic Text (MT) for centuries. And it hits on some very real historical complexities. Our goal here is not to argue, but to engage these points squarely, relying on both the Church’s Tradition and the scholarship that illuminates it.

As mentioned in the previous article, this is a topic that requires dipping into rather expensive and not-so-accessible academic works—like the $200 Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Orthodox Christianity I used for the previous article. (Citations at bottom.)

It’s perfectly understandable that there’s a lot of confusion out there. So, let’s pour yet another cup of coffee and clarify some things for the benefit of all.

The “Septuagint”: Not One Book, but a Library

First, I’d like to address a common misconception: Just as “the Bible” isn’t so much a single book as a collection of books, “the Septuagint” is a not a single, monolithic volume OR translation either. So even the idea of “THE” Septuagint isn’t really true. It was, rather, a series of translations of various Hebrew (and some Aramaic) Old Testament texts into Greek, occurring over several centuries, primarily in Alexandria, Egypt. Pentiuc states directly that its “transmission history is ‘quite complex and convoluted,’ especially compared with later, more standardized texts.”

Imagine trying to collect every English translation of the Bible over, say, 500 years, with revisions, different translators for different books, and regional variations in the manuscripts. That’s closer to the reality of the how the Septuagint came to be.

These Greek translations evolved over time, went through “copying, revising, and even competing editions.” For instance, as mentioned before, the Greek version of Daniel commonly used in the East was not the oldest Septuagint version, but a later translation associated with Theodotion (2nd century AD). This alone tells us that even the Greek Old Testament wasn’t a single, fixed volume that simply “dropped from heaven in leather‑bound form,” as previously discussed.

So, while “the” Septuagint is indeed a remarkable ancient textual witness of great importance—and it is the oldest complete version of the Old Testament in any language to survive today—it’s more accurate to see it as a textual stream, a dynamic collection that became the Old Testament for Greek-speaking Judaism and, critically, for the early Church.

Providential Primacy: Why the Septuagint Is Our Bible

The question of why the Septuagint matters so much to the Orthodox Church is crucial, and on this point, the initial comment points to a key concept.

The early Church embraced the Septuagint quickly and instinctively, because it bore witness to Christ. As Pentiuc argues, for the Fathers, the Septuagint was a “missionary Bible,” which “helped prepare the nations to receive Christ. It let the Jewish Scriptures ‘speak Greek’ in a world where Greek was the common language.”

More than just a convenient translation during a time where Greek was increasingly spoken, it shaped the very language and theological mind of the Apostles and the early Christians. When the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament, they are overwhelmingly quoting the Septuagint. This isn’t a coincidence; it’s because this was their Bible, the Scripture that sounded in their ears, prayed in their synagogues, and proclaimed in their churches.

This means that the Septuagint became, for the Church, the definitive collection of Old Testament prophecies. It was the lens through which Christ’s coming was understood. It’s the language that resonates through our hymns, our homilies, and our iconography.

As stated in the previous article:

When one hears, ‘Orthodoxy reads the Septuagint,’ one should think: The Greek Old Testament that shaped our hymnography, preaching, and theological imagination from the beginning.

Masoretic Text: A Different Stream, a Resilient Witness

Now attention turns to the Masoretic Text (MT) and the common concern that it might have been altered to obscure Christ.

It’s indisputable that the Masoretic Text, as it is known today, was standardized much later than the Septuagint, primarily between the 7th and 10th centuries AD by Jewish scholars called the Masoretes. Their meticulous work involved adding vowel points (the “dots and dashes”) and accent marks to the consonantal Hebrew text. This was a monumental effort to preserve the pronunciation and reading tradition of the Hebrew Bible for future generations within their community.

The claim that the MT is not “the original Hebrew” in the sense of a single, unchanging source text that existed throughout all antiquity is also accurate. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the mid-20th century, revealed that even in the Second Temple period (the centuries immediately before and during Christ’s time), there was a diversity of Hebrew textual traditions. The Septuagint was often based on Hebrew manuscripts that reflected these earlier, diverse traditions. Some of these traditions differed from the particular textual stream that would eventually become the Masoretic Text.

Now, to the important point about accusations of deliberate alteration. It is historically significant that prominent Church Fathers did accuse Jews of altering the Hebrew Scriptures to obscure Christ—such as Saint Justin Martyr and Saint Irenaeus of Lyons (both 2nd century AD). This was part of a broader patristic concern rooted in heated theological polemics between Christians and Jews regarding the interpretation of prophecy. For these Fathers, certain Old Testament passages read differently in the Septuagint offered clearer prophetic witness to Christ, and they suspected that divergent Hebrew versions were a result of intentional changes to weaken that witness. This perspective, therefore, has indeed been part of Orthodox understanding of textual differences.

Adding to the complexity, this accusation was made over 500 years before there was any such thing as the MT, and many of the ancient Hebrew witnesses are in agreement with the LXX.

Moreover, according to Pentiuc, the dominant Orthodox scholarly understanding today is informed by the insights of modern textual research (which the Fathers themselves did not have access to), and tends to explain the differences between the LXX and MT in several other ways:

• Different Hebrew Versions: The Septuagint translators worked from Hebrew manuscripts that were, in some cases, centuries older than those used by the Masoretes and belonged to different textual families. Essentially, the issue is that many of these textual variations were already present in the Hebrew.

• Interpretive Variations: All translation involves some level of interpretation. The Greek translators had their own theological and linguistic nuances, as did the later Masoretes. Pentiuc argues that these were often good-faith efforts to understand and preserve the text according to their respective traditions.

• Masoretic Goals: The Masoretes’ primary aim was to standardize their existing Hebrew tradition for their Jewish community, preserving its reading and pronunciation, not primarily to engage in theological warfare with Christians.

But to address the core theological concern embedded in the Fathers’ critique: even if textual differences exist, did they succeed in truly obscuring Christ in the Hebrew text?

The answer from Orthodox theology is a resounding no. Even with differences, the Holy Spirit ensures that the truth of Christ remains clear to those who seek Him. While the Church has long prioritized the Septuagint, it has consistently maintained space for the Hebrew witness—while St. Justin Martyr argues for Christ from the Septuagint, he also addresses Jewish appeals to the Hebrew text in his Dialogue with Trypho.

The Hebrew witness might require more careful reading, more theological discernment, and certainly the guidance of the Church’s Tradition, but the Old Testament, in any canonical form, ultimately points to Christ. The Spirit’s witness to the Son is more resilient than minor textual variations, and certainly far outlasting any human attempts to dim its light.

The Septuagint’s primacy does not itself mean there are no other witnesses! Pentiuc witnesses to this textual diversity when he discusses how the Fathers themselves were aware of different readings. He points out that in their commentaries, they would refer to “The Hebrew,” “The Samaritan,” and “Later versions” like those of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. This means the early Fathers were not oblivious to differences, and their faith in Christ was not shaken by them.

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Reading Alongside: A Confident, Nuanced Orthodox Approach

So, what does this complex history mean for the Church today? It certainly doesn’t mean throwing up hands in confusion. Today we still hold the Septuagint with primacy for the Old testament, but it’s a nuanced primacy.

Pentiuc emphasizes that “modern Orthodox Bible translations tend to be more balanced and dispassionate in how they use textual witnesses.” I propose that an ideal contemporary approach is something like this:

• LXX-Primary: Orthodox Old Testament translations remain primarily based on the Septuagint, especially for books where it is clearly the Church’s traditional text. This is frequently the norm because the LXX is more or less the Old Testament of the New Testament.

• Broad Foundation: Translators also “consult the Hebrew, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Peshitta (Syriac), and other versions,” particularly “where the Septuagint seems obscure, obviously secondary, or questions of transmission are at play.” This is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of scholarly and spiritual integrity.

The Orthodox Church practically lives and breathes out of the Septuagint historically, but she has frequently read it alongside other witnesses, not in isolation. This is a testament to the Tradition’s strength—not its fragility. The Church trusts that God’s inscriptured revelation is not so delicate that honest scrutiny or textual complexity will break it.

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Conclusion

I’ve been working through many of these questions for years, and will likely continue to do so for years to come. Starting “Bad” Books of the Bible several years ago set me out on a path of textual exploration that has been nothing short of breathtaking and eye opening. Every time I think I’ve wrapped my head around the transmission of Scripture in history, there’s another layer or wrinkle that gives way to opportunity for further exploration.

The questions raised in the initial comment are important, and they give us an opportunity to consider how the Church engages with her sacred texts. It’s tempting to want a perfectly simple, linear story about “the Bible,” but the reality is more complex:

• It’s a story of divine providence working through human hands;

  • of textual streams that evolved over time;

    • and of the Church prayerfully discerning the voice of Christ in her Scriptures across centuries.

The collection of Greek Old Testament that we have come to call the Septuagint remains the cherished, providential Old Testament—the voice through which the prophets spoke to the Apostles, the wellspring of Orthodox hymns, the bridge that carried Israel’s story into the Gentile world.

Yet the Church has never locked it away in splendid isolation. She has held it alongside other ancient witnesses—the Hebrew original, the Syriac streams, the patient comparisons of Origen’s Hexapla—always discerning, always prayerfully receiving, never afraid that truth might fall apart under honest scrutiny.

For readers today, there’s no need to be afraid of other text families. We approach the Old Testament with reverence, letting the LXX shape souls as it shaped the saints, but we can also understand its complex history. We have so many tools available today for the diligent student of Scripture to compare it with other texts when questions arise. The confident Orthodox believer can trust that the same Tradition that cherished the LXX is anchored in truth, so some embrace of textual diversity is not a threat. The Tradition magnifies Christ, and remains.

The Church returns again and again to the services: we hear the Psalms at Vespers, the prophecies at Matins, the Theotokos’s canticles, and every feast can tune our hearts to the rhythm of the Church. There, in the choir of the Church, the Septuagint still breathes—alive, echoing, pointing ever forward to the ever-breaking-through coming of the Kingdom of God.

Source

• Pentiuc, Eugen J. The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Orthodox Christianity. Oxford University Press, 2017. All quotes taken from pages 6-10.

  • Transmission history, Theodotion Daniel, missionary Bible, p. 6

  • Fathers consulting other versions, p. 7

  • Modern Orthodox translations, consulting other texts, p. 10

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It’s Bright Week now, but I can’t stop thinking about Pascha. I want to go back to Saturday night, to the greatest Vigil and Liturgy that comes only once a year.

The nave is entirely dark. It is 11:07 PM on Great and Holy Saturday, and the air inside the church is heavy. It is thick with the scent of spent beeswax, residual frankincense, and the undeniable, physical exhaustion of a parish that has been standing, kneeling, and chanting for a long season, and especially in the past week. The people in the pews are waiting in anticipation, eager for the Resurrection. The expectation and faith are palpable.

Beside me in the pew, completely oblivious to the cosmic threshold we are about to cross, my four-and-a-half-year-old son is totally sacked out. He is curled up tightly against the wooden pew, his head resting heavy as a rock on his beagle pillow, covered from the neck down in a Snoopy blanket. He is breathing the deep, rhythmic, unbothered breaths of a boy who could not possibly make it to midnight.

It is amusing to watch—and perfectly fitting. He is sleeping peacefully through the harrowing of Hades. He is participating in the Great Sabbath. Just as the Creator is currently resting in the tomb from His labor of saving the world, my son is resting in the pew.

The Orthodox tradition beautifully holds this in tension. As the Synaxarion of Holy Saturday proclaims:

On the Great and Holy Sabbath the Church celebrates the burial of the divine Body and the descent into Hades of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ... This is the blessed Sabbath, this is the day of rest, on which the only-begotten Son of God rested from all His works.

As I look down at his tiny body, resting heavily in the darkness of the nave, I realize his physical exhaustion perfectly mirrors the spiritual reality of the rest of us. Holy Week is both a physical and spiritual grind. We do not arrive at the empty tomb pristine, polished, and piously full of energy. We usually arrive battered. We drag our mortality, our failures, and our sheer fatigue right up to the stone.

The raw, real world shows what this approach is really about. As my friend Steve Robinson notes in his essay “Stealing Paradise,” the Gospels are not populated by spiritual elites effortlessly ascending from glory to glory. The Kingdom of Heaven is routinely taken by the desperate. Robinson catalogs the dramatic interlopers: the bleeding woman crawling through the dirt of a crowded street just to touch a hem; the blind beggar screaming loud enough to annoy the religious gatekeepers.

He rightly includes the thief on the cross, who did his own Ocean’s Eleven heist when he stole his way into Paradise with his dying breath. God seems to look upon great desperation as great faith. Salvation, Robinson observes, is as simple and difficult as that.

But Robinson does not romanticize the unexpected, eleventh-hour conversions. He honors the quiet, ongoing “desperation” of ordinary faith. He points to the fifty-year, monotonous, repetitive slog of daily life—the mortgages, the relational friction, the temptations managed but never fully eliminated, the mid-life crises endured without surrender.

Whether you arrive at the tomb through a tragic, revelatory moment of the eleventh-hour desperation, or through decades of tedious, uninspiring faithfulness, the intention is what God honors. Both the flash-in-the-pan interloper and the guy who’s worked his whole life drag their exhaustion up to that stone, still hoping against hope the tomb is empty.

And what do we find inside our exhausted selves when we finally stop moving? Often, we find our own tombs.

Archimandrite Justin Pârvu, a Romanian confessor who survived years of communist imprisonment, offers insight on this dark interior reality. When asked how we can descend into our hearts when they feel full of passions, rot, and darkness, he flipped the script on us. The darkness is not a disqualification; it is the exact purpose of Christ’s descent.

“There is no depth that God has not reached,” Pârvu reminds us. He shone in the deepest, most terrible darkness of Hell itself. How much more, then, will He shine in the darkness of our hearts if we simply wait for Him?

The heart is a tomb. The more you look at your own heart unvarnished, you will find it is actually a terrifying space to inhabit. But our job is not to miraculously fix our own brokenness before the Feast—our job is to keep watch in the dark without despair.

Pârvu prescribes an important tool for this vigil of the soul: the Jesus Prayer. We sit in the dark, calling upon the Name, waiting for the King of Glory to melt our corruption with His warmth. We endure the spiritual Holy Saturday.

As we stand in the dark church, waiting for the light, human reason often hits a wall. The intensity of the services, combined with the rationalist conditioning of the modern world, can breed intense cognitive dissonance. Thomas del Vasto, reflecting on his own Holy Saturday struggles as a modern “Doubting Thomas,” admits that human intellect cannot neatly resolve the paradox of the God-Man lying dead in a grave.

When human reason fails at the boundary line of the tomb, we are left only with the desperate pivot of the Apostle Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go? you have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). This cognitive failure is not a modern, secular invention. It is embedded right there in the original Paschal morning.

The Resurrection does not produce an automatic, tidy, doubt-dissolving certainty for most of us. It is instead a shattering, terrifying reality that breaks all human paradigms. The Gospel of Mark tells us that the myrrh-bearing women did not leave the empty tomb with triumphant theology; they fled in trembling and astonishment, saying nothing to anyone out of sheer terror (Mark 16:8).

Even the remaining eleven disciples, standing on the mountain in Galilee with the Risen Lord standing right in front of them, experienced a similar dissonance. “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted” (Matthew 28:17). You cannot logic your way into the Resurrection. Reason may still fracture at the empty tomb.

The truth is that the historical event of the Resurrection is inaccessible to us. We can only experience the Resurrection mystically through the Liturgy, trusting the reality of “cosmic Agape”—a love so vast that it embraces us entirely as we are, trembling, afraid, and even if we are of two minds.

We hear the cosmic stakes chanted in the darkness during Matins (Triodion):

Hell trembled, O Savior, when he saw Thee, the Giver of life, despoiling him of his wealth and raising up the dead from every age.

Suddenly, the Royal Doors swing open in the darkness:

Come receive the light from the unwaning light, and glorify Christ, who has risen from the dead!

A single flame emerges from the sanctuary. It passes to the altar servers, then to the front pews, spreading backward until the entire nave is ablaze with candlelight. The heavy, dark grind of the fast is visibly broken by the light. The smell of melting wax replaces the stale air. We begin the shuffle for the procession, my son still dead to the world, his Snoopy blanket now illuminated by the flickering glow of hundreds of tapers.

Why does this light matter? How did the locks of Hades actually break? Turning to the Cappadocian Fathers, we can address the “mechanics” of our salvation.

St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzus) rightly corrects the false idea that Christ’s death was a transaction or a ransom paid to some all-powerful Devil. He calls the very idea an “outrage.” As he puts it:

To whom was that Blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed? ... If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself...

No, the Incarnation was not a payoff. It was a cosmic rescue mission initiated from the inside. Humanity had to be sanctified by the Humanity of God. But how did He trap the great tyrant?

His great friend, St. Gregory of Nyssa, answers this with a well-known analogy of the fishhook. The Divine Nature clothed itself in human flesh, using the fleshly, human body as bait. Death saw the broken, exhausted body of Jesus of Nazareth on the Cross and swallowed it eagerly, assuming it had claimed just another mortal victim.

“The Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature,” Saint Gregory of Nyssa explains, “that so, as with ravenous fish, the hook of the Deity might be gulped down along with the bait of flesh, and thus, life being introduced into the house of death, and light shining in darkness, that which is diametrically opposed to light and life might vanish.”

In swallowing the bait of His humanity, Hades choked on the hook of His Divinity. We needed an Incarnate God, put to death, that we might live. Christ blew death apart from the inside out, poisoning Hades with the unendurable presence of God.

Because of this supreme victory, Saint Gregory Nazianzus issues his sweeping, pastoral invitations to all of us holding our candles in the night:

If you are a Simon of Cyrene, take up the Cross and follow. If you are crucified with Him as a robber, acknowledge God as a penitent robber... enter with Jesus into Paradise, so that you may learn from what you have fallen. If you be a Mary, or another Mary, or a Salome, or a Joanna, weep in the early morning. Be first to see the stone taken away... If, like a Thomas, you were left out when the disciples were assembled to whom Christ shows Himself, when you do see Him be not faithless; and if you do not believe, then believe those who tell you; and if you cannot believe them either, then have confidence in the print of the nails.

Whatever your state, whatever your burden, the Incarnation was designed specifically to draw you into the life in Christ.

The procession reaches the doors of the church. The priest raises the cross into the air, and the first, explosive chant shatters the silence.

Christ is Risen from the dead, by death trampling down upon death, and to those in the tombs He has granted Life!

In most parishes, the doors are pounded open, symbolizing the shattering of the gates of brass, and then everyone floods back into a church now blazing with full light. The sorrow is gone. The grind is over. And here, the majestic, triumphant words of St. John Chrysostom’s Paschal Homily are woven through the chanting, calling forth our joy.

Chrysostom reminds us that the feast is prepared for everyone. The first and the last, the fasting and the non-fasting, the zealous and the slothful. The gritty reality of our personal failures is entirely swallowed by the majestic triumph of His mercy on all. He unleashes a roar against the gates of Hell:

Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain.

O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?

The Divine Liturgy carries on into the early hours of the morning, a blur of incense, beautiful vestments, and chaotic, joyful Paschal greetings in multiple languages. By the time we receive the Eucharist and finally hear the dismissal, it is the wee hours of the morning. Through it all, my son has barely moved an inch. He is still out cold on his beagle pillow.

He missed the dramatic lighting of the candles. He missed the procession. He missed all the activity at the doors, the shouting, the bells, and even the triumphant homily.

It’s not lost on me that Christ’s Resurrection icon depicts Adam and Eve pulled out by their wrists—from what I know about Orthodox theology and the idea of “synergy,” one would expect them to be holding on with their own hands, too. But they aren’t.

I, too, “pulled” my son “out by the wrists,” when I woke him up at the appointed time to receive communion—my sleeper stirred long enough to tell the priest his name and to receive the Pure Gift in the chalice. “Come receive the light, my son, it’s time for communion—and I want you to say your name at the chalice, like we always do,” I told him as we walked the aisle.

Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.
(Ephesians 5:14, ESV)

In context, Saint Paul prefaces this quote with this: “Therefore it says...” Usually, that’s the setup for a direct Scriptural quote. But because this exact phrasing doesn’t exist anywhere in the Old Testament, the consensus among the Church Fathers and modern scholars alike seems to be that Paul is quoting a song the early Church was already singing.

Specifically, it’s widely believed to be a fragment of an early baptismal hymn. When a catechumen descended into the baptismal waters (representing the tomb) and rose back up, the congregation would sing this over them. It’s a Christological remix of a few key prophecies from Isaiah:

• Isaiah 60:1: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.”

• Isaiah 26:19: “Awake and sing for joy, you who dwell in the dust, for your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.”

The early Christians took these ancient promises of Israel’s restoration and applied them to their ultimate fulfillment: Jesus Christ. They took the raw materials of Isaiah, baptized them in the reality of the Resurrection, and swapped out the generic “light” for Christ Himself. And those of us present in the morning for the baptisms and chrismations saw this too—two dozen people “rose from the dead” and were united to Christ.

So as I gather up his Snoopy blanket and hoist his little, sleeping body over my shoulder to carry him out to the car, the profound reality of the night hits me. It doesn’t matter that he slept through it. The victory was won for him, too. He didn’t have to earn it. He didn’t have to stay awake to secure it. He was completely helpless, entirely exhausted, resting in a deep “Sabbath sleep”—and yet, he was carried out of the church a true victor.

All of this is exactly what Christ did for us. He descended into our dark, passion-filled tombs while we were entirely helpless. He carried our dead weight out of Hades upon His own shoulders. That is the very definition of Κοσμικὴ Ἀγάπη (Cosmic Agape).

That is the majestic truth that remains when all of the grit of our personal striving is finally exhausted. Christ is Risen!

Sources for this reflection:

• This post was inspired by a roundup of resources sent to me by a reader. That roundup served as the foundation of my own reflections, though the direction I go with it is a bit different. I’ve supplied links to sources above, but here’s a list for those keeping track at home.

• Steve Robinson, “Stealing Paradise: Desperate Measures,” Pithless Thoughts II (Substack), March 2025.

• Archimandrite Justin Pârvu, “The Heart as the Tomb of Christ’s Resurrection,” Trans. Grig Gheorghiu (Substack), April 2026.

• Thomas del Vasto, “Faith & Doubt During Holy Week,” Shapes in the Fog (Substack), April 2026.

• “The Synaxarion of Great and Holy Saturday,” from the Lenten Triodion.

• “Matins of Great and Holy Saturday, The Praises,” from the Lenten Triodion.

• St. Gregory of Nazianzus, “The Second Oration on Holy Pascha,” Oration 45, Section 22, c. 380 AD.

• St. Gregory of Nyssa, “The Great Catechetical Oration,” Chapter 24.

• St. John Chrysostom, “The Paschal Catechetical Homily,” c. AD 400.

Take a moment to close your eyes and imagine you are standing in a dark, incense-filled Orthodox Church at midnight, at the end of a long winding road to Pascha (Easter).

Did you do well? Perhaps your stomach is a hollow cavern after forty days of lenten rations, your legs are vibrating from exhaustion, and you’re wondering if you can honestly make it through another three hours of standing.

Or perhaps you ate a ribeye a few times, popped by Mickey D’s for some nuggets, and boozed it up with your buddies after work. Did you screw up? Did you drop the ball? Did you fail? Come anyway.

Regardless of how you prepared for Pascha, the royal doors will be thrown open. The Church will be flooded with the brightness of the light of Christ, and the priest isn’t going to just read, but might actually boldly proclaim or shout a 1,600-year-old sermon at the congregation!

This is the Paschal Homily of Saint John Chrysostom. We read it every single year on Pascha night, usually right when our physical and mental endurance is running on fumes. But this homily isn’t just a piece of soaring ancient poetry designed to give us a second wind. It is a scripturally saturated breakdown of the metaphysical earthquake that just occurred in the basement of the universe.

Many of us carry a massive amount of legalistic baggage into our faith, sometimes even if we were raised Orthodox. We too often treat God like a cosmic magistrate and salvation like a courtroom acquittal.

Chrysostom takes a sledgehammer to that entire framework with his ancient sermon. Through a masterful rhetorical delivery, Chrysostom dismantles our spiritual meritocracy, redefines repentance, and reveals the terrifying, glorious “physics” of how Jesus Christ actually murdered Death.

The Economics of Grace (Matthew 20)

To some extent, all humans are accustomed to meritocracy. You clock in, you get paid. You do the crime, you do the time. Because of this, it is incredibly easy to slip into a transactional view of God and religion—treating sin like a legal infraction, fasting like a currency, and salvation as a wage we earn by being relatively good people.

Chrysostom puts an end to this transactional nonsense in his very first breath by channeling Jesus’s Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (from Matthew 20):

If they have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward; If any have come after the third hour, let him with gratitude join in the Feast! ...And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

In Matthew 20, the master of the vineyard pays the guys who worked one hour the exact same denarius as the guys who sweated through the heat of the day. To our modern, merit-obsessed minds, this is a gross miscarriage of justice. It’s no surprise that those among us who keep the Lenten fast the strictest are frequently tempted to act like the resentful first-hour workers.

But Chrysostom reminds us that God is not an IRS agent auditing a spiritual tax account. “He gives rest to him who comes at the eleventh hour, as well as to him who toiled from the first... The deed He honors and the intention He commends.”

If salvation were a strict legal contract, this could certainly be a breach. But as Saint Paul writes, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life” (Romans 6:23). The Kingdom of Heaven isn’t a wage you earn, it is pure gift and an inheritance you step into. Whether you kept the fast perfectly or stumbled into the nave at the last minute smelling like a cheeseburger and a beer, the Table is richly laden. The grace of God is violently disproportionate to human effort.

The Fatted Calf and the Death of Guilt (Luke 15)

Once we realize we can’t truly earn our way to the table, the immediate temptation for many of us is to despair. We look at our own wretchedness, our own failures to pray, to love our neighbors, or to conquer our passions, and we assume we are disqualified.

Chrysostom anticipates this exact psychological trap. He pivots directly to the imagery of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15:

Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one. Let no one go away hungry; partake, all, of the cup of faith... Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

When the Prodigal Son returns home, he has a prepared speech (probably with note cards and all). He essentially wants to negotiate a plea deal: Make me as one of your hired servants. He is still trapped in a transactional mindset. But the Father doesn’t even let him finish the sentence. He sprints down the road, throws a robe over his filthy shoulders, and has the fatted calf slaughtered.

This is the eradication of guilt. “Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again.” Why? Because forgiveness didn’t just issue a decree; forgiveness rose from the grave.

Under a legal framework, if you break a law, you pay a fine. But in the Orthodox framework, sin isn’t a parking ticket; it is more like a terminal illness. You don’t take a cancer patient to traffic court, you take them to a hospital.

On Pascha, the Great Physician has successfully synthesized the cure for human mortality, and He is distributing it to absolutely everyone willing to drink the cup of faith. As St. Paul assures us, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

The Metaphysics of the Bait-and-Switch (1 Corinthians 15)

But the question remains in light of this mercy: How did Jesus actually pull this off? How did a man dying on a Roman instrument of torture result in the liberation of the human race?

This brings us to the theological climax of the homily, where Chrysostom gives us the mechanics of the Harrowing of Hades (the realm of the dead). His sermon builds with a cadence like a drumbeat:

He destroyed Hades when he descended into it. He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh... Hell took a body, and it discovered God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

For thousands upon thousands of years, Death had a flawless winning streak. It swallowed every human being that walked the earth. When Christ was crucified, Death looked up and saw a bruised, bleeding, mortal man. It opened its jaws to swallow Him, just like it swallowed Adam, Abraham, and David. It took the “bait” of His humanity, and His death.

But to understand what happened next, we have to consider what theological scholars call the “Hypostatic Union.” This is the bedrock doctrine that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, united in one single, undivided person. The uncreated, infinite divine nature and the created, finite human nature are perfectly united.

When Death swallowed the human soul of Jesus, it unknowingly swallowed the infinite fire of His divinity. Death, which only has an appetite for the finite, the corrupt, and the fallen, tried to digest the Author of Life. It choked.

St. Peter preaches this exact reality in his first sermon at Pentecost: “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:24).

Saint Gregory of Nyssa (4th century) puts it like this:

…it was not in the nature of the opposing power to come in contact with the undiluted presence of God, and to undergo His unclouded manifestation, therefore, in order to secure that the ransom in our behalf might be easily accepted by him who required it, the Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature, that so, as with ravenous fish, the hook of the Deity might be gulped down along with the bait of flesh, and thus, life being introduced into the house of death, and light shining in darkness, that which is diametrically opposed to light and life might vanish; for it is not in the nature of darkness to remain when light is present, or of death to exist when life is active.

Christ didn’t just survive death; He weaponized it. He used death to destroy Death from the inside out. He kicked the gates of brass off their hinges, grabbed Adam and Eve by the wrists, and dragged human nature out of the tomb.

As St. Paul taunts in 1 Corinthians 15, “O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” Chrysostom echoes the Apostle perfectly: “Christ is risen, and you, O death, are annihilated!”

The Bottom Line

Pascha is not just a historical memorial of something that happened in a dusty tomb in AD 33. It is an eschatological event. It is the end of the world breaking into the here and now.

When the priest booms this homily at midnight, he is declaring an ontological shift in the very fabric of reality. Because Christ is the “first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep,” Death has been permanently demoted. It is no longer a dark, inescapable dead-end; it has now become a doorway to Resurrection. The sting is gone.

We do not worship a God who is waiting in the heavens to catch us on a technicality. We worship the God who willingly descended into the deepest, darkest basement of human misery, planted a bomb, and blew the Hell out of Hell to drag us out of it.

The fast is over. The doors are open. The Kingdom has been revealed. Enter into the joy of your Lord.

The Paschal Homily of Saint John Chrysostom

Is there anyone here who is a devout lover of God?
Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival.
Is there anyone who is a grateful servant?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!
Are there any now weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!
If they have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour,
let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he shall have sustained no loss.
And if any have delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.
For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him who comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him who toiled from the first.
To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the work as he greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.
Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry; partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!
Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.
He destroyed Hades when he descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below.
Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar, because it was mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it was destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar because it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and it discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?

Christ is risen, and you, O death, are annihilated!
Christ is risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ, having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen!

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Years ago when I lived in Philadelphia, and was a member of a century-old Russian Orthodox parish, I was talking to an elderly man about the sheer physical toll of Holy Week. He laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and told me about his own childhood. By the time Holy Saturday rolled into Pascha night, his entire family would be running on fumes. He remembered being seven or eight years old, the Church thick with incense and echoing with Slavonic, and finally just giving up. He said he crawled right under the wooden pews, curled up on the floorboards, and nearly slept through the Resurrection.

If you’ve survived Holy Week before, you know the feeling. We are about to enter the most exhausting, exhilarating, and transformative eight days of the Church year. You will stand until your feet ache. You will be hungry. You will smell like frankincense through Tuesday. And that is exactly the point. We worship with our bodies, not just our brains, because the God we worship took on a body to save us.

Yet it’s incredibly easy to walk into this week treating it like a guilt trip or a piece of theological community theater. We often drag our legalistic baggage right into the nave: the underlying assumption that sin is a cosmic parking ticket, God the Father is an angry judge, and Jesus is stepping in as a divine ATM to pay our fine with His blood. We brace ourselves to feel very sad for Jesus on Friday so we can feel happy for Him on Sunday.

If that is your framework, you are going to miss the midnight earthquake.

Holy Week isn’t a courtroom drama; it is a cosmic rescue mission. In the Orthodox Church, liturgical time isn’t a straight line—it’s a spiral. When we sing these hymns, we aren’t merely reenacting an event from two millennia ago. We are stepping outside of linear time and participating in the eternal Today of Christ’s saving work. Christ isn’t paying a fine. He is the Great Physician, and He has stepped onto the floor of the plague ward.

Here is your field guide to the services, the theology, and the sheer metaphysical weight of what we are about to do.

Palm Sunday: The Warrior King Arrives

It starts this weekend. We just had the raising of Lazarus on Saturday morning, a foretaste of Christ’s own resurrection and the resurrection of all. Then at the nighttime services for Palm Sunday, we read prophecies from Zephaniah and Zechariah that foresee the Messiah coming to Jerusalem to deliver His people from the abyss.

On Palm Sunday, when you stand in the nave holding your blessed palms (or perhaps pussy willows, depending on your parish’s local tradition), you are not a fan cheering at a parade. You are a citizen of a besieged city welcoming the conquering King. But He isn’t riding in to overthrow the Romans; He is riding in to engage in single combat with Death itself. It is truly a joyous celebration, and the Church permits (or encourages) us to lighten the fast a bit with some fish.

By Sunday evening, the tone shifts abruptly. The bright celebration pivots to the Bridegroom Matins, and we hear the dismissal prayer that will anchor us through Great Wednesday: “May the Lord who came to His voluntary passion for our salvation, Christ our true God... have mercy on us and save us.”

Notice the phrase “His voluntary passion”:

Nobody is taking His life;

He is laying it down as a tactical strike.

Fr. Georges Florovsky constantly battled against what he called “eschatological Docetism”—the bizarre but common idea that the Incarnation and the Cross were just temporary “episodes” in God’s timeline. It’s the heresy that Jesus just put on a human meat-suit for thirty-three years, suffered a bit, and then discarded it so we could all return to being pure, ethereal spirits in the clouds. History matters to Christianity, and that history is an outworking of God’s acts.

God didn’t just beam down a theological concept. He entered the dirt, the betrayal, and the blood of human history. The Christ who suffers this week doesn’t just pretend to be human; He takes our actual, physical humanity into the grave to blow the doors off it from the inside.

Moreover, the Ascension didn’t undo the grit of the Incarnation. The God who hangs on the cross is the same God who sits on the throne, forever bearing the marks of His love in His flesh.

The First Three Days: The Bridegroom and the Chamber

From Palm Sunday evening through Holy Tuesday, we celebrate Bridegroom Matins. The Church is darkened, and the icon of Christ the Bridegroom is brought out in procession. But He isn’t dressed for a wedding—He is wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe of mockery.

Why a Bridegroom? Because the Cross is a marriage. Christ is coming to unite Himself to humanity, and He is paying the ultimate dowry: His own blood.

But there is an eschatological tension here. We are forced to ask ourselves: Am I ready for the wedding? We sing the haunting Troparion:

Behold the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching... Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep.

At the end of these services, we sing an Exapostilarion, admitting that we see the bridal chamber adorned, but we have no wedding garment to enter.

We are confronting our own unreadiness. We are the foolish virgins who fell asleep; we are the guests who showed up to the King’s feast in filthy rags.

“The kenosis, the self-emptying of Christ is, in itself, the supreme form of tenderness,” says Saint Dumitru Stăniloae. By stepping into the ultimate human suffering, betrayal, and abandonment, Christ fills the darkest, most godforsaken corners of human existence with the uncreated light of God.

Because of this week, there is nowhere you can fall—no depression, no suffering, no betrayal, and not even death itself—where Christ has not already been and planted His flag. Saint Dumitru and other holy fathers have taught that our dogmas are not abstract truths, but rather are an articulation of the living experience of God within the Church.

The Bridegroom services aren’t designed to make you feel guilty; they are designed to wake you up so you don’t miss the rescue mission.

Holy Wednesday: The Harlot and the Traitor

On Wednesday, the Church draws a sharp, terrifying contrast between two people: Judas, the chosen disciple who betrays Christ for thirty pieces of silver, and a sinful woman (a harlot) who shatters an alabaster flask of expensive myrrh to anoint His feet.

We sing the famous Hymn of Kassiani, written by a brilliant ninth-century female hymnographer and saint. It is a masterpiece of biblical exegesis. Kassiani puts words into the mouth of the sinful woman, drawing a direct, chilling line back to the Garden of Eden: “I will kiss Thy pure feet and I will wipe them with my tresses. I will kiss Thy feet Whose tread when it fell on the ears of Eve in Paradise dismayed her so that she did hide herself because of fear.”

Look at what is happening here. This is a metaphysical reversal. In Genesis, God walks in the Garden, and Eve hides in fear because of her sin. This time, God is walking on earth in the flesh, and a woman drowning in sin doesn’t hide—she runs to Him, falls down, and kisses those exact same feet.

Saint John Chrysostom points out the tragic irony of this moment. “And when the harlot had repented, when she had been drawn to the Master, then the disciple betrayed his Teacher.” Judas, the insider, the man who spent three years listening to the Word of God, starts doing math. He calculates the cost of the perfume. He calculates the payout from the Pharisees. The harlot, meanwhile, calculates nothing. She simply recognizes her Creator.

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SIDEBAR: Oil, Bread, and the Liturgical Reality

While the historical timeline of Holy Week gives us the narrative, the liturgy drags us directly into the events. If you’re navigating the service schedule this week, keep an eye out for two major sacramental anchors that break the usual rhythm.

Holy Wednesday: The Sacrament of Unction
In many parishes, Wednesday evening is reserved for the Sacrament of Holy Unction. The timing is entirely deliberate. On the exact day we commemorate the sinful woman weeping and anointing Christ’s feet with expensive myrrh, the Church turns around and anoints us with blessed oil. It is administered for the healing of soul and body. We don’t just watch the harlot repent; we step into her shoes and receive the medicine of the Great Physician ourselves.

Holy Thursday: The Mystical Supper
“Accept me today, O Son of God, as a partaker of Your mystical supper.” Thursday is liturgically massive because it is the day Christ instituted the Eucharist. To mark this, we celebrate a Divine Liturgy (specifically, the majestic Liturgy of St. Basil the Great) on Thursday morning or early afternoon. But we are not putting on a historical play. We are not hosting a new supper or merely doing a reenactment. Through the Liturgy, we step outside of time and participate mystically in that exact same upper room in Jerusalem.

Great and Holy Friday: Theopaschism and the Glory of the Cross

If you come from a Christian background that emphasizes “penal substitution,” you might expect Good Friday to focus on the psychological and physical agony of Jesus—the nails, the scourging, the sheer human terror.

We do not ignore the suffering. (Your feet and your fasting stomach will remind you of it.) But the Orthodox Church focuses on something far deeper: the divine glory manifest in that suffering.

On Thursday night, we read the Twelve Passion Gospels. On Friday afternoon, we take the body of Christ down from the Cross (the Unnailing) and place it in the tomb. On Friday night, we sing the Lamentations over His grave. All the drama of Christ’s final week becomes real in our midst as we literally have a funeral for God and eulogize Him as He descends into the tomb.

Saint Andrew of Crete tells us that the cross is the glory of Christ, that it was his goal before the ages:

The cross is called Christ’s glory; it is saluted as his his triumph. We recognize it as the cup he longed to drink and the climax of the sufferings he endured for our sake.

And Saint Andrew of Crete won’t let us treat the Cross like a tragedy that happened to “the human part” of Jesus while the divine nature watched from a safe distance. The Cross is exalted because it’s Christ’s glory—his triumph, the cup he wanted to drink, the summit of his love for us. That’s why it isn’t God’s emergency patch after Eden. It’s the plan “before the ages.” The Cross is the eternal shape of God’s self-emptying: God unites Himself to humanity, meets Death head-on, and kills it from the inside—by death.

So when we look at the cross, we don’t just see an instrument of Roman execution; we see the King of Glory ascending His throne.

We believe in an Orthodox understanding of Theopaschism—as championed by St. Cyril of Alexandria—that God suffered in the flesh.

This means that the One hanging on the wood—and the services say exactly this—is the selfsame One who hung the earth upon the waters. The hymnography of Great and Holy Friday is staggering because it forces us to watch the angels. The bodiless powers are looking down in absolute, unmitigated shock as their Creator allows Himself to be slapped by the clay He molded.

Saint Dumitru Stăniloae again:

Without the cross man would be in danger of considering this world as the ultimate reality. Without the cross he would no longer see the world as God’s gift. Without the cross the Son of God incarnate would have simply confirmed the image of the world as it is now as the final reality, and strictly speaking he could have been neither God nor God incarnate. The cross completes the fragmentary meaning of this world which has meaning when it is seen as a gift which has its value, but only a relative and not an absolute value. The cross reveals the destiny of the world as it is drawn towards its transfiguration in God by Christ. For this reason at the end of this stage of the world this sign, ‘the sign of the Son of Man’, will be revealed in the heavens above all the world, as a light, as a meaning, as a destiny which illumines the whole history of man (cf. Matthew 24:30).

The Cross is not a defeat; it is the ultimate revelation of God’s uncreated love. He is weaponizing Death against itself.

Great and Holy Saturday: The Harrowing of Hades

This brings us to the very hinge of the universe. On Saturday morning, we celebrate a Vesperal Liturgy—the mood has begun to change from the rest of the week. The clergy change from dark purple vestments to bright white. Many parishes throw bay leaves and flower petals all over the Church, shouting, “Arise, O God, judge the earth!”

Christ is in the tomb. But the tomb is not a place of decay, it has become a “life-bearing tomb.”

While His body rests in the grave, His human soul—united to His divinity—descends like a nuclear strike into Hades (the realm of the dead). For all of human history, Death had swallowed everyone: the righteous and the wicked. But when Death swallows Christ, it swallows God. It is like a dark, sealed room trying to swallow the sun.

Hades is shattered. The gates of brass are kicked off their hinges. Christ grabs Adam and Eve by the wrists and pulls them from the graves. The “death of God” becomes the death of Death.

Christ, the New Adam, restores our humanity so that we can once again stand as priests of creation. The Cross and the descent into Hades are the ultimate acts of His priestly offering, reclaiming everything that was lost before.

SIDEBAR: Holy Week at a Glance

If you want to explore a little more, Archpriest Ivan Shandra provides a straightforward breakdown of what the Church actually commemorates each day in this video, and summarized below:

Holy Monday - The Patriarch and the Fig Tree

We hold up two warnings: Joseph the Fair (sold by envious brothers, foreshadowing Christ) and the cursed fig tree. The tree had plenty of green leaves but zero fruit—a stark image of hypocritical religion that looks the part but lacks actual repentance.

Holy Tuesday - Spiritual Vigilance

Christ drops parables in the temple that infuriate the Pharisees. We read the Parable of the Ten Virgins as a blunt, unvarnished call to wake up. Do the actual work of your faith so you aren’t caught sleeping when the Bridegroom arrives.

Holy Wednesday - The Sinner and the Traitor

A terrifying contrast. A sinful woman weeps, anoints Christ’s feet, and repents. Meanwhile, Judas—the insider, the disciple—does the math and sells his God for thirty pieces of silver. The harlot repents; the theologian betrays.

Holy Thursday - The Supper and the Garden

A massively dense day. Christ washes His disciples’ feet and institutes the Eucharist. Then, the narrative plunges into the dark: the agonizing prayer in Gethsemane, the arrest, and Peter’s three-fold denial before the rooster crows.

Holy Friday - The Cross and the Tomb

The trial, the mocking, and the sheer shock of the Creator remaining silent before His creatures. Christ is crucified and dies. Just before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus take His body down from the wood and seal it in a garden tomb.

Holy Saturday - The Harrowing of Hades

A day of heavy, pregnant silence. Christ’s physical body rests in the grave, but His soul descends like a battering ram to kick the doors off hell and rescue the righteous. By evening, the liturgy noticeably shifts. The Resurrection is coming.

Conclusion: Your Role in the Drama

Every day this week is called “Great” because of the magnitude of what God is doing. But we do not do Holy Week to feel bad for Jesus. He doesn’t need our pity; but he does call us to repentance.

Even in the midst of this cosmic drama, the Church reminds us that our theology must become action. We cannot just read about this; we have to live it in the community of the Church. One of the hymns of the week instructs us plainly:

Let us serve the Master eagerly... Let one gain wisdom through good deeds; Let another celebrate the Liturgy with beauty; Let another share his faith... Let another give his wealth to the poor.

We are about to walk through the darkest, brightest, most exhausting week of the Church year. Pace yourself. We should fast, but not boast about it. We pray more, we pray deeply. We work on forgiveness. And we show up to as many services as the circumstances of life and physical stamina allow.

If your legs are shaking during the Twelve Gospels, and when the smell of myrrh and incense clings to your clothes, remember the old man in Philadelphia—and cut the little boy some slack, too. We bring our whole bodies to the tomb because Christ brought His whole body to the cross.

We are marching with Christ to the grave this week. But we do not go to mourn a martyr. We go to watch the Author of Life plant a bomb in the basement of Hades.

The Bridegroom is coming. Make sure you are awake.

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To borrow an opening line from the rock band Foo Fighters, I have another confession to make—and I have never felt more fiercely righteous than when I was absolutely certain someone else was ruining the Church.

It is an intoxicating feeling, being “right” when everyone else is so wrong. You look around at the state of your parish, or your Orthodox administrative jurisdiction (or someone else’s jurisdiction—i.e., GOA, OCA, ROCOR, etc.), or the latest theological trainwreck unfolding in the Orthodox corners of the internet, and a hot, clean zeal washes over you. You know exactly what needs to be fixed. You know exactly who the problem is. And you know, with the unshakeable confidence of a crusader, that if people would just listen to you, the Bride of Christ would finally be pristine again.

It is also, almost without exception, a complete spiritual delusion.

On Friday, His Eminence Metropolitan Saba of the Antiochian Archdiocese published a piece that stopped many of us dead in our tracks. It wasn’t a standard encyclical or a theological treatise. It was a prayer—a raw, honest, public confession written directly to Christ. In it, he named the exact temptation that plagues anyone who cares deeply about the Church, from the newest convert on YouTube to the bishops in their cathedrals: the terrifying ease with which we confuse our own ego with zeal for God’s house.

So, today I want to go through the Metropolitan’s prayer, “Lord, Do Not Discipline Us Harshly.” We are going to look at the messiness of the Church, the strange geometry of Christ’s life, and why the most dangerous thing you can do is try to “fix” the Body of Christ.

My Lord,

Perhaps one of the most difficult things in Your Gospel is that You allowed the wheat to grow together with the tares until the final judgment. In doing so, You taught us that Your Church on earth is not a gathering of saints as much as it is a community of strugglers seeking holiness.

Some may attain it; others may glimpse it only from afar; and many may not see it at all.

You willed Your Church to be a community of seekers of the truth—and the Truth is You, and in You it is revealed. Yet we still wonder why the Church is persecuted and in conflict until the end of time.

In our disputes and zealotry—which we mistakenly attribute to You—we imagine that we are defending You and defending Your Body stretched out across the earth.

But the truth is: we belong to this and that of your servants more we belong actually to You.

You also taught us that holiness is not given except to those who truly seek it on the narrow path.

Thus, we learned that we must be strict with ourselves, not others, and that we must demand truth and uprightness from ourselves before anything else.

Then You offered Your life so that truth, purity, and self-sacrifice might hold the highest place in Your creation. Your sacrifice became the true expression of Your pure words.

And because You humbled Yourself and made Your life consistent with Your word, Your whole life was a descent.

You ascended only twice.

The first time was so that the multitudes might hear Your teaching, when You went up the mountain to give them the new law.

The second time was upon the Cross. On the hill of Golgotha, You allowed Yourself to be lifted up as a martyr, embracing the world with Your outstretched arms.

Yet even this elevation was the summit of Your descent, for it led You to the tomb in an earthly cave.

And through this utmost descent You rose again and burst forth with life—the life of which You spoke in the Gospel, saying that You came to give it to us, and to give it to us abundantly.

But we often act contrary to you.

We love display and self-exaltation. We prefer that people see us as leaders rather than as servants and fathers.

We want followers, even if we lead them to destruction.

Because we are small within, we seek to become great—not through You, but through them—so that we may feel effective, influential, and important.

If Your children, out of love for us, see only our outward appearance, what excuse do we have, when we ourselves know who we are and are aware of the baseness, weakness, and impurity that dwell within us?

Teach us, Lord, how to descend so that You may raise us up.

Guide us to understand the true exaltation that befits Your people and Your servants.

Is it not enough for us to remain at Your feet?

Is not the whole fulfillment in listening to You, as Mary did when she received the good portion that shall not be taken away from her?

In the intoxication of our self-importance and ego, we often forget You, my Lord, and replace You with our followers.

We become preoccupied with the devil dwelling within us, following his whispers so we no longer see You or hear You. Thus, vainglory leads us to do what we perceive is right—when in truth it is our own sins.

And so, Lord, we no longer know how to distinguish between our passions and our zeal for Your house.

Do not allow turmoil, Lord, to drive us to act contrary to Your Gospel.

Have mercy on us and on our hardness of heart. Pour out upon us much more of Your abundant mercy.

You have entrusted us with a fearful responsibility, for You have chosen to place Your Holy Spirit in us—vulnerable vessels so easily broken.

How can we keep our vessels intact while slipping is so easy, and the illusion that we are Your chosen agents to correct Your Church and the world is so enticing?

Lord, how many times have we been tempted to act against Your Gospel in order to serve Your Church “better”?

How often have we violated Your Gospel when we sanctified the means for the sake of the end?

And how often have we betrayed You when we set You aside and used You as a tool for our own interests and desires?

Teach us, Lord, that we are not greater than You, for no servant is greater than his master.

Help us to accept Your example—the example of the one who is the persecuted, not the persecutor.

Direct our steps so that You may be our first love.

Grant that we may listen to You more than we speak about You, so that we may rightly discern between Your will and our passions.

My Lord, throughout history You have taught us that You permit both external and internal persecution when we stray from the truth and depart from the straight path.

Do not discipline us harshly, Lord, for we can scarcely endure it.

Preserve among us a remnant that bears witness to You—to the fullness of life You desired for us, and to the joy that Your angels proclaimed when You honored our earth when You visited us.

People are weary of Your Church because of us, O Lord. Forgive us and guide us onto the straight path.

It is You who we desire, Lord. Do not let us become distracted from You by that which belongs to You.

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Setting Up the “Agricultural” Problem

Most Orthodox Christians want a pure Church.

This is not a new problem. In the fourth century, a group of hardline Christians in North Africa looked around at their bishops and priests. Some of those clergy had caved under Roman persecution, handing over holy things to save their own skins. When the persecution ended, these lapsed priests wanted to return. The hardliners—who became known as the Donatists—said absolutely not. They demanded a pure Church, stripped of the compromised, the weak, and the cowardly. For the Donatists, these people weren’t invited to the party.

The Orthodox, Catholic response—championed most famously by Saint Augustine—was far more messy. The Church, they argued, is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

Metropolitan Saba addresses this directly in his prayer, pointing straight back to Christ’s parable of the wheat and the tares. “Perhaps one of the most difficult things in Your Gospel,” he writes, “is that You allowed the wheat to grow together with the tares until the final judgment.”

He gives a beautiful definition of what we are actually doing here:

You taught us that Your Church on earth is not a gathering of saints as much as it is a community of strugglers seeking holiness. Some may attain it; others may glimpse it only from afar; and many may not see it at all.

The human tendency is to hate this. We want to pull the weeds, and we’re pretty sure the other guys are the weeds. We may be tempted to draw sharp lines between the “True Believers” and the “Compromised.” But the tension of the Gospel is that Christ actually tells us to knock it off with the weed-pulling (Matthew 13:24-30)—primarily because our spiritual eyesight is so warped by pride that we are almost guaranteed to uproot the wheat while protecting our own favorite tares.

Or, more frighteningly, and I already hinted at this: we might realize that we are the tares.

“Thus, we learned,” His Eminence concludes, “that we must be strict with ourselves, not others, and that we must demand truth and uprightness from ourselves before anything else.”

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The Two Ascents of Christ

If the first temptation is to purge the Church, the second is to climb to the top of it.

Here, Metropolitan Saba makes a profound observation about the physical trajectory of the Incarnation. Our culture is obsessed with upward mobility. We want platforms. We count clicks, subscribers, followers, and comments. Enter YouTube, and the newly zealous want to be seen as leaders, defenders of the faith, important voices.

But Christ’s life moved in the exact opposite direction. His entire existence was an act of kenosis—a Greek word meaning self-emptying. God becomes a fetus. The Creator of the cosmos learns to walk in the dust of first-century Palestine. He famously rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, and yet was greeted by the masses as a King and Royal Victor.

“Your whole life was a descent,” Metropolitan Saba writes. And then he points out an astonishing detail: “You ascended only twice.”

The first time Christ goes up is to the mountain, so the multitudes can hear the new law (Matthew 5). The second time is upon the Cross: “On the hill of Golgotha, You allowed Yourself to be lifted up as a martyr, embracing the world with Your outstretched arms.”

Even when Christ goes “up,” it is actually the summit of His descent. He ascends the mountain to serve the crowds. He ascends the cross to die for them.

Contrast this with how we operate. “Because we are small within,” the Metropolitan confesses on our behalf, “we seek to become great—not through You, but through them [our followers]—so that we may feel effective, influential, and important.”

We use the things of God to build monuments to ourselves. We gather followers, readers, and allies under the banner of “defending” or promoting Orthodoxy, but the engine driving the train is often just our own desperate need to matter.

We are like the disciples arguing over who is going to be the greatest in the Kingdom; meanwhile, Christ is prepping a bowl of water to wash the feet of the disciples.

Sanctifying the Means

All this presents an amusing—or rather, tragic—conundrum. What happens when we convince ourselves we are fighting a holy war for the Church? And what if we are really being driven by ego?

“How often,” the Metropolitan asks, “have we violated Your Gospel when we sanctified the means for the sake of the end?”

When you believe that the survival or purity of the Church depends entirely on you winning an argument, securing a parish council vote, or “destroying” an opponent online, you will justify almost any behavior. Snark, slander, political maneuvering, gossip, personal attacks—it all gets baptized as “zeal” or is justified “because he brought so many to the Church.”

But the Metropolitan pierces right through this delusion:

In the intoxication of our self-importance and ego, we often forget You, my Lord, and replace You with our followers. We become preoccupied with the devil dwelling within us, following his whispers so we no longer see You or hear You. Thus, vainglory leads us to do what we perceive is right—when in truth it is our own sins.

Read that line again. Vainglory leads us to do what we perceive is right.

The most terrifying moment in the spiritual life is not when you are tempted to do something obviously evil. It is when the demons convince you to do something “holy” using the methods of Hell.

We set Christ aside, the Metropolitan says, and “use [Him] as a tool for our own interests and desires.”

The Weariness of the World

If we stay on this path of arrogant, self-appointed crusading, the results are inevitable. As is usually the case, history shows us exactly what happens, even when new technologies give platform to our sins.

When we become swollen with in our own self-importance, and when the broader Church begins to forget the strange geometry of downward mobility, God prunes us. He permits external hardship or internal fracture to break the pride of His people. He lets the structures collapse so we will hear the message and we can remember how to pray.

This leads to the most sigh-inducing line in the entire piece:

People are weary of Your Church because of us, O Lord. Forgive us and guide us onto the straight path... Do not discipline us harshly, Lord, for we can scarcely endure it.

If you have spent any time trying to evangelize, you know how true this can be. People are rarely kept away from Orthodox Christianity by the doctrine of the Trinity or the complexity of the Divine Liturgy. They are kept away by us. They see our infighting. They see our arrogance. They see leaders and laymen who demand to be served rather than to serve. They see people who claim to eat the Body of the crucified God, but who refuse to crucify their own egos. The see a prideful bunch who fill X with posts about being right, and everyone else is just stupid, wrong, and probably dishonest.

Is it any surprise that some are weary of us? And we are, if we are honest, frequently weary of ourselves.

The Good Portion

So how do we fix it? How do we stop being the obstacle? The answer is unexciting to the human ego: you stop trying to “fix” the Church, and you sit down.

“Is it not enough for us to remain at Your feet?” Metropolitan Saba asks. “Is not the whole fulfillment in listening to You, as Mary did when she received the good portion that shall not be taken away from her?”

This is where the Metropolitan reframes it for us. The next time you feel that hot flush of righteous indignation—the next time you are absolutely certain that you need to step in and correct someone, or launch a theological offensive, or save the parish from itself—pause.

Look at your own hands: Are they reaching for a towel to wash feet, or are they reaching for a crown?

The Church doesn’t need more saviors. It already has one. What it needs is a committed bunch of men and women who are willing to take the downward path. It needs people who are more concerned with their own repentance than their neighbor’s theology and morals.

“Direct our steps so that You may be our first love,” the Metropolitan prays. “Grant that we may listen to You more than we speak about You.”

May it be so. Because when we finally stop trying to ascend, we might just bump into the God who is already waiting for us at the bottom.

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This Lent I would like to pause to consider just what profound spiritual surgery this short, powerful prayer is performing on our souls.

We know it’s important. It’s everywhere during Lent, both in Church and in our private prayer corners. Yet, for all its seeming to be everywhere, its direct, almost blunt petitions can fly by, becoming part of the Lenten atmosphere rather than an earnest, personal plea.

So, let’s explore this little Lenten prayer that has withstood the test of time. We’ll peel back its layers, understand the ancient wisdom it condenses, and see how this prayer, century after century, offers a direct path to spiritual healing and true communion with the God who is there.

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother; for blessed art Thou unto ages of ages. Amen.

Source: OCA

Dissecting the Petitions: The Four Foes and the Four Friends

Saint Ephraim’s prayer is a two-part spiritual diagnostic.

• First, it identifies the primary diseases of the soul we need God to remove.

• Then, it prescribes the essential virtues we need God to implant. It’s a masterful piece of spiritual engineering: concise, precise, and effective.

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

This isn’t a generic “make me a better person” petition. Ephraim names four specific, insidious “spirits” that corrupt us from within.

• Sloth (ἀργία - argia): This isn’t just about being lazy and binging Netflix. This is spiritual sloth, a listlessness of the soul that resists effort towards God. It’s the spiritual inertia that keeps us from prayer, from charity, from any real striving for holiness. Sometimes it comes across as a comfortable apathy that says, “eh, tomorrow.” (There are some differences between the Greek and Slavonic here that are interesting.)

• Despair (ἀθυμία - athymai): Sometimes this is translated as “faint-heartedness,” this is the spirit that tells us it’s too hard, we’re too weak, God can’t possibly forgive this. It’s a parlyzing doubt, the inner voice that whispers to us that spiritual growth is for others, not for our pathetic selves. Interestingly, the desert fathers saw despair as one of the ultimate temptations, because it cuts off the very hope needed for repentance.

• Lust of Power (φιλαρχία - philarchia): This isn’t just about wanting to be CEO. This is the desire to dominate, to control, to impose our will on others, even subtly. It’s pride’s ugly cousin, whispering that we know best, that our opinions are superior, that our way is the only way. You need a permit in fourteen U.S. states to attempt that level of self-importance, but here we are, asking God to yank it out of us.

• Idle Talk (ἀργολογία - argologia): Oh, the chatter! And in our digital age, this one hits close to home. It’s not just gossip, but all speech that is empty, pointless, or destructive. It’s the incessant internal monologue, the endless scrolling, the words that build nothing up but tear down reputation, peace, or truth. It’s spiritually junk food for the soul.

This prayer is a direct plea for God’s grace to pull out these deep-rooted and tenacious weeds from our souls.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.

Having cleared the ground, Ephraim then asks for the cultivation of four essential virtues. These aren’t just external behaviors; they are qualities that transform the very fabric of our being, making us more truly human, more truly like Christ.

• Chastity (σωφροσύνη - sophrosyne): It’s more than sexual purity (but not less than sexual purity), so this ancient virtue speaks to inner integrity, sobriety, and self-control across all aspects of life. It’s the spiritual clarity that allows us to see things as they truly are, unclouded by passion or illusion. It’s aiming for a unified, healthy soul.

• Humility (ταπεινοφροσύνη - tapeinophrosyne): The queen of virtues, often misunderstood. It’s not self-abasement; it’s self-knowledge. It’s seeing ourselves accurately before God and others, without pretense or exaggeration. It’s the freedom from needing to prove anything, the quiet confidence that comes from resting in God’s grace.

• Patience (ὑπομονή - hypomonē): This is not passive resignation but active endurance. It’s the steadfastness that allows us to bear trials, temptations, and delays without losing heart. It’s the long-suffering love that trusts in God’s providential love, even when we don’t understand this mortal existence.

• Love (ἀγάπη - agapē): The highest virtue, the very essence of God Himself. It’s selfless, sacrificial love, the kind that seeks the good of the other before its own. It’s the glue that binds all other virtues together, making them truly Christ-like.

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The Mirror, Not the Hammer: Seeing My Own Transgressions

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother; for blessed art Thou unto ages of ages. Amen.

This final petition is the prayer’s pinnacle, the place where it has been leading all along. It’s the antidote to pride and the foundation of true repentance. How often do we, as humans, find it so much easier to spot the speck in our brother’s eye than the plank in our own? Saint Ephraim cuts to the chase, and with him we ask for the grace of self-knowledge, the radical honesty to confront our own fallenness.

This prayer and this petition isn’t really about wallowing in guilt; it’s about clarity. It’s about turning the spiritual microscope on ourselves, recognizing our inner “spirits” of sloth or lust of power, and simultaneously disarming the judgmental spirit that so quickly rises when we look at others.

True humility, the prayer teaches us, leads not to condemnation of our neighbor, but to compassion, because we know all too well our own battles.

Sidebar: The Syrian Sheepdog

It’s a great irony of Church history that Saint Ephraim the Syrian—one of the most prolific and complex poets and theologians of the ancient Christian world—is globally famous today for a prayer that takes about thirty seconds to say, complete with gestures and prostrations.

In the fourth century, Ephraim was a towering intellectual. He was ordained a deacon by a bishop who had actually sat at the Council of Nicea. But he didn’t fight the theological battles of his day with dry academic treatises. He fought them with lyrics.

As the Orthodox YouTube channel Patristix notes in a great video essay on the topic, Ephraim used his hymns to build a fortress of truth against the swirling heresies of his era. In fact, a century after he died, another saintly poet, Jacob of Serugh, gave him the perfect title: “a sheepdog guarding the sheep of God’s household.” Ephraim literally built a protective sheepfold out of poetry to shield the faithful from spiritual storms.

He didn’t just argue. He sang.

We can remember this when we drop to the floor to pray his Lenten prayer, that we aren’t just reciting an isolated monk’s private journal entry. We’re borrowing the field-tested notes of a fourth-century theological sheepdog.

(To dig a little deeper into the history of the man behind the prayer, I highly recommend the short breakdown from Patristix below.)

From Words to Life: Living the Prayer

This prayer is not merely recited; it’s lived through gesture and intention. Whether bowing alongside our brothers and sisters during a Pre-Sanctified Liturgy, or quietly in the solitude of our homes, its rhythm is meant to imprint itself on our bodies and souls.

The bodily action that accompanies this prayer—which can vary in specifics, but pretty much always involves some form of bowing or prostration—is crucial. It reminds us that repentance is not a purely mental exercise. It involves the whole person—mind, heart, and body—bending in submission and humility before God. As the Fathers understood, the body is a full participant in our spiritual lives, not just vessels for our souls and the thoughts that rattle around our heads.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann (of blessed memory) put it like this:

In the long and difficult effort of spiritual recovery, the Church does not separate the soul from the body. The whole man has fallen away from God; the whole man is to be restored, the whole man is to return. The catastrophe of sin lies precisely in the victory of the flesh—the animal, the irrational, the lust in us—over the spiritual and the divine. But the body is glorious; the body is holy, so holy that God Himself “became flesh.” Salvation and repentance then are not contempt for the body or neglect of it, but restoration of the body to its real function as the expression and the life of spirit, as the temple of the priceless human soul. Christian asceticism is a fight, not against but for the body. For this reason, the whole man—soul and body—repents. The body participates in the prayer of the soul just as the soul prays through and in the body. Prostrations, the “psycho-somatic” sign of repentance and humility, of adoration and obedience, are thus the lenten rite par excellence.

Incorporating Saint Ephraim’s prayer into our daily lives during the Lenten weeks transforms our days into a school of spiritual combat and a deepening self-awareness.

Rightly understood, it teaches us that true fasting isn’t just about abstaining from food, but from the passions that distort the image of God within us. Each time we utter it, each time we bow, we are engaging in a micro-act of metanoia, allowing God to work His healing, transformative power within us.

So this Lent, as the familiar words rise from your lips, take a moment. Let them sink in. Feel the weight of each petition, the cutting edge of each diagnosis, and the soaring hope of each virtue on offer in the prayer.

Because in this short but bold prayer, we hold the scalpel that cuts to the heart—in order to truly heal it.

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When they finally reached the summit, they found a tiny church—roughly the size of a modern office. Inside, the priest-monk opened the altar table to reveal the reserved sacrament. It had been sitting there for decades. The exact date of the last Divine Liturgy celebrated in that building was lost to memory, unrecorded in any parish registry. Yet, the Holy Communion was perfectly preserved. It hadn’t molded. It hadn’t decayed. Decades later, it remained physically pure.

This story was recounted by Bishop Nikolai Soraich—he was the theology student. For Orthodox Christians, a story like this is more than just a historical curiosity or a neatly packaged miracle. It forces us to confront a startling reality that modern minds instinctively want to domesticate. We are not dealing with a metaphor.

When we talk about the Eucharist, the tension usually lies right here: we either reduce the chalice to a memorial symbol, or we elevate it to an untouchable prize reserved only for the spiritually elite. Both extremes miss the mark entirely.

So, we’re going to clear up two interconnected mysteries of the Church:

1. What we are actually receiving in the chalice;

2. And how the gritty, often uncomfortable work of Confession prepares us to approach it.

Defining the Mystery: More Than a Symbol

Let’s start with a plain definition: Holy Communion is the literal, true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, taking the physical form of bread and wine, given to us for our salvation and union with God.

As Bishop Nikolai plainly puts it, “It isn’t just a symbol of Christ’s body and blood. It truly is.”

If you look at the historical development of the Divine Liturgy—specifically the Liturgies of St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great, more or less actualized by the fourth century—you see a clear divergence in how the Christian East and West understand the moment this transformation happens.

In the Roman Catholic tradition, the consecration is tied specifically to the Words of Institution: when the priest points to the elements and says, “Take, eat, this is my body.” The Orthodox tradition, however, understands this as a broader, more mystical action. The transformation occurs during the epiclesis (the calling down of the Holy Spirit), which happens during the anaphora (the Eucharistic prayer).

“In the Orthodox Church, that’s not the case,” Bishop Nikolai explains regarding the Western timing. “That period of anaphora begins right after the Creed... until the end of the anaphora. In there is the calling down of the Holy Spirit upon those gifts, and they’re actually transformed.”

We call it a “mystery” not because we enjoy being intellectually evasive, but because human cognition simply lacks the bandwidth to process the mechanics of how the Creator of the cosmos unites Himself to us through bread and wine. It defies our categories.

Interestingly, this very physical reality—that it is truly Christ’s blood—is why Bishop Nikolai notes that alcoholics need not fear the chalice. It is the zapivka (the blessed wine and water taken in many parishes after communion to wash the mouth) that triggers addiction, not the pure, consecrated Blood of Christ.

This article is based on a conversation between His Grace Bishop Nikolai and a priest. To listen in to the conversation, check out this video on YouTube:

The Hitman and the Witness

If the Eucharist is a consuming fire, an encounter with the living God, then it demands preparation. And this brings us to the great hurdle for modern people: Confession.

Many of us wince at the word. We drag our feet. We convince ourselves that since God already knows our sins, we can just handle the paperwork privately in our own living rooms. I’ve even been surprised many times to hear cradle Orthodox people in class object to confession, “But the priest is just a human like me!”

Father Dimitri Kulp, speaking alongside Bishop Nikolai, counters this widespread misconception. While private repentance is necessary—and we absolutely should confession our sins in our ordinary daily, private prayers—he points out that non-sacramental Christians and modern secular believers largely lack the physical realization of repentance. “There is something to our repentance actually being realized when we confess to a person in the flesh,” Father Dimitri notes.

The Orthodox sacraments are inherently hands-on. Literally. Under ordinary circumstances, you cannot be absolved via Zoom or through solitary meditation. You have to stand before an icon of Christ—with a deeply flawed (but duly called and appointed) human priest standing next to you—and speak your shame into the air in faith that Christ Himself will hear your confession.

Why the priest? Because we need a witness. Before hearing a confession, the Orthodox priest reads a prayer reminding the penitent: “Behold, child, Christ stands here invisibly... I am but a witness, bearing testimony before Him of all the things which you have to say to me.”

Confession is like cleaning out a dark basement. The priest isn’t there to judge your performance or really even to criticize the mess—he’s there to hold the flashlight while you do the work of bringing everything into the light.

Bishop Nikolai shares a jarring example from his first parish to illustrate the absolute leveling power of this sacrament: he became the confessor to an active hitman. This man had been baptized Orthodox but eventually took on a job doing the devil’s work. He would receive an envelope containing a photograph, a gun, and an address. He wanted to know nothing else about the families he destroyed. His life inevitably spiraled into misery and severe alcoholism, which eventually killed him.

“But he had true repentance,” Bishop Nikolai recalls. “He died miserably because he lived miserably for many, many years... But he had true repentance. I believe he had true repentance, and at that point, he could die.”

If the Church has room to witness the repentance of a cartel hitman, she has room for your pride, your anger, and your quiet betrayals. As Father Dimitri observes, “We look at confession as one of the biggest manifestations of our repentance... in this way we’re opening ourselves up to receiving God’s grace.”

The Trap of False Piety

All this presents an amusing, if tragic, conundrum. We know the Eucharist is holy. We know we are broken. Therefore, the logical human conclusion is to self-exclude. I am too sinful to approach the chalice.

In many parishes, this has historically devolved into people receiving Communion only two or three times a year—perhaps on Lazarus Saturday or just before Nativity. It looks like humility, but it is actually a subtle form of spiritual pride. It operates on the assumption that if you fast hard enough, pray long enough, and behave well enough, you might cross an invisible threshold into “worthiness.” This has been such a common issue in Church history that both Protestant Reformer Martin Luther and Orthodox monk and holy one, Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite, each wrote to encourage more frequent reception of Holy Communion.

Bishop Nikolai sharply dismantles this misdirected piety:

You get that false piety of, “I’m not worthy to receive.” No, you’ll never be worthy to receive. I’m not worthy to receive—and nobody’s worthy to receive. It’s a gift that Christ gives us for our salvation, for our very life.

The Church’s preparation is multifaceted. Of course, we universally emphasize fasting from midnight, and we are strongly encouraged to remember the broader fast during fasting seasons, as well as Wednesdays and Fridays. Some are particularly disciplined with attending Vespers the night before, maintaining peace and stillness the morning of Liturgy (and all parents laugh!), or saying pre-communion prayers in advance of the service.

To whatever extent we are doing these things, we need to remember that this is not a transactional currency used to purchase a ticket to the chalice. It is simply the act of tuning our spiritual radio to the right frequency.

When we hold onto anger toward a brother, or when we skip the evening services out of sheer laziness, we are out of tune. We confess to realign. But when we refuse the chalice because we feel “unworthy,” we are entirely missing the theological plot.

Father Dimitri puts it perfectly: “We are supposed to be preparing at all times for Christ. And when we have prepared, God gives us the sacraments as a gift. Who are we to say, ‘No, I don’t want the gift right now’?”

The Medicine of Immortality

The Orthodox Christian life is unavoidably physical. It requires speaking difficult truths out loud in the presence of another human being, going a little hungry on a Friday, and ultimately opening our mouths to receive God Himself from a metal spoon.

Communion and Confession are not distinct, disconnected rituals; they are the rhythmic breathing of the Christian life. At confession we exhale the poison of our own self-will, and at the Eucharist we inhale the very life of the Trinity.

When you next approach the chalice, remember the reserved sacrament sitting pure and incorruptible on a mountaintop in Serbia. Remember that the same God who preserves that mystery is offering Himself to you, not because you have earned it, but because you are starving without it.

We are all unworthy. Thanks be to God, He invites us to the banquet anyway.

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Yet popular claims like “Orthodox only use the Septuagint” can turn that treasure into something rigid and almost magical, far from the living, prayerful reality the Church has always known.

In his contribution to The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Orthodox Christianity, Eugen Pentiuc (also editor) gently dismantles the oversimplifications while showing why the LXX remains irreplaceable. Here’s what he actually says, explained plainly for those of us juggling work, family, and trying to keep up a semblance of a prayer life.

So let’s walk through what he’s saying in plain language, with an eye toward two things:

1. What it actually means for Orthodox Christians to “read the Septuagint.”

2. Why it’s not quite right to say, “Orthodox only use the Septuagint,” as if that settles everything.

What Is the Septuagint, and Why Did It Matter So Much?

Most Orthodox folks have at least heard the term “Septuagint” (often shortened to “LXX”), but it can feel like a magical code word: “Ah yes, the real Old Testament.” That’s not quite what Pentiuc is saying.

Plain definition: The Septuagint is an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, begun a couple of centuries before Christ, and used widely in the Jewish world of the Eastern Mediterranean. It’s not the work of one translator on a deadline, but a collection of translations and later revisions.

For the early Church, especially in the Greek‑speaking East, the Septuagint quickly became:

• The Bible of the liturgists: Byzantine hymnographers mined it for language, images, and key phrases. Their artistry shows in how they weave biblical words—often straight from the LXX—into the hymns and services. When you’re at Orthros and hear a canon that suddenly sounds like a psalm, that may just be direct Septuagint phrasing. The Theotokos’s “More honorable than the Cherubim…” hymn has the same spiritual and poetic DNA as her Magnificat—which itself leans on the Old Greek Scriptures.

• A missionary Bible: According to the Fathers, the Septuagint helped prepare the nations to receive Christ. It let the Jewish Scriptures “speak Greek” in a world where Greek was the common language. For the early Christians, this was not just a convenient translation; it was a providential bridge between Israel and the Gentiles.

So when you hear, “Orthodoxy reads the Septuagint,” think: The Greek Old Testament that shaped our hymnography, preaching, and theological imagination from the beginning.

A Translation, Not a Magic Text

From there it’s tempting to talk about the Septuagint as if it dropped from heaven in leather‑bound form, with ribbon markers and gilded edges. Pentiuc rightly resists that.

Plain definition: The Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures—just as every English Bible you own is a translation.

Because it’s a translation, a few things follow.

• It has a history. Over time, the Septuagint text went through copying, revising, and even competing editions. Its transmission history is “quite complex and convoluted,” especially compared with later, more standardized texts. We have major uncial manuscripts from the fourth and fifth centuries, lots of later small manuscripts, and signs of differing local traditions.

• It doesn’t always line up neatly with the Hebrew we have today. Origen, the great third‑century scholar, created his massive Hexapla to compare the Hebrew text with several translated versions, including the Septuagint. The very existence of that work shows the Church was aware of different textual traditions and willing to study them side by side.

• Sometimes, the Church preferred another Greek version: A striking example is the book of Daniel. Over time, the Greek Daniel in most Septuagint manuscripts was displaced in the East by another Greek translation, associated with Theodotion (second century A.D.). By the fourth and fifth centuries, manuscripts show Daniel largely in this Theodotion form. The older “OG Daniel” survived, but on the margins.

In other words: the Church did not treat the Septuagint as untouchable in every detail. It is revered. But it is human. It can be compared, corrected, and supplemented, not treated as “another Testament.”

The pastoral takeaway here is important: loving the Septuagint does not mean pretending it’s perfect in a way no other textual witness can be. It means recognizing it as the Church’s ancient, prayer‑soaked Old Testament, yet still a translation subject to study.

So if the Septuagint isn’t a flawless, heaven‑dropped text, how central was it really? To answer that, we have to look at what the Fathers actually did.

The Septuagint Is Central—but Not Alone

Here Pentiuc tackles a common Orthodox myth: that the Septuagint is the Bible of the Fathers, full stop, and everything else might as well be kindling.

He explicitly says this isn’t quite true.

Plain definition: The Fathers use the Septuagint heavily, but they also consult and cite other biblical texts—Hebrew, Syriac, Samaritan, and other Greek versions.

In their commentaries, Pentius says they sometimes refer to:

• “Later versions”

• “Hexaplaric versions” (those affected by Origen’s comparative work)

• “The Three” (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion—alternative Greek translators)

• “The Hebrew”

• “The Samaritan”

That list tells us something: when a Father is wrestling with a difficult passage, he doesn’t say, “Well, the LXX says this, case closed.” He says, in effect, “What do the other witnesses show?” He is aware of:

• Jewish Greek translators, some more literal, some more elegant.

• The Hebrew text, which he may not handle with modern philological precision but still respects.

• Other textual families, like the Samaritan Pentateuch and, in Syriac circles, the Peshitta.

Yes, the LXX is their home base, but it’s not their only address.

For us today, that means:

• We absolutely should know and love the Septuagint.

• We don’t have to panic if a modern Orthodox translation consults the Masoretic Hebrew, the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Syriac Peshitta alongside it. Pentiuc stresses that the LXX is a key witness among others, not a solitary king on the mountain.

This alone punctures the overstatement that “Orthodox only use the Septuagint.” Historically, we haven’t.

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How the Septuagint Functioned in Orthodox Life

Textual theory is one thing. How did this play out on the ground? Pentiuc describes several layers.

1. Liturgical Scripture: Through the first millennium, the Eastern Church relied on the Septuagint as its Old Testament in worship, without formally rejecting the Hebrew text. Psalmody, readings, hymnography—all of it sings in the cadences of the LXX. When you hear a troparion that suddenly turns into a mini‑psalm, that’s frequently going to be Septuagint language.

2. Pastoral and practical reasons: Greek was the language of most Eastern Christians. So using the Greek Old Testament simply made sense for preaching and catechesis. Pentiuc notes that the reasons for preferring the Septuagint were “not theological, but rather practical.” The LXX was the Scripture people could actually understand, and it had already shaped Christian theology.

3. A late start on textual debates: In the West, fierce arguments over the biblical text and canon flare up around the Reformation and the Council of Trent. In the East, intense debate over particular textual forms comes later—around the seventeenth century—often in conversation (and sometimes conflict) with Roman Catholic and Protestant scholarship.

4. The Rudder and the Septuagint: As late as the codification of canon law in The Rudder (the Pedalion of St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, eighteenth century), the Septuagint is still explicitly identified as “the Bible of the Eastern Orthodox Church.” That doesn’t mean no other text exists; it means that, functionally, the LXX is the normative Old Testament for liturgical and canonical life.

Up to the nineteenth century, Orthodox Bible translations into various languages were generally based on the Septuagint, with only minor exceptions. If you picked up an Old Church Slavonic Bible or an early modern Greek version, you were essentially looking at the LXX in another dress.

Do We Still “Only Use the Septuagint”?

Here’s where it lands for those of us sitting in the pews—or scrolling through Bible apps.

Pentiuc notes that modern Orthodox Bible translations tend to be more balanced and dispassionate in how they use textual witnesses. That’s academic‑speak for this: we’ve learned a lot about manuscripts, and we’re not afraid to use that knowledge.

In practice, this means:

• A modern Orthodox Old Testament may be primarily based on the Septuagint, especially for books where the LXX is clearly the Church’s traditional text. This is frequently the norm.

• Translators will also consult the Hebrew, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Peshitta (Syriac), and other versions, especially where the Septuagint seems obscure, obviously secondary, or questions of transmission are at play.

And remember, the Peshitta is itself an ancient Christian translation—Syriac instead of Greek—based largely on the Hebrew text. It, too, is part of the Church’s scriptural inheritance, especially for the Syriac traditions.

So, do the Orthodox “only use the Septuagint”?

• Historically: No. We privileged it, but we were aware of and sometimes preferred other texts for specific books or problems.

• Liturgically: The Septuagint is still the backbone in the Byzantine tradition, especially in Greek and Slavonic practice.

• Pastorally: In English and other modern languages, we increasingly see translations that respect the Septuagint and draw on broader textual research.

A more accurate way to say it might be:

The Orthodox Church lives out of the Septuagint, but she reads it alongside other witnesses, not in isolation.

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Why This Matters for an Orthodox Christian Today

Let’s end where we actually live. If you’re an Orthodox Christian trying to deepen your understanding of Scripture, here are a few practical takeaways from Pentiuc’s discussion:

1. Don’t be scared of the word “Septuagint”: Think of it as the Church’s foundational, ancestral Old Testament—the version that shaped how the Apostles and saints heard the Scriptures. If you can get an edition that clearly marks where it differs from standard English Bibles, even better. It will explain a lot of the differences you notice in services.

2. Avoid magical thinking: The Septuagint is holy and venerable, but it’s not a talisman. The Fathers scrutinized it, compared it, and even replaced parts of it (like Daniel) when they judged that best. You’re not being less Orthodox if you notice that your priest quotes an Old Testament passage that sounds more like a modern translation than a direct LXX rendering.

3. Welcome a “many‑voiced” Bible: Orthodoxy is comfortable living with multiple textual witnesses—Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and more—without panic. This reflects trust that God’s word is not fragile, and that our Tradition is solid. When we compare texts carefully and prayerfully, we are not undermining Scripture; we are paying attention to how God actually gave it to us in history. And we always do so from the vantage point of the rooted Tradition.

4. Let the liturgy be your guide: Whatever Bible you read at home, listen closely in Church. The psalms, prophecies, and hymnography will gradually tune your ear to the Septuagint’s rhythms. You’ll begin to hear connections that a strictly Masoretic‑based English translation might obscure.

Conclusion

In the end, Eugen Pentiuc does not call us to love the Septuagint any less. He calls us to love it more truly—more deeply rooted in the Church’s own history, more open to the Spirit’s guidance across centuries, more attuned to how God has actually preserved and spoken His word.

The Septuagint is no frozen relic or exclusive talisman. It is our living inheritance: the Greek voice through which the prophets first echoed in the ears of the Apostles, the poetic wellspring of our hymns, the providential gift that carried Israel’s story into the Gentile world so that all might hear the Gospel in a shared tongue. The LXX isn’t a sealed artifact or a magic text; it’s memory—our memory—of how God spoke Greek to the world so the world could hear the Gospel in its own tongue. It’s the living voice that still echoes through every troparion, kontakion, and psalm we chant in Church.

Yet the Church has never locked it away in splendid isolation. She has held it alongside other ancient witnesses—the Hebrew original, the Syriac streams, the patient comparisons of Origen’s Hexapla—always discerning, always prayerfully receiving, never afraid that truth might fracture under honest scrutiny.

For us today, this means freedom rather than fear. Reading the Old Testament Scriptures with reverence, letting the LXX shape our souls as they shaped the saints. Comparing it humbly with other texts when questions arise, trusting that the same Tradition that cherished the LXX also embraced textual diversity without losing hold of Christ. Above all, we return again and again to the services: let the psalms at Vespers, the prophecies at Matins, the Theotokos’s canticles in every feast tune our hearts to its rhythms.

There, in the choir of the Church, the Septuagint still breathes—alive, echoing, pointing ever forward.

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In 1344, Gregory Palamas, a monk from Mount Athos, was condemned by a council in Constantinople and thrown into prison. His crime? He was defending the absurdly bold claim that ordinary human beings could actually, (physically? tangibly?) experience the living God. Three years later, a different council completely vindicated him. Nine years after his death, the Church officially declared him a saint. It’s a historical whiplash that easily reminds one of Saint Athanasius being repeatedly exiled from Alexandria.

But this Sunday might seem a bit puzzling, this Second Sunday of Great Lent. So, let’s get this straight, just after the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the Church hands us not a martyr, not a desert oddity, but…[*checks notes*]…. a theologian? (Also a monk and a bishop.) And a man whose name many of us know just well enough to mispronounce with confidence!

SO, it’s natural to ask: Why, right when we are deep in the trenches of fasting, prostrations, and repentance, does the Church hit the pause button to commemorate the hero of a 14th-century Byzantine theological dispute?

Let’s start with this: The Church does not pause mid-Lent for Gregory Palamas because she wants you to admire some Byzantine-era controversy or to beef up on your Church history trivia, or every necessarily to become one of his full-on navel-gazers. No, the Church pauses for him because Lent is not merely about restraint, it is about transformation.

It is about what a human being is for, what prayer is doing to us, and whether communion with God is real—or merely religious talk with candles around it.

Seminary Ed Day

Recently I listened to an insightful conversation from Saint Vladimir’s Seminary featuring Rev. Dr. Bogdan Bucur and Dr. Alexander Titus, whose translation work on Palamas’s Triads is helping make this great text more accessible. In their discussion, Palamas does not come across as a specialist’s saint, but he came across as a saint for those of us trying to repent in the real world.

I thought it would be a helpful exercise to pull insights from this conversation and in so doing shine a light on why we spend an entire Sunday honoring this great saint and theologian.

(Full disclosure: Fr. Bogdan was one of my absolute favorite professors in the Master of Orthodox Theology program at the Antiochian House of Studies. He has a unique gift for making high level theology feel as exciting a five-alarm fire in your own living room, and he does not disappoint here. His specialty, in my opinion, is his explanation of the significance of Christ’s Transfiguration.)

He Was Defending a Life, Not Starting a School

One of the most useful points in the conversation is also one of the simplest. Palamas was not writing theology in order to build a career, fill a CV, or win an abstract argument. He was drawn into controversy because something precious needed defending.

During the webinar, they laid out the central conflict. Palamas was facing off against a philosopher named Barlaam of Calabria. Barlaam looked at the Hesychast monks on Mount Athos—men who prayed with their heads bowed, regulating their breathing, seeking to bring their minds into their hearts—and he scoffed.

For Barlaam, God is utterly transcendent and unknowable. Therefore, Barlaam argued, any “experience” of God a monk claims to have must just be a created symbol. A nice feeling, maybe a psychological state, but not actually God. Barlaam wanted to keep the mind safely detached and elevated. For him, the body was basically not invited to the party.

As Dr. Titus puts it, the Triads ask a basic question: “What is the role of the mind… in the spiritual life?” That may sound narrow at first, but it opens into almost everything. In Dr. Titus’s words, “the nous needs to be integrated into the spiritual life… involved in prayer… centered in the heart.”

Not the mind floating above us. Not the body dragging behind us. Not a religious self and a real self. The whole person.

Most of us in the modern world know what fragmentation feels like. Our attention is scattered. Our desires are uneven. Our prayers are interrupted by shopping lists, anxieties, resentments, and whatever else is living rent-free in ours brains and our souls.

Palamas matters because he refuses to accept such things as normal. The mind is not meant to roam around endlessly like a nonstop tourist. It is meant to return home.

Fire and Sun: What “Divine Energies” Actually Means

Palamas saw this as a disaster. If Barlaam was right, then true communion with God is impossible. We are just down here thinking hard thoughts about a God who stays strictly upstairs.

To defend the monks, Palamas leaned into a distinction that is at the bedrock of Orthodox spiritual life: the difference between God’s essence and His energies.

In the webinar, Dr. Titus explains that when Palamas speaks of God’s energies, he means “the self manifestation of God… the experience of God himself.” Not something created by God as a buffer between Himself and us. Not a religious effect. Not a symbolic glow. God Himself—as He gives Himself to be known.

That matters because Palamas is trying to preserve two truths at once.

• First, God in His essence remains beyond comprehension. We do not master Him, define Him, or capture Him.

• Second, God really is experienced. We do not merely think about Him from a distance. We truly participate in His life.

Dr. Titus uses the image of fire and sunlight. We cannot seize the sun in our hands, but we really do experience its light and heat. Light and heat are not imaginary, not a lesser “fake” sun. No, light and heat are the sun as it reaches us.

Palamas is not asking us to fall in love with terminology for its own sake. He is defending the Church’s conviction that the living God truly gives Himself to His people. Fr. Bogdan Bucur adds: “The words are negotiable; what is defended by the words is non-negotiable.” What is non-negotiable is that God truly gives Himself to us. Not a postcard of Himself. Himself.

And if that sounds like more than theology, it’s because it is: It is theology in defense of prayer.

Lent Is About the Whole Person

One reason Palamas can speak to the present moment is that he refuses to treat the body as an inconvenience.

We live in an age that is deeply confused about bodies. We either treat them as meat-machines to be “biohacked” and optimized, or even as awkward fleshly cages for our “true,” inner selves that are dying to get out and be “affirmed.” Barlaam fell into a version of this trap, acting as if the intellect was the only part of a human that mattered to God.

Palamas vehemently disagreed. As Dr. Titus says plainly, for Palamas, “the nous needs to be integrated into the spiritual life... involved in prayer... centered in the heart.” In short, Palamas reminds us that repentance is not the improvement project of an inner ghost.

Instead, Dr. Titus reminds us, “the body is not excluded from the life of prayer.” We fast with our stomachs, we make prostrations with our knees, we cross ourselves with our hands. This is why Fr. Bogdan says, “the whole human person is the locus of divine encounter.”

That was part of the scandal in Palamas’s own day. The hesychast monks spoke about prayer in a way that included the body: stillness, posture, breath, attention, watchfulness. Their critics found that embarrassing, primitive, or even dangerous. Palamas did not.

Further, Palamas regarded the chase for a purely disembodied spiritual experience as a delusion. That certainly resonates with me in our own age, when we tend to live either as brains on sticks or as bundles of insatiable appetites, and insist on being “spiritual but not religious”—which usually means neither religious nor particularly spiritual, just deluded.

That is why the Transfiguration stands so near the center of Palamas’s thought. Christ’s light on Tabor is not stage lighting. It is the truest revelation of who He is. As they point out in the discussion, this vision is not an experience of “something” around Christ, but of Christ Himself. Fr. Bucur puts it into sharp focus: “there is no way to have an experience of the Divine energies” apart from an experience of Christ.

So when the Church gives us Palamas during Lent, she is reminding us that this season is not so much for behavior management, but participation in the life of Christ.

Why Palamas Matters Today

And that takes us, at last, back to Lent. Last week it was the Sunday of Orthodoxy and we celebrated the restoration of the icons. We affirmed what we believe: that the invisible God became visible flesh. This week, the Church takes the next logical step: If God took on human flesh, then human flesh is capable of holding God.

We are tempted to make Christianity merely moral:

• Or merely intellectual.

  • Or merely emotional.

    • Or merely symbolic.

      • We are tempted to treat prayer as self-soothing, theology as personal branding, and sacramental life as “nice traditions.”

        • Or even worse, we reduce the faith into a kind of “Moral Therapeutic Deism,” where true Christianity is simply about “being nice,” feeling good, and utilizing this distant God as a cosmic therapist.

Palamas will not let us do any of that. You might say Palamas matters today because we are still tempted by the same old errors, even if we use very different vocabulary.

In the seminar, Dr. Titus is careful to say that Palamas is not anti-sacramental, not anti-ecclesial, not some freelance mystic doing spirituality off to the side. In fact, he insists that the same uncreated grace at work in hesychast prayer is what we encounter “in the life of the church including in the sacraments.” Even more simply: “all of them lead towards divinization.” There is the real modern relevance.

St. Gregory Palamas matters as much now as ever, because he tells us that repentance is not just feeling bad, and we don’t fast and pray to be come good little citizens. That’s not what we are doing. We are doing theosis. We are looking for re-integration in Christ.

• Palamas reminds us that ascetic life is not judicial decree, but it is the healing of perception.

  • Palamas reminds us that asceticism isn’t about punishing the body; it’s about untangling the soul so that the whole person can be flooded with light.

    • Palamas reminds us that theology is not a spectator sport; it is the Church finding words sturdy enough to do justice to what the saints have actually lived and our God has revealed.

And that is why the Church pauses to commemorate him in Lent. We are stepping into the sacramental life of the Church—which Dr. Titus reminds us is “the ordinary channel through which the same uncreated grace flows”—so that we might be completely transformed. Fr. Bucur closes the conversation with a line from the hymns of Transfiguration: “all of mortal nature now divinely shines.”

That is as good a summary of Palamas as any. More importantly, it is as good a summary of Lent as any. We fast, pray, repent, confess, and return not because matter is bad, or because bodies are embarrassing, or because holiness is for specialists. We do these things because in Christ, the human person can actually be illumined.

At the risk of belaboring the point, in sum: the goal of the Christian life is not merely to think differently about God; it is to be changed by Him. That is why Gregory Palamas matters. That is why the Church holds him up to us now.

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Watch the Full Conversation: If you want to understand how the Orthodox Church actually views the spiritual life, you need to watch this SVS Press webinar with Fr. Bogdan Bucur and Dr. Alexander Titus. It is both accessible and insightful, exploring the Triads and the explaining the theology of the Transfiguration:

When reflecting on the divide between the Orthodox and Catholic churches, people love to pinpoint a single year—usually 1054—as the definitive moment everything broke. But as my friend Dr. Gary Cyril Jenkins pointed out in a brilliant article for Touchstone magazine last year (“1054 & All That: Dating the Orthodox/Catholic Schism”), the fuller story is a tangled web of shifting loyalties, theological disputes, dramatic political interventions, and dashed hopes for unity.

The year 1054 is often blamed for a divorce it didn’t actually finalize. So, we’re going to look at the messy reality of the East-West Schism, define what a schism actually is, and see why the division took centuries of tragic missteps to become permanent.

Forced Unity and an Empire in Danger

As Jenkins explains, by the late 1200s, the Byzantine Empire faced existential threats, particularly from western powers. Desperate to stave off invasion, Emperor Michael sought reunion with Rome—perhaps less out of piety and more out of political necessity. Rome agreed, provided Michael could force his obstinate Church to fall in line.

He couldn’t. Jenkins elaborates:

When Michael VIII recaptured Constantinople in 1261, he opened probably the most bitter episode of the several attempts at healing the schism between the Catholics and the Orthodox, the Latins and the Greeks. Michael hoped that a union of the churches would spare his weak and feeble empire, and, under the sympathetic eye of Pope Gregory X, he agreed to such a union. Rome accepted that the emperor was able to control the Byzantine church, at least on some level, and expected Michael to enforce the union. But, as Michael informed Pope Gregory, the union enjoyed no popularity among the clergy or the people of Constantinople. The main defender of Michael’s position was the former cartophylax John Bekkos, who had been imprisoned at one point for his obstreperous resistance to the idea of the union. But fed a steady diet of Latin polemics, Bekkos eventually came to the Latin position on the key question of the procession of the Holy Spirit. However brilliant Bekkos was, the Synod of Constantinople dug in its heels.

The result? Harsh repression, public humiliations, and punishment for dissenters, which led to superficial acceptance among some bishops. Real popular support was a ghost. Even so, when a reunion council was summoned in Lyon in 1274, hardly any attended beyond diplomats and a former patriarch. Michael’s bid to enforce reconciliation ultimately failed.

He died excommunicated, his successors immediately reversed the union, and he left behind a bitter legacy of mistrust.

What Is a Schism, Really?

Many popular discussions of such schisms treat schism as a clean break—a document gets signed, someone storms out, and suddenly everyone is unchurched, rechurched, or in a different church. To make sense of this period, and of the nature of schism, Jenkins indicates that historians will draw a helpful distinction between material and formal schism.

• Material schism refers to a real, practical division: when bishops no longer recognize one another, when liturgies are deliberately celebrated apart, and when theological understandings diverge so much that unity is no longer possible on the ground.

• Formal schism, in contrast, is an open, official declaration that the churches are severed. In the aftermath of events such as Michael VIII’s failed policies and the repudiation of union in 1285, both types coexisted. Prior attempts to “heal the schism” were mostly acts of political theatre without true reconciliation in the pews.

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The Myth of 1054

The year 1054 is routinely cited as the point of no return, but closer examination dispels this notion. That summer, papal legates excommunicated Patriarch Michael I of Constantinople, and he responded in kind. However, the main actors did not represent their entire churches, and the excommunications were limited in scope—naming individual clerics, not whole communions.

Furthermore, the papal legate’s authority had effectively expired with the pope’s death prior to the event, making the sanction ultimately invalid. Although tensions escalated and mutual suspicions grew, the emerging division at this stage remained more a matter of material strain—practical difficulties and strained relations—than a formal, irreversible schism.

Moments of Goodwill

Despite increasing friction, there were periods when the two sides treated each other with charity, even long after 1054. Latin and Greek churchmen debated theology openly and sometimes reached genuine understanding. Bishops like Peter of Antioch took a charitable view of the Latins, recognizing some differences but not outright separation.

Even in moments of fiery polemics flying back and forth, there were others who acted as a counterbalance—encouraging moderation, humility, and stressing Christian unity.

The Crusades: Widening the Gulf

The situation changed most decisively during the era of the Crusades. The First Crusade began with rhetoric of Christian brotherhood—and let’s not forget that the Crusades were begun with cries for help from the Orthodox East—but as Latin armies flooded the East, it is not surprising that tensions mounted. Crusader lords sometimes installed Latin bishops where Greek ones had served—certainly putting a strain in certain localities. Nonetheless, for decades, a semblance of cooperation and mutual tolerance endured—putting a kibosh on the neat and tidy 1054 narrative.

Everything changed in 1204. Crusaders, unable to reach their original goal, turned instead to attack Constantinople itself—talk about mission drift.

This event was catastrophic. Not only was a great Christian city looted and destroyed by fellow Christians, but the Greek population was subjected to terrible humiliation and violence. This trauma cemented, for many, the sense that the two churches were now truly and bitterly divided. Reconciliation efforts still occurred, but trust had collapsed.

Both material and formal schism became an undeniable reality.

Attempted Reunions and Final Separation

During the 13th and 14th centuries, Byzantine emperors continued to appeal to Rome, desperate for help against Ottoman advances, often dangling the carrot of reunion. Occasional councils were held and documents of union signed, such as the Council of Florence in 1438-1439. Many Greek bishops agreed, under immense pressure, to union with Rome—though some courageously refused to sign, most notably Saint Mark of Ephesus.

Upon returning home, however, most Orthodox clergy and laity flatly rejected the agreement, and the council’s decisions found very little real acceptance in the East. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, any practical pretense of unity crumbled too. Successive Orthodox councils formally rejected the union, and contacts with Rome dwindled to almost nothing until the 20th century.

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Rethinking the “Schism Date”

In light of these events, assigning a single date to the East-West Schism really muddies the waters and obscures its true nature and timing of the divide. Schism was never just a matter of a single excommunication or dispute, but the slow hardening of attitudes, fostered by war, politics, and theological divergence.

Some historians, therefore, place the “material schism” at the sack of Constantinople in 1204, with “formal schism” existing only after subsequent councils and official repudiations. This is certainly what I teach in our catechism classes at Saint Mark—we discuss the typical 1054 narrative, but not without reference to the material and formal schisms that occurred later and were far more definitive.

(And we haven’t even gotten into the particular issues of the East-West schism—which went beyond the filioque to include debates about Eucharistic bread, Papal jurisdiction and the Patriarchates, and more.)

Conclusion

The separation between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism grew gradually rather than erupting in a single moment. It emerged from centuries of theological debate, power struggles, and tragic missteps—reminding us that institutional Christianity unity, once lost, is not easily regained.

In this season of Lent, as we look to repent of our personal and abiding sins, we also remember the tragic cost of pride and forced unities in our history. The schism wasn’t created in a day, and our own relational divides usually aren’t either. It takes centuries to build a wall of political maneuvering and mutual excommunications, but it takes daily, humble faithfulness to begin tearing it down.

The memory of these centuries still shapes Orthodox life and theology today, not as a reason for animosity, but as a testimony to the importance of faithfulness, humility, and the work of true reconciliation.

To read Dr. Jenkins’s article, click here to subscribe to Touchstone. Gary Jenkins Ph.D., is the Van Gordon Professor in History (retired) at Eastern University in Pennsylvania, and the current director of the St. Basil Center for Orthodox Thought and Culture (also at EU).

Disclaimer: This summary is by Jamey Bennett, and neither Doc Jenkins or Touchstone vetted the history as presented here. Go to the impeccable source yourself!

We tend to treat Great Lent like a spiritual obstacle course—a forty-day endurance test where the goal is to cross the finish line without accidentally eating a cheeseburger or strangling a coworker. (Some of us even try to vote people off the lenten island!)

But this week, listening to Fr. Mark Leondis preach at Saint Mark Greek Orthodox Church in Boca Raton (video link at bottom of post), I was struck by a much saner image. He didn’t talk about Lent as a punishment, a chance to flex our ascetic muscles, or even a diet. Rather, he described it as a pilgrimage.

“Think of yourself as a pilgrim stepping onto holy ground,” he said. “Lent is not merely a date on the church calendar. It is an invitation. It is a refocusing of the whole person—heart, mind, body, and soul.”

If we are going on a pilgrimage, we don’t need a survival kit; we need a map. And conveniently, the Church provides one in Sunday’s Gospel, taken from the Gospel of Matthew 6:14-21.

As Fr. Mark points out, Christ gives us three specific coordinates to navigate the road to the Resurrection: Forgiveness, Fasting, and Treasure. So, before we start hyperventilating about the ingredients in our non-dairy creamer, let’s look at the map.

Forgiveness: Check Your Baggage

The first coordinate is arguably the most annoying because it requires the most heavy lifting. It’s how we kick off Great Lent—with forgiveness.

In the Orthodox tradition, we begin Lent with “Forgiveness Sunday.” For the uninitiated, this is a day set aside to ask forgiveness of others, and sometimes in practice you literally ask forgiveness of every person in the parish who came to Liturgy that day. It is beautiful, yes, but for those of us who are socially anxious or holding onto a particularly cozy grudge, it can be terrifying.

It forces us to realize that we can’t walk a long road while dragging a steamer trunk of resentment behind.

Fr. Mark put it bluntly: “Before we fast from food, we must fast from resentment. Before we abstain from meat and dairy, we must abstain from bitterness and pride.”

This is where the rubber meets the road. It is infinitely easier to give up a hamburger than it is to give up the right to be angry at your brother-in-law for his political posts. But Christ is clear: If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

Fr. Mark calls forgiveness “the doorway into the Kingdom of God.” It’s not a sign of weakness; it’s spiritual strength. If we start the journey carrying the dead weight of anger, we aren’t going to make it to the empty tomb. We’ll just be hungry and angry (”hangry”), which is a terrible combination for spiritual growth.

Fasting: Don’t Outmonk the Monks

The second coordinate is Fasting. This is usually where we get hung up on the technicalities.

• Can I have olive oil on Tuesday?

  • Does lobster count as a fish?

    • Is Impossible Meat cheating?

But Fr. Mark points out a linguistic detail in Matthew that we often gloss over. Jesus says, “When you fast...” He does not say, “If you fast.”

“Fasting is assumed,” Fr. Mark notes. “It is normal. It is expected.”

For the early Christians (and for the Orthodox today), fasting wasn’t a mark of being a spiritual Navy SEAL. It was just what Christians did. However, there is a caveat: It’s not supposed to be theatrical. We aren’t supposed to walk around looking miserable, sighing loudly about our lack of cheese, hoping someone at the office asks us about our extreme piety.

“Lent is not about appearing spiritual,” Fr. Mark reminds us. “It is about becoming spiritual.” We use the physical discipline to wake up the soul, not to impress the neighbors. It’s a tool, not a performance art.

If your fasting makes you proud, or if you find yourself side-eying someone else’s plate, you might be in danger of missing the point. Like I said a few weeks ago—don’t try to outmonk the monks. Keep your eyes on your own plate (and your own heart).

Treasure: The Hunt

The final coordinate on our Lenten map is Treasure. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Our efforts in Lent are designed to make us uncomfortable—Lent reveals what we actually love. When the comfort foods, the excess entertainment, and the worldly distractions are stripped away, what do we miss? What do we crave? Do we miss prayer, or do we miss scrolling Instagram until our eyes glaze over?

“Do we treasure comfort? Do we treasure control, convenience, or do we treasure Christ?” Fr. Mark asks. To switch metaphors slightly, this is the diagnostic check-engine light of our souls.

We live in an economy of distraction. We are pulled apart by “noise, screens, reels, schedules, opinions, anxiety.” Lent is the Church’s way of tapping on the brakes. It’s a season of metania—a Greek word we translate as “repentance,” but which literally means a “change of mind” or a turning around.

It’s a reorientation—it’s a checking of the compass and getting back on track with true North. It’s realizing that we’ve been treasuring the wrong things—hoarding comfort and convenience—and adjusting our course back toward the Father.

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The Buddy System

Here is the best news about this pilgrimage: It’s a group trip. One of the most dangerous myths about spiritual life is that it’s a solo sport—just you and Jesus in a private room, white-knuckling your way to holiness. But Orthodoxy is relentlessly communal. We fast together. We pray together. We struggle together.

“The enemy wants isolation,” Fr. Mark warns. “The Church offers communion.” There is a immense comfort in standing in a darkened church during Pre-Sanctified Liturgy, hungrier than you’d like to be, and realizing everyone else is in the same boat. You aren’t the only one fighting the urge to check your phone or impatiently respond to your kid.

“When you wake up and choose prayer instead of scrolling, someone else in the parish is doing the same,” Fr. Mark says. “When you choose forgiveness instead of resentment, grace not only flows into your heart, but into the life of the community.”

We are strengthening the “spiritual fabric” of the body of Christ. We are carrying each other’s baggage. So when you stumble—and you will—you have a whole line of pilgrims walking beside you to help you up.

Packing for the Resurrection

So, what is the point of all this? Why the struggle? Why the forty days of veggies and so many extra services?

It’s not self-improvement. If you just want to lose weight or be more mindful, there are apps for that. The goal of Lent is not so much “a better you”; rather, it’s a prepared you.

“Every year,” Fr. Mark says, “we rehearse what it means to stand before the empty tomb.”

We are practicing for the end of our lives. We are learning to let go of earthly things so that when we stand before Christ, we aren’t strangers. We are packing our bags for the Kingdom of Heaven, and it turns out, we can’t take the resentment or the pride with us.

If we drift through these forty days casually, eating our shrimp but keeping our grudges, we will arrive at Pascha unchanged. We’ll just be the same people, only slightly more irritable.

But if we engage? If we use the tools? “We will arrive at Pascha lighter, clearer, softer, and stronger in our faith,” says Fr. Mark.

The road is open. The map is laid out. The challenge is simple, though not easy: forgive, fast, and find your treasure.

As Fr. Mark invites us: “Let us refocus. Let us return. Let us prepare.” The pilgrimage has begun. Let’s walk.

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For the full sermon and to hear Fr. Mark’s specific “St. Mark Lenten Challenge,” you can watch the video here:

The other—maybe a glossy one from a monastery or a simple one from a parish bookstore—is crowded with saints’ names, little fish icons, color‑coded fast days, and feasts with names like “Entry of the Theotokos” or “Meeting of the Lord.”

It looks beautiful but slightly overwhelming—like your iPhone calendar married a medieval manuscript. Most new Orthodox Christians (and a lot of old ones) feel this tension: I already live in one kind of time. How do I live in this other one too?

Fr. Steven Kostoff, who sees every moment as a gift and not something to be flittered away, puts it like this:

In the fallen world that we occupy, time has become inextricably linked to mortality and death, but it still remains a gift, as do all aspects of God’s creative will, now redeemed by the advent of Christ. Often, we hear—and may even use—the dreadful phrase “to kill time,” either out of boredom or in waiting for something “important” to happen. Yet our Christian vocation is to “sanctify time” as our movement toward the Kingdom which has no end. Every moment counts, because every moment is a gift from God.

The good news is that the Church’s year is not meant to be a second full‑time job. It’s a way of telling time with Christ, slowly letting His life, and the lives of His saints, become the framework for our own.

Why the Church Has Its Own Calendar

Ever wonder why the Church has its own calendar? It’s really about storytelling. It’s how we walk through the life of Christ—and the life of His Mother, His Apostles, and His saints—over and over until those stories sink deep into our hearts.

Now, the regular calendar we all use isn’t bad, but it focuses on different things—national holidays, wars, important figures in history, and dates that matter in daily life. The Church calendar, on the other hand, revolves around the big moments in our faith: the Incarnation, Cross, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, Dormition—and, of course, all the incredible examples over the centuries people saying “yes” to Christ despite the intense personal cost.

So, next time you glance at a church calendar, don’t just think of it as another list of dates. See it as the Church’s way of showing us who we are and reminding us that we’re living in God’s time, that time itself can by sanctified and made holy, set apart.

The Twin Gravitational Centers: Pascha and Sunday

Okay, before we dive into the nitty-gritty, it's helpful to understand the two major focal points that shape the Orthodox Church's calendar: Pascha and Sunday. Think of them as the big gravitational centers of the Orthodox liturgical universe.

Pascha: Feast of Feasts

Pascha (that’s Easter) isn't just another holiday on the list. It's the most important one—the “Feast of Feasts” as it is sometimes called. It’s our annual celebration of Christ's Resurrection, and it's a huge deal, with Holy Week leading up to it, and then Bright Week following it. Great Lent is the long period of preparation beforehand, and the Sundays after Pascha (Thomas Sunday, the Myrrhbearers, the Paralytic, etc.) all riff on its themes.

If you imagine the Church’s year as a wheel, Pascha is the hub. Everything else—fasts, feasts, commemorations—turns around it.

Sunday: Weekly Pascha

We believe it is Easter every Sunday. So when we speak of Sunday, which the New Testament already calls “the first day of the week” (Acts 20:7) and “the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10), remember that for the Church, every Sunday is a little Pascha. That’s why the Resurrection theme shows up in the hymns week after week, not just once a year.

(And it is worth noting that even Sunday’s Liturgy is interconnected with other services—Vespers, Matins, and so on. Together, they work to incrementally instruct us and lead us in worship of Christ our true God.)

For most of us, the simplest way to start “living the Church’s year” is to let Sunday Divine Liturgy really become the center of our week. If Pascha and Sunday are in place, the rest of the year has something solid to hang on.

The Twelve Great Feasts on One Page

Beyond Pascha, if the Orthodox year is telling us a story, then the Twelve Great Feasts function like major chapter headings in that story. In very brief strokes:

1. Nativity of the Theotokos (September 8) - The birth of Mary, the future Mother of God—God’s preparation for the Incarnation begins.

2. Elevation of the Holy Cross (September 14) - The discovery and veneration of the Cross; the paradox that a device of execution becomes the sign of victory.

3. Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple (November 21) - The young Mary being brought into the Temple—her life being offered to God.

4. Nativity of Christ (December 25) - Christmas: the Word becomes flesh; God with us in our own human life.

5. Theophany (January 6) - Christ’s baptism in the Jordan; the Trinity revealed; the waters of the world blessed.

6. Meeting of the Lord (February 2) - The forty‑day‑old Christ brought to the Temple; Simeon and Anna recognize him as the Light of the nations.

7. Annunciation (March 25) - Gabriel’s announcement to Mary; her “Let it be” that opens the door to the Incarnation.

8. Entry into Jerusalem / Palm Sunday (Sunday before Pascha) - Christ enters the city as King, riding toward His voluntary Passion.

9. Ascension (40 days after Pascha) - Christ returns to the Father in His glorified humanity; humanity is seated at the right hand of God.

10. Pentecost (50 days after Pascha) - The Holy Spirit descends; the Church is publicly born; the nations of the earth are called to fellowship with God in the Church.

11. Transfiguration (August 6) - Christ shines with uncreated light on Mount Tabor; His divinity is revealed through His humanity.

12. Dormition of the Theotokos (August 15) - The falling asleep of Mary and her being taken into the presence of her Son.

Some of these feasts focus on Christ directly; others on the Theotokos and how her life is woven into His.

Together they trace a pattern:

• from preparation and promise,

  • through Incarnation and Pascha,

    • to the gift of the Spirit

      • and the glorification of humanity.

You don’t have to memorize the dates or expect a quiz. Just knowing that these are the “big twelve” helps you notice when they come around in parish life and show up in the weekly worship guide.

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The Four Great Fasts & the Little Rhythms

If the feasts are like going up to the mountaintop, the fasts are the rigorous training paths that prepare us to ascend. While many of the specifics belong in conversation with a priest, we can certainly sketch a lay of the land.

The Four Major Fasts

• Great Lent - The long, sober season before Holy Week and Pascha. We’ve already built a full guide for this one.

• Nativity Fast (Advent) - The 40 days leading up to Christmas (starting November 15 on the New Calendar), a time of repentance and quiet expectation as we move toward the Nativity of Christ.

• Apostles’ Fast - A variable‑length fast between All Saints Sunday (the Sunday after Pentecost) and the feast of Saints Peter and Paul (June 29). It honors the Apostles and our own calling to be witnesses for Christ in this life.

• Dormition Fast - A two‑week fast (August 1–14) preparing for the Dormition of the Theotokos—shorter and more concentrated, with a strong theme of turning to Mary’s intercession.

Weekly and Smaller Rhythms

• Wednesdays and Fridays - Traditionally these are fast days all year (with a few exceptions), remembering Christ’s betrayal (Wednesday) and Crucifixion (Friday). Fasting here is often simpler than in the big seasons, but it keeps the Cross near.

• Fast‑free periods - The Church actually builds in seasons of no fasting before and/or after a fast: Bright Week after Pascha, the week after Christmas, after Pentecost, and a few others. These are intentional exhale moments: the Church doesn’t just tighten; she also relaxes and feasts.

The big idea: fasting is not a liturgical punishment. It’s a way the Church trains us, over and over, in repentance, watchfulness, mercy, and deeper joy. How exactly you keep these fasts depends on your situation and must be worked out with your priest, not an online list downloaded at midnight.

Father Steven Kostoff explains it this way:

The festal cycle of the Church sanctifies time. By this we mean that the tedious flow of time is imbued with sacred content as we celebrate the events of the past now made present through liturgical worship. Notice how often we hear the word “today” in the hymns…: “Today let us, the faithful dance for joy….” “Today the living Temple of the holy glory of Christ our God, she who alone among women is pure and blessed….” “Today the Theotokos, the Temple that is to hold God, is led into the temple of the Lord….”

Again, we do not merely commemorate the past, but we make the past present. We actualize the event being celebrated so that we are also participating in it. We, “today,” rejoice as we greet the Mother of God as she enters the temple “in anticipation proclaiming Christ to all.” Can all—or any—of this possibly change the “tone” of how we live this day? Is it at all possible that an awareness of this joyous feast can bring some illumination or sense of divine grace into the seemingly unchanging flow of daily life? Are we able to envision our lives as belonging to a greater whole: the life of the Church that is moving toward the final revelation of God’s Kingdom in all of its fullness?

Everyday Texture of the Year, Saints, & Seasons

If you look again at that second calendar on the fridge, you’ll notice that every day has saints. Not just the super famous ones everyone has heard of: local saints, martyrs, ascetics, bishops, holy fools. I’ve heard some joke that icons are like Pokemon, you gotta collect them all—I think it’s more like a family photo album that never seems to run out of pages or forget about family members.

A few features worth noticing:

• Namedays - In many Orthodox homes, your main celebration may not be your birthday but your saint’s day—your nameday. It’s a way of rooting your identity in a holy person who has already walked the path you’re on. In my family, we try to honor these days with well wishes and special prayers at the very least.

• Seasonal Feelergies - How the seasons “feel” to the pilgrim journeying through them.

  • Great Lent: sober, penitential, introspective.

  • Pascha and the weeks after: bright, triumphant, almost giddy with “Christ is risen.”

  • Dormition: quietly contemplative, looking to the Mother of God as the first fully redeemed human.

• Local and parish feasts - Your parish probably has a patronal feast (St. George, St. Nicholas, etc.), which is like the parish’s birthday. These days shape the local church’s sense of itself in a unique way.

• Anniversaries and other sacraments - The Church also sanctifies time by commemorating the faithful departed at appropriate intervals; blessing us shortly after birth, naming us, welcoming us into the Church, and baptizing us into Christ; blessing the foundation of marriage in hopes that with time it would blossom into a new family; and so on.

  • The Saturday of Souls - We believe God’s love extends beyond the grave and that remembrance itself is an act of mercy, so the Church sets apart certain Saturdays throughout the year to commemorate and pray for the departed. Part of this is the recognition that death does not sever our bond with loved ones or break the communion of saints; through the Divine Liturgy and our prayers, we offer what comfort and intercession we can for those who have fallen asleep.

  • Memorial Services and the 40-Day Cycle - The Church establishes rhythms of remembrance: the 40-day memorial, the one-year memorial, and anniversary commemorations invite us to gather repeatedly around the departed, offering prayers and the Divine Liturgy on their behalf; these intervals honor both the journey of the soul after death and our own need to grieve, celebrate their life, and maintain the living bond between the Church on earth and those who have departed. Love and intercession do not end for us when the funeral does.

And then there’s the calendar question that looms in the background: Old Calendar vs New Calendar. Some Orthodox follow the older Julian calendar for fixed feasts, which currently runs 13 days “behind” the civil (Gregorian) calendar; others follow the Revised Julian (“New Calendar”) for fixed feasts while keeping Pascha together. (If this is your first time hearing of this, you might want to read that paragraph again, because I actually was talking about three calendars there and I can almost guarantee you’re lost!)

You don’t need to become a calendar apologist. It’s enough to know:

• Faithful Orthodox Christians exist on both systems.

  • I’ve been on each calendar, and I had to wash my undies the same amount of times, no matter the calendar.

• Pascha is kept together across canonical Orthodoxy.

  • Despite the hype online, Pascha hasn’t changed for us.

• The divisions and arguments around the calendar are tragic.

  • But the calendar problem is not a clever puzzle to solve in your first year, but represents rather what is on-the-ground a sometimes challenging situation for unity in the faith.

The task is simple if you wish to be a faithful Orthodox Christian: follow the calendar of your bishop and your parish, pray for the healing of divisions, and let the feasts and fasts you’re actually living shape your heart. And since we follow ultimately the same feasts and fasts, and share a common Pascha, the division is actually much less than it appears from the outside.

As Saint Paul puts it in Romans 14:5-6, when addressing matters of fasting, feasting, and observing holidays, we should also honor one another when we honor the Lord with our sanctification of time:

⁵ One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. ⁶ The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

How a Normal Person Can Live the Church Year

All of this may still sound like a lot. So what does it look like for an ordinary catechumen or new Orthodox Christian to begin to live this out?

A few suggested starting points:

• Let Sunday really be Sunday. If you only do one thing, let Sunday Divine Liturgy become non‑negotiable in your week. Build outward from there.

• Choose a handful of feasts to “own.”

  • Many parishes will hold weekday liturgies for one or more saints or feasts above—depending on the parish and the feast, these services may be offered in the morning or the evening. Carving out some time to go can be extremely rewarding. Maybe consider:

    • Your patron saint’s day (nameday).

    • The feast of your parish’s patron.

    • One or two feasts that particularly move you (Theophany, Dormition, Pentecost), or other services provided throughout the year.

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Make a point of being at the services in person if you can, and mark them at home with a special meal, light candles during prayer, or perhaps have a short family prayer to mark the particular feast day. Perhaps you might pray one of the hymns to one of the saints of the day during your morning or evening prayers—or maybe find an excuse to talk about the life of the saint with one of your friends or family members who would enjoy such conversation.

• Take the fasts seriously—but sanely. Talk to your priest about how to begin observing:

  • Wednesdays and Fridays,

  • And several of the “main” services your parish offers during the year.

Aim for faithfulness, not heroics.

• Bring it home in small ways. You don’t need to turn your home into an elaborate domestic monastery. But you can:

  • Light a candle or lampada on feasts, maybe even some incense from a monastery or parish bookstore.

  • Read a short life of the saint of the day now and then—for the more ambitious, maybe one a day.

  • Let your conversations, media, and meals reflect the season. The general thought pattern is that it is quieter in Lent, more celebratory at Pascha—many will even cut out social media and entertainment like movies during the fasting seasons.

Over time, you’ll find that you’re not just looking at two calendars on the fridge—you’re learning to inhabit one through the other. Work and school and civic life won’t disappear, but they’ll be nested inside a bigger story: creation, fall, Incarnation, Cross, Resurrection, Spirit, kingdom.

And as you move through that story again and again, the point is not to collect feast days like stamps, Pokemon cards, or refrigerator magnets. The point is to let Christ’s life, and the lives of His saints, quietly reshape your own sense of what a year—even an ordinary, busy, messy year— is for.

In conclusion, let’s hear Professor Theodore Stylianopoulos:

What is the significance of the liturgical year?

The liturgical year is a way of discipline in prayer, a pattern of worship, an anchor of support for the life of the Church. But it also has deeper significance. The late George Florovsky, an eminent Orthodox theologian of blessed memory, has taught us that worship is a response to the call of God who has already made known His redeeming love to us through decisive events culminating in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. Worship has two major aspects: remembrance (anamnesis which means not only historical remembrance but also re-living the events commemorated) and thanksgiving (including praise and doxology).

Thus the liturgical year, by bringing unceasingly before us God’s mighty deeds of salvation and the reality of God’s kingdom in our midst, is the sanctification of time and thereby the true fulfillment of both personal and corporate aspects of our lives as Christians. Far from being simply a calendar, the liturgical year in the life of the Church—the life of Christians living in community as brothers and sisters—in awareness of God’s kingdom, remembering the entire communion of Prophets, Apostles, Saints and all of God’s people on earth and in heaven, being renewed by God’s saving love, helping one another, witnessing to Christ’s good news, and waiting for the fullness of the coming kingdom according to God’s timing.

“If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord” (Rom. 14:8).

Orthodox worship proclaims the centrality of Christ. The liturgical year celebrates the presence of the mystery of Christ in the life of the Church and seeks to make the living Christ a renewing lifesource for every Orthodox Christian.

Glory to God for all things!

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P.S. We had a sudden influx of readers this last week, so welcome to everyone just joining us! We provide 1-2 posts a week of primarily catechetical material, often with an emphasis on the “Deuterocanonical” books of the Orthodox Old Testament. Our content is frequently aligned with something we are doing in our in-person teaching ministry at Saint Mark Greek Orthodox Church in Boca Raton, Florida. We have a ton of great content planned for this year, and lots in the archives—we welcome your requests for future content via email or in the comment boxes on the site itself.

Perhaps people at coffee hour lately have been tossing around words like Triodion and Presanctified as if everyone was born understanding them. Some dork jokingly calls Lent “Byzantine CrossFit.” Someone else mentions giving up oil and alcohol and then clarifies, “No, not that oil and not that alcohol,” and now you’re wondering if you need a degree just to grocery shop.

This guide is my attempt to zoom the camera out. I want to show you what Great Lent actually is, where it came from, how it hangs together, and how you—especially if you’re a catechumen or recently received—can walk into it without either burning out or treating it like a mere religious diet.

Contents of Post:

1. So What Is Great Lent?

2. The Countdown: Triodion and the Four Pre‑Lenten Sundays

   1. Sidebar: 40 Days or 70 Days?

3. Walking Through Great Lent: A High‑Level Map

4. Turning up the Volume on Holy Week and Pascha

5. So What Do I Actually Do during Lent?

6. Common Pitfalls (For New and Old Orthodox Alike)

7. Lent as Baptismal and Ecclesial Renewal

1. So What Is Great Lent?

Most of us come to Orthodoxy with some idea of “Lent” already in our heads. Maybe you thought of it as a time to “give up chocolate for forty days,” or perhaps it was “that thing Catholics do with ashes.” So Orthodoxy shows up with several weeks of a countdown, a bunch of sequential weeks of fasting, extra services, and something called the Triodion, so it’s natural to ask: What’s actually going on here?

In the most straightforward of terms, Great Lent is a focused and intensive time set aside by the Church annually to focus on repentance, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—in preparation for the great celebration of Holy Week and Pascha. But that simple line conceals three big pieces you don’t want to miss.

• Lent is ecclesial. This is not a private affair, and it’s not a “spiritual challenge.” It is something the Church does together as a spiritual discipline. Parishes, monasteries, catechumens, long‑time faithful—we are all being carried along by the same liturgical current. Or maybe think of it is a spiritual training ground or boot camp.

• Lent is baptismal. In the ancient Church, this period was tightly linked to people preparing for baptism. The catechumens were being exorcised, instructed, and scrutinized; the faithful were fasting and praying with them and for them. You can still hear echoes of this in the prayers and hymns throughout this season.

• Lent is Paschal. The point of the fasting and prostrations is not to prove we can suffer. The point is to walk with Christ into his death and resurrection. Everything is aimed at the glory of Pascha night: the holy light, the proclamation of “Christ is risen,” the feast of the Kingdom.

While there are many other important dates and seasons in the Church year for the Orthodox, Lent and Pascha are kind of the main show. If you remember nothing else, remember this: Great Lent is the Church walking you somberly into the tomb and out again in victory.

And if you’re preparing for baptism or chrismation, you’re not a side‑project—you’re at the center of this whole movement.

2. The Countdown: Triodion and the Four Pre‑Lenten Sundays

At some point, you’re going to hear someone say, “We’ve entered the Triodion,” like a pilot announcing you’re now over Kansas. That can sound mysterious, but the basic idea is simple.

• The Triodion is a liturgical book the Church uses from the first pre‑Lenten Sunday all the way through Holy Week. It contains hymns and texts that shape the season.

  • You might think of it as the Church’s Lenten playlist, curated over centuries.

Before Great Lent proper even starts, the Church spends four Sundays getting our hearts ready. This is a time where things ramp up, and each Sunday is meant to strike a different chord.

Publican and Pharisee: Smashing Spiritual Pride

Two men go up to the Temple to pray. One thanks God he’s not like other people. The other can barely raise his eyes and just says, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

The shock of the parable is that the “good” religious man goes home unjustified, and the tax collector goes home right with God. Lent opens here because the Church wants to blow up any idea that this is about spiritual performance. If Lent makes you impressed with yourself, you’re doing it wrong.

The point? The first Sunday of our countdown begins by reminding us of what we lack, of our own sin, and to remind us to resist the spiritual pride of the Pharisee.

Prodigal Son: Coming Home Filthy

Then we get the Prodigal Son. A kid demands his inheritance, wastes it in a far country, and crawls home rehearsing an apology. The father runs to meet him and throws a feast before he can finish his speech. While the story has much bigger implications than individualist considerations, it is normal to see a little bit of ourselves in this story.

This is Lent’s second move: repentance is returning to the Father who runs to meet you. You cannot out‑sin His hospitality. The point is not to wallow in guilt, but to actually come home to the Father.

Sunday of the Last Judgment (Meatfare): Love in Deeds, Not Just Foods

On Meatfare Sunday, we hear the Gospel of the Last Judgment. Christ separates the people of all nations based on how they treated “the least of these”: the hungry, the stranger, the sick, the prisoner.

This is the Church reminding us: fasting without mercy fails the test. If we obsess over ingredient labels but ignore the poor or neglect the people right in front of us, we’ve missed the heart of Lent.

Saint Basil the Great has said:

“The benefit of fasting is not limiting to one abstention from food, because true fasting is eliminating evil deeds. Destroy every connection with the unrighteous. Forgive your neighbor his offenses; forgive him his debts. Do not fast in judgment and quarrels. You do not eat meat, but you eat your brother. You abstain from wine, but you do not abstain from insults. You wait until evening to eat food, but you spend the day in judgment places.”

Expulsion from Paradise (Cheesefare Sunday): Standing at the Gate

Finally, Cheesefare presents us with Adam and Eve being cast out of Paradise. The hymns put words in Adam’s mouth as he weeps outside the closed gates. It’s poignant and painful, and reflects the universal human experience in this fallen and broken world.

Lent begins with this image so that we understand where we’re standing: outside Eden, looking in, beginning the journey back. The “good news” is that we don’t walk back alone; the Church takes us by the hand.

By the time we reach this point, we’ve been spending weeks preparing. Across the Orthodox world—regardless of Greek, Slavic, Antiochian, Romanian, old calendar, or new calendar—while melodies and local customs may differ in minor details, these four Sundays form a shared pre‑Lenten grammar. They tell us who we are and what we’re about to do.

SIDEBAR:

In Orthodox Christianity, preparing for Pascha (Easter) is not a single 40-day Lenten block, but a sequence of spiritual seasons. While people often say “40 days,” the full spiritual journey is 70 days long. It begins with 22 days of preparation, moves into 40 days of Great Lent, and finishes with the 8-day “sprint” of Holy Week.

• The 70-Day Journey to Pascha

  • Phase 1: The Pre-Lenten Warm-Up (22 Days)

    • Day 70–64 (Week of the Publican & Pharisee): The “fast-free” week. No fasting even on Wednesday or Friday, emphasizing that we are not saved by our own efforts.

    • Day 63–57 (Week of the Prodigal Son): Normal fasting resumes (Wednesday/Friday). Focuses on returning to the Father.

    • Day 56–50 (Meatfare Week): The “Farewell to Meat.” You stop eating meat on Sunday (Day 56) and eat dairy all week to ease into the strict fast.

  • Phase 2: The Great 40 Days (40 Days)

    • Day 49 (Clean Monday): The official start of Great Lent. A day of strict abstinence and “cleaning house” spiritually.

    • Day 49–10: The core 40-day fast. Unlike the West, Orthodox Lent includes Sundays in the count, totaling six full weeks of fasting.

    • Day 10 (Friday of the 6th Week): The “Great 40 Days” technically conclude here.

  • Phase 3: The Bridge (2 Days)

    • Day 9 (Lazarus Saturday): A celebration of the resurrection of Lazarus, foreshadowing Christ’s victory over death.

    • Day 8 (Palm Sunday): A festal break commemorating the entry into Jerusalem; fish, wine, and oil are typically permitted.

  • Phase 4: Holy Week (7 Days)

    • Day 7–1 (Holy Monday to Holy Saturday): A separate, intensified fast. These days are not part of the “40 days” but are the most rigorous days of the entire 70-day cycle.

    • Day 0 (Pascha): The Resurrection. The fast is broken, and the 70-day journey concludes.

3. Walking Through Great Lent: A High‑Level Map

Now we actually step into Great Lent. No, I won’t give you a day-by-day manual—this is still just a blog post—but you should at least know the lay of the land.

The Forty Days

Great Lent proper runs from Clean Monday through the Friday before Lazarus Saturday. The number 40 echoes Israel’s forty years in the wilderness and Christ’s forty‑day fast. The tone is sober but not despairing; it’s more like focused training.

During these weeks you’ll notice:

• More frequent services.

• A different, more penitential musical tone.

• A general sense that the Church has shifted gears.

• Each Sunday during Lent has a theme, too.

Calendar details—exact start dates, how the civil calendar lines up—will vary, especially between Old and New Calendar jurisdictions, but the basic architecture is common, and most of the worldwide Orthodox Churches follow the same calculation for Pascha.

The Canon of St. Andrew: Learning to Repent in First Person

In the first week (and again in full later on) we meet the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete. It’s a long poetic work that walks through Scripture, putting us in the shoes of figures who repented and those who refused.

If you stick with it, you realize something important: the Church doesn’t let us keep our sins at arm’s length. We say, “I have become like…” this or that figure. It’s an extended exercise in honest self‑knowledge, but always in conversation with God’s mercy.

Presanctified Liturgies: Food for the Road

In the middle of the week, many parishes celebrate the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, traditionally on Wednesdays and Fridays. The Eucharist is consecrated on Sunday and reserved so that in the middle of the fasting struggle, the faithful can receive communion even though we don’t serve a full festive Liturgy.

If you’ve never been, the feel is different: more prostrations, more Psalmody, a sense of being pilgrims at dusk, stopping at a roadside spring. It embodies the idea that Lent is not starvation; it’s a different kind of nourishment. This is my favorite Liturgy of the year after the Pascha Vigil and Holy Saturday.

The Akathist Hymn: Joy in the Middle

In many parishes, especially those of Greek and Arab extraction, Fridays in Lent may be marked by the Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos. In the middle of all this penitence, we stand and pour out a long, joyful poem of praise to the Mother of God for her role in the Incarnation.

It’s as if the Church says, “Don’t forget why you’re doing this. The Word became flesh. Salvation is already at work among you.”

Even in Lent, joy keeps breaking through the floorboards.

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4. Holy Week and Pascha: Pump up the Volume

The reality is that all of Great Lent in Orthodox Christianity is a gradual ramp up to Holy Week and Pascha.

Lazarus Saturday & Palm Sunday: Life and Kingship

At the end of the Forty Days, we hit Lazarus Saturday: Christ calls his friend from the tomb. Death loses its grip. The next day, Palm Sunday, we follow Christ into Jerusalem with palms and branches. He comes as the King who conquers by being slain.

For catechumens, these days are not background drama. They proclaim what baptism is about: being called out of the tomb and pledging loyalty to this upside‑down King.

Holy Unction: Strength for the Finish

In the middle of the Lenten journey, the Church does something that can look almost surprising: she stops us all—healthy, sick, young, old—and lines us up to be smeared with oil.

This is Holy Unction (also called the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick or Euchelaion), one of the chief “seven” sacraments of the Orthodox Church, rooted in Apostolic practice (James 5:14–15), where the prebyters/priests are instructed to anoint the sick with oil and pray for healing and forgiveness.

In the Orthodox mind, though, this isn’t a narrow “last rites” for the visibly ill; it is a sacrament that asks God for physical healing of illnesses and infirmities, spiritual healing of soul and mind, and the forgiveness of sins—even those forgotten or unknown.

During Great Lent many parishes serve a special communal celebration of Holy Unction, most commonly on Great and Holy Wednesday evening, as we stand on the threshold of the Passion; the service weaves together seven Epistle readings, seven Gospel readings, and seven prayers, punctuated by the anointing of the forehead, hands, and sometimes other parts of the body by one or more priests with the blessed oil.

Every Orthodox Christian present is anointed, not just those who “look” sick, receiving this touch of mercy as preparation for Holy Week and Pascha, a concrete way the Church presses home Lenten themes of repentance, spiritual renewal, and readiness to meet Christ in his suffering and in his Resurrection.

Bridegroom Services: The Road to the Cross

Early in Holy Week, the Church serves the Bridegroom Matins services. Christ is pictured as the Bridegroom who comes in the night; the Church calls us to wakefulness: “Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight…”

As the week goes on, we are drawn into:

• The Mystical Supper;

• The betrayal and arrest;

• The Cross;

• The placing of Christ in the Tomb;

• The storming of Hades and Christ’s triumph over death and evil;

• The dark sadness of waiting for the Resurrection—shot through with triumph.

Orthodoxy does not so much pretend to “reenact” these things like a play, but rather the liturgy assumes that we are being drawn into the once‑for‑all Pascha of Christ, made present to us sacramentally. The Holy Mysteries usher us into the reality, making the reality present in a mystical, but real, way.

Pascha Night: Stepping into the New Creation

Then comes Pascha. The dark church, the single flame, the spread of light from candle to candle, the triumphant hymn announcing Christ’s victory over death—this is where the whole season has been headed.

For the newly baptized and chrismated, this is the first time receiving the full Paschal feast as Orthodox Christians. For the rest of us, it is a yearly renewal of the baptism we may barely remember.

By the time we shout “Christ is risen,” the goal is not that we have completed a spiritual challenge. The goal is that, by grace, we have taken another real step into the life our baptism already gave us.

5. So What Do I Actually Do during Lent?

At this point, you may be thinking: “Okay, I get the big picture, but what am I supposed to do?” This is where I need to be very clear: I’m not your priest, and a blog post is not adequate for spiritual direction.

Think of your priest as a kind of spiritual trainer. He knows (or should know) your spiritual condition, your health, your job, your family situation, your particular temptations. Any real, concrete “rule” for Lent—what you eat, how you pray, how often you come to confession—belongs in that relationship, not in an internet article.

What I can give you here are categories and questions to bring into that conversation.

Fasting: More Than Food, Not Less

The Church sets a “gold standard” for our fasting pattern. But nobody lives the Typikon on the internet.

Instead of asking, “How hardcore do I have to go?” start by asking:

• What keeps me enslaved to my appetites?

• Where can I embrace simplicity and self‑control?

• How can my fasting free time, money, and attention for prayer and mercy?

Then take those questions to your priest and let him set the dose and intensity. Fasting is not a dare; it’s medicine.

Prayer and Services: Showing Up

If Great Lent is the Church’s journey, then showing up with the Church is already a major step.

Talk with your priest about a realistic pattern, but for many people starting out, it might look as simple as this:

• Treating Sunday Liturgy as absolutely non‑negotiable.

• Adding at least one Lenten service during the week if your schedule allows—often a Presanctified.

• Establishing or modestly strengthening a daily prayer rule (morning, evening, or both), even if it’s brief.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the possible. Better a small, honest rule you keep than an imaginary monastic schedule you abandon a mere eight days in.

Almsgiving and Mercy: The Weightier Matter

Meatfare already warned us: Christ will judge us on how we treated the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned. Lent is a perfect time to let that sink in.

Good questions here include:

• Can I deliberately redirect some of what I save by simpler eating toward concrete charity?

• Is there a person in my life I’ve been avoiding who needs my time, attention, or forgiveness?

• Am I fasting from meat while still devouring my brother online or in gossip?

Listen to Saint John Chrysostom:

“Let the mouth also fast from disgraceful speeches and railings. For what does it profit if we abstain from fish and fowl and yet bite and devour our brothers and sisters? The evil speaker eats the flesh of his brother and bites the body of his neighbor.”

If our Lenten discipline makes us pickier in the supermarket but just as harsh, cynical, or indifferent as before, we’ve got the equation backward.

Repentance and Confession: Not Just Guilt Management

Lent is the main season when many Orthodox Christians go to confession. If you’re a catechumen, your priest will guide you on when and how that begins for you.

The point, though, is not to tick a sacramental box. It’s to:

• Name the ways we keep siding with the old Adam.

• Receive forgiveness and healing.

• Learn to live more truthfully before God.

Overzealous converts sometimes try to fix everything at once and end up in shame or scrupulosity. If that’s you, remember: Lent is not about achieving. It’s about returning. Go at the pace obedience and honesty require, not the pace your religious ego demands. (This is a great time to learn the meaning of the word “prelest.”)

6. Common Pitfalls (For New and Old Orthodox Alike)

Lent has its clichés, and they exist for a reason. A few to watch out for:

• Overzealous Convert Syndrome - You discover the fasting rules and decide to out‑monk the monks on your first try. By week three you’re exhausted, irritable, and quietly judging everyone else’s oil intake.

  • Antidote: humility, obedience, and gradualism. Let your priest set something doable. Holiness is a marathon, not a stunt.

• Lent as Religious Diet - You can recite what’s “allowed” on every day, but you haven’t prayed more, given more, or forgiven more.

  • Antidote: periodically ask, “Is my heart softer? Are the people around me safer from my anger, sarcasm, and online takes?” If not, the fast needs recalibration.

• Apathy and Background Lent - You treat Lent as liturgical wallpaper: it’s there, but nothing in your life changes.

  • Antidote: don’t aim for a complete overhaul. Pick one concrete next step—in services, prayer, or mercy—and actually do it.

• Weaponizing the Fast - You use your Lenten discipline as a quiet superiority complex or as a yardstick to measure others. “Keep your eyes on your own plate” is great spiritual advice.

  • Antidote: remember the Publican and Pharisee. If your fast makes you more aware of other people’s sins than your own, it’s time to go back to square one.

7. Lent: Baptismal and Ecclesial Renewal

Underneath all the details, this is what I want you to hear: Great Lent is the Church’s yearly catechumenate. Even if you were baptized as an infant and don’t even remember it, the Church brings you back, again and again, to the waters.

If you’re preparing for baptism or chrismation this year, you are not tagging along on something meant for “the real Orthodox.” You are part of the reason this whole season exists. The rest of us walk with you so that we can remember who we are and what we’ve already received.

By the time we come to the empty tomb and shout, “Christ is risen,” the deepest hope is not that we can boast about how strictly we fasted or how many services we made it to. The hope is that—by grace—we have taken even one real step further into the death and resurrection of Christ, together.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann writes in Great Lent: Journey to Pascha:

“As we make the first step into the ‘bright sadness’ of Lent, we see—far, far away—the destination. It is the joy of Easter, it is the entrance into the glory of the Kingdom. And it is this vision, the foretaste of Easter, that makes Lent’s sadness bright and our lenten effort a ‘spiritual spring.’ The night may be dark and long, but all along the way a mysterious and radiant dawn seems to shine on the horizon.”

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P.S. You may have noticed we didn’t include a list of foods. We did this on purpose—the list of foods can become a distraction if the other points mentioned above are not dialed in first. If you want to explore the “food rules,” you can see the following articles:

• Fasting Guidelines

• “And When You Fast”

Additional Resources:

• Deacon Michael Hyatt Teaches through Schmemann’s Great Lent

• Downloadable Resources - Greek Archdiocese

• Preparing Your Family for Great Lent

• Preparing Your Family for Holy Week

• Observing Holy Week as a Family

• Making the Most of Great Lent

The following is a “pastoral” letter I wrote to my kids in the aftermath of our baby girl’s arrival, and is based in part on pastoral research I completed a couple of years ago for a master’s program at the Antiochian House of Studies. Our son is four years old, and our daughter is a mere two weeks old. My primary source for Chrysostom quotes is his Six Books on the Priesthood, trans. Graham Neville (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984).

Expect regular, weekly content to return next week.

Dearest Gregory and Alexandra,

Tonight the house is a strange harmony of sounds. Gregory, you are thumping toy cars across the coffee table and narrating entire universes under your breath. Alexandra, you are making those small newborn noises that are half‑sigh, half‑grunt, like you’re surprised to be here and perhaps a little delighted about it.

I wanted to put some words on the page for you—words gathered from Scripture, from St. John Chrysostom, from my own bruises and blessings. You will read this, God willing, when you are much older. For now, think of it as a kind of time‑capsule blessing from your dad, who loves you, and who is still learning the very things he’s trying to hand on.

Born into a Great Company

First, know this: you were both born into a great company. You are not alone in this mortal existence, but have been blessed with true traveling companions.

You have grandparents and godparents, cousins, and other relatives and friends who love you.

You have your patrons and heavenly intercessors—St. Gregory the Illuminator praying for you, my son; Saints Empress Alexandra and Sophia of Shamordino praying for you, my daughter; St. Benedict, whose name hides in our family name; the saints who watch over your mom and me—Saints Athanasius, James of Nisbis, Apollinaria of Egypt, John of Shanghai and San Francisco, and Saint Xenia of Saint Petersburg.

And you have your mother. Honor her. She has carried you, fed you, lost sleep for you, prayed for you with tears you will never see. The commandment to “honor your father and your mother” (Ex. 20:21) is the first one with a promise, and it is not just about being polite. It is about gratitude—learning to recognize the quiet, costly love that shaped you from the beginning. As you grow, listen to her, care for her, defend her, and when the time comes, be willing to return the care she lavished on you.

Honor, too, your grandparents and the elderly in general. Our culture often hides its elderly away, but Proverbs 16:31 says, “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.” Make space in your lives for the stories, sorrows, and hard‑won wisdom of those who have walked longer roads than you have. Stand up for them—literally and figuratively. Let the way you speak to your elders be marked by respect and tenderness—that will preach louder than a hundred insistent arguments.

Gregory, you were baptized into Christ and anointed in His name, and soon, Alexandra, you will be too. That means the deepest truth about you is not your talents or your failures, not your profession or your reputation. The deepest truth is that you belong to Jesus Christ. You are “little christs,” anointed ones, beloved children of God.

So whatever comes—success, confusion, heartbreak—you are never just a lone individual trying to survive. You are part of a communion. Lean into that. Let the Church, the saints, your mother and father, your elders, and the friends God gives you be your traveling companions in this life.

Remember the Suffering: Widows, Orphans, and the Poor

You were both born into a world that hurts.

When I was right in-between your ages, Grisha and Sasha, my own father died at thirty‑seven year old. My earliest memories are a strange blend of love and loss: the feeling of my mother rocking me in tears, the sight of my dad’s casket; warmth and grief tangled together in the same space. Your grandmother was a widow at thirty‑three with four children aged 2-13. There were many tears.

St. John Chrysostom knew this kind of pain. His father died when he was very young. His mother, Anthusa, spoke of widowhood as a “stormy sea” and an “iron furnace”—an unbearable sorrow she did not choose, but had to carry. His mama lamented to him that the death of her husband “left you an orphan and me a widow before my time, with all the burdens of widowhood, which only those who have borne them can properly understand.”

Some wounds can only be understood from the inside. Because of this, I want you to remember the sufferings of others—especially widows, orphans, and the poor. St. James (1:27) writes:

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

That’s not an optional extra. It is Christianity donning its working clothes.

You will meet people whose grief you cannot fix. Please don’t say, “I know exactly how you feel,” when you don’t (and even if you do). Don’t rush to reassure them, “God has a plan,” like a thin bandage slapped on a deep wound. Instead, say, “I am here. I care. I will listen.” Sometimes the most Christ‑like gift you can offer to others is your quiet, patient presence.

And remember the poor. Wisdom of Sirach 7:32 says: “Stretch out your hand to the poor, so that your blessing may be complete.” Chrysostom warns that “involuntary poverty is an insatiable evil”—it can embitter people, make them “querulous and unthankful.” When you help, don’t expect glowing reviews from those you serve. Give anyway. “Freely you have received; freely give” (Matthew 10:8).

Helping the poor, Chrysostom says, demands justice, wisdom, and forbearance. There will be complaints and misunderstandings. Some of the people you help will wound you. I have occasionally seen unkindness and ingratitude showered upon the helpers of the poor by the very poor who were being helped—which is why St. John Chrysostom says this: “But you must look for the possession of another quality as well, and that is forbearance, the source of all human blessings, which guides the soul to anchorage and escorts it into a fair haven.”

Fred Rogers told children to “look for the helpers” when the world looked scary. Chrysostom reminds the helpers not to be destroyed by accusations or ingratitude. Both are right.

Be those helpers.

Truth, Tradition, and a Dangerous Kindness

The faith you’ve received is not an idea your mother or I invented. It has been handed down—traditio—from Christ to the Apostles, from the Apostles to the Holy Fathers, from the Fathers through generations of ordinary Christians and rather extraordinary saints.

All of human learning is passed on person to person. Chrysostom says our best “teaching [is] by word of mouth”—it’s “the best instrument, the best diet, and the best climate.” We learn the faith at the kitchen table, in the nave, in the car on the way to school, from grandparents’ stories and priestly homilies and the pages of Scripture. We pass things on patiently by the exchange of ideas and the impartation of wisdom, and there is no substitute for a disciple-teacher model. This is true in the faith of the Church, and it is true in the ordinary realities of the world.

Because of that, truth matters. Heresy is not a clever alternative; it is cruelty. Misrepresenting God is like prescribing the wrong medicine to a sick patient. People can die from that. Do not let kindness cause you to forget the truth.

But still, be kind to those who are misled—but do not share in their errors. Jesus warns about “the leaven of the Pharisees,” because a small distortion can change the whole loaf (Luke 12:1-7). Chrysostom says there were many groups in his day “who bear the name of Christian,” but whose doctrines put them “beyond the pale of truth.”

Our age has its own myriad versions of religious ideas. You will meet people who want a Christianity without repentance, or without sacrament, or without the Incarnation, or without the Cross. Be gentle. Don’t bully. Our prayerful hope is that others may be “converted gently and gradually from the sins they commit” (in Chrysostom’s words).

But don’t trade the truth of Christ for the approval of anyone, even of people you love. This includes your papa. If I ever wander from the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3), your loyalty is to Christ and His Church, not to my opinions.

Leadership Without Ambition, Courage Without Fury

At some point in life, each of you will likely find yourself in positions of leadership—even if it’s just a circle of friends looking to you for what to do next. Chrysostom spends hundreds of pages describing the priesthood, but most of what he says applies to any kind of leader: parent, teacher, supervisor, advocate, pastor, podcaster, average Joe.

1. Beware Ambition

Ambition, he says, is a fire smoldering under the surface. Once it flares up, it’s hard to put out. A leader “must purify his soul entirely of ambition for the office,” or else he will endure all kinds of evil—flattery, compromise, cowardice—just to keep his position.

Wanting to do good work is holy. Wanting applause is dangerous. Let your main ambition be to please God and to love people, and hold every office lightly.

2. Master Your Temper

Nothing “muddies the purity of the mind” like a hot temper. An angry soul, Chrysostom says, is like a soldier fighting a night battle, striking wildly, unable to tell friend from foe.

You will feel anger. Some of it will be justified. The key is what you do next.

• Pause.

• Remember your own sins.

• Refuse to let anger drive the car.

If you do not learn this, your anger will devour you—and often the people you most love. Anger can destroy relationships, it can consume your time, and it can even make you sick or suffer mental maladies. It can become a poison—depending on the dose and duration.

When you feel angry, desperate, or grieved, you are in no position to discuss the important issues that led to such feelings, and no quick reaction will serve you well. Ephesians 4:26: “‘In your anger do not sin’: do not let the sun go down while you are still angry…”

3. Expect Criticism; Don’t Be Ruled by It

When a man or woman becomes visible, “even the most trivial faults get known,” and “a trifling and unimportant fault has often curtailed the glory of many fine achievements.” I have seen men I respected and admired throw it all away by a momentary mistake—decades of love and kindness can be wrecked for a lifetime, in only a few moments. Do not become a cautionary tale, my dear children.

Chrysostom compares public opinion to a “many‑headed savage monster.” If you chase praise, you’ll never rest. If you crumble under every critique, you’ll never move. “Let the best craftsman be the judge of his own handiwork,” he says. Let your conscience and your father confessor weigh your actions more than the crowd.

Do your work before the face of God—because it already is anyway. Don’t let likes, shares, or gossip steer your soul, and don’t be the cause of your own undoing.

Friendship That Can Survive Pain

One of my favorite parts of Chrysostom’s On the Priesthood is the friendship between him and St. Basil the Great. It seems obvious that they argue, forgive, disappoint each other, and still bear one another’s burdens.

Saint Basil tells him:

“I have made it a rule for myself… that I would never demand an explanation of any pain you might choose to cause me.”

That’s not a call to accept abuse; it’s a picture of deep loyalty. These are friends who know each other’s weaknesses, who can say, “You hurt me,” and at the same time, “I’m not going anywhere.”

I hope you will be that kind of sibling to one another. Gregory, cherish your little sister and look out for her. Alexandra, your big brother is already your most loyal friend—cultivate that relationship throughout life. Forgive quickly. Let love “cover a multitude of sins,” as St. Peter says (1 Ptr. 4:8). And may God give you true friends in the wider world who will stand with you in a similar way—be that kind of friend to them, too.

Friendship also means sometimes saying “no.” Chrysostom disappointed Basil when he refused certain honors. Life is finite; you cannot say yes to every invitation, even from people you love. Learn to tell the truth kindly, to set boundaries without bitterness.

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And I Repeat…

Honor all your loved ones, living or dead—but live for the living. We sit with our loved ones and talk with them, we take interest in their lives. We care, because they loved us into being and made us who we are.

Remember especially your mother, Polina—always remember your mother and her well being. Care for her in her old age, but do not neglect her or take her for granted for even a single day, if you can help it. Think of her often when you are away, and when you feel alone, remember the love she has for you—a love that was knit together in her heart, while you were knit together by God’s hand in her womb (Ps. 139:13). They say that in marriage—like the first pair, Adam and Eve—man and woman become “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23).

But never is that more literally true than in the fruit of the womb—you are flesh and bone derived from your parents, but especially you are bone of your mother’s bone. This is why St. John’s mama pointed out that even if he had a thousand friends, “there is nobody who cares for your reputation as I do.”

Even God himself, in becoming man, took on flesh from a woman’s womb, and now God has become bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh—this is why we can be saved, this is why we can experience the divine life that produces theosis in us. A thousand disciples could never know what the most holy Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary knew of God, and so a good mother’s love for her child is among the greatest of loves in all of creation.

Let it be said again: A faithful son remains kind to his mother all of her days, which is why Chrysostom’s mother begs him to be near until her death, rather than to leave her alone in this life. “Be patient till my death,” she instructs him.

“It may be I shall depart before long. Those who are young look forward to a distant old age; but we who have grown old have nothing to wait for but death.”

Stark words, but certainly representative of how many people think of their experience. “Love is watching someone die,” writes the poet, because love is sometimes manifested simply by being with someone at the end.

Which brings me back to one of the main things in this life: repentance. “This life has been given to you for repentance; do not waste it in vain pursuits,” says St. Isaac the Syrian. All people are called by God to repentance, and even those who have become friends of God must continually walk the path of repentance. The Church is not always led well by her ministers or is exhibited properly in the actions of her people, and there have been periods in Church history that were quite dark. But Jesus promised his faithful who follow him that we shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life (John 8:12).

“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching,” St. Paul instructed Timothy. “Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16). St. John Chrysostom warns: “Christians damage Christ’s cause more than his enemies and foes. But the good Lord still shows his kindness and calls us to repentance”—yes, repentance is for the believer, too.

We must remember this, and we must be personally open to correction.

A Final Word From Your Dad

Малыши (malyshi - little children), by the time you read this, you may already have learned that your dad is far from a perfect man. I have my own griefs, sins, failings, and foolish detours. You will see some of those up close—may God forbid you mirror them. I pray you also see some repentance exhibited in my life.

Resist hot-headedness and selfish ambition; be kind to all; stand up for the weak and mistreated; be a good friend; and remember the people who have loved you. If I can leave you with a short list, it would be this:

• Love Christ and His Church more than you love being right.

• Honor your mother, your elders, and those who have sacrificed for you.

• Remember the suffering and the poor; be one of the helpers.

• Guard the faith you’ve received; don’t trade it for trends.

• Keep watch over your own heart—your temper, your desires, your craving for applause, and your own weaknesses.

• Be loyal, gentle friends to each other and to the people God gives you.

And know, in all of it, that you are more loved than you can possibly understand—by your mom and me, by your grandparents and godparents, by the saints, and above all by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

My dearest Gregory and Alexandra, so much more could be said, and if the Lord gives me enough years of breath, I will impart many important lessons to you long before you read this letter. But if he does not grant me this desire of my heart, then you will have these words of mine to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest for as long as you are willing to consider them.

If I am alive when you read this, know that I am praying for you. If I have fallen asleep in the Lord, I will still be praying for you then, too, in ways I can’t fully describe now.

Archbishop John Shahovsky wrote:

“The whole span of a man’s life may be compared to a plot of ground. His duty is not idly to lie on this God-given ground but to cultivate it, to make the most of the life given into his stewardship as a token of a better life, better soil.”

I love you, my dear ones. And even if you are unable to live out these ideals, I will not love you any less. I could not be more grateful to God for giving me the opportunity to be your daddy, and I pray for the strength to lead you well.

Pray for me, and pray for your loved ones—it is such a precious gift given to us, as it connects us with God, with each other, and with the whole cosmos.

To paraphrase the conclusion of St. Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, now may the God of peace himself bestow upon you peace, in every way and at all times, that you may know that the Lord is with you. I, your father, write this message myself. The grace of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ be with you this day and evermore.

With all my love,

Papa

Here’s a little something extra—it’s a song I made with my group Royal Ruckus for Gregory:

I’ve been doing a good deal of study on Sirach, so it piqued my interest when a Reformed pastor friend of mine posted a bit of a jab online:

“Imagine having Sirach as a book in your Bible:

‘From garments comes the moth, and from a woman comes woman’s wickedness. Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good; it is woman who brings shame and disgrace’ (Sir 42:13–14).”

If that’s all you see, “misogyny” feels like the obvious label. To his credit, in online discussion with me, he framed three possibilities:

• either you agree with this as a true description of women;

• you disagree and so must reject Sirach as Scripture;

• or you are misunderstanding Sirach and need a better reading.

As an Orthodox Christian who accepts Sirach as Scripture—and as someone who has spent the last several years studying the so‑called “Apocrypha” for graduate work and podcast projects—I clearly take that third option. But “we’re misunderstanding it” can’t just be a hand‑wave. We need to show how this text can be read in a way that is honest about its sharpness, faithful to its context, and coherent with the rest of Scripture.

What Kind of Book Is Sirach, and Who Is It For?

First, we have to remember what Sirach is and what it is trying to do. Sirach (or, more formally, The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach) is a Second Temple Jewish wisdom book, written in Hebrew and preserved for us in Greek in the Septuagint—arguably the Old Testament of the early Church.1 It emerges essentially from a wisdom school for young men in Jerusalem—future leaders, scholars, and household heads—being formed by an older Jewish sage.

The tone is often like Proverbs: punchy, vivid, morally instructive, sometimes deliberately overstated.

That context matters. Sirach is not a neutral sociological survey of “What are women like?” It is a collection of exhortations addressed to young men, full of fatherly warnings about temptations, dangers, and responsibilities. The “you” in Sirach is almost always a young male listener, father or not.

As Fr. Patrick Reardon notes, Sirach is also written into a particular cultural crisis: many Jews were embarrassed by the Law and attracted to Hellenistic morals and social freedoms—including looser relations between the sexes. Sirach writes to stiffen the spine of young Jewish men—and fathers—in a world where it was starting to feel shameful to be distinct and faithful.

When you put those together—wisdom rhetoric, young male audience, moral crisis—you should expect two things:

• Rhetorical hyperbole: overstatement to make a point stick.

• Targeted warnings: “Watch out for this kind of woman / this kind of man / this kind of friend.” It is a mistake to assume an isolated text applies to all women or all men.2

Sometimes Sirach is more like a coach giving a frank pep talk in the locker room than a carefully nuanced textbook on life.

Hard Texts Are Not a “Sirach Problem”

We also need to be honest: this is not a problem unique to Sirach—or to the “Apocrypha”/“Bad” Books of the Bible.

If the standard is, “If an unbeliever can quote this and say ‘Imagine having to believe this!’ then it cannot be Scripture,” then large portions of the universally accepted Old Testament are in trouble.

Just a few examples that conservative Protestants affirm without hesitation:

• The command to destroy the Canaanites in Joshua, including women and children, is regularly cited by atheists as morally indefensible.

• The nightmare violence of Judges—think of the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19—does not require any help to scandalize modern readers.

• Some passages speak of infants dashed to pieces and women taken in war.

If our move is, “I cannot see how this could possibly be morally coherent, therefore this book must not be Scripture,” that move does not stop with Sirach. It runs straight through Joshua, Judges, parts of Samuel and Kings, and into certain psalms and prophetic oracles. “Hard texts” are woven through the canon that Protestants and Orthodox share.

So the real question is not, “Does Sirach have verses that land hard on our ears?” but:

• How do we read hard texts at all?

• What hermeneutic do we bring to them?

• Who gets to teach us how to hear them—our late‑modern instincts, or the Church that has prayed with these texts for centuries?

The Orthodox instinct is not to simply pretend these passages into softness, nor to discard them, but to read them:

• Within the whole canon, letting Christ, the cross, the resurrection and victorious triumph over death, and the Mother of God be the frame to understand what’s inside.

• Within the Church’s life, which has preached these texts and surrounded them with saints—male and female—who embody the right way to hear them.

• Within their own genres and settings, so we don’t flatten war narratives, prophetic oracles, and wisdom hyperbole into only wooden literalism, but see it in terms of its place in redemptive history, its multi-faceted reading by Christians in history, and its ultimate goal: the revelation of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ.

If we already do that for Joshua and Judges, Sirach deserves at least the same courtesy.

What Does the Verse Actually Say? Greek, Nuance, and Hyperbole

A very wooden English rendering—“Better the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good; it is woman who brings shame and disgrace”—can easily be heard as: “Men’s sins are preferable; women are fundamentally shameful.” But that’s not the only, or best, way to hear the verse.

The text could be stated like this:

“I would rather deal with any man than with the most well-intentioned woman, because a man will not disgrace you like a woman can when she acts shamefully.”

Here’s an explanation provided from an old Catholic commentary:

Hence some translate from the Greek as follows: Wickedness of a man is better than a beneficent woman; for a woman is a cause of shame and reproach. The Tigurine translation: Wickedness of a man is better than a woman showing herself kind; a woman who is the same author of disgraceful turpitude. Vatablus explains: Better, he says, that is, less evil, meaning there is more danger from the love of women, even with their kindness and charm, than from the open wickedness of men.

Thus Palacius: Better, he says, is it to associate with a wicked man than with a charming woman. For the wickedness of the former drives you away and repels you from him; but the flattery of the latter provokes and attracts you to her. Everyone hates a wicked man, but it is rare not to love a charming woman.

And Dionysius: Better, he says, is the wickedness of a man than a beneficent woman, not directly but occasionally, that is, a wicked man is less dangerous and harmful than a good woman; for a good woman provokes more to the fire of concupiscence. For the better and more charming the woman, the more desirable she is. This sense is clear from what follows: “And a woman bringing shame,” that is, leading to shameful lust and to the great disgrace that results from it. This is Dionysius.

Notice a few things:

1. The verse sits at the end of a section about fathers, daughters, and honor. In Sirach 42:9–14, the sage is lamenting how easily a daughter’s reputation (particularly in that culture) could be wrecked and how vulnerable she is in a permissive environment. He is not calmly writing “What women are like in general”; he is sounding an alarm to fathers about the stakes of raising and guarding their daughters well.

2. The Orthodox Study Bible’s gloss is pointed: “There is a subtle contrast that can easily be missed. Whereas the churlish baseness of evil male conduct can be vulgar and obscene, the flirtatious seductiveness of a woman can lead to the more serious sins of fornication or adultery.” It contrasts the gross, obvious sins of some men with the more insidious power of a woman’s seductive charm, which can lead to deeply destructive sins like fornication and adultery. In plain English: it can be far worse for a young man to be spiritually wrecked by a good‑looking disaster of a woman than to be wronged by a crude male jerk.

3. It is comparative and situational. The focus is not “all men vs. all women,” but perhaps it is a comparison between two specific scenarios:

   1. a man whose evil is crude and obvious;

   2. versus a woman who may be doing something “good” on the surface but is in fact bringing dishonor—through flirtation, infidelity, or manipulative seduction.

That is not flattering. It is not gentle. It should it be used as a justification for boys to be bad. It is also not a claim that women are ontologically inferior or more evil than men.

It is a moral warning about one particular pattern of temptation, framed in heavy hyperbole.

And we should note: Sirach is full of similarly sharp overstatements:

• “It is better to die than to beg” (Sir. 40:28).

• “A word is better than a gift” (Sir. 18:16).

We instinctively recognize these as wisdom exaggerations, we don’t take them literal commandments about charity, economics, or how to buy presents for your kids. Sirach 42:13–14 belongs to the same rhetorical world.

Women in Sirach and in Scripture More Broadly

If Sirach truly believed “woman = shame,” we would expect to see that everywhere in the book. We do not.

Sirach can speak very warmly about women:

• “A friend or companion is always welcome, but a sensible wife is better than either” (Sir. 40:21).

• “Cattle and orchards make one prosperous; but a blameless wife is accounted better than either” (Sir. 40:19, high praise in an agrarian society!).

• He stresses the importance of marriage and warns men that without a wife can become rootless wanderers (Sir. 36:29–30).

Taken as a whole, Sirach assumes that women can be wise, prudent, and a profound blessing; he simply also knows—and says aloud—that a foolish or sexually manipulative woman can do enormous damage.

And, of course, Sirach is part of a much larger biblical witness:

• The books of Ruth and Esther present heroic, faithful women at the center of God’s providence.

• Wisdom is personified as a woman in Proverbs—a theme that runs naturally into Sirach’s own love of Wisdom.

• In the fullness of time, God Himself is born of a woman, the Theotokos, whom the Church acclaims as “more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim.”

• The New Testament places women at the tomb as the first to meet the risen Christ, while the men are in hiding.

Whatever else we say, a truly misogynistic reading of Sirach 42:13–14 sits poorly in the scriptural and ecclesial world Sirach actually inhabits.

So What Is Sirach Really Doing Here?

Putting all this together, I would summarize the passage this way:

Sirach 42:13–14 is not teaching that women are inherently worse than men. It is warning young men—and the fathers who raise daughters—about how devastatingly powerful misused female sexuality can be, especially in a culture that treats chastity lightly. (Sounds a bit like our day.)

Combined with the broader book, it fits into a pattern: Sirach rebukes male sins directly (“stop doing this”), but he also issues “beware” warnings about certain kinds of women (and friends, as well as rulers, and so on) who can drag the young man into ruin.

For Orthodox Christians, that means we do not have to choose between embarrassed rejection and uncritical literalism. Instead, we can let this text do what wisdom literature is supposed to do: shock us awake to the seriousness of sin, the vulnerabilities of youth, and the weight of parental responsibility—while simultaneously honoring the many places in Scripture and tradition where holy women stand as icons of faithfulness and wisdom.

Where This Leaves Us

If a thoughtful Protestant says, “If I were to accept Sirach 42:13–14 as Scripture, it would have to shape how I view women,” I agree—with one key clarification: it must shape how we view certain dangers and certain responsibilities, not how we view women as such.

And then we should add: we (Christians) already say the same about Joshua, Judges, and the prophets. We do not throw out Joshua because its warfare texts can be weaponized by cultists, nor discard Judges because its horrors scandalize modern sensibilities. We accept that these hard passages belong to the Church’s Bible and work to understand them in the light of Christ.

My argument is simple: let’s extend that same hermeneutical seriousness to Sirach. Once we recognize its genre (wisdom), its primary audience (young men), its rhetorical style (hyperbole), and its place in the broader biblical witness about women, the “misogyny” charge loses most of its force. What remains is an uncomfortable but intelligible pastoral concern about sexual sin, misplaced desire, and the high stakes of fatherhood and formation.

If Sirach must be expelled from the canon for this verse, then intellectual honesty would require us to put many shared Old Testament books in the dock as well.

If, however, we are already committed to wrestling faithfully with Joshua, Judges, and the prophets as God’s Word, then Sirach 42:13–14 deserves to be read with the same disciplined charity: not explained away, but situated—within its own world, and within the larger scriptural and ecclesial world where holy women, above all the Theotokos, stand as living refutations of any truly misogynistic reading.

Author Note

If this kind of close reading of Sirach is helpful to you, I’m launching a deliberate, verse‑by‑verse walk through the entire book on Ancient Faith Radio—a year‑long series that will let us sit with the text in more detail than a single Substack piece allows. It will also connect this “bad book” to the rest of Scripture and the life of the Church in a way I can only sketch here. Keep an eye out there (and here) for more on Sirach, wisdom, and the so‑called “Apocrypha.”

If you walked into an Orthodox church today, you might be forgiven for thinking we were making a very big deal out of a very ordinary thing. A big bowl or font of water sits in the middle of the temple; the priest plunges a cross into it three times, breathes on it, prays over it, and then people line up to drink it, carry it home, sprinkle it on their walls and children and kitchen sinks. We call this feast Theophany—the manifestation of God—and it comes with wilderness, a prophet, a river, a dove, and a voice from heaven.

But why water? Why this particular feast, squeezed between the joy of Nativity and the long road of Lent? And what does any of it have to do with your own baptism or the world outside the church doors?

We know the icons and the hymns, but the deeper pull—the way it reveals Christ’s renewal of all creation—can get lost in the spray. It’s no mere historical reenactment; it’s a liturgical participation in Christ’s baptism, an invitation to remember our own, and a window onto the world’s quiet transformation into the Kingdom.

Theophany unveils creation’s new beginning. So let’s walk through Fr. Anastasios Hallas’s sermon together: we’ll start with the feast’s liturgical rhythm, move into the Gospel wilderness with John the Forerunner, and then trace how it all opens onto the new creation.

Between Christmas and Theophany: The “Good Feasts”

While many people think of the popular “Twelve Days of Christmas” (song and lore alike) as a countdown to December 25, it’s really more like an Advent calendar in reverse. The “first day of Christmas” is on Christmas Day, and traditionally initiates a brief stretch in the glow of the incarnation through to January 6, Theophany (or Epiphany).

Fr. Anastasios sets the scene right away:

“In the Orthodox Church, the 12 days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day, December 25, and end on January 6, the Feast of Epiphany, or Theophany.”

I’ve heard that in Greece, people wish one another Kala fota and “good feasts,” meaning the whole stretch from the cave in Bethlehem to the waters of the Jordan. Christmas is the Lord’s Nativity; January 1, His circumcision and naming; and then Theophany—Christ’s baptism and the manifestation of the Holy Trinity.

“On this day, we see Christ our God entering the waters of the Jordan River. We see the Holy Spirit descending upon Him in the form of a dove. And we hear the voice of the Father saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’”

If you’re not Orthodox, this might be the part of the service you’ve never seen: the Great Blessing of the Waters. Fr. Anastasios walks the faithful through the very practical side of this: royal hours, vespers, the blessing of the waters on the eve of the feast, and then the blessing again after the Divine Liturgy on Theophany itself, with the faithful taking holy water home.

“We drink this holy water. We bless our homes, our cars, and everything around us with it… When Christ went down into the Jordan River, He sanctified the waters and, through them, all of creation. When we bless and drink holy water, we participate in that sanctification. We are reminded of our own baptism and our commitment to live in Christ.”

Interestingly, that phrase “good lights” echoes the feast’s theology: Christ as the Light illumining the world from manger to river. It’s one extended mystery, not isolated holidays.

Sidebar: What Are “Good Feasts” and Kala Fota?

• In Orthodox practice, the period from December 25 to January 6 is not “post‑Christmas slump” time; it is an extended, festal season.

• “Good feasts” is a way of blessing that whole arc of celebration, not just a single day.

• “Kala fota” literally means “good lights” or “joyful lights,” and it is associated especially with Theophany, when the Church sings of Christ as the “Light” who has appeared and illumined the world.

• Such greetings quietly encode the theology Fr. Anastasios is preaching: from manger to Jordan, we are walking through one mystery—the manifestation (epiphany or theophany) of the Light of the world.

The Wilderness Within: John’s Call to Repentance

From there, he turns to Mark’s Gospel and John the Baptist. The Theophany Gospel begins like this:

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).

Fr. Anastasios pauses over that first line:

“This is not just the beginning of a book. It is the beginning of hope, the beginning of healing, the beginning of God entering into our broken world in a way we cannot ignore.”

But before Christ steps into the Jordan in Mark’s Gospel, we hear a voice crying in the wilderness. That word “wilderness” hits hard because, as Fr. Anastasios notes, it’s not just a dusty Judean landscape—it’s a heart condition. Dry, empty, restless spots far from God.

He puts it plainly:

“The wilderness is not only a place on a map. It is also a condition of the heart. It is that place in us that feels dry, empty, restless, far from God. It is loneliness, confusion, fear, and struggle. And right there, in that wilderness, God sends a voice.”

You don’t have to live near the Judean desert to know what that feels like. The wilderness today might look like the bottom of your inbox, the late‑night anxiety rut, or the sense that you’re somehow both over‑stimulated and under‑nourished all at once. Scripture names that internal landscape and then, right into it, puts a prophet.

John’s word is simple and demanding:

“Repent.”

And here Fr. Anastasios does something important. He rescues repentance from our worst imaginations.

“Repentance is not about shame. It is not about beating ourselves up. It is not about thinking that we are worthless. Repentance is a gift. It means to turn around, to change direction, to come home. It is to stop walking away from God and to begin walking toward Him.”

If you’ve only ever heard repentance preached as “feel bad enough about yourself and maybe God will tolerate you,” this is a different tone entirely. It’s not a performance of misery, or beat yourself up until you feel bad enough. It’s really more of a change of course.

John Prepares, Christ Sanctifies

Crowds go out to John. They leave the city, head into the barren places, and do something most of us would rather not do: they tell the truth.

“They came to the Jordan River to confess their sins. They did not come pretending to be perfect. They came with honesty and humility, admitting that their lives were not in order, that they needed God. They entered the water not as people who had it all together, but as people hungry for God.”

John knows his role. He’s not the main event.

“After me comes One who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie… I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:7–8).

Untying sandals, as Fr. Anastasios points out, is the job of the lowest servant. John says he’s not even worthy of that. That’s not some pious humility on the part of Saint John—no, it’s clear vision. Despite his obvious holiness, John doesn’t clutch the spotlight, he points away from himself.

And that’s where we move from John’s ministry to Christ’s.

“John’s baptism with water was real, but it was preparation. It washed the outside. It woke people up. Christ’s baptism with the Holy Spirit goes deeper. It heals the soul. It transforms the heart. It gives strength to the weak, light to those in darkness, and forgiveness to those trapped in sin.”

As St. Gregory the Theologian sums it up:

“But John baptizes, Jesus comes to Him perhaps to sanctify the Baptist himself, but certainly to bury the whole of the old Adam in the water; and before this and for the sake of this, to sanctify Jordan; for as He is Spirit and Flesh, so He consecrates us by Spirit and water.”

That’s the shift—from preparation to transformation. That little line—John baptizes, Jesus sanctifies—captures Theophany in miniature.

When Christ descends into the Jordan, He’s not there because He personally needs repentance. He’s there to step into the same water as sinners, to stand in line with us, to make the river itself an instrument of new creation.

Here Fr. Anastasios summarizes: “John opens the way; Christ comes to renew all things.”

Florovsky: The Beginning of the New Creation

This is where I want to slow down and bring in Georges Florovsky for a moment, because he helps us see how big this “beginning” really is—and how Theophany plugs into the whole story of the Bible.

There is this sense that the arc of Scripture can be understood in terms of a tension between two “moments”: creation and new creation. In an essay on revelation and the Bible, Florovsky writes:

Scripture begins with the creation of the world and closes with the promise of a new creation. And one senses the dynamic tension between both these moments, between the first divine “fiat” and the coming one: “Behold, I make all things new” [idou, kaina poiô panta—Revelation 22:5].

That “dynamic tension” is not a mere literary flourish of the Biblical authors; it is the drama of salvation. The first page of Genesis gives us a world that is good, ordered, and given as a gift. The last pages of Revelation show us that same world transfigured as the “new heaven and new earth,” the New Jerusalem descending, and God dwelling with His people.

For Florovsky, you cannot fully understand any single event in the Gospel—Bethlehem, Jordan, Tabor, Golgotha, the empty tomb—unless you hold it inside that tension. These are not isolated miracles scattered through an otherwise ordinary “religious history.” Each is a “moment” in what we might call the divine economy: the one, coherent work of God to bring His creation from its first beginning to its final, glorified state.

In that light, the Incarnation is not simply God visiting us in our world. It is the beginning of the world’s own resurrection. The Son assumes the created, material, historical life of humanity so that, in Him, creation itself can pass through death into newness. Theophany, then, is a kind of public unveiling of that plan. The eternal Word through whom all things were made steps down into the river of His own creation, and the Spirit descends upon Him as once the Spirit hovered over the primordial waters.

If you put your thinking cap on here, you can hear Mark’s line, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” in at least three registers at once:

1. It is the “beginning” of his written account.

2. It is the historical beginning of Christ’s public ministry.

3. It is, Florovsky might say, the eschatological beginning—the first appearance, within time, of the future that God has promised: the new creation breaking in.

Fr. Anastasios continues:

“When Christ entered the Jordan, He did not do it because He needed to repent. He did it to stand with us, to stand in the place of sinners, and to make the waters of baptism the place where we die and rise with Him. In Theophany, all of creation begins to be renewed in Christ.”

This is no escape hatch from the world, but it’s resurrection starting now, where the Spirit hovers again over waters like in Genesis. It is about the world itself being re‑created from within by the crucified and risen Christ.

The Jordan is not a side stream to that story! It is one of the places where the first and the last pages of Scripture suddenly meet.

Water as Mystery: Schmemann’s Close-Up

Sacraments (or holy mysteries) aren’t “religious” interruptions in a secular world; they reveal creation’s true purpose as communion with God. Fr. Alexander Schmemann spent much of his ministry pushing back against the idea that the sacraments are strange “religious” interludes in an otherwise secular universe. In his view, the sacraments do not temporarily suspend the world’s normal functioning; they reveal the world’s deepest truth. Creation, he argues, has a “sacramental” structure—its whole existence is ordered toward being a means of communion between God and humanity.

In that sense, the world is called to be the “sacrament of God’s presence.” Matter is not an obstacle to God but the means through which God chooses to give Himself. Bread and wine, oil and water, time and space: these are not raw materials we use to reach upward. Properly received, they are gifts in which God reaches us. Schmemann can therefore speak of creation as matter becoming communion—not in a magical sense, but as matter offered back to God in thanksgiving—and thus revealed for what it was created to be.

When he considers Theophany and the Great Blessing of the Waters, Schmemann notices something crucial in the prayers. The water is not treated as a neutral substance we “charge” with supernatural power. Instead, the Church remembers the whole history of water in God’s saving work: the Spirit over the deep in Genesis, the waters of the Flood, the Red Sea, the Jordan. The blessing is, in a sense, an act of anamnesis—a remembering that makes present.

For Schmemann, this means the blessing unveils the water’s true vocation rather than adding something foreign to it. He argues that in the rites for Theophany, the Church does not impose a kind of “supernatural quality” onto water that it did not possess before, nor did it change the molecular structure of water either. Rather, it was a revelation of Christ, of the water of trule if in Christ, the water that was a gift from God, the means of life, and therefore a kind of “symbol” of the world itself.

In other words, the Jordan on Theophany is not a departure from what water is—it is water finally being itself in Christ.

If we keep that in mind, the very “stuff” of the feast hits different (as the kids say). The bowl or font of water in the middle of the church is not an exception to a godless universe; it is a small, concentrated icon of what God desires for all creation. The blessing of the waters is the Church learning to look at the world eucharistically—to see creation as gift and as invitation to communion with God, not just as a stockpile of resources to be consumed or exploited.

That is exactly what Fr. Anastasios is getting at when he urges the faithful at Saint Mark not to treat Theophany water as a superstition or a souvenir:

“When we take holy water home, when we drink it and bless our homes with it, we are not playing with magic. We are confessing that, in Christ, no part of our life is outside of His care. Our homes, our work, our fears, our joys—everything can be touched by His grace.”

Schmemann would say that in this feast, the Church gets a brief glimpse of the world seen rightly. For a moment, we act as though it were true (because it is) that every created thing is, in principle, capable of bearing grace—capable of being taken, blessed, broken, and shared in Christ. (Otherwise we wouldn’t bless public waters!) Theophany is not about escaping matter; it is about matter being restored to its liturgical calling.

If Florovsky gives us the wide‑angle view—creation straining toward new creation—Schmemann hands us a close‑up shot: a drop of water falling on your forehead, a sip of blessed water on your tongue, your apartment walls sprinkled and prayed over. In that drop, in that sip, in that room, the new creation is already, quietly, at work.

Schmemann calls the world “eucharistic”—offered back to God. In that sip or sprinkle, new creation stirs.

(I’ve found Schmemann’s sacramental theology in his For the Life of the World and for Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism to be indispensable resources in understanding these Holy Mysteries, and much of this is a distillation of my understanding of Schmemann.)

Preparing the Way: Concrete Steps in Theophany’s Light

Fr. Anastasios doesn’t leave Theophany in the realm of ideas. He keeps coming back to John’s voice as something still addressed to us:

“The call of John the Baptist did not end two thousand years ago. His voice still cries out in the wilderness of every age: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight.’”

So what does “preparing the way” look like for people who don’t live within walking distance of the Jordan?

He gives some examples:

“We prepare the way when we forgive someone we have been holding in our heart with anger.

We prepare the way when we turn off the noise of this world and make time for prayer.

We prepare the way when we come to confession with honesty and humility.

We prepare the way when we admit our weakness and ask God for help.”

Bringing this home, consider the following:

1. Name your wilderness. This can get a little hokey if we get carried away, but the exercise is worth pondering for a moment. As he puts it, the “wilderness” is that dry, restless place within you, and this is exactly where God wants to send His voice.

2. Approach repentance as homecoming. Not as self‑hatred, but as the courage to say, “I’ve been walking in the wrong direction. I want to turn toward Christ.” Always know this: God loves you and he is a good Father.

3. Make room for silence and Scripture. Even ten minutes with Mark’s opening verses (without an iPhone distracting) can be a way of “going out to the wilderness” to hear John.

4. Use holy water like you mean it. Bless yourself in the morning and remember your baptism. Sprinkle your home and pray that Christ would be Lord over its conversations, its screens, its worries. Bless your kids, drink a little bit and cross yourself, put some in your food if you wish. Sprinkle some in your neighborhood. It’s sanctified, and it sanctifies, so use it reverently but freely! Blessed is the Kingdom! Theophany can be shot through with joy if we let it.

Fr. Anastasios drives the point home:

“Christ does not force Himself into our hearts. He waits. He waits for us to clear away the clutter, the anger, the pride, the fear, the distractions, the sin. When we do, even a little, He comes. He enters with mercy. He enters with healing. He enters with the Holy Spirit.”

That is as good a one‑sentence summary of Theophany’s invitation as I know: clear a little space, and He comes.

Watch Fr. Anastasios’s sermon on the Saint Mark YouTube Channel:

Listening to the Voice, Standing in the Water

After Christmas, we were living liturgically between manger and river—between the quiet glory of Bethlehem and the open heavens over the Jordan. We have now come to the bank of the river Jordan to witness Christ’s baptism and the revelation of the Holy Trinity.

This is the beginning of the new creation; water (and the whole material world) is not an afterthought but a bearer of grace. Fr. Anastasios reminds us that all of this lands in the very ordinary wilderness of your own heart.

My prayer—for our faithful Orthodox, for catechumens, and for the simply “Orthocurious”—is that this Theophany would be, in Saint Mark’s words, a new “beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” in each of us.

It comes in the phone call that wakes you at 2 a.m., in the doctor’s hand on your shoulder, in the tiny hospital bracelet around a baby’s wrist, in the empty chair at the dinner table that used to be filled. One moment you’re managing life; the next, you’re staring at a world that doesn’t make sense anymore.

And somewhere in the middle of that shock a very old question forces its way to the surface: Where is God when it hurts?

You can find that question in Job sitting in the ashes, in the Psalms of lament, even on the lips of Jesus on the Cross. It isn’t new. But when it’s your diagnosis, your child, your loss, it stops feeling like a topic for books and becomes something much more raw—a kind of wordless howl at the center of your chest.

Evangelical Christian writer Philip Yancey has done important work helping many people wrestle with that question in his book Where is God When it Hurts? A Comforting, Healing Guide for Coping with Hard Times. I’m grateful for that. But in this piece I want to approach the same cry from within the Orthodox Church’s way of seeing: her conviction that evil is parasitic and without true being, that God is never the author of it, and that the God who seems absent in our suffering has in fact descended into it—all the way down.

In this post, I don’t want to give you a color‑coded theology of suffering or a tidy list of verses to tape on the fridge. What follows is offered not as a final word, but as an Orthodox companion on the road—a way of thinking and praying that has been tested in hospital rooms and at gravesides and in back pews where the tears finally spill over, and that dares to say: God is not watching your hurt from far away—He has gone into it Himself.

First, You’re Allowed to Ask This

If you grew up with a tidy religious script, you may have absorbed the idea that real faith doesn’t ask why. That to question, or to cry out, is to doubt.

But the first thing I want you to see is that God has already put your question into His own book.

The Psalms are full of it:

• “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 12/13:1)

• “Why do You stand afar off, O Lord? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 9/10:1)

• “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Psalm 21/22:1)

Those words are not a failure of faith; they are what faith sounds like when it is wounded. And the Church gives us those words to pray. We don’t have to invent our own “where are You?” God hands us His own language of lament and tells us to use it.

So when you ask, “Where is God when it hurts?” you are not stepping outside the life of faith. You are stepping directly into the middle of it. Orthodoxy doesn’t try to slap a smiley‑face sticker over your grief. We bring that grief into prayer, even when the prayer is closer to a groan.

God Is Not Watching From a Distance

A lot of the bad answers to suffering start with a hidden assumption: that God is basically far away, occasionally intervening. He’s up there; we’re down here; sometimes He reaches in.

God is watching us, God is watching us

God is watching us from a distance

-Bette Midler

But in the Orthodox vision, God is never “over there” watching the tragedy unfold like a spectator “from a distance.” Saint Paul tells us, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God is, as we pray in almost every service, “everywhere present and filling all things.”

That does not mean everything that happens is His will—he did not decree your suffering like some calloused emperor watching condemned people go to their death in the coliseum. It does mean there is no place your pain can go that is outside His presence. Even Hell is not really “God‑forsaken”; rather, it is where God’s very real and true love is rejected. This is why the Psalmist can say, “If I make my bed in Hades, You are there” (Psalm 138/139:8).

When it hurts, you may feel like God is absent. Orthodoxy is clear: your feelings are real, but they are not the final word on what is Real.

Christ went down into the grave, into Hades itself. He has stooped lower than your worst night. He is not waiting for you on the other side of the dark; He is in the dark with you.

What Evil Is—and Isn’t

Here is where the Fathers help us name something that’s usually only felt.

When you stand at a graveside, or in an ICU, or with your eye on the phone waiting for bad news, evil feels like a solid wall. It feels like a thing slamming into you.

But the Orthodox Church insists on something strange and freeing: evil is not a “thing” in the way goodness is. It has no real being of its own.

It is a distortion of what God made, a parasite feeding on good, a hole torn in reality rather than a substance God manufactured.

God creates being; He creates life, light, goodness, beauty. Sin, death, and pain are what happens when that goodness is twisted, when that life is wounded, when that light is refused. Think of rust on iron, rot in wood, illness in a body. Rust is not a new, positive creation; it is iron corrupted. In the same way, death is not a created “thing” God sends. It is the ripping apart of what God joined together.

That distinction won’t make your tears stop, but it does matter. It means:

• God is never the positive author of evil.

• God is not secretly hiding behind the bullet, the cancer cell, or the drunk driver.

• God is always, by His very nature, on the side of being, healing, and restoration, not on the side of the tear in the fabric.

When you rage against what has happened—“This should not be”—you are not fighting God’s will. You are agreeing with Him. Death really, truly is an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26). We are supposed to hate death’s stinking breath; we are supposed to be at enmity with the serpent and his love of death.

Your horror at it is not a lack of faith; it echoes God’s own verdict lodged in your heart.

God Isn’t Behind the Bullet or the Tumor

There is a cheap way to protect God’s power that ends up wounding people: “Everything happens for a reason,” we say, meaning, God chose this for you. God sent this cancer. God took your child. If we want to be faithful to the Orthodox Christian faith, I think we should not talk this way.

We confess in every Divine Liturgy that God is “the lover of mankind.” The One who took on flesh, healed the sick, wept at the tomb of His friend Lazarus (John 11:35), and went to His own unjust death on a cross. He is not the secret author of evil, nor did He sign a deal with the devil for your downfall. Death, that last enemy, is not His tool; it’s what He came to overthrow.

So where does the hurt come from?

• From a broken world: creation itself is “groaning” (Romans 8:22). Bodies fail. Cells misfire. Accidents happen. The fabric that is the goodness of creation has been torn, and we all feel the draft.

• From human sin: our freedom to love also means a real freedom to harm. Drunk drivers, abusers, negligent doctors, indifferent systems—none of that is God’s will. Rather, these are the suffering that God enters into with us.

• From the mystery of spiritual warfare: there are forces that hate the image of God in you. Orthodoxy takes that seriously without reducing everything to demons under the bed.

None of this makes your pain smaller. It does something else: it moves God to your side of the equation. God is not the One throwing the punches. He is the One with you in the ring, working—even in the midst of parasitic, senseless evil—to bring healing, repentance, and resurrection.

When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego where thrown into the fiery furnace in anticipation of certain death, there was a fourth Man with them, and they were saved—we too can hope for such a Presence when we call out to God for mercy.

The Cross Is God’s Answer, Not God’s Excuse

Sometimes Christians rush to the resurrection so fast we never really stand at the Cross. But if you want to know where God is when it hurts, the Cross is the one place you must not skip.

On the Cross, the Son of God cries out in the words of the Psalm: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Psalm 21/22:1; Matthew 27:46). The Fathers are clear: Christ is not having a crisis of faith. He is taking into Himself our feelings of rejection, our humiliation by death, our feelings of God‑forsakenness into Himself. There is no human question about suffering that He did not make His own.

• The Cross does not give us a neat explanation. It gives us a companion.

• God does not explain our pain from a safe distance; He enters it.

• He is spat on, abandoned by friends, tortured, humiliated, and killed. The answer Orthodoxy gives to the problem of suffering has a crucified face.

And remember what we said about evil: it has no true being; it is a distortion. On the Cross, Christ lets that distortion do its worst. It tears at Him, rips life from His body, drags Him into death. And then He walks out of the tomb on the third day, carrying our humanity with Him, leaving the distortion behind like a broken shell. He conquers it, leaving it vanquished.

The resurrection is not God saying, “It wasn’t that bad.” It is God taking what was truly that bad and filling it with His life. Christ keeps His wounds; they do not keep Him.

Your wounds, too, are not annihilated in Christ; they are destined—however impossible it seems now—to be transfigured.

Where Is God? In the Church…With You

One of the quiet Orthodox answers to “Where is God?” is very simple: He is in His Body.

That’s not just a metaphor. When you are baptized, chrismated, and fed with His Body and Blood, you are joined to Christ in a way deeper than biology. “You are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27). That means that when you hurt, the Body hurts.

And when the Body gathers around you in prayer, meals, childcare, hospital visits, and simply sitting in silence, Christ Himself is gathering around you.

This is why we make such a big deal of the services for the departed, of the Trisagion prayers at the grave, of the memorials at 40 days and beyond. The Church believes something real is happening there. We are not just “remembering” your loved one. We are standing with them before God, asking that their sins be forgiven, their wounds healed, their rest made bright.

And we are standing with you. Orthodoxy refuses to make suffering into a purely individual project. We bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), sometimes very clumsily, but really. If you are asking “Where is God?” and you are doing it alone, the Church’s answer is: come stand among us; let us hurt with you.

You Don’t Have to Make Sense of This Today

I wish I could give you a satisfying explanation. I can’t. The book of Job ends without one; God does not tell Job why he suffered. He shows Job Himself. He gives Job back more than he lost, but He never gives him a tidy answer.

That, too, is part of our Orthodox honesty. There are mysteries we do not solve, we only endure. The Scriptures do promise that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28), but they do not ask you to see that good right now, from where you are sitting. Often we only glimpse the pattern by hindsight, and sometimes we will only see it clearly in the age to come.

In the meantime, here is what you are not required to do:

• You are not required to call evil good.

• You are not required to pretend you are “fine.”

• You are not required to put on a brave religious face for God.

What you are invited to do is simpler and harder: to bring your raw, unedited self into prayer. It’s okay to not be okay—even “Lord I believe; help my unbelief!” is faith (Mark 9:24). To stand before an icon of Christ or the Theotokos and say, “This hurts, and I don’t understand, and I need You.”

A Final Word, From One Pilgrim to Another

If you are struggling with life right now, I am not writing this from a safe, untouchable place. I’ve had my own seasons of asking where God is when everything falls apart. I’ve watched people I love suffer in ways that still haunt me.

Orthodoxy did not solve that; it christened it. It gave me language, saints, services, and a crucified‑and‑risen Lord to cling to.

So if you find yourself staring at the ceiling tonight asking, “Where are You?” know this much: the very act of asking is already a kind of prayer. It is already a reaching out. And the God who has gone into death and out the other side knows how to find those who can barely lift their eyes.

He is not indifferent to your tears. He has collected every one of them. The evil that has touched you is real as a wound but thin as a shadow next to His being and His love. And even if you cannot yet see Him in the dark, the Church will stand with you there and keep saying His name until, little by little, the dawn begins to show.

The so‑called apocryphal books are the Rodney Dangerfield of the Bible. They get no respect.

If you grew up with a standard Protestant Bible, you might not even know they exist. If you had a King James with Apocrypha, you probably saw them marooned in an awkward appendix between Malachi and Matthew, separated off like that one weird cousin at Thanksgiving.

In the Orthodox Church, though, these books don’t live in the appendix. They live inside the Old Testament.

In earlier episodes of “Bad” Books of the Bible, I laid some groundwork: what the Bible is, how the canon came to be, why access to Scripture has changed so dramatically over time, and how the Old and New Testaments hang together. In this episode—and this article—I finally do what the show’s title promises: I start walking you through the “bad books” themselves.

To get there, we first need to ask two things:

• What kinds of literature are we dealing with?

• What do all these loaded terms—apocrypha, deuterocanon, pseudepigrapha—actually mean?

Genres in Scripture: Not Everything Is a Documentary

When we open the Bible, we’re not opening one book. We’re walking into a library. And like any library, it has sections.

I sketch eight major genres in the episode:

1. Law - Legal codes, commandments, and regulations, especially in the first five books of the Old Testament—the Torah or Pentateuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy).

2. History - Narrative accounts of events and people: Joshua, Judges, Kings, Chronicles in the Old Testament, and Acts in the New.

   1. Biblical history doesn’t play by modern documentary rules. And even then, we like to pretend our documentaries are neutral and precise; they aren’t. A documentary arranges facts to serve a thesis.

   2. Biblical historians do the same: they select, arrange, and emphasize with theological intention. The question isn’t “Did they have a bias?” but “What is their bias—and is it holy?”

3. Wisdom literature - Reflective, philosophical, practical: Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and, in the Orthodox canon, books like Wisdom of Solomon and Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus). These books help us see the world as God sees it and live accordingly.

4. Poetry - Expressive, often liturgical language: the Psalms, the Song of Songs. This is the Bible in hymn form, the words the people of God sing back to Him.

5. Narrative - Story-based texts: Genesis and Exodus are full of it, as are the Gospels and Maccabees. Narrative can overlap with history, but it’s a broader category.

   1. It includes parables—fictional stories Christ tells to reveal truth (e.g., Matthew 13). It can also include something like historical fiction, where a tale is set in a real time and place but told with literary freedom.

   2. The Book of Tobit probably lives here: it appears to take deliberate liberties with chronology and details to tell a theologically rich story about providence and faith.

6. Epistles - Letters written to communities or individuals, like Paul’s epistles and the general epistles (Hebrews through Jude) in the New Testament.

7. Prophecy - Messages from God delivered through prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the other prophets. Sometimes prophecy looks ahead; just as often it calls for repentance right now. And it is worthy of note that revelation of God is, in a sense, prophetic—truth spoken from God to His people in a particular moment.

8. Apocalyptic literature - A sub‑genre of prophecy marked by visions, symbols, beasts, and cosmic conflict: Revelation in the New Testament; parts of Daniel and Ezekiel in the Old. This is the genre we most often think of when we hear “prophecy,” even though it’s one corner of a larger prophetic landscape. (People often sensationalize these texts and imagine them to say more than they do.)

Knowing these genres matters because we interpret texts according to what they are. We don’t read Proverbs the way we read 1 Samuel. We don’t read Revelation like Romans. And we don’t read Tobit—or Judith, or Maccabees—well if we demand from them the kind of modern, footnoted historiography they never set out to provide.

Check out the episode below:

Defining Our Terms: Apocrypha, Deuterocanon, Pseudepigrapha, and Heresy

The word that causes the most trouble in English is “apocrypha.” It comes from a Greek word meaning hidden. Over time, it picked up a sense that something about these books is dubious, secret, or suspicious.

In popular Christian usage, “apocrypha” often does three different jobs at once:

• It can refer to the books Catholics and Orthodox include in the Old Testament but Protestants do not.

• It can refer to pseudepigraphal writings—texts falsely attributed to biblical figures.

• It can refer to heretical books that the Church explicitly rejects.

No wonder people are confused.

As an Orthodox Christian, I don’t like using “apocrypha” to talk about the books my Church reads as Scripture. I’d rather reserve that term for books outside the Orthodox canon. Some of those apocryphal writings are spiritually helpful; others… not so much. The Protoevangelium of James, for example, is apocryphal and pseudepigraphal (falsely attributed to James), but the Church has found it useful in articulating the early life of the Theotokos. The so‑called Gospel of Thomas, on the other hand, is both pseudepigraphal and not particularly edifying.

A somewhat better term for the extra Old Testament books is “deuterocanon,” literally “second canon.” This is a term forged in the Roman Catholic world and sometimes adopted by Orthodox writers for convenience. Deuterocanonical books are those recognized as canonical in some Christian traditions but not all, and recognized somewhat later than the core books. They weren’t added at the end of church history; they were there from the beginning. (Admittedly, a few Early Fathers like Saint Jerome had heartburn over them, but they were received nonetheless.)

Then there’s pseudepigrapha itself: writings attributed to biblical figures who did not, in fact, write them. Enoch, Jubilees, and many others fall in this category. Ironically, by this technical definition even Wisdom of Solomon could be called pseudepigraphal. It’s clearly written in Solomon’s voice and style, but most scholars agree it comes from a later Jewish author, probably in Alexandria, and the Orthodox Church still reads it as Scripture. You can think of this like “In the style of [Biblical figure]…”

Finally, heretical books: texts that embody false teaching, contrary to the apostolic faith. Heresy literally means “choice”—to choose your own path over the mind of the Church. I sometimes joke, “To each his own heresy,” but there’s a serious point underneath: when someone chooses their own gospel over the one the Church received, they step outside the life‑giving stream.

So to summarize:

• I avoid calling the Orthodox Old Testament extras “apocrypha.”

• “Deuterocanon” is better, but still not perfect.

• “Pseudepigrapha” is a technical literary category that can apply to both canonical and non‑canonical works.

• “Heretical” I reserve for writings the Church has weighed, found wanting, and rejected.

What, then, do I call the books this podcast is about?

For us in the Orthodox Church, they are simply part of the Old Testament.

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Thinking Theologically Extra Books Of The Bible

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The Septuagint: The Old Testament of the Apostles

If you want to know why the Orthodox canon looks the way it does, you have to talk about the Septuagint.

The Septuagint—often abbreviated LXX—is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures produced in the third century before Christ, traditionally in Alexandria. According to the legend, seventy‑two Jewish scholars translated the Law independently and produced identical Greek versions. Whatever the details, the upshot is clear: by the time of Christ, Greek‑speaking Jews had a Greek Old Testament, and it included several books and expansions not preserved in the later standard Hebrew text.

For the early Church, this Greek Bible became the Old Testament. The New Testament itself is written in Greek, and when it quotes the Old, it usually follows the Septuagint wording. The LXX was the Bible of the apostles and the first Christians. It’s still the Old Testament of the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Study Bible bases its Old Testament on it.

A few key points about the Septuagint:

• It includes books written originally in Greek (e.g., Wisdom of Solomon, 2 Maccabees) and some originally in Hebrew where only the Greek survives.

• Many Septuagint manuscripts are older than our earliest complete Hebrew manuscripts.

• The Church’s liturgical life and patristic exegesis lean heavily on the LXX text.

When you hear someone say, “The Catholic Church added books to the Bible,” or, “The Orthodox tacked things on after the fact,” the historical reality is closer to the reverse. These books were there in “the Bible” that Jesus and the apostles knew. They appear in Christian Bibles really from the beginning. It’s the Protestant Reformers who removed them from the main text or shunted them into an appendix.

Myth‑Busting the Canon: Nicea, Athanasius, and Carthage

Another popular myth goes like this: “The Council of Nicea decided which books would be in the Bible.” Womp, womp. It didn’t.

The First Ecumenical Council at Nicea (AD 325 ) was convened to address Arianism and confess the full divinity of Christ. The bishops were not sitting around a table voting Matthew in and Thomas out. The canon of Scripture was a centuries‑long, grassroots process shaped by liturgical use, apostolic tradition, and pastoral discernment.

One of the key figures in that process is St. Athanasius of Alexandria. In his 39th Festal Letter (AD 367), he gives the first surviving list of the twenty‑seven New Testament books exactly as we know them today. He distinguishes these fully canonical books from other writings used for catechesis and devotion, and he uses the term “apocryphal” very narrowly—for heretical texts, not for the deuterocanonical books.

Athanasius calls the books we’re focused on here the “readable” books, ones the fathers appointed for those “who have newly joined us and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness.” In other words, they are recommended reading for catechumens. That alone ought to make modern Christians pause before dismissing them as peripheral.

Later councils, like Carthage (AD 397), reflect and confirm a broad consensus already present in the churches. They do not create the canon out of thin air; they recognize what the Spirit has already stamped on the heart and worship of the Church.

The Orthodox Old Testament Canon: Same Story, Longer Shelf

So what actually distinguishes the Orthodox Old Testament from the standard Protestant one?

From Genesis through Chronicles, all three major traditions—Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox—are reading essentially the same story, though we use slightly different book names:

• 1–2 Samuel are 1–2 Kingdoms for us.

• 1–2 Kings become 3–4 Kingdoms.

• 1–2 Chronicles are sometimes labeled 1–2 Paralipomenon.

After that shared core, the Orthodox canon keeps going. In addition to the books Protestants know, we include:

• 1 Esdras (our “1 Ezra”; the Protestant “Ezra” is our 2 Ezra, confused yet?),

• Tobit,

• Judith,

• 1–3 Maccabees (with 4 Maccabees as an appendix in many Orthodox editions),

• Wisdom of Solomon,

• Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus),

• Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah,

• Psalm 151,

• additions to Esther,

• extra material in Daniel: Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Azariah, and the Song of the Three Youths,

• and the Prayer of Manasseh (often printed with the Psalms or in the service books).

Local Orthodox traditions—Georgian, Slavonic, and especially the Oriental Orthodox (and Ethiopians!)—have their own nuances, but that’s the core of the Orthodox picture.

A Whirlwind Tour of the “Bad Books”

Let me introduce a few of these briefly, with special attention to Tobit, Sirach, and the Maccabees.

Tobit: Providence in Exile

Tobit 4:19 says, “Bless the Lord your God always, and desire of him that your ways may be directed, and that all your paths and counsels may prosper.”

On the surface, Tobit is the story of a righteous Israelite living in Assyrian exile, his blindness and bitterness, and the journey of his son Tobias to recover a debt. But along the way we meet an archangel in disguise (Raphael), a demon who has killed seven bridegrooms in a row, a long‑suffering young woman named Sarah, a faithful dog, and a fish that nearly eats our hero’s foot.

Historically, the book was probably written between about 225 and 175 BC, but it is set after the fall of the northern kingdom (around 720 BC). That deliberate bending of timelines is one reason many scholars see Tobit as a kind of didactic historical fiction. It’s not lying to you; it’s telling the truth in story form, using real places and periods to frame its message.

And that message is profoundly Orthodox: God’s providence runs underneath everything. Even in exile, even in suffering, even in the small choices of travel plans and marriages, the Lord is at work. Tobit and Tobias insist on almsgiving, prayer, and obedience to the Law when it would be easier to disappear into Assyrian life. Sarah cries out to God in despair instead of surrendering to the demon’s script. Raphael quietly orchestrates meetings, healings, and exorcisms behind the scenes.

Tobit feels, in other words, like a story written for anyone who has ever wondered, “Is God still paying attention?” The answer it gives, through angels and dogs and a very large fish, is yes.

Judith: Holy Cunning

Judith 16:16 declares, “For the mountains shall be moved from their foundations with the waters. The rocks shall melt like wax at your presence, yet you are merciful to those who fear you.”

Likely composed in the late second century BC, Judith reads like an ancient thriller. A beautiful, devout widow outwits an invading general, gets him drunk, and cuts off his head to save her city.

The historical details are intentionally scrambled; the point is not to give a precise chronicle but a hero‑tale of courageous faith and holy cunning.

Wisdom of Solomon: The Two Ways and the World to Come

“Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love her and is found by those who seek her” (Wisdom 6:12).

Probably written in the first century BC by an Alexandrian Jew, Wisdom of Solomon stands squarely in the wisdom tradition of Proverbs but pushes further into themes like the two ways (life and death, righteousness and wickedness) and the hope of life after death. It reflects on what it means for the righteous to suffer and the wicked to prosper, and it insists that God’s justice extends beyond the grave.

Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus): A Second Proverbs for the Church

“Stand up for what is right, even if it costs you your life. The Lord God will be fighting on your side” (Sirach 4:28).

Written around 180–175 BC by Jesus ben Sirach, a Jewish sage in Jerusalem, and later translated into Greek by his grandson, Sirach is essentially a second Proverbs on steroids. It ranges over friendship and speech, money and marriage, priests and kings, honoring parents, avoiding gossip, guarding your tongue, and the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom.

Unlike most Old Testament authors, Ben Sirach actually names himself and locates his work clearly in the Second Temple world. That alone gives us a rare window into Jewish piety between the prophets and Christ. The book was beloved in Judaism and in the early Church. Western Christians even nicknamed it “Ecclesiasticus,” the “church book,” because it was used so heavily in catechesis.

The New Testament doesn’t quote Sirach directly with a “thus says the Scripture,” but its fingerprints are everywhere—in James’s concern for the tongue, in the Sermon on the Mount’s praise of mercy, in the Epistles’ concern for humility and almsgiving.

Sirach reveals the religious and spiritual tone of the Jewish world of Jesus.

Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah: Exile, Idols, and Hope

“Learn where there is wisdom, where there is strength, where there is understanding, so that you may at the same time discern where there is length of days and life, where there is light for the eyes and peace” (Baruch 3:14).

Attributed to Baruch, Jeremiah’s scribe, but likely written much later, Baruch offers theological reflection on sin, exile, and God’s mercy. The attached Epistle of Jeremiah (often counted as Baruch 6) is a blistering critique of idols and idolatry.

Together they speak to Jews scattered from their homeland and to anyone tempted to trust in the glittering gods of empire instead of the living God. Certainly something we could all stand to be reminded of in the modern era.

The Greek Daniel: Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, and the Songs

In the Septuagint, Daniel includes several narratives not found in the later standard Hebrew text.

• Susanna tells of a righteous woman falsely accused by corrupt elders and vindicated through Daniel’s Spirit‑filled cross‑examination. It is an early meditation on justice, chastity, and God’s defense of the innocent.

• Bel and the Dragon showcases Daniel dismantling idol worship and unmasking fraud in a way that feels almost like an ancient crime story. We love a good detective tale around here.

• The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Youths expand the fiery furnace narrative, giving us the repentant and doxological words of the three young men as they refuse to bow to the image and are preserved in the flames with a fourth figure “like a son of God” (Daniel 3 in LXX). The Church has always seen this as a theophany, a revealing of Christ our God in the Old Testament.

Additions to Esther

The Greek additions to Esther supply exactly what many readers of the Hebrew book feel is missing: explicit prayer, fasting, and references to God’s providence. They turn a story that—on the surface—never names God into one that constantly acknowledges His hidden hand.

Psalm 151

This short psalm, speaking in David’s voice about his anointing and victory over Goliath, long existed only in Greek, Latin, and Syriac. The discovery of a Hebrew form among the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed it as an ancient piece. Orthodox Christians have always prayed it as a kind of doxological coda to the David story; most other traditions simply omit it.

1 Esdras

1 Esdras overlaps with parts of 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah and includes the famous story of the three bodyguards debating what is strongest—wine, the king, women, or truth—with truth winning the day. Likely written between 150 and 100 BC, it was a key source for Josephus. In the Orthodox canon it leads naturally into 2 Esdras (the Protestant Ezra), filling out the picture of temple restoration and return from exile. (The story of that text sounds like a rollercoaster!)

The Maccabees: History, Martyrdom, and Reason over Passion

The four books of Maccabees give us different angles on Jewish suffering, resistance, and faith under pagan rule.

• 1 Maccabees is a fairly straightforward historical account of the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the second century BC. It could easily be a Ridley Scott film with all the intrigue and battles. If you want to know what happened in broad strokes, start here.

• 2 Maccabees covers some of the same ground but with a different emphasis. It zooms in on the martyrdoms of faithful Jews who refuse to apostatize, on prayers for the dead, on the hope of resurrection, on the intercession of the righteous. Where 1 Maccabees gives you the skeleton of events, 2 Maccabees gives you the beating heart—the theological meaning of those events. Together they form a bridge from the Old Testament into the world of the New, where resurrection hope and martyrdom will shape Christian witness.

• 3 Maccabees isn’t about the Maccabean revolt at all. It tells of persecution and deliverance of Jews in Egypt under Ptolemy IV, probably to explain and sanctify a local festival. Think of it as an ancient thanksgiving story for a particular community that still speaks to the wider world about God’s care for His people even in a pagan land.

• 4 Maccabees, usually appended in Greek Bibles rather than fully canonical, is a philosophical sermon on the theme that “pious reason is master of the passions.” It uses the stories of the Maccabean martyrs as case studies in how a mind formed by the Law can govern fear, pain, and desire.

  • If you’ve ever wondered what Stoic philosophy sounds like when baptized into Judaism, 4 Maccabees is your book—and it has had a real influence on Orthodox reflection on asceticism and martyrdom.

Taken together, the Maccabean literature explains not only a crucial chapter of Jewish history but also the spiritual atmosphere into which Christ was born: a world where fidelity to God might cost you everything—and where God’s people believed, stubbornly, that He could raise the dead.

The Prayer of Manasseh

Finally, the Prayer of Manasseh gives us the contrite voice of one of Judah’s worst kings (see 2 Chronicles 33). It’s a short Greek prayer that the Orthodox Church places prominently in the service of Great Compline during Great Lent.

Alongside Psalms 50/51 and 101/102, it teaches us how to say, “I have sinned more than the sands of the sea,” and yet still throw ourselves on the mercy of God. It’s hard to imagine a more practical, usable text for the life of repentance. (We did an episode on it a while back, and think it is worth your time.)

Why These Books Matter

These are not curiosities for footnotes. They shaped the piety of Second Temple Judaism (c. 516 BC - AD 70). They fed the imagination of the apostles. They were read aloud in early churches and recommended by saints like Athanasius for catechumens. They continue to form the prayer life, preaching, and theology of the Orthodox Church.

If you want to follow along with this material in print, a good English companion is the Orthodox Study Bible, whose Old Testament is based on the Septuagint. For exploring other ancient Jewish and Christian texts that sit outside the canon, Fr. Stephen De Young’s book Apocrypha is a very helpful guide.

In “Bad” Books of the Bible, the aim is not merely to defend these books’ place in the canon but to walk with you through them: to show how Tobit teaches us providence, how Judith models courage, how Wisdom and Sirach train us in virtue, how Baruch and the Maccabees speak to exile and resistance, how Daniel’s Greek additions deepen our understanding of God’s presence in the furnace, and how the Prayer of Manasseh teaches every one of us how to say, “I have sinned,” and mean it.

These “bad books” might just end up being some of the best gifts you didn’t know your Bible had.

Prefer to listen on YouTube?

Can’t wait for the next episode? Guess what? An intro to Sirach is here!