Today is the only day that we kneel during liturgy. During that time we will recite the kneeling prayers. Typically we will say the first one. These prayers are part of the Pentecost vespers that are said on Sunday evening.

1st kneeling prayer

Again and again on bended knee let us pray to the Lord

O Lord, most pure, incorruptible, without beginning, invisible, incompressible, unsearchable, unchangeable, unsurpassable, immeasurable, and forebearing: you alone have immortality; you live in unapproachable light; you made heaven and earth and the sea and all things created in them. You grant to all their requests even before they ask. We pray to you, and we beseech you, O Master who loves all people, the Father of our Lord, God, and Savior, Jesus Christ. For our sake and for the sake of our salvation, he came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and Mary, the ever-Virgin and the most glorious Godbearer. At first he taught us with words which were then later confirmed through deeds when he endured the saving passion, giving us, your humble, sinful, and unworthy servants, the example of offering supplications to you, with necks bowed and on bended knees, for our sins and for the people’s acts done in ignorance.
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Many out there know I am Eastern Rite Catholic, which is more akin to Orthodoxy than to Roman Catholicism (well it should be, however it seems the leadership of the Eastern Churches are hell bent on making us theologically RC than EC.)  This is NOT a slam at the Roman Catholic Church.  The East and West are parts of the same body who look at things with different views.  The base theology is the same, but in the Eastern Church it may sound different, or we may look at a different aspect of the same idea.

A very good example of this is what is called the Feast of the Epiphany and in the East we Celebrate the Theophany (the baptism of Christ in the Jordan.)  They are both sides of the same coin.  Christ reveals himself in two ways, the West looks at the revealing of Christ to the Wise men, the East looks at Christ’s manifestation of the Triune God in the baptism of our Lord.

Now we enter Holy Week, or what we call Great Week in the Eastern Churches

Beginning on the evening of Palm Sunday we enter the services of the Bridegroom.  This name is given from the parable of the 10 virgins in Matthew 25:1-13.

The first part of Great week gives us many themes that are based on the Passion of our Lord.  Which are centered on Jesus’ divine sonship, the kingdom of God, the Parousia, and Jesus’ contempt of the corruption of the religious elders of the time.  The first three days constitute a single liturgical unit.

The Orthros of each of these days is called the Service of the Bridegroom (Akolouthia tou Nimfiou). The name comes from the central figure in the well-known parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-13). The title Bridegroom suggests the intimacy of love. It is not without significance that the kingdom of God is compared to a bridal feast and a bridal chamber. The Christ of the Passion is the divine Bridegroom of the Church. The imagery connotes the final union of the Lover and the beloved. The title Bridegroom also suggests the Parousia. In the patristic tradition, the aforementioned parable is related to the Second Coming; and is associated with the need for spiritual vigilance and preparedness, by which we are enabled to keep the divine commandments and receive the blessings of the age to come. The troparion “Behold the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night…”, which is sung at the beginning of the Orthros of Great Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, relates the worshiping community to that essential expectation: watching and waiting for the Lord, who will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Here is the troparion for Monday Night.

Here is a meatless sauce for pasta.

Here is a quick and easy meat free recipe for those fast days

Now if you are on the Strict Orthodox fast, then the oil blows it. You could try to substitute Applesauce for the oil, and use nonstick spray rather than butter or grease.

Contrary to popular belief, true believing Catholic couples do use some forms of birth control.  While believing Catholics are not supposed to use chemical forms of birth control, there are natural forms of birth control that are used by catholics.

NFP – Natural Family Planning is a system of measuring a woman’s body’s temperature  to figure out just when she ovulates.  The couple then abstains from sexual relations during this time.

The barrier method – While the Catholic Church teaches that there are several barrier methods are wrong there are a few barrier methods that are approved.

Here the child acts as a barrier so the parents don’t have time, nor do they have energy to have sex.

Coitus interruptus – There are various forms of this method.

Method 1 – The Toddler that is sleeping down the hall wakes up.  The universe has some sort of perverse sense of humor since it is almost always true that a toddler will wake up and go to their parents room when sex is about to or has just begun.

Method 2 – The door is locked, and you and your spouse are alone, the kids are downstairs watching some sort of movie that they are totally engrossed in.  Chances are, at the moment of contact the following will happen:

Method 3 - Nursing.  This method is used by a subset of Catholic couples.  It is sort of related to Method 1 above, but as it happens, when the circumstances get interesting for the couple.  The nursing toddler or the nursing baby will wake up.

So, there you have it, your introduction to the diverse world of Catholic Birth Control.  Final note, this post is supposed to be a humorous look into parenting and parental relations.  It is NOT intended to be take seriously.

The American nun who has been appointed by the Vatican to conduct an apostolic visitation of American women’s religious orders has written to the leaders of women’s religious communities, asking for their cooperation in the inquiry. Mother Mary Clare Millea’s letter, dated January 12, implicitly acknowledges that many religious orders have failed to respond to earlier requests.

Mother Millea was appointed by the Congregation for Religious to head the apostolic visitation. Last year she sent questionnaires to the leaders of women’s religious orders, asking that they be returned by November 20. Many religious orders, joining in a refusal to cooperate with the Vatican inquiry, did not respond.

File this under “Why am I not Surprised”

St. Anthony

Saint Anthony the Great is known as the Father of monasticism, and the long ascetical sermon in The Life of St Anthony by St Athanasius (Sections 16-34), could be called the first monastic Rule.

He was born in Egypt in the village of Coma, near the desert of the Thebaid, in the year 251. His parents were pious Christians of illustrious lineage. Anthony was a serious child and was respectful and obedient to his parents. He loved to attend church services, and he listened to the Holy Scripture so attentively, that he remembered what he heard all his life.

When St Anthony was about twenty years old, he lost his parents, but he was responsible for the care of his younger sister. Going to church about six months later, the youth reflected on how the faithful,in the Acts of the Apostles (4:35), sold their possessions and gave the proceeds to the Apostles for the needy. Continue Reading »

Sunday of Zacchaeus

The paschal season of the Church is preceded by the season of Great Lent, which is also preceded by its own liturgical preparation. The first sign of the approach of Great Lent comes five Sundays before its beginning. On this Sunday the Gospel reading is about Zacchaeus the tax-collector. It tells how Christ brought salvation to the sinful man, and how his life was changed simply because he “sought to see who Jesus was” (Luke 19:3). The desire and effort to see Jesus begins the entire movement through Lent towards Pascha. It is the first movement of salvation. Continue Reading »

The Veneration of the Honorable Chains of the Holy and All-Praised Apostle Peter: In about the year 42, on the orders of Herod Agrippa, the Apostle Peter was thrown into prison for preaching about Christ the Savior. In prison he was held secure by two iron chains. During the night before his trial, an angel of the Lord removed these chains from the Apostle Peter and led him out from the prison (Acts 12:1-11).

Christians who learned of the miracle took the chains and kept them as precious keepsakes. For three centuries the chains were kept in Jerusalem, and those afflicted with illness and approached them with faith received healing. Patriarch Juvenal (July 2) presented the chains to Eudokia, wife of the emperor Theodosius the Younger, and she in turn transferred them from Jerusalem to Constantinople in either the year 437 or 439.

Eudokia sent one chain to Rome to her daughter Eudoxia (the wife of Valentinian), who built a church on the Esquiline hill dedicated to the Apostle Peter and placed the chain in it. There were other chains in Rome, with which the Apostle Peter was shackled before his martyrdom under the emperor Nero. These were also placed in the church.

On January 16, the chains of St Peter are brought out for public veneration

Kontakion – Tone 2

Christ the Rock radiantly glorifies the Rock of Faith,
the first-enthroned of the disciples;
He calls us to honor the miracles wrought through Peter’s chains,
so that He may grant us forgiveness of our sins.

Troparion – Tone 4

You came to us without leaving Rome
through the precious chains that you wore.
First-enthroned of the apostles,
we bow down to them in faith and pray:
“Through your prayers to God grant us great mercy.”

One of the sad parts about being in Eastern Christian is the fact that we are deeply aware of the separation between East and West. This last Saturday I walked into an Orthodox church, looked around the icons, the candle stands. I realized, that for me, the separation between East and West is something that I deal with on a daily basis.

One of these images is from an Orthodox Church, One is from an Eastern Catholic Church.

To all intensive purposes I was home. the liturgy was  the same the only thing different was it was more ancient I.E.the English was in the more familiar. Replacing the more formal you and your was thees and thys. Yet there was a distinct separation,  For I am not in union with them.

I get the sense that if an Orthodox Christian were to walk into my parish they would feel the same. My parish has done away with a lot of the latinizations  that have creeped in over the years. So that when you walk in it looks and feels like an Orthodox church. But the distinct issue remains the same. We are separated and we know it.

Back to the Eastern Orthodox parish, there I was chanting the prayers knowing them by heart and realizing that my brothers and sisters and I have a wall between us that is invisible. So heavy was the realization of this separation of centuries that it was painful. The sad fact is that both Orthodox and Eastern Catholic know this at some level.

Roman Catholics cannot really understand what is going on here. Many of them don’t even know that the Eastern rite exists. Even the Roman Catholic bishops don’t truly comprehend us or understand us. even within Eastern Catholicism there are many who don’t understand who we are or what we are. It is as if the Eastern rites have a bout of amnesia and they have forgotten who they are. Unfortunately the bishops of the Eastern rite have also fallen into this problem that they do not know who they are or what they are.

For an Eastern Catholic, who is deeply involved in their faith, who studies the issues from both sides, who has friends who are Orthodox, realizes the deep pain and misery that truly encompasses the eastern part of the body of Christ. There is deep pain. It is like a poor man finding out that he has been left a large fortune, but the fortune is being denied to him, through some type of legal maneuver by a crafty legal team.  The only way that the Eastern rites will survive, will be to completely reincorporate themselves into true Orthodox theology, Orthodox thinking, and Orthodox liturgy. Until such time they will remain as stagnant museums which are on the way to closing. The Eastern rites are steeped in ethnicity, and it’s this ethnicity that is going to be their downfall. Half measures do not work, when those who find Orthodoxy in union with Rome scratch the surface they find a thin veneer of orthodoxy. And wanting to steep themselves more deeply they find they cannot get this within the Eastern rites so they have to go to the Orthodox. Even the Vatican has told the Eastern rite Catholics that where we are lacking in our spirituality we must go back to the Orthodox. Even the Vatican realizes that on some level that  due to miscalculated meddling that the Eastern rite Catholics have been robbed of many of their authentic traditions.  In the end, the ultimate goal, should be the total reincorporation of the Eastern Catholic Churches with those Orthodox Churches that they once were part of.  The separation from our roots, and our brothers, is killing us.  It is like taking a plant out of the soil that it was created to live in and transferring it to a different environment. Withering death follows.

I say these words not to hurt but to bring them to light. If we are truly to understand the issue of Eastern Catholicism then we must understand the roots. We must understand why we exist and we must actually come to terms on how and why we came into being. In my own church if we are really honest we must understand that union came about because of a more political issue rather than theological. If we’re to be true to ourselves then we must understand this and acknowledge it.

Again,  nowhere in Christianity, are the wounds of separation so distinct, so raw, and so tender. My prayer is that the Christian West, and the Orthodox East can someday come together and be one again. The healing of this tragic wound is sorely needed. However reunification isn’t going to be easy. There are issues on both sides that need to be deeply looked at. Pope Paul the sixth, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict the 16th, have all talked about a re-image of the papacy, let us hope that this means that the West is serious about looking into the hard issues of reunification between the churches. I also truly hope that the Eastern churches are serious about looking into the hard issues. The fracture of the body of Christ is diabolical. Much prayer, fasting, and listening are needed on both sides.

I guess why I’m writing this is that I have seen the wound and terrible scars and it makes me truly sad.