Easter - Orthodox Christian Laity

Browsing: Easter

New Holy Week-Easter Hymnal

By Webmaster on February 26, 2024 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: The National Herald By Eleni Sakellis The Triodion began this year on February 25, and before you know it, Lent and then Holy Week will be upon us. Patmos Press announced that its new book, the long-awaited Holy Week-Easter Hymnal has been published to serve as the companion to the ever-popular Greek-English Holy Week-Easter book by Fr. George L. Papadeas just in time to order ahead of this year’s Holy Week services. According to Patmos Press, the most widespread Holy Week Easter book for the Greek Orthodox faithful around the world was first published 60 years ago by Fr.…

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and Metropolitan Onufriy, Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, visit Amman in 2019. Credit: RISU.

Orthodoxy, and Easter, in Ukraine

By Webmaster on April 19, 2022 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: The Pillar JD Flynn First, it is not yet Easter for most Christians living in Ukraine, where the Battle of Donbas is raging in the east, and in the west, the city of Lviv saw its first missile-strike casualties on Monday. Ukraine has defended Kyiv and the fighting has shifted, but the war is far from over. Amid the humanitarian and social crisis that will envelop Ukraine from years to come, there has also occasioned a serious ecclesiastical crisis for the 70% of Ukrainians who are Orthodox Christians. Orthodoxy in Ukraine has two hierarchies, and two sets of dioceses and…

Why is Pascha So Late This Year?!: SOME COMMON MISPERCEPTIONS ABOUT THE DATE OF PASCHA/EASTER

By Webmaster on April 9, 2021 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: Public Orthodoxy by John Fotopoulos This essay was originally published in 2017. It has been updated for 2021. [Common Misperceptions] A common misperception among Orthodox Christians is that Orthodox Easter (i.e. Pascha) often occurs so much later than Western Christian Easter because the Orthodox Church abides by the rules for calculating the date of Pascha issued by the 1st Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in AD 325. Another element of this misperception is the belief that the Orthodox Church must wait for Passover to be celebrated by the Jewish community before Pascha may occur. Despite these views being held by so…

Saint Francis in Ecstasy by Giovanni Bellini

Preparing for Pentecost…Keep Death Daily Before You

By Webmaster on May 6, 2020 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: Crisis Magazine FR. BENEDICT KIELY We are now in what is called the “Great Fifty Days” of the Easter Season. As we know, every Sunday is really the celebration of Easter, what the Church calls the “Paschal Sacrifice,” the saving death and resurrection of Christ. During these great fifty days, we are meant to recall and be refocused on the central event of our faith in an even more profound way. This event, which is at the heart of history, and the heart of the universe, is meant to shape every aspect of our lives—our family life, work, and politics—and,…

A man walks through the empty Monastiraki square, in central Athens on April 9, 2020, as the country remains under lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19 disease caused by the novel coronavirus. (Photo by Angelos Tzortzinis / AFP) (Photo by ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Greece Has an Elderly Population and a Fragile Economy. How Has It Escaped the Worst of the Coronavirus So Far?

By Webmaster on April 22, 2020 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: TIME BY BILLY PERRIGO AND JOSEPH HINCKS This weekend’s Orthodox Easter celebrations in Greece were a low key affair for Michalis Stratakis and his wife Nancy. They still ate lamb, but the meat was oven-cooked instead of carved off a whole animal that had been spit-roasted for hours over charcoals. They painted eggs red according to Greek tradition and played games with family members in Athens, but over cell phone screens from their home on the Greek island of Crete on Sunday, rather than at the usual raucous feast of about 20 friends and relatives. “It was heartbreaking, to tell you the truth, because we didn’t…

Transcendent Moments of Faith and Music, from all Orthodox Traditions

By Webmaster on April 22, 2020 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church Bulletin, Kankakee, IN Christ is Risen! Alithos Anesti! What a wonderful – against all apparent odds – Holy Week and Easter we had, connected in new and unusual ways – by icons in the pews, by Facebook live and Zoom, by our souls and by Christ’s love and sacrifice. I hope you were able to feel the transcendence of it all. Spiritual music helps, and our Church is loaded with it, and blessed with multiple traditions of sublime combinations of sacred text with melody, harmony, tone, and mood, to create moments that transcend everyday life…

Bishop Maxim of Los Angeles and Western America

The Pearl of this Spring is a Fruit of the Entire Humanity’s Pain – Bp. Maxim’s Easter message 2020 (Video)

By Webmaster on April 18, 2020 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America Тhe pearl of this year’s spring – and of the Great Lent for us Christians, culminating in Holy Week – is the offspring of the pain that the entire humanity and the Church body altogether lives through amidst the sea of tribulations caused by the Coronavirus. Everything that is done out of pure love is preserved and saved, for eternity. Those who were crucified with Christ will abound with glory; those who died with Him, will be filled with life. As somebody said, we’ve seen no evidence of COVID-19 discriminating on the basis…

The government is begging Georgians not to make themselves martyrs this year. (Giorgi Lomsadze)

Georgia’s Nightmare Before Easter

By Webmaster on April 16, 2020 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: Eurasianet Georgia has received plaudits for its response to COVID-19. But as the biggest event in the Christian calendar approaches, the nation finds itself torn between church and state, faith and science. Giorgi Lomsadze Georgians are counting down to what may be the most troubled Easter in the 1,700 years since the country adopted Christianity. As cases of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 continue to climb, churches are preparing for an influx on Easter Sunday, which falls on April 19 in the Eastern Orthodox world this year. Despite a state of emergency that is supposed to keep everyone at home,…

BEING THERE WITH CHRIST

By Webmaster on April 12, 2020 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church Bulletin, Kankakee, IN Dear Parishioners of Annunciation Kankakee and Friends Everywhere: Let us be there with Christ, Tonight, Tomorrow, This Week, and Always! This is the day that the Lord has made! Let us rejoice in it and be glad! Tonight is the eve of Holy Week for hundreds of millions of Orthodox and other Eastern Christians, and the eve of Easter for even more numerous Western Christians. As ever, all Christians are united in the unity of our essential belief, and the small things that identify us as different, best serve to give us new…

Pope Francis and the Coronavirus Pandemic During the Easter Holy Week

By Webmaster on April 10, 2020 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: The New Yorker By Paul Elie In the time of the coronavirus, the symbolic motifs of religion have turned literal. Lent, the forty-day season of preparation for Easter, is usually a time of symbolic deprivation: giving up meat on Fridays, giving up chocolate, giving up unkindness, giving up carbon. This year—Lent began on February 26th—the coronavirus has demanded quite literal deprivation: no going out, no eating out, no shopping, no seeing friends. For too many people, it has brought the pain of job loss, illness, and death. Ambulance sirens ring out constantly in the otherwise empty streets of New York…

Standing before rows of empty pews at the closed Taxiarchae Archangels Greek Orthodox Church in Watertown, Reverend Father Athanasios Nenes delivers his sermon during a virtual service on April 5, 2020. [Courtesy photo]

Watertown Greek Orthodox church feels financial impact of coronavirus

By Webmaster on April 7, 2020 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: Citizen-Herald By Joanna Tzouvelis WATERTOWN, MA – Eastern Orthodox Easter will be celebrated on April 19 this year. There are many services leading up to the religious holiday throughout the world which usually draw thousands of people together and raises thousands of dollars for churches. This year, however, for the first time in history, every Greek Orthodox Church in Massachusetts is closed and anyone wishing to participate in one of the services will need to watch it virtually via Facebook or YouTube. The Taxiarchae Archangels Greek Orthodox Church in Watertown estimates it will lose approximately $250,000 over the next three months.…

Members of Debre Selam Kidist Mariam Church attend a Christmas Eve service in Washington. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)

Churchgoers, cut the ‘Chreasters’ some slack

By Webmaster on December 23, 2018 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: The Washington Post By E.J. Dionne Jr. Christmas remains wondrous, but it arrives at a difficult moment for Christianity in the United States. We still see Christmas trees strapped to the tops of cars, neighbors lighting up their homes, and children getting as excited as ever. And the churches will be unusually full. This last point is revealing: A relative decline of religious observance has brought forth the “Chreasters,” Christians who attend services only on Christmas and Easter. Regular worshipers can be disdainful of the Chreasters. They make it hard for the loyalists to find seats in the pews and…

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Browsing: Easter