afrishman's blog
Please Pray for the Aramouni Family
Please offer prayers and help for the Aramouni family in their present crisis. Their 16-year-old son Andrew recently suffered severe brain damage in an accident, and the family is in great financial need.
Donations of any size would be greatly appreciated.
Update from Bishop MARK (Nov. 19th, 2008):
Dear to God,
Christ is in our midst! This past Saturday, I was blessed to visit with Andrew Aramouni and his family. Thanks to your prayers Andrew continues to recover from his severe head trauma. In fact he was allowed to come home overnight on Saturday and visited him in his home. As he sat beaming from ear to ear, with a helmet on his head he struggled to find words to express his gratitude to God and our faithful.
Andrew will need another surgery sometime in January to insert a steel plate (approximately 3” x 4”) on the left side. At present he has the ability to express some emotional thoughts, i.e., “thank God,” or “awesome”, but he cannot speak in sentences yet! By the grace of God, your prayers, gifted surgeons and therapists his prognosis looks good.
Contacts
Antiochian House of Studies Contacts
|
Director |
Registrar |
Registrar |
Department personnel may be contacted by
Phone: 201-569-0095
E-mail: theoedu1@aol.com
or via
St. Anthony Church
385 Ivy Ln.
Bergenfield, NJ 07621-4508
Donate
Donation Form
To donate to any of the Hauran Connection programs, please complete a donation form and mail it with your check to:
The Hauran Connection
c/o K. James Kallail
502 Creekside Ct
Derby, KS 67037
Donations of any amount, large or small, are appreciated.
May God bless your generosity!
The Essence of Orthodox Mission
by Fr. Michael Oleksa
What is it that we Orthodox Christians—as the faith community of the first millennium, upholding the beliefs, doctrines, traditions, liturgy, spirituality, piety, and morality of the thousand years of the predenominational Church—have to offer America, and for that matter, the inhabited Earth, in the 21st century? What can we claim is not only our own unique identity, but our contribution to the society in which we live?
The paradigm our Lord provided us for mission is most clearly stated in the parable of the Sower and the Seed. Some seed produces a harvest, but the harvests vary: thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold, depending, it seems, on climatic and soil conditions. If the ground is not prepared, if there are weeds, rocks, or too many birds, there's not much chance for the seeds to germinate. We need to prepare the ground—or look to areas where others have already cleared it.
I would submit that the other Christian traditions in this country have plowed the field. We are not, in America, entering an illiterate or pagan culture, where the Church needs to educate, to introduce the written or published word, nor even philosophy or theology. All these arrived long before Orthodoxy. Most citizens also identify themselves as Christian. None of the original disciples enjoyed such advantages. The soil is ready, receptive, and fertile, and while there are still rocks and weeds, the potential for a great harvest lies before us.
The seed is the same seed the Church has always scattered, nurtured, and brought to maturity: the fullness of the Gospel of Christ as the Church has always believed, preached, proclaimed, and celebrated it. What is different from all previous eras is the sowers themselves.
Circling the Airport
by Dylan Jenkins
Jaroslav Pelikan, renowned Yale professor of history and religion, converted to Orthodoxy in the latter years of his life. Dr. Pelikan described his lifelong journey into the Church as “circling the airport.” This description fits the experience my wife Meg and I had in approaching Orthodoxy as well: initial discovery, questioning, learning, circling, and finally safely landing upon our conversion.
Unwitting Passengers
Our flight from Protestantism to Orthodoxy began in June 1996, when I was introduced to John Oliver. Two years earlier, John had converted to the Orthodox faith after a transformative visit to Russia to help restore the Valaam Monastery (documented in his book, Touching Heaven). When we first met John, he was diligently working out his faith and contemplating joining the priesthood. We clicked, and thus spent several late nights drilling into many subjects, including church doctrine and practice.
The evening before we departed, John and I locked horns in a civil but spirited discussion about the Bible, church history, and the legitimacy of the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. Toward the end of our debate, John punctuated his thoughts (and mine) with, “Dylan, I’m sure that if you continue to seek the truth, you will come to embrace Orthodoxy.”
Initially, my ego was wounded and the emotional high of making a new friendship was sobered. But in our short time together, John’s confident and gentle humility had captured my respect. I soon reconsidered his counsel as an older brother’s wisdom; and in hindsight, this moment marked the beginning of our journey to Orthodoxy.
Turbulence in the “Primitive Church”
Selections from AGAIN
Selected Articles from AGAIN Magazine
Attaining the Kingdom of Heaven
by His Grace, Bishop JOSEPH
Biblical Repentance
by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon
Dachau 1945: The Souls of All Are Aflame
by Douglas Cramer
Light for the World: the Life of St. Gregory Palamas
by Fr. Bassam A. Nassif
What Do the Converts Want?
by Terry Mattingly
Circling the Airport
by Dylan Jenkins
The Essence of Orthodox Mission
by Fr. Michael Oleksa
