This is the sixth article in our On the Incarnation series for the Nativity Fast. It includes a short video at the end.

The slab on which Christ’s body lay.

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The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

These words echoed through my mind, along with the faint chanting that echoed in the tomb’s darkness. I had cast my eyes on a few candles that were growing out of a fat mound of water-suspended wax, and made my way over to the font, mesmerized as I crossed the floor. Reaching them, I gazed with intent and cupped my hands around the flickering light, seemingly suspending that which the darkness had not overcome in midair. Taking a breath, I realized in that moment for the first time where I truly was.

Knowing that the opportunity would not likely come again, I was quick and glad to sign up for a 3-week ecumenical immersion in biblical studies that was taking place in Jerusalem (see video below). On the way over, my new friends from Holy Cross in Brookline were swift to give a Catholic such as myself a crash course in all that I would need to know on Orthodoxy (leading in time to the discovery of Orthodoxy in Dialogue). It was during these conversations that I learned on the way about the possibility of staying overnight in the Holy Sepulchre and simply said, “Okay, we’re doing that,” with no thought to plans or schematics. Somehow, a few of us secured spaces to keep vigil, decided to chance it, and prepared to not sleep in the midst of our endless walks and day trips under a baking Mediterranean sun. Read More

How to Be a Sinner
Peter Bouteneff
Yonkers NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018

I remember when I first saw the cover of this book I thought, “I must have read the title wrong.” So I did a double take and, lo and behold, it was what I had read: “How to Be a Sinner.” Are they serious? What a crazy name for a book, especially for a book published by an Orthodox Christian press. Besides, who needs a book on how to be a sinner? We’re all pretty good at it already. Right?

Over the past several decades the term “sinner” has fallen on hard times. Sin and sins have recently been replaced with more nuanced words like mistakes, inappropriate behavior, addictions, phobias, etc. Those who commit these errors are not sinners but rather victims of prejudice, narrow-mindedness, racism, sexism, chauvinism, to name a few. The very definition of what is a sin is myriad, and no agreement can be reached. Those who even suggest that there is such a thing as sin are in some circles thought to be psychologically warped.

For all the above reasons, Peter Bouteneff’s book is so important. A professor at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, he deals with several different aspects of the topic, from Scripture, the liturgical services, the writings of the Fathers/Mothers, and everyday practical issues. In the introduction he states that the goal of his writing “revolves around reorienting our understanding of how to ‘successfully’ be a sinner” (p. 18). He enumerates those goals:

• To see a genuine “sinner identity” as realistic and healing rather than neurotic
• To understand that identity as holistic, rather than divisive
• To cultivate a self-love that is healthy, rather than narcissistic
• To find self-acceptance that is realistic and constructive, rather than libertine

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Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s Feeding the Homeless on Christmas campaign on GoFundMe will accept donations no later than this Saturday evening, December 22. We’re just a little over $1400 short of our $5000 goal.

Can you help? We’re pleased to accept any amount with deep gratitude.

You can read our original and follow-up post about this project here and here.

You can go straight to our GoFundMe page here.

Please pray for the success of this project, and for the well-being of all those who will benefit from it.

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The Orthodox Church in America (hereinafter the OCA) is one of multiple overlapping Orthodox jurisdictions in North America. Because its dioceses cover the US, Canada, and Mexico, its bishops sit as members in one of three interjurisdictional Assemblies of  Canonical Orthodox Bishops: that of the United States, Canada, or Latin America.

As can be read here, on March 31, 1970 the Soviet-controlled Moscow Patriarchate and the schismatic Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America (popularly known as “the Metropolia”) entered into an Agreement which resulted in the immediate restoration of communion between them and—ten days later—a Tomos of Autocephaly granted by the former to the latter, followed soon thereafter by the name change of the latter to the Orthodox Church in America.

Almost a half-century later, in 2018, the OCA’s autocephaly remains unrecognized by most of the Orthodox Church—although no Patriarchate or autocephalous metropolitanate has ever broken communion with the OCA or Moscow over the issue. 

Yet even the Moscow Patriarchate continues to apply a selectively limited meaning to the term “autocephaly” in the OCA’s case insofar as the Russian Church retains control of two separate jurisdictions on American soil: The Patriarchal Parishes in the USA: Moscow Patriarchate and the better known—and until 2007 schismatic—Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR).   

Metropolitan Tikhon, Primate, and the Holy Synod of the OCA

This article is not “anti-OCA.” Despite the OCA’s long history of unanswered questions vis-à-vis the nature of its relationship with Moscow, of missed opportunities, and of outright failures—including the scandals surrounding the  “retirement” of the three consecutive primates immediately prior to the current one (see here for a partial record of this period)—and despite the injustices that I have endured personally at the hands of the Holy Synod for the past twenty-three years, I remain fundamentally pro-OCA. (I do not, however, attend an OCA parish.) The OCA still represents the only concrete, albeit mishandled attempt to establish an ecclesiastical structure in North America that is both ecclesiologically and canonically correct. For now we can overlook the anomaly of its own three non-territorial ethnic dioceses—Albanian, Bulgarian, and Romanian—given that their bishops too hold full membership in the OCA’s Holy Synod.  Read More