Matthew Heimbach wields an Orthodox cross as a weapon in 2014.

Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s readers who have followed us from the beginning will recall our response to the deadly right wing violence in Charlottesville VA in August 2017: Open Letter to Our Beloved Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America, Response to Racist Violence in Charlottesville, VA, and Editorial: Our Response to the Assembly of Bishops. Orthodox Christian Matthew Heimbach participated in the terrible events of that day.

One of our readers has brought the following to our attention:

A Bad Day for Right-Wing Wackos

Folks like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Aryan Nation, etc. seem to be such unhappy and angry people that we are not sure they actually have good days. But they definitely have bad days, and a whole bunch of alt-righters definitely had one of those yesterday. Read More

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Grant rest eternal in blessed repose, O Lord,

to the souls of Thy servants who have fallen asleep,

and may their memory be eternal.

Memory eternal. Αἰωνία ἡ μνήμη. Вѣчная память. Veșnica pomenire.

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$2500

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Grayson Alexander
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As we journey to Bethlehem this Nativity Fast, please consider including the hungry and the homeless in your budget for Christmas gifts, decorations, new clothes, parties, and elegant meals.

On Christmas Eve, we will walk the streets of downtown Toronto delivering cash into the hands of our shivering brothers and sisters who wonder if they can afford a cup of coffee to celebrate the birth of Christ.

Since Christmas 2017, Orthodoxy in Dialogue has given tens of thousands of dollars on the streets of Toronto on Christmas, Pascha, and other times of the year—all provided by you, our faithful readers and lovers of Christ. Some years, we collect enough to give everyone $40. One year, we were able to give each person $100. We wish you could be with us to see their faces awash with tears of joy and gratitude, and to experience with us the rush of divine grace from on high as we encounter our newborn God and Saviour over and over again on our frozen sidewalks, who Himself had no home in which to enter the world and be born. Let’s strive together to make this our best year ever.

Send you contribution, whether large or small, to editors@orthodoxyindialogue.com via PayPal. In your message, include your name, place of residence, and—if you wish—the name(s) of the person(s) in whose memory you make your offering. Check back often to see our total collections rise over the next six weeks. Donors’ names and our running total will be updated daily at the top of this post. Please also share this post widely on social media.

Send your offering as a gift, not as payment for a purchase.

Please pray with us that our merciful Lord, who comes to be born of the Virgin, grant success to our project.

We wish you a holy and spiritually fruitful Nativity Fast.

Most who know me know that I am averse to haunted houses and anything with jump scares. It might come as a surprise that I got into the Netflix series Midnight Mass, a limited, seven-episode series by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Haunting of Hill House) that is billed as both drama and supernatural horror. The script, in my opinion, is excellent, although I can certainly understand if it is not everyone’s cup of tea. For the record, though, I believe that the bulk of its horror is psychological, and when blood is shed, it is typically in very low lighting, making the gore minimal. It reminded me by turns of The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the magic realism of Gabriel García Marquez, the play/film Doubt, a smidge of Perelandra by C.S. Lewis, and a Hitchcockian thriller. But above all, I found the series to be a deeply philosophical, elegant meditation on the nature of faith, certainty, and how we meet our earthly end. Some excellent reviews (which contain spoilers) have already been written of the show, but I am going to do my very best to keep this spoiler-free.

Generally, the series concerns an isolated island community off the coast of New England. The island is predominantly Catholic with the exception of its sheriff, who is Muslim. That alone sets up some tension and human interest in the inner workings of this society. The central plot concerns a new priest who comes to take over the island’s only church after its former priest takes a trip to the Holy Land and mysteriously does not return. Read More