The Monastery of All Celtic Saints, under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate, is the first Orthodox monastery in the Isles of Scotland in over a thousand years. From the monastery website:

The Orthodox Monastery of All Celtic Saints was founded in 2010, when Fr Seraphim took over Kilninian, the Church of St Ninian and St Cuthbert, on the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides. The Church had been deconsecrated and was not in use. Read More

When I first set out to write something for Great Lent about humility and vulnerability, I had something entirely different in mind as an example. It had to do with things I learned while preparing to write a book.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and all the remarks I made about what I’d learned seemed to become rather pointless in the face of this crisis that is thrusting us all into the realm of vulnerability. It makes for a different Lent than we’re used to, because we usually draw together during this time in preparation for the Feast to follow. Even if this forced isolation also offers opportunities for the reflection and prayer that are a part of every Lent, we Orthodox are very much community-minded people when it comes down to it. Read More

In the endless and often unedifying intra-Orthodox debates about the possibility or impossibility of getting sick from what is truly the Body and truly the Blood of Christ; about the suitability or unsuitability of watching livestreams of the local priest and two or three self-proclaimed “lucky ones” receive Holy Communion when we “unlucky ones” cannot (instead of, say, using the opportunity of social distancing to imitate St. Mary of Egypt and the Desert Fathers of old by increasing and intensifying our rule of prayer at home); about how local priests might or might not provide pastoral care and access to the Eucharist without undue risk of contagion to their flocks; about same-sex marriage as the cause of COVID-19 (yes, we’ve heard this now from Ukraine’s pseudo “Patriarch” Filaret); we have seen very little—if any, frankly—attention given to the most fundamental of all ascetical disciplines for us who aren’t hermits: almsgiving and feeding the hungry from our own pockets.  Read More