Ibbygirl
-
Posts
8,015 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by Ibbygirl
-
-
Oooh this was in an email from my priest. It was so good I wanted to share. :) I hope it edifies you as much as it did me. :)
Make Some Time for Prayer
There are so many times throughout my day that people ask me to pray for people. Whether an email, phone call or in person - it is a daily occurrence. I have always felt that this is such an important part of my ministry. But the truth of the matter is that prayer is something not just for the priest.
Praying for others is a central part of our daily lives as Orthodox Christians. We need to pray daily. You may be so busy throughout your day that you feel that you don't have time to pray.
I remember listening to a sermon of a bishop who said, "I have so much to do today, I must spent at least an hour a day in prayer".
You see, prayer gives us strength; Prayer gives us peace; Prayer gives us patience; Prayer gives us humility; Prayer allows us to put focus in our lives.
Saint John of Kronstadt, a wonderful 20th century saint of our Church writes, "When you prayer, endeavor to pray more for others than for yourself alone. When you pray for others it purifies the heart, strengthens faith and hope in God, and arouses love for God and our neighbor. If you make a habit of praying for the salvation of others, God will give you an abun- dance of spiritual gifts, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But be careful, for there is a great difference between repeating names apathetically and remembering them heartily. Pray for them with the same ardor and zeal as you would pray for yourself."
Make time today to commune with the one who created you! Make time today to pray for others! Make time today to pray for the forgiveness of your sins! Make time today to pray. I guarantee . . . it will be worth every minute!
1 Thessalonians 5:17-18 "Pray without ceasing; give thanks; for this is the will of God." Have a Blessed Day!
In Christ,
Fr. Elia Shalhoub
-
I'm so happy you're back Aubrey and so happy for your conversion. Congratulations honey. :)
-
Happy St. Valentine's day to everyone. :) If y'all remember, my dd has a special place in her heart for St. Valentine so we tried as best as we could to honor him today. I found a Troparion dedicated to him and we *tried* to sing it in his honor and we read about his life along with the readings of the other Saints today.
One thing that happened though as I was trying to figure out how to sing the Troparion (it was in tone 4), I went on youtube to see if I could find the Troparion to him, but there was none, so I looked for other Tropations in tone 4 that we could kind of listen to and get the feel for and sing the one to St. Valentine as best as we could and I found this Troparion. It moved me to tears and blessed me so much I wanted to share it with you all. It's so simple and compact (as far as words go), but in it is the whole of the Truth of our Hope in Christ. I wanted to share it with you all to bless your day as it blessed mine. :)
Peace be to you all. :)
-
Briva, my life had become the cacophony that Fr. Stephen speaks of. Always arguing (within myself) about the "right" way to practice the faith, continuously comparing this belief with that belief, ever-changing based on what I thought God was telling me and what I thought I understood. In all that, deep down, somehow I understood that I had no basis to be writing the story of the church and the faith myself. When it all started coming to the surface four years ago, it was such a relief! Scary, but a relief. It was so nice to let go of all that (should we or shouldn't we celebrate Christmas? Should communion bread have yeast in it or not? Is homeschooling right for everyone? Do we tithe or just give offerings? Should I wear a headcovering to church or not?) -- to fall into the arms of the ancient faith and let it guide me. The discoveries of the Orthodox church, and its rich treasures, are endless, and lead us directly to communion with God.
I'm very glad for you and your husband and wish you many years. The catechumenate is likened to "engagement" to the church -- what a blessed joy that would be for you. In God's time, it will happen.
Cacophony is a good word (had to look it up :p hehe). I am still in the process of extricating myself from it, but already I am feeling so much freer and so much more at peace. The beginning of this journey was all about learning what Orthodoxy claims and then testing those claims to see if they are really true. Once I got past that part, it was all about learning and starting to make the mental shifts that I needed to make as I moved (mentally) from Protestantism into Orthodoxy. Although I'm still in this process now and probably will be for a long time,but now that I have become convinced that this is the true path, I am also beginning to be able to go to church and just sit and experience it and relax into the faith. I feel so incredibly peaceful now and freer than I have felt in a long long time. :) I can see that Orthodoxy truly is about doing what Jesus said, "Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all of your mind and love your neighbor as yourself." :)
-
Gee, why have I stopped reading those conversion stories. This one from Fr. Stephen Freeman so resonates with me http://glory2godfora...f-our-humanity/
Amen!
-
Okay, I have a prayer corner question. Can I use any image of Jesus or Mary that I want as long as it's blessed or does it specifically have to be an icon??
-
Lol, MFL, I talked to Jen on the phone last night! She didn't have time to type, lol. ;)
LOL I know! How many hours did we talk Caitilin?
-
Hugs to all of you who are sick. :( So much illness is going around this year. :(
-
That is superb to hear! You must have danced in the streets over that much savings!
I joked with DH this morning that the timing was exceptional for us. Now we have money to spend this afternoon on the doctor. DS#3 came home from college yesterday afternoon, with a headache and fatigue. By 9:00 P.M. he was running 102.3. By 11:00 P.M. he was throwing up as if he were a burst cement mixer truck. . . . We're off to see the Nurse Practitioner (only staff member with space available) for a 1:00 P.M. appointment. . .
Oh I'm so sorry to hear about your son. :( Sounds like he has the flu or a stomach virus. Poor thing. I'll pray for him and for all of you who are sick right now. HUGS. <3
-
TOTAL CHANGE OF SUBJECT:
I just stopped by the "Byzantine, Texas" blog (one of very few that I read often) and found a link to this fascinating article about an Old Believer family. Hope you all will enjoy it!
http://www.smithsoni...-188843001.html
All I can say is "Wow!" It's amazing how they survived. It's so sad though how quickly the three died though after the geologists discovered them. I wonder how Agafia is doing and if she is still living. What an amazing story.
-
We survived our house blessing! I was very nervous. The kids were *somewhat* well behaved. He stayed for about an hour afterwards talking. He also gave us a beautiful mounted icon (this one).
This afternoon, we meet two of DS's three new therapists.Pray they're a good fit please! We'll be spending 30 hours a week with these people.
That icon is so beautiful! How sweet of him to give you one for your newly blessed house. :) I'm glad it went well. I would be nervous too, mostly because my house is such a wreck. hehe
Does your house feel or seem different now that it's been blessed??
I'll pray for your son and for things to click with the therapists. :) Can I be nosy and ask if this therapy is through private insurance or are you receiving help through a grant??
I'm searching for some kind of grant that will enable me to get help for my son, but I'm not having any luck. :(
-
Ibbygirl/Jen, Try not to worry. (That's what my priest told me from the beginning.) Just go step by step and as slow as you want. There's no hurry. Attending the services will give you the peace to calm your soul. We have a loving God and He doesn't expect us to figure Him out. Seek and ye shall find.
28Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matt. 11)
Thanks so much honey. This is so comforting to me. This is the verse that got me saved. :)
-
These subtle issues have always nagged at me and made me think intellectual honesty is not valued among church leaders, book publishers, etc.
This! I'm so dealing with this right now too and it's seriously freaking me out! It seriously SUCKS to question everything I believe, but the more I go into this journey, the more I feel the need to really examine everything and try to discern what is true. It's so hard, and there is so much at stake in it. I mean, we're talking about the salvation of our souls here, that is no small stake. I've been feeling really discouraged today myself just trying to sort through my feelings, my beliefs and my doubts. Everything I have examined critically in Orthodoxy has a reasonable explanation and I can see that the religion lines up with the Bible so why the heck am I still struggling so much? I was listening to Father Damick's podcasts about the Protestant Reformation and the Radical Reformation. Holy smokes did that resonate with me! It is really helping to see how much of my religion is actually culturally based in being North American. But Cultural tradition does not equal Biblical Truth. Ugh, it's all making my head spin. I never imagined that this journey would be so hard. :( Lord have mercy on me and bring me to Your Truth.
-
-
Linda, you are cracking me up, shoving Ibby out of the way. I can just see the hand-slap fighting going on. Little brats. (not)
ROFL. I'll just add to your excellent post, that this article that I read last night (sorry I can't remember now which one of you excellent ladies linked me to it, you've all been so amazingly helpful) but it really answered every question that I had about Mary being "Ever- Virgin". I managed to clear that hurdle last night because of it. :) HTH. :)
-
Yes, and expect to be sorely tested by this as you grow in the Orthodox faith. It's been really, REALLY hard for me lately.
HUGS Debbi. <3
-
Just one point-- I would never consider any question to be offensive. You are asking because you sincerely want to know.
And, I dont waste too much time thinking about other folks as heretics. Even though I love Orthodoxy I know that there is lots of good elsewhere too. :)
Love to you all & may God bless everyone's journey!!
Of course you don't because you're a dear! :) <3 But the more i learn, the more I realize the position I'm in and I can't help but get a mental picture of a little rebel of a kid coming up to a wise and well respected pillar of the community and telling him, "Prove it to me why I should respect you!" Anyway you look at it it comes off rude. I'm just realizing that without any intentions of being so, my questions could be construed that way since here I am coming from a church that broke off to the original church and saying, "prove to me why I should believe you." It sounds odious to me when I see it in that light. So disrespectful. And yet here I am.
I do thank you all so much for your grace and bearing with me and all my questions. I thank you for your looking beyond the snot nosed bratty kid part and seeing instead the true heart of the matter which is that I only want to KNOW the real truth. <3
-
Good questions you have. Fair questions. I can offer only my own experience. God will continue to provide you with yours in whatever form and timeframe He knows is best for you! May He bless your path!
I have explained to people all along that I became convinced on this issue in an arid, intellectual manner. I read history books. I "read my way" into the faith allowing no preconceptions, no theological "arguments" to influence me. Had the historical record not been what it is, I just as easily could have ended up elsewhere. I examined the history events same as could any adherent of some other religion (or of no religion), seeking to establish no more than "which church" truthfully could claim to be "the original". When I learned about the original five sees of Christianity, and that Rome was simply one of those five, without any authority over the other four (other than that of "honor", which meant only that during a conciliar meeting, somebody had to function as Chairman -- and that does not mean "boss") -- at that point I knew I had found "the original." Then I turned to teachings and beliefs, from which I realized what I wrote before -- that of all Christian groups, here were the best, most persuasive answers to everything possible to wonder about. (I already had read every one of the basic books about every denomination represented in the downtown Houston Public Library.)
P.S. (back again with "edit") . . . As for "only church", same methodology for me. There was "an original", and history clearly shows that all other groups broke away at some point in time. First the non-Chalcedonians, then the Roman Catholics split off from the original five equal centers (from the Catholics, the first Protestant groups broke away, then proceeded to splinter into the myriad Protestant groups now extant).
What some people wrestle with is a deep reluctance to accept that there is One Holy Church from which the other Christian faith groups parted company. It can come across as exclusive and hard-hearted. So the comforting alternatives developed. One such alternative is the "branch theory", which diagrams more than one Christian group simultaneously springing up from the ground roots. Some people go for the "two lung" theory, which claims equal authority for Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Still other people abolish all belief in "the visible Church", insisting that there is no external structure necessary at all, only the amorphous unity of belief. Others, in a variation of that last approach, point only to the saints in Heaven as being "church". This last position baffles me, because it will be those very same people who believe in "soul sleep" (derived from a misunderstanding of the Bible), and reject that the saints can hear our prayers (because they are in some sort of a coma until Christ returns).
I, myself, do not consider that there is any cold-hearted exclusivity on the part of the Church. Entry is available to everybody! We do not, as do many other Christian groups, make any claims whatsoever about who is saved. We know that only God can (and will) make that decision about the ultimate destination of any given individual soul. It is not our job, we have no such authority. Being Orthodox is no guarantee of ultimate salvation. (Hence our rejection of "once saved, always saved".) How does that prayer go? "The Father is my hope; the Son is my refuge; the Holy Spirit is my protection. All-Holy Trinity, glory be to Thee!" (I think I quoted correctly; I'm late to bed!) Point is that the Church is open to everybody on earth, and Christ is there with His loving arms open wide to receive us.
Thanks so much for coming back with the edit. I really loved your post.:) Thank you so much for taking the time. For me, I have to be sure before I go "all in", which is why it's so important to me to be sure that the Orthodox Church is The One untainted, unchanged handed down by Christ to the Apostles and still pure to this day. Once I know that with certainty, I'll be all in. I'm learning already so much about Protestantism and the flaws in the doctrine and that's really giving me assurance that I can let it go entirely and move on, I just need the faith of the next step to jump into the Orthodox belief completely. I'm getting there though. hehe :)
Thank you so much for your time and your care in writing out these posts, I say this to you and all of the ladies who have contributed so much here, it's really truly helpful to work through these questions. :)
You all help me so much to see things more clearly. :) <3
-
You're Welcome! Here's a good book to check out for that: Apostolic Fathers
Also, keep in mind as you look at and consider buying books that a LOT of parishes have lending libraries for inquirers and catechumen. Just ask.
Thank you SO MUCH MIlovany. You are a fount of wisdom and knowledge. I didn't know about the lending libraries. I'll have to look into that. I've already bought so many books on Orthodoxy this month. hehe Thank you so much for the link. I think it will help me a great deal in sorting through this last piece of the puzzle for me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. :) <3
-
You could read some at the OCA website (they have a saint-of-the-day tool). There are books. One of the more modern day ones that I read was Father Arseny. Here's a man in a labor camp in Russia in a world so far removed from my own in so very many ways, and we share the same faith and practices. Oh, and reading the writings of the early church Fathers is a good idea, too. Have you peeked at the Didache yet? This text was likely written while some of the apostles were still alive. It speaks of being baptized, of not receiving the Eucharist (the body and blood of Christ) unless one is baptized into the church (remember, there was only one then), of fasting on Wednesday and Friday (!), etc.
Oh thank you so much for the link! I hadn't read him or any of the church fathers yet. This is the kind of information I'm looking for, but just didn't know about it or where to look for it. :) Thank you so much. :)
-
The best thing for this, in my opinion (and I am open to correction!), is to read the lives of the saints from different periods of church history and you'll see that they held to this unchanging Orthodox faith through time. I can read of a saint from the 300's and it will speak of how they loved the Divine Liturgy, how they venerated their icons, how they worshipped God as a Holy Trinity, how their priests and bishops played roles in their lives and churches, etc. It's all very telling.
Thank you so much for this Milovany! :) Where did you read about them?? Online or in a book??
-
I don't mean to disoblige; however, that was reading from 1973-1976. I'm an old bird.
hehe No worries. Someone on the FB group recommended Deacon Michael Hyatt's podcasts to me on ancient faith and he has a lot of historical stuff on there I see. So I'm downloading a ton of his podcasts now and will work through them. :)
If anyone is interested in checking the podcasts out too, here is the link. :) I sorted by date to start with the oldest ones first. He gets into a lot of history there it looks like. :) HTH
-
Good questions you have. Fair questions. I can offer only my own experience. God will continue to provide you with yours in whatever form and timeframe He knows is best for you! May He bless your path!
I have explained to people all along that I became convinced on this issue in an arid, intellectual manner. I read history books. I "read my way" into the faith allowing no preconceptions, no theological "arguments" to influence me. Had the historical record not been what it is, I just as easily could have ended up elsewhere. I examined the history events same as could any adherent of some other religion (or of no religion), seeking to establish no more than "which church" truthfully could claim to be "the original". When I learned about the original five sees of Christianity, and that Rome was simply one of those five, without any authority over the other four (other than that of "honor", which meant only that during a conciliar meeting, somebody had to function as Chairman -- and that does not mean "boss") -- at that point I knew I had found "the original." Then I turned to teachings and beliefs, from which I realized what I wrote before -- that of all Christian groups, here were the best, most persuasive answers to everything possible to wonder about. (I already had read every one of the basic books about every denomination represented in the downtown Houston Public Library.)
Wow that's a lot of reading! I'm reading my way through as well. I've been reading and listening to podcasts non stop for weeks. May I ask what sources you read for the history?? I'd really be interested. :) Thanks. :)
-
The "brothers" of Jesus is an easy question to answer. St. Joseph the Foster-Father (husband/guardian of the Theotokos) was an elderly widower when he became betrothed to Mary. He had children by his first wife who by law would be Christ's "half-brothers". (In that Jesus was born of a virgin, they are not related to Him by blood at all, of course.) You will read of "St. James, the Brother of the Lord" (feastday October 23), for example.
In that Protestants reject Holy Tradition, they do not believe what the preceding paragraph says. Thus they wind up with make-believe "problems", such as (1) How could there be a "virgin birth", since there were "brothers", (2) The Theotokos cannot possibly be called "ever virgin" because of these referenced siblings, (3) and so forth.
The Theotokos is not, and never has been, worshipped. (as posted already by Alenee) Her role was the only stumbling block for me during my journey. Really. The only one. Otherwise, I would have become Orthodox at age 18, rather than at age 22. I finally dealt with the issue in what might be considered a wholly simple-minded, non-intellectual manner. As I already was persuaded that the Orthodox Church was the original Church, and also was the only Christian group with believable answers to every question that ever could be posed about God, I recognized that the Orthodox faith (theology, practices, etc.) had been worked out by people who were infinitely more faithful, pious, increased in holiness and closer to God than I was or ever would be. Those people knew infinitely more than I did, or than I arrogantly could claim to know . . . so I decided that I safely could trust Church teachings regarding the Theotokos. I did not have to understand, or even agree in order to convert. I could trust God to grant me that last, final piece of belief when the time was right.
Antonia
P.S. (back with an "edit") Rejecting Holy Tradition about St. Joseph and about the Theotokos also resulted, eventually, in those several movies about the life of Christ featuring the impossible, imaginary relationship of a teenaged (or young adult) Joseph falling in love with a young Mary. I saw one of those once; don't remember which one.
Thank you so much for your reply Antonia. <3 I have just finished reading this article, http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith9174 and it made so much more sense.
I wanted to speak specifically to the part of your comment that I bolded. I have the opposite side of that same coin as my major hang up. If I can be persuaded that the Orthodox is the true and only Church, then I will be completely sold on all the rest even if I don't understand it yet (or ever). That's the biggie for me that will make everything else fall into place.
I still have so much to learn and am still working through my issues, but every new step forward I take has been met with more assurance, so I'm cautiously hopeful. ;)
SOCIAL GROUP: Exploring the Orthodox Church
in Exploring Orthodox Christianity
Posted
Yay! This is awesome Allymom. :) I'm so happy for you. :) What parts are you still struggling with if I can be nosy? I wonder if it's something I had to struggle through too. Maybe I can be helpful to you? I hope for your brother too. It's sad to see him leave altogether. I hope he too returns to The Lord. :)