Music featured on Our Life of Christ

An Interview with Hieromonk Damascene

Frederica Mathewes-Green

An Interview with Father Damian

An interview with Fr. John Finley (www.sacredmeals.com)

The phrase "apostolic succession" has a number of different meanings among the various Christian traditions, but is key to a proper understanding of Orthodox ecclesiology and her claim to be the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church stated in the Nicene Creed. Here we offer a modest explanation of the Orthodox Church's view, focusing on the collegiate role of bishops, in whose office and authority is found the continuation of Christ and His Apostles' sacramental unity, oversight, and teaching through history to the present day.

We continue our discussion of the famous Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian and his plea for God to remove from him the "lust for power" and "idle talk". As is made clear from the sayings of the Fathers cited here, these sins are so well-rooted in our normal, everyday lives that raising our self-awareness regarding how and how often we commit them is a significant Lenten undertaking.

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen! This is the anthem of Pascha, and since it was in fact Holy Week and Pascha last week, we have decided to "go lite" this program hour and air a 20-minute interview segment we did last month with local Phoenix evangelical drive-time radio program host Andrew Tallman in lieu of a full study hour. So enjoy, and next week we'll tackle another topic. A blessed Bright Week to all.

In this program, we revisit Orthodox Holy Week with selected passages from the Holy Tradition - in the hope of trying to convey the richness of the "conversation" between God and the Church. For Christ invites us to go with Him to the Holy Cross, and we find ourselves both willing and unwilling, like the repentant harlot and the betrayer Judas, like the good thief and the blind and unbelieving crowd. Glory to God in Christ! He overcomes the wrath and sins of mankind through love and humility in His Suffering and tramples down Death by Death.

We begin a series on prayer which is the center of the life of the Orthodox Christian. Prayer is our connection to God who is our life. It is to be like our breathing, without ceasing. The Church provides a deep wealth of writings about prayer, but it also provides us with a daily order of services that structures the entire day around prayer. We are able to pray in the same ways the Jews prayed at set hours of the day that we see in the book of Acts. In this program Steve and Bill begin a discussion of the daily order of prayer services and then next week will move into "personal prayer" and a discussion of "The Jesus Prayer", the single most important prayer of our spiritual life.

Central to the prayer life of the Church is the cycle of eight musical tones or structures (The Octoechos, or eight echos) that accompany the hymns and prayers in all the services. In this program, Steve provides a basic, lighthearted but informative overview of the Eight Tones of the Church as expressed in Byzantine, Russian, Bulgarian and other styles, and how the Tones reflect the Orthodox Traditional concern with the beauty of sound and its place in sacramental worship.

Steve and Bill finish the mini-series on the liturgical prayer life of the Church. For all the teaching and talk about fasting on the program, the Church's liturgical calendar really focuses on the 12 Great Feasts and fasting is our preparation for the Feasts of the Church. In the third segment of the program, Steve and Bill tag team wrestle a glossary of liturgical terms and show once again that two lightweights are no match for the 2000 year old Tradition. They deftly handle the Troparion, they almost pin down the Kontakion, but the Canons and Exapostilarion finally throw them. The Church's liturgical terms win by a unanimous decision. A rematch may be scheduled in the future.

In this program we discuss the topic of "personal prayer" in the Orthodox Tradition. Liturgical (corporate) and personal prayer are tightly linked together because the goal of all prayer is, ultimately, union with God. To "pray without ceasing" (I Thess. 5:17) is to live every moment consciously in the presence of God and to "take every thought captive to Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5). The Fathers teach that when we set ourselves to pray seriously, we enter the arena of spiritual warfare with the hosts of Satan whose aim is to keep us from God. As in all things, the Orthodox Christian succeeds in prayer through humility and simplicity - and the Jesus Prayer and the prayer rope are our aids in making our lives, as Paul Evdokimov says, "prayer incarnate."

If the daily, monthly, yearly prayer cycle of the Church and personal practice of the Jesus Prayer speak to the consecration of the person in time - sacred time - then it follows that Orthodox Christians are also concerned with space and its relationship to the Kingdom of God. Orthodox Church architecture and the decoration of space reflect the grand reality and destiny of the universe created and redeemed by God incarnate: Jesus Christ. It is through the Incarnation and the sacramental world view that we come to understand that the physical Church building itself allows us to participate in the Holy Infinite, even as the physical Eucharist is mysteriously the Body and Blood of Christ. Simply put: Church buildings are indeed "houses of God." This program begins to explain why.

Having entered sacred space in the Church building, we now turn to the 'main event' of the Church, the Divine Liturgy. We know that liturgy means 'work of the people', the labor of love we perform as citizens of the Kingdom. Yet, there is much that must be done to prepare for the public worship, and this work is begun long before the typical schedule published in the bulletin. In this program we focus on the "eternal time" of the Divine Liturgy in the sacred space of the Church, and the rationale for the special clothes or vestments of the priest, which, having been donned with special prayers from Holy Scripture, transform him into the Icon of Christ, the Humble Servant.

The Proskomide, or the leavened bread that is offered to God, and the accompanying Proskomide prayers, form the essential first part of the Divine Liturgy, taking place well before the arrival of the parishoners to the scheduled service. In this program we attempt to convey some of the significance of the Proskomide and the preparation required for its use. In the Proskomide, the whole of the Kingdom of God - those on earth and in heaven - is commemorated; the Incarnate Lord, the One Sacrifice, the One Bread, the One Body of Christ.

The priest is vested, the Gifts have been prepared for the celebration of the Eucharist, and now the Divine Liturgy begins. The first half of the Divine Liturgy is called "the Liturgy of the Word" or "the Liturgy of the Catechumens". In the Liturgy of the Word we hear the Church's teaching about the saints, feasts and events being commemorated that day, the Epistle is read and the Gospel is preached. We see it is not always easy to follow along, even with a service book in hand. Steve and Bill offer some insights into the structure and flow of the Liturgy of the Word that will help newcomers participate more fully in the service.

With the reading of the Gospel and the homily that often follows it, the Liturgy of the Catechumens is concluded, and we transition to the Liturgy of the Faithful - The Communion Service. The Eucharist has always been the central focus of the life and worship of the Church from the beginning. Here we try to convey, by way of the Cherubic Hymn and the priestly prayers, the meaning of the Great Entrance - the journey of the gifts from the Prothesis table to the Altar. This is the life-journey of Christ in the world on his way to His Life-Giving Death, and the faithful are eyewitnesses to this - as the lines between heaven and earth are blurred in the mysterious and sacred space of the Kingdom.

We come to the most sacred and debated words of Christian worship in history: the Epiclesis, the calling down of the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine to make them into the Body and Blood of Christ. Is the change "real" or is it symbolic? How does the change happen? When does it happen? Are the words just a "hocus pocus" incantation? Can it happen anywhere a priest just speaks the words? Steve and Bill take up the challenge of going three rounds with this theological giant. In the first round they come out hesitant and tentative, dancing around their opponent. In the second and third rounds they get bolder and grapple with the topic but in the end are no match for the great Mystery. The epiclesis wins by a unanimous decision and Steve and Bill go home and hope to recover from their wounds by next week's show.

The mystical change of the gifts of bread an wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in the Epiclesis is followed by a series of pre-communion prayers and hymns - given to continually focus us on the grace and unity of the Holy Spirit, for it is He who has been invited to come down upon us and abide in us. The closing prayer of the Epiclesis, which declares the unity of all saints made righteous by faith, is followed by the Megalynarion - the Magnification of Mary, for it was she who by virtue of her humility and purity and the power of the Holy Spirit provided the world with Christ's Body and Blood - the Incarnation itself. The litanies then lead us to the Lord's Prayer, the extolling of God's Holiness (not ours), and then a final declaration of of our own humility and allegiance before we partake of the Mystery of Mysteries. The now thoroughly inadequate Steve and Bill move through this part of the Divine Liturgy "as usual" - with their familiar, winsome klutziness.

The prayers are said, the clergy have commmuned and we finally come to the people's communion. The Eastern Rite Orthodox communion has no counterpart in Western Christian practice, so we discuss the mechanics of taking communion, the unusual "liturgical spoon", the different ways communion has been served over the centuries, and the minor variations of praxis among Orthodox Churches. The communion ends with several prayers that declare what the Church has been teaching, confessing and praying all through the liturgy: we have found the true faith, worshipping the undivided Trinity. Is this triumphalistic arrogance or something more?

In this final program of the series on the Divine Liturgy we discuss the dismissal prayers after communion. These are more than just a formality as they express the summation of all that we have experienced for the past hour or more: God is the lover of mankind. But the Christian's experience of the Eucharist does not end with the final doxology or the Liturgy. In many parishes there are "post communion prayers" that are read as the people come for the closing blessing and antidoron from the priest. These express in prayer the Orthodox experience of the Eucharist and its meaning to us as we commune and "go forth in peace."

In response to listener requests, Steve and Bill begin a new series on the Orthodox view of the end times and the book of Revelation. With the popularity of the "Left Behind" books, the recent developments in the Middle East, and the American Protestant theological hodge podge of end time scenarios, what does the Church have to say about all of the speculations about the immanent return of Christ? In this program Steve and Bill discuss the landscape of popular end time scenarios and laugh way too much.

In the second part of a possible 144,000 part series on the End Times and the Revelation of St. John, Steve and Bill give some definitions of some of the views of the Tribulation and Rapture and where the second coming of Christ and judgment fits in the various scenarios. Then they take a romp through Church history and go through a list of prognostications about the second coming throughout the centuries.

In part three on this series on the end times Steve and Bill discuss the Father's ancient wisdom of being silent on things that are difficult to interpret in the Bible then go on to discuss difficult topics about the end times. In this program they discuss the Rapture, dispensationalism and the place of the Church in God's plan of salvation, and Christian Zionism, all hinges on the door of many Protestant end time theories. They summarize how the Creed addresses all of these interpretations.

In the last program of the End Times series, Steve and Bill try to tag team wrestle "the Beast" and the "Antichrist." It was a tough match-up, and the they left some marks on them, but not the trademark "666." And just what does "666" mean anyway? Tune in and see who has been marked as the Beast and the Antichrist through history.

We're baaaack! After an unintended extended hiatus from the program, we were finally able to find an evening to record a special "Christmas edition" of Our Life in Christ. In this program we walk through the icon of the Nativity and look at the wholistic view of the ministry of Christ in His incarnation. The Nativity icon foreshadows the Passion of Christ and we see in the details of the icon commmon elements that show us that our salvation began from eternity. Blessed Nativity to all of our listeners!