Month: December 2010

…I’ll be speaking at the Ave Maria University Founders Club.

Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2010

The Birth of Christ and The Rebirth of Culture

The season of Advent is a time to prepare our hearts to receive the gift we share in the birth of Christ. Fr. Johannes (Hans) Jacobse, a priest of the Orthodox Church, will explore the miracle of Christmas and its impact on culture, past and present. Fr. Hans will offer background and reflection on the Akathist Hymn in praise of the Mother of God, a liturgical and literary masterpiece of the Church that has been in continual use since the seventh century. Through this hymn Christians praise the transformation of culture by Christ’s birth, which overturned the illusions of paganism and proved the secular logicians illogical.

Fr. Hans is founder of the American Orthodox Institute, editor of Orthodoxy Today, and a past fellow of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. He served as pastor of St. Katherine Orthodox Church in Naples and now conducts St. Peter Orthodox Mission in Estero.

Click here to print a dinner flyer for your Church bulletin, prayer group, bookstore, bulletin boards, and to give out to family and friends.

In a new series beginning today, Fr. Andrew presents a study of major themes of the Orthodox Christian faith as found in the letters of the 2nd century martyr and 3rd bishop of Antioch, Ignatius the God-bearer.

Podcast courtesy of Ancient Faith Radio

Listen here:

His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

Within the last 15 days, several Greek Orthodox bishops have crossed oceans and continents to travel to a police station in Istanbul where they picked up an unexpected gift: Turkish passports.

Since September, the Turkish government has granted passports and Turkish citizenship to at least 17 senior foreign clerics from the Greek Orthodox Church.

“This is a real surprise,” said Father Dositheos Anagnostopulos, a spokesman for the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, in an interview with CNN on Friday.

The Turkish passports may mark a turning point for the patriarchate, an ancient and beleaguered Christian institution based in Istanbul that some observers feared was on the verge of dying out.
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My first thought was no political correctness there. My second thought I’d want something like this if I were at the top of a rocket shooting into space.

Moscow, December 1, Interfax – The crew of Soyuz TMA-20 piloted spaceship that starts from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on December 5, will take Gospels to the International Space Station, the crew commander Dmitry Kondratyev said.

“The crew attended a prayer service dedicated to our flight. Father Job conducted it. We received church gifts from Father Job and Gospels for ISS. We hope to take it with us and leave at the station,” Kondratyev said in his interview posted on the Roskosmos website.

The prayer service was conducted in the Transfiguration Church in Zvezdny Gorodok. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia consecrated the newly built church last weekend. Hegumen Job (Talats) is appointed its rector.

The cosmonaut said that the Soyuz crew is ready for the flight to Baikonur planned for December 3.

Before the flight, Kondratyev and his colleagues Catherine Coleman (USA) and Paolo Nespoli (Italy) will meet with Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov. Traditional tea party of the crew and leaders of the Russian space department will take place on December 1.