In this episode, Fr. Anthony interviews Fr. John Whiteford about some of the many joys he has found serving and glorifying God in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Fr. John is the rector of St. Jonah Orthodox Church in the Houston area (saintjonah.org) and he blogs at his parish website and at fatherjohn.blogspot.com. Fr. John has a great love of the Gospel and sharing it with everyone. That joy is contagious. Enjoy the show!

Fr Anthony and Fr. Gabriel Rochelle overcome myriad technical problems to talk about the confluence of poetry, story, and proclamation that take place in the Divine Liturgy (and life). Enjoy the show!

Fr. Harry Linsinbigler talks with Fr. Anthony about the moving, standing, kneeling, and sitting postures of prayer and worship that Orthodoxy prescribes, some of the confusion that surrounds them, and what they do for the believers who participate in them.The article they discuss is found at https://christinourmidst.com. Enjoy the show!

Join Fr. Anthony and Amon Sul co-host Richard Rohlin as Richard shares his origin story (the spider bite was a bilingual household!), some thoughts on kata, and his love of language. This edition serves as a warmup for their upcoming conversation on the need to get the stories of ourselves, our nation, and the cosmos right. Enjoy the show!

Fr. Anthony continues his discussion with Fr. Robert, author of "The First and Finest: Orthodox Christian Stewardship as Sacred Offering" about some of the necessities, joys, and struggles that come with starting and nurturing a mission. This time, they focus on how to pay for (and NOT to pay) the bills. The key is to make everything - to include financial stewardship - resonate with and in the Eucharist. Enjoy the show!

Elissa encourages us to develop a vocabulary to communicate the significance of prayer in terms children can understand and then offer opportunities to put it into practice.

Elissa explains how to be responsible for a child during the Divine Liturgy.

Elissa offers various ideas for communicating the glorious feast of Theophany to children.

Elissa offers some suggestions for teaching children about the purpose of fasting.

Elissa details what she and her parish learned when FOCUS North America's Youth Equipped to Serve (YES) came to visit Austin, Texas.

Elissa discusses the story of Abraham and Isaac and her favorite prayer for children.

Elissa shares the wisdom of the newly canonized St. Porphyrios with regard to raising up children.

Elissa shares with us how to get our kids to the place where their worldview is totally dependent on the Christian story.

Elissa reminds us that good stewardship heals our relationship to money and other possessions.

Elissa encourages us to teach our children some prayers to say to themselves while they're standing in line for Communion.

Sometimes, the God we imagine is not at all who He really is. We need to let our children see faith that is alive and real—which reflects the True God who exists apart from our imaginations.

The Holy Spirit can be a difficult and abstract concept to explain to young people, so in honor of the feast of Pentecost, Elissa explores the story of the tongues of fire, as well as the prayer "O Heavenly King," to find ways to describe this most mysterious person of the Holy Trinity.

Elissa talks with Dan Bein from Orthodox Christian Fellowship about this important ministry for college students.

Elissa updates the Raising Saints audience on some new projects they might find interesting, and establishes a new plan for the future of Raising Saints.

Fr. Michael shares from St. Isaac the Syrian, "How one speaks of spiritual things is perhaps more important than the very spiritual matters themselves."

Fr. Michael shares his concerns with the familiar "Poop in the Brownies" story and offers some positive alternatives to talking about purity with children.

Fr. Michael shares helpful words for the beginning of Great Lent from Chapter 21 of the Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian.

“So there you are on the heights, surveying the earth below and the sky above. Your intellect [nous] now begins to feel its freedom and wants to fly.” I enjoy reading spiritual literature from holy people in the Orthodox Christian tradition. I like it because I often catch glimpses of myself, of my own struggles and my own triumphs. In many ways, books have been like a surrogate spiritual father to me. However, there is also a great danger in reading books for spiritual guidance. Often—actually, just about always in my experience—the writers of spiritual books, especially the classical spiritual books of the Orthodox tradition such as The Ascetic Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John of Sinai, and the the writings found in the Philokalia, these were written to be read by monastic men and women who have already attained to a high degree of spiritual life. They was written, we might say, for those who have already attained the foothills and have now set their eyes on the heights.

This morning my wife and I took one of our occasional half-day vacations. It’s a warmish 19 degree day (68 Fahrenheit) with the sun poking through the clouds. We walked a mile or so up a trail in the hills and then afterward stopped by a country tea and scone place for a bite and a chat and just some quite time together, Bonnie working on her knitting project and I reading a book (what else would I be doing?). Bonnie asked me what I was reading, so I read her a little quote from from Archimandrite Aimilianos. What does it mean to be dispassionate? It means turning exclusively to God, with all your strength, energy, power, and love. There is no turning aside to anything else whatsoever….

Many of us have had mountain-top experiences at one time in our life or another. We have had times when God seemed right there, so close that, at that moment it seemed like nothing to offer God everything, to sacrifice all for the sake of Christ. These mountain-top experiences, at least for me, are very few and far between. It is a kind of miracle when this happens. But like most miracles, it happens not so that we don’t have to suffer, don’t have to slog through the rest of life on the plains. Rather, God gives us these moments as signs, as encouragement to keep us on the way, as a foretaste so that we know what the coming main meal will be. But the wonderful experience of nearness to God soon passes and we find ourselves back in the world, back in the arena of our salvation, back now having to fulfill the promise of giving our life to God. On the mountain top it seemed that it would be so easy, but on the plains, in the mud and snirt (a Canadian term referring to snow mixed with dirt), in the messiness of the lives we actually live, giving our life to God is much more difficult and messy than we ever imagined it would be.

In Homily 43, St. Isaac speaks of three areas of ‘discipline,’ or areas in which we must guide or rule our life. Proper discipline in these areas leads to purity. These three areas are bodily discipline, leading to purification of the body; discipline of the mind, leading to purification of the soul; and spiritual discipline, leading to purification of the mind.

A reader wrote to Fr. Michael Gillis that he had begun to discover himself through Buddhist meditation despite 25 years of Orthodox Christian practice. The reader asked for Fr. Michael's perspective.

Repentance is a matter of saying, that’s not me, that’s not who I am—even while all I can see is my failure and darkness. This is because who I am, who I am becoming, is hidden in Christ. When I turn my attention to my failure and darkness, all seems to become failure and darkness because guilt makes me want to hide from God, driving me back to sin. In turning to Christ (rather than hiding behind the fig leaves of the knowledge of good and evil–the guilt and sin dynamic), the Light cleanses me from all darkness. We only turn to sin when we turn from the Light, and it is only in turning to the Light that we start to experience real victory over sin.

I write a weekly letter for our community and this week I thought I would share this letter with a broader audience. We celebrated the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos this week. Mary the Mother of God was born into a world full of oppression and confusion, yet she was able to become the Holy dwelling place of God. We too, especially at this time of government restrictions and all of the heightened rhetoric of political campaigns—all too radicalized and spun by social media, news outlets, social prophets, and advertising—we too may feel that we are living in an increasingly oppressive and confusing world. While we are not suffering under the occupation of a foreign army, as was Israel during the lifetime of the Mother of God, still many of us are angry and stressed out by the restrictions being imposed on us, whether we agree with them or not.

It is time for a public confession from the chief hypocrite.

Fr. Stephen De Young begins a discussion on 1 Corinthians Chapter 1.

Fr. Stephen De Young continues his talk about 1 Corinthians Chapter 1.

Fr. Stephen De Young dives into a discussion of Chapter 2 of 1 Corinthians.

Fr. Stephen De Young finishes his discussion on 1 Corinthians Chapter 2 and begins looking at Chapter 3.

Fr. Stephen De Young finishes Chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians and starts into Chapter 4.

Fr. Stephen De Young finishes Chapter 4 of 1 Corinthians.

Fr. Stephen De Young begins discussing Chapter 5 of St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians.

Fr. Stephen De Young continues his discussion about Chapter 5 of 1 Corinthians.

Fr. Stephen De Young talks about Chapter 6 of 1 Corinthians.

Fr. Stephen De Young begins a talk on 1 Corinthians Chapter 7.

Fr. Stephen De Young finishes his thoughts on Chapter 7 of 1 Corinthians and begins talking about Chapter 8.

Fr. Stephen De Young welcomes us back after a short break, and begins discussing Chapter 9 of 1 Corinthians.

Fr. Stephen De Young continues and concludes his discussion of 1st Corinthians, Chapter 9.

Fr. Stephen De Young begins his discussion of 1 Corinthians, Chapter 10.

Fr. Stephen De Young concludes his discussion from the week previous about 1 Corinthians, Chapter 10.

Fr. Stephen De Young begins his discussion of 1 Corinthians, Chapter 11.

Fr. Stephen De Young finishes his discussion on St. Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 11.

Fr. Stephen De Young begins a discussion on Chapter 12 of St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, verses 1-22.

Fr. Stephen De Young finishes up his discussion on 1 Corinthians Chapter 12 and moves forward to talk about Chapter 13.

Fr. Stephen De Young begins a discussion on St. Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 14.