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 shares how to use the lives of the Saints to combat children's fears.

Elissa shares some examples of how to teach children about the Orthodox understanding of heaven and hell.

Let’s not just offer little Bible Stories as morality tales. Let’s instead help our children to encounter the Scriptures in their wholeness, finding Christ in the Old and the New.

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 demonstrates how talking about St. John the Forerunner can be a great way to illustrate and understand the roles of the prophets and the saints all at once.

Elissa discusses Orthodox marriage and parenting, focusing particularly on how both involve dying to self.

The goal of Great Lent is not only to deny ourselves and live for Christ, but also to let Christ live in us.

Try not to fall, but if you do, just get back up again.

Great Lent is a preparation for the ultimate Pascha—for the end of time and Christ's return.

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

Elissa discusses how the parish and Sunday school can help support the family throughout Lent.

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.

Some years, Bright Week is filled with joy, but there are other years when we are just worn out. Have we done Pascha wrong? What do we do next?

Is there a way to approach the Old Testament with our children in a fascinating and dimensional way? Elissa encourages us to teach Old Testament stories on three different levels.

Our culture shies away from death, but every year, as we Orthodox participate in Holy Week and Pascha, we recalibrate our relationship with death. We face death squarely, and we enter into grief and find that Christ conquers death.

Elissa talks with Alisa Rakich-Brooks, author of Let There Be Light, the first in a new series of Orthodox children's books, about how our children are experiencing the relationship between religion and science and steps we might take to frame scientific inquiry in an Orthodox light.

In honor of Parenting Month at Ancient Faith, Raising Saints is flipping it around: instead of talking about how adults can feed the faith of children, we're considering the impact this process has on the parents, and the many ways in which raising saints can transform one into a saint.

Elissa takes a look at a question from a friend: How do we handle it when an older child doesn't want to go to church? Can't we just worship from home? Why does it matter and how do you teach that?

Elissa interviews Jenny Stasinopoulos, the Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries at the GOA Metropolis of Denver about a big change she made this year at Camp Emmanuel. Perhaps we should all consider innovative ways to empower our kids to take responsibility for their own faith lives!

Elissa and her Tending the Garden of Our Hearts co-author, Kristina Wenger, discuss the nuts and bolts of their new book of daily Lenten meditations for Families and their ongoing Tending the Garden podcast, including how the meditations can be adjusted for use in church school classrooms.

Fr. Michael examines Jesus's exhortation in Matthew 6:1-3 to "take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men."

Fr. Michael addresses disappointment—what it is and how we should deal with it.

Fr. Michael addresses the passages in the gospels where Jesus instructs his disciples to buy swords, Peter's use of the sword, and our own response. "When you look at the Orthodox tradition, there is quite a mixed bag regarding violence and the use of weapons.... When we use force to oppose those who oppose us, when we end up fighting fire with fire, we destroy the ability of our enemy to hear. We cut off the ear of the very ones Jesus came to save."

Fr. Michael talks about charismatic Protestant Christianity.

Fr. Michael begins a two-part series on discussing the comparison between vocations: marriage, monasticism, and singleness.

Fr. Michael concludes his two-part series on discussing the comparison between vocations: marriage, monasticism, and singleness.

Fr. Michael shares about discernment. "We all have to begin where we are, with the limited ability and grace we have.... If we follow what we know, maybe God will reveal to us some of what we do not know."

Fr. Michael reflects on a recent public-transit pilgrimage.

Fr. Michael shares about lessons learned from a poem by author Beatrix Potter and why he doesn't have a bucket list.

Fr. Michael talks about the Orthodox Church understanding of Paradise and our encounter with Paradise.

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

"One of my big confusions during the first few years of my journey as an Orthodox Christian was caused by an assumption I had that words used by different Orthodox spiritual writers would refer to the same thing. It took me a few years and abundant consternation to finally figure out that, ... sometimes words take on slightly different meanings in one context than they have in another. Figuring this out the hard way cost me several years of headache wondering why apples sometimes looked more like oranges."

Fr. Michael shares from Homily 24 from St. Isaac the Syrian. "“Everything that can be perceived by the senses, whether an action or a word, is a manifestation of something hidden within.”

Fr. Michael shares from St. Isaac the Syrian. "St. Isaac advises us that when we find ourselves confronting either tedium or despondency, we need to call to mind why we are doing what we are doing. Why do I pray? Why do I read my bible? Why do I do any spiritual discipline that I do? I do it because I desire the hidden, spiritual realities. I desire to know God. St. Isaac tells us that we must allow this desire to generate expectation in us: expectation that God will come to my aid, expectation that soon something hidden will indeed be revealed to me; expectation that this simple act of being diligent and hanging in there will indeed bear fruit."

"In Homily 27, St. Isaac the Syrian speaks of two kinds of confidence. The first kind of confidence is what we generally mean when we say someone is confident. That is, the person is sure about what he or she is doing or saying. St. Isaac tells us that this kind of confidence is spiritually dangerous. It is dangerous because we live in an age of changeability, or 'ununiformity' as it is translated in the Holy Transfiguration edition of St. Isaac’s text. This ununiformity refers to the mutability or inconstancy we experience in this world. Things and people don't stay the same."

Probably the most controversial teaching of St. Isaac the Syrian is his teaching on Gehenna, or hell. Homily 27 begins with the following statement and explanation of St. Isaac’s thoughts on sin, Gehenna, and death: "Sin, Gehenna, and death do not exist at all with God, for they are effects [or acts], not substances."

“This is the fiercest struggle, the struggle that resists a man unto blood, wherein free will is tested as to the singleness of his love for the virtues….It is here that we manifest our patience, my beloved brethren, our struggle and our zeal. For this is the time of unseen martyrdom…” What is this struggle that St. Isaac speaks of and how can it be overcome?

It is difficult for some of us who were raised on a theology of substitutionary atonement, those of us Protestant converts to holy Orthodoxy, it is difficult for us to accept that our final judgement will involve anything more than the forgiveness of sins. But the Church teaches us otherwise. Parables such as the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the Separation of the Sheep and the Goats play a huge role in the hymnology of the Orthodox Church and in its understanding of what our judgement before God will look like. That is, judgement before God is not merely about forgiveness of sin. But rather, the judgement of the Age to Come is also about comfort and torment; or as Christ puts it in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Father Abraham speaking to the Rich Man who is in torment), “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.”

Many people hit a roadblock in their relationship with God when the weight of their sins catches up to them, when they realize they are trapped in a cycle of sin or habit of ungodly behaviour that they cannot control.

In one of his talks, St. Theophan speaks of the glories of life in a monastery and then he makes a the following statement: “Of course, many inconsistencies occur here, too…” Ah, there’s the rub. There’s the bit that throws us off, “many inconsistencies occur here, too.” And the saint says, “of course,” as though we should have never expected things to be consistent. But we do. We do expect things to be consistent and we are offended when they are not.

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….

As an Evangelical, I had been taught that everything that is really important (spiritually speaking) has to do introducing people to Jesus Christ. Presenting Christ was almost everything. I believed that once one was reconciled with God through Christ–which I understood to be a legal transaction–everything that was really important in one’s relationship with God had been taken care of. This assumption, or something very like it, pervades Evangelical writing.

The Orthodox Divine Liturgy presents an introductory phrase in the form of prayer—as is typical in Orthodox Christianity, there is the prayer before the prayer. It goes like this: "And grant, O Lord, that with boldness and without condemnation we may dare to call upon you the Heavenly God as Father and to say." Why is it a daring thing to say the Lord’s Prayer? Why is it daring to call God "Our Father in heaven"?

Fr. Michael shares his reflections on St. Isaac the Syrian's response to the question, "If, after a man has greatly toiled, laboured, and struggled, the thought of pride shamelessly assails him—taking occasion from the beauty of his virtues—and reckons up the magnitude of his toil, by what means should he restrain his thoughts and achieve such security in his soul as not to be persuaded by it?"

I was speaking to an eighteen year old recently who told me about her bucket list: things she wanted to do before she dies. At the time, I didn’t think much about it. In fact, it seemed rather mature of her to have such specific goals. However, as I have thought about it, I’ve begun to suspect that having a bucket list is a symptom of a particular disease in our culture. What we do does not define who we are, it manifests who we are.

Patience, according to St. Isaac the Syrian, can cut in half the adversity and affliction one experiences in trials, regardless of the source.

As we prepare with God’s help to enter the arena of the Great Fast, let’s not mistake the means for the end. Let’s use the tools the Church gives us wisely. Let’s push ourselves. Let’s deny ourselves that we may know ourselves. Let’s pray with the Publican, the Harlot and the Thief. And let’s together long for the Glorious Resurrection of our Lord and God, Jesus Christ.