Fr. John tells the story of when St. Macarius journeyed from the desert to the city to meet two laywomen who were superior to him in their spirituality.

Fr. John looks at some of the actual texts of early Christian hymns and the way in which they gave expression to the vision of early Christendom.

Fr. John looks at the development that took place within the Frankish lands themselves, especially those concerning the liturgy.

Fr. John examines the tendency toward eucharistic piety in Frankish Christendom.

Fr. John discusses the baptism of Saint Vladimir and shares an introductory anecdote about the death and canonization of Saints Boris and Gleb.

In this opening anecdote of a new reflection in the podcast, Fr. John examines a famous account of a medieval English knight's pilgrimage to Ireland and vision of purgatory there, relating how it documents the rise of a new type of piety in western Christendom.

In this episode of his reflection on the new Christendom of the middle ages, Fr. John discusses the new ecclesiology of Roman Catholicism, contrasting it to Orthodoxy and concluding with a reference to its most notorious statement, the papal bull Unum Sanctum of Boniface VIII.

In this episode, Fr. John describes the revolutionary changes that came to characterize western monasticism after the Great Schism, leading to the rise of the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Templars.

Fr. John discusses the Christian statecraft of early Christian Russia.

In the latest episode of his reflection on the new Christendom of the medieval west, Fr. John discusses the new approach to theology fostered by scholasticism, contrasting it with traditional Christian theology.

In his conclusion to this reflection, Fr. John discusses the Roman Catholic theological principle of "doctrinal development," and traces the origins of four new doctrines that arose in the west after the Great Schism.

After a transition to his new parish assignment, Father John returns to the podcast with a discussion of the atmosphere of catastrophe that hung over the old Christendom of the east as the Muslim Turks advanced on Byzantium, while a defender of traditional Christianity, Saint Mark of Ephesus, prepared to depart for the unionist Council of Florence in the west.

Fr. John introduces the force that kept traditional Christianity on course at a moment of crisis in the east, Hesychasm, and how it maintained Christendom's focus on paradise.

In this episode, Fr. John describes why Saint Gregory's defense of hesychasm against the westernized Barlaam represented a defense not only of Orthodoxy, but of Christendom itself.

In this episode, Fr. John draws upon several scholarly works to show how hesychasm protected eastern Christendom from the forces that had begun to lead the new Christendom of the west away from traditional Christianity.

Fr. John discusses the rise of the Franks in Western Christianity.

Fr. John gives an account of the atmosphere in Italy in which Orthodox and Roman Catholic delegates met to discuss the possibility of union in the middle of the fifteenth century. Only one of the Orthodox would refuse to sign the resulting Treaty of Union, Saint Mark of Ephesus.

In this final episode of Reflection 17, Fr. John relates the final catastrophe to befall eastern Christendom during the period, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses an important and fateful development in the history of Russian Christendom before modern times, the Possessor Controversy.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses Muscovite Russia's encounter with the West in the face of Uniatism, military invasion, and theological "captivity," all of which contributed to the decline of eastern Christendom.

In this final episode of his reflection on Muscovite Russia, Fr. John describes the Old Believer Schism as a crisis in the formerly optimistic cosmology of eastern Christendom, leading to its decline on the eve of modern times.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses ways in which papal supremacy led to the growing sense of crisis that preceded the Protestant Reformation.

In this latest episode on the impending Protestant Reformation, Fr. John discusses ways in which the long legacy of pessimism about the human condition and the world in general undermined western Christendom at one of her most critical moments.

In this episode, Father John continues his discussion of developments that led to the Protestant Reformation, emphasizing doctrines and practices related to human salvation.

In this episode Father John concludes his reflection on the critical state of western Christendom on the eve of modern times, exploring how the Reformation tried to resolve the issue of anthropological pessimism but ironically served to intensify it.

In this anecdotal introduction to the final reflection of Part 2 of the podcast, Father John relates the extraordinary story of a Reformation-era town that declared itself the kingdom of Christ on earth, a "New Jerusalem." Expressing a profound absence of God in the world, however, the story of Reformation Muenster was in fact a sign of the fall of a Christendom centered upon the experience of paradise.

In this episode Father John explores the way in which the loss of sacramental experience among Calvinists led to the rise of a political ideology that would unintentionally lay the foundation for utopia.

Fr. John concludes his account of the influence of the Franks by returning to the question of the filioque and how the papacy's resistance to its insertion in the Creed finally came to an end on the eve of the Great Schism.

In this episode Father John describes some of the most noteworthy effects of the Protestant Reformation on Western Christendom, emphasizing the decline of a sacramental basis for civilization and the rise of a primarily moral one.

Returning after a long absence from the podcast, Fr. John in this episode introduces a new reflection on the crisis of western Christendom prior to the Reformation by discussing the penitential context of Martin Luther's famous Ninety-Five Theses.

Fr. John discusses the spiritual transformation of time by Christianity.

In this special video episode (the first of two parts), Father John discusses the background to the revolution in art during the Italian Renaissance. Though it produced some of the most stunning and innovative works ever, secular humanism represented a radical departure from the heavenly orientation of traditional Christian art.

This is part 2 to last week's special video episode, on the revolution of art during the Italian Renaissance.

In this reflection, Father John Strickland turns from secular humanism to reformational Christianity to see how Christendom's paradisiacal culture was subverted by both the Protestant "Counter-Reformation" and the Roman Catholic "Neo-Reformation." Ironically, Protestant fathers like Luther and Calvin did much to perpetuate the anthropological pessimism and cosmological contempt of their rivals like the earlier Pope Innocent III, opening the door even wider to the wholesale secularization of the West.

In this anecdotal introduction to Reflection 21, Father John relates a remarkable but short-lived revolution in fourteenth-century Rome that served as a sign of what the age of utopia would bring. Listeners who enjoy the music of Richard Wagner will recognize the ill-fated revolutionary's name and understand why the turbulent nineteenth-century composer was attracted to him! And speaking of music, if you are wondering about the new closing sequence, it is a chorus from Mozart's utopian opera The Magic Flute and consists of the following (in translation): "When virtue and justice strew with fame the path of the great, then earth is a realm of heaven, and mortals are like the gods."

In this episode the "father of humanism," Francesco Petrarch, broods over his sense of guilt and despair, seeking a new path for Western Christendom known as the saeculum, or "secular."

Modern historians often bring attention to the effects of secularization on the West. Once traditional Christianity ceased to influence Western culture, the experience of the kingdom of heaven naturally diminished, something the famous German sociologist Max Weber called the "disenchantment of the world." In this episode, Fr. John describes how the concept of the saeculum, a kind of neutral cultural space cut off from the life of the Church, first appeared, and how, with Petrarch, it became a haven for humanists fleeing the pessimism of the fourteenth century.

In this episode, Father John relates a case in which the early humanist Petrarch confronted one of the new Christendom's chief architects, Pope Innocent III. Applying his newly developed secular thinking, he rejected the pope's notorious treatise entitled On the Misery of the Human Condition.

In this episode, Fr. John Strickland recounts the efforts of three Italian humanists of the quattrocento ("fourteen hundreds") to rescue the dignity of man from the pessimism of Western culture. Departing from traditional Christianity's dignification of man through communion with God, they looked instead to Neoplatonism and there found a model of the fully autonomous human being, Prometheus.

In this reflection on an emerging post-Christian Christendom, Fr. John Strickland discusses two ways in which eighteenth-century philosophes—from Voltaire to Thomas Jefferson—worked to subvert the paradisiacal culture of the old Christendom. He explores their use of photic imagery such as "enlightenment" and their introduction of the tripartite utopian model of history consisting of ancient, medieval, and modern periods. He concludes with a brief description of Edward Gibbon's famous and influential work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Most Americans know Tchaikovsky as the composer of the delightful dances contained within the Nutcracker Ballet. As Fr. John Strickland shows, however, there is much more to be heard in their melodies, and little that was delightful about the emotionally agonized life behind them. Using selections from a variety of works, he explores how the romantic agony came for Tchaikovsky in his boyhood and thereafter never departed. Special attention is given to an analysis of the famous Sixth Symphony, nicknamed Pathetique. First performed just days before the composer's abrupt death, the work brings the generation of the romantics to a heart-rending and emblematic conclusion.

In this special edition of Paradise and Utopia, Fr. John Strickland responds to a recent review of the first two volumes of his book series. In it, he notes the failure to consider the books on their own terms. He uses the opportunity to elaborate what he considers a healthy vision of Christian historiography, one that supports what many consider the need for a "re-enchantment" of modern culture.

In this second half of his response to a recent review of his books, Fr. John Strickland discusses his use of scholarly sources (The Age of Division required more than three hundred and fifty of them). He also reflects on how criticisms of his sources and his arguments may have been provoked by the unconventional way in which he tells the story of Christendom.

In this long-delayed episode (due to work on The Age of Nihilism, available at store.ancientfaith.com/the-age-of-nihilism-christendom-from-the-great-war-to-the-culture-wars), Father John presents the historical origins of liberalism as a modern secular ideology. Atheistic philosophers like Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill provided the philosophical basis for hope in a secular "kingdom of posterity."

Fr. John Strickland continues his account of the rise of secular ideology with a presentation on the Russian intelligentsia and the case of Karl Marx.

Fr. John Strickland concludes his account of the origins of modern political ideology with the rise of nationalism, a force that not only proved to be a counterfeit to traditional Christianity, but the cause of one of utopian Christendom's greatest tragedies.

Fr John reflects on Dr. Peter Bouteneff’s podcast concerning “Post-Episcopalian Stress Disorder,” and suggests a course-correction.

In this episode, Fr John reflects on the Scripture readings for the Divine Liturgy of the Feast of the Holy Ascension—and their impact on our mission and commission as Orthodox Christians.

In today’s episode, Fr John Parker addresses “becoming fishers of men” using Mormon practice as a catalyst to missionary work.

In this episode, we join Fr. John Parker at a fundraising dinner for the OCMC sponsored by the DC Metro Area Pan-Orthodox Missions Council. Fr. John's keynote address was entitled, "Here I Am, Send Me: How Every Christian can Answer the Great Commission."