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Fr. Lawrence R. Farley, and Ancient Faith Ministries
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Reflections on Orthodox Theology and Biblical Studies

  1. DEC 3

    “Command!”: a Reflection on the Contemporary Ordination Practice

    At the ordination of a priest or deacon the following ritual is observed: some of the serving clergy take the candidate to be ordained into the nave (in the case of a diaconal candidate, two subdeacons; in the case of the priestly candidate, two deacons), assist him in making a prostration toward the assembled congregation and they then say “Command!” They then raise up the candidate, turn him around so that he is facing the altar, have him make another prostration and again say “Command!” Having raised him up again, they take him through the Royal Doors into the altar. The candidate is then received by another clergyman (a deacon if the candidate is to be ordained deacon; a priest if the candidate is to be ordained priest) and then brought to the bishop who is seated by the altar table. He is then helped to make a prostration to the bishop as the assisting clergy say, “Command, right reverend Master!” No response is given to these words; the requests for a command are met with silence.

  2. NOV 19

    The Accomplishments of the Reformation

    On October 31 parts of the western world celebrated Reformation Day, giving thanks for the Protestant Reformation. (I am tempted to observe that on the old Julian calendar, Reformation Day was on Thursday November 13.) Here I would like to look back and make a few observations about the accomplishments of the Reformation. For the Reformation resulted in a number of things we now too easily take for granted.

  3. NOV 11

    The King of Israel

    Tucked well away in the Divine Liturgy in a prayer that the priest says silently for himself we find a significant title of Christ. The priest offers the prayer as the people sing the cherubic hymn but because it is not a prayer of the Church but a private prayer of the priest there is no reason for the people to hear it and seal it with their “Amen”. Nonetheless, I sometimes feel that it is a shame the people cannot overhear it, for it is very beautiful.

  4. SEP 24

    A Christian Response to War

    As a baby boomer child of the 1950s, I was taught to hate war. For my generation, war was an unmitigated evil (though, happily, this notion did not spill over into hating or disrespecting our soldiers—later described as “peace-keepers”). Our generation’s hatred of war was well expressed in the 1969 heart-felt anti-war song popularized by Edwin Starr, some of the lyrics of which were, “War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!...War I despise, ‘cause it means destruction of innocent lives…It ain’t nothing but a heart-breaker, friend only to the under-taker!”

  5. SEP 17

    The Dying of the Light

    When I was young, I read a famous poem that I now regard as one of the strangest poems ever written. It is the one entitled “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas with its repeated refrain “do not go gentle into that good night…rage, rage against the dying of the light”.

  6. SEP 10

    Surveying the Old Testament

    When I was a child in grade five, I was given a New Testament by the Gideon Society, like everyone else in my grade. Note: the New Testament, not the entire Bible. I suspect that the decision to confine the gift to the New Testament Scriptures was dictated more by economics than by theology—after all, there were a lot of kids in the schools in those days and giving an entire Bible to each one of them would have cost a lot. Nonetheless the decision tended to give the impression that it was only the New Testament that mattered and that the Old Testament didn’t count for much for Christians.

  7. AUG 27

    Tithing Mint

    I am often asked by catechumens questions of basic liturgical etiquette, such as how to enter the church, how to venerate an icon, and when to make the sign of the cross. I am always happy to explain and (if in church) to demonstrate, since these are things that Orthodox people should know and do instinctively. They are part of forming an Orthodox mind and approach to life and worship. But there is a danger in answering such questions without first placing them in a wider context, because answering them without context might give the erroneous impression that Orthodoxy is all about rules.

  8. AUG 20

    All Kinds of Everything

    There are, I suggest, two ways to experience the world. The first is that of the materialist: the world is all that exists. The physical world that we see and experience has no real or intrinsic meaning; it just is. We can, if we like, endow it with meaning from our own heads, but such meaning would be entirely subjective. Religion or philosophy, they say, might imagine that meaning can be discerned in world, but this is an illusion.

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Reflections on Orthodox Theology and Biblical Studies

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  • Creator
    Fr. Lawrence R. Farley, and Ancient Faith Ministries
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2025
  • Episodes
    290
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Ancient Faith Ministries
  • Show Website
    No Other Foundation

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