A few years ago my friend and her family were received into the Orthodox Church. When our priest prayed for the Luceros they did not stand by themselves. In fact, if they wanted to join the Church on their own, they would not be allowed, because the Church is not a gathering of individuals; it is a Eucharistic community. In a beautiful practice birthed in the ancient wisdom of the Church, each…

At our Southern Baptist church, I knew “transubstantiation” was a non-starter. But did we perhaps believe in Martin Luther’s “consubstantiation,” the idea that the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ are present alongside the substance of the bread and wine...er, grape juice?

On a recent weekday I was walking from my church’s fellowship hall into the nave to light a jar candle and pray for a friend in need. My thoughts were pinging around as usual, and I wasn’t feeling particularly spiritual. But when I opened the door to the narthex, my heart registered a sacred truth well before my mind caught up: I had entered a holy place. The signal came not from…

Have you seen anyone recently with a golden electric chair hanging from a chain around his neck? How about an elegant, elderly woman showing off a diamond guillotine brooch on her dress? Or maybe you spotted a buffed-up guy at GNC, buying a protein supplement while wearing a sterling silver noose over his tight workout shirt.   No? Me neither. Even in our depraved modern world, instruments of violent death aren’t used…

The Church considers September 1st to be the beginning of the new year, called the Feast of Indiction. But the first sign of fall for suburbanites can be summarized in three letters: PSL. This acronym shows up in late August, signaling the appearance of the pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks as well as pumpkin spice everything else—candles, muffins, potpourri, desserts.

I saw it happen on television and in movies, but never in real life. The characters, male and female, young and old, and often in period costumes, hurriedly tapped themselves—forehead, sternum, left shoulder, right shoulder—during moments or fear or confusion. The presence of a dead body was often involved. These people who crossed themselves were often portrayed as ignorant, possibly uneducated, and definitely superstitious. They were secondary characters—not the heroes, and certainly…

To this day Orthodox Christians continue to eat together after the service, but the ongoing liturgy involves more than a communal snack. Some have called the post-liturgy period, from coffee hour through the rest of the week, “the liturgy after the liturgy.” It encompasses our whole lives, both inside and outside the walls of the church building.

In all my years as a Christian, I never, ever experienced the amount of preparation for Communion that the Orthodox Church requires. The reason for all the prayers, praises, and pleas for forgiveness lies in the nature of the offering itself. If communion is more than the sum of its physical parts, and if Christ truly gives Himself to us in the bread and the wine, then we must adequately prepare to receive the King of kings.

When I set out on a trip, I usually consult Google Maps on my phone. To get where I want to go, I input my current location then type in my destination. My starting point is always located at one specific address, because it is physically impossible to be present in two places at once.In the spiritual life, however, this is not so. I attend the Divine Liturgy with other parishioners at a Denver-area church on a physical street. But at the same time, we are present in the ongoing worship in heaven. A local parish might be in Tulsa, London, or Sydney, but the Divine Liturgy occurs in the Kingdom of God. As we worship, we are in two places at once—physical reality and heavenly reality.

A palpable shift occurs in the service after the Liturgy of the Word is completed. As we ascend toward the Eucharist in the Liturgy of the Faithful, the choir begins a new song, and the pace of our journey slows.