Христос посеред нас! Christ is amongst us!
As we are now awaiting the start of Great Lent and our journey towards Blessed Pascha, the resurrection of our Lord, I hope that everyone had a blessed Nativity and New Years. I would also like yo thank all those who welcomed me into their homes during the Celebration of the Theophany.
During Great Lent I will be doing a lectionary series on our liturgical service cycle and why it is important to us. I will be breaking down Great Vespers, Matins, Proskemedia, the Divine Liturgie and several other services so that we may gain a better understanding of why they are beneficial to us as Christians. With that said, I thought I would send out a lighter pastoral message for this month, so that we may all have a reason to smile!
You know you’re Orthodox if …
- You are more comfortable standing in church than sitting.
- You can suck/vacuum up the crumbs of bread out of your hand without coughing.
- Lent to you means peanut butter, tofu, soy, lots and lots of pita bread and hummus.
- You’re used to skipping breakfast on Sundays.
- You wonder why the Pope crosses himself backwards when you see him on TV.
- You wear comfortable shoes to church, because you know you’ll be standing a long, long time.
- You spend time figuring out the best way to remove smoke stains from your ceiling and wax from your walls.
- Before you pray, you say a prayer.
- You don’t flinch when someone throws water at you.
- When you first tell people who ask what religion you are, at first they think you’re Jewish.
- The service routinely starts at least 15 minutes late and lasts 2 ½ hours.
- You consider any service two hours or under short.
- You know that when the priest says, “Let us complete our prayer to the Lord”, there’s still half an hour to go.
- Your priest is married.
- You have seen all members of clergy in purple robes.
- You typically celebrate a feast day by observing a strict fast.
- You celebrate feast days the night before.
- You address the city as Constantinople rather than Istanbul.
- You can say “Christ Is Risen”/”Indeed He Is Risen” in at least three languages.
- You have tournaments of red-egg-cracking on Pascha.
- You actually read the Bible in your spare time.
- You’ve grown accustomed to the taste of wine because you’ve had it since you were a baby.
- Even if you don’t speak the language fluently (i.e. Ukrainian, Greek, Russian, etc.) you could still carry on a decent conversation about food in it.
- You would like to think up 16 more of these just so that the list would come out to a good Orthodox number like 40.
Yours In Christ,
Fr. Peter Haugen
Fr. Peter Haugen
