On Sunday, we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Grand Prince of Rus’ Volodymyr Equal-to-the-Apostles at the temple in Richmond. Coinciding with the celebrations, two material gifts were brought to the temple, one for us as a people and one for me personally. First, our ecumenical friends from St Francis’ Chapel on the Street in the Mong Kok occupation of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement met our bishop and transported their crucifix via him to us. Second, I received as a... Read more
Two Fridays ago at the Feast of Ss Peter and Paul on the New Calendar, I served as cantor for the reception of two of my friends into the Kyivan Church by chrismation. At the end of the service, another friend whose singing skills I deeply respect said to me, ‘You are a great cantor!’ I demurred, having seen him cantor before and thinking he was only saying that because for this service, he had to endure my hand-waving in the... Read more
I don’t know what it says about me that the most popular post around here for a while was last Wednesday’s piece on Asian American evangelicals. I am sure that the Orthodox are among my readership. For example, I saw on a recent post on Ancient Faith Ministries that the very popular Orthodox priest Fr Lawrence Farley ‘heard that a Byzantine Catholic community used [his] akathist Jesus, Light to Those in Darkness as a liturgical part of expression of support for the... Read more
My dear friend, the Claremont ethicist Grace Kao, nominated me last week on facebook to do a write-up on Asian American evangelicals and Eastern Orthodoxy. She did so in the wake of a rather embarrassing twitter spat between some popular Orthodox leaders and the evangelical publication Christianity Today, over comments made by the popular pastor Eugene Cho on his imminent departure from his post at Quest Church in Seattle to focus on his non-profit social activism and traveling schedule. The fault... Read more
Last night I had the strangest of dreams. The scene begins with our temple in Richmond packed. For some reason, I do not know many of these people, and it is not the recent chrismation service that we celebrated for my dear new friends who were just received into the Kyivan Church. But we do have a kleros, and the newly received neophytes are in it. I am the cantor. My spiritual father is celebrating the liturgy, swinging his... Read more
I will always remember the moment I was received into the Kyivan Church. After I made a profession of faith at the narthex of the temple, my spiritual father led me on his epitrakhil (the thing the priest wears around the neck) into the sanctuary. This moment was the formal churching part of the Rite of Reception: I was being received by my spiritual father into the congregation of the church assembled, and even more meaningfully, my biological father – an Anglican... Read more
In my icon corner in Chicago hangs three ‘group icons’ of holy martyrs: the Holy Martyr Sophia and daughters Faith, Hope, and Love, the Holy Martyrs of China, and the Holy New-Martyrs of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church of the Twentieth Century. With them, I also have an icon of the Holy Passionbearers Borys and Hlib. Day after day, I pray before them, along with my patron saint, Holy Justin the Philosopher and Martyr. As I currently am in Richmond for... Read more
It is actually not difficult to understand why it is that evangelicals are now supporting the political candidacy of someone who is openly a purveyor of prostitution. If one has hung around evangelicalism for any amount of time, the Age of Trump, with its pronounced emphasis on ‘golden showers’ and Stormy Daniels, is more of the same. Of course, most people outside of the movement will of course be confused by this because they think of evangelicals as ‘values voters.’... Read more
In my first childhood memory, I am standing by the fireplace. It’s made of brick, and it goes up to the ceiling and out the roof and becomes the chimney to our home. Next to it is a television set. On it is playing scenes of protest, then of fire, and then of a man standing before three tanks holding a metal lunch box. Over these clips, a song is playing. It is in Mandarin, and I am singing. When... Read more
Sister Vassa (Larin) has begun a podcast series on Psalm 50. When I was a Protestant, I knew it as Psalm 51. I like what Sister Vassa has to say about the psalm. She reads it as the prayer of a guy who is eaten up by guilt. Indeed, the psalm is about King David’s internal messiness after committing adultery with Bathsheba and having her husband Uriah the Hittite killed. But it is also a liturgical prayer, which means that... Read more
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