How to Be an Orthodox Christian

The Holy Eucharist (Part 1): The Mystery of All Mysteries

In the first of two episodes on the Eucharist, Dcn Seraphim explores what the Holy Eucharist is according to Holy Tradition: the fruit of the Tree of Life given again to the children of the new Adam, the sacrifice of Melchizedek brought to its perfection, the anamnesis of the Lord's passion, the very Body and Blood of the incarnate Christ made present by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts. Drawing on Nicholas Cabasilas's Life in Christ — "the clay is no longer clay when it has received the royal likeness, but is already the Body of the King" — he ends with the central claim of the whole Orthodox sacramental life: that the purpose of the Christian faith is to eat God so that we may become, by grace, what God is by nature. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FOxCuUeiWEKWzdt_6w2i121c6R82hjVK?usp=sharing Music Used: Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8 Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

Baptism and Chrismation: The New Birth and the Breath of Life

Dcn Seraphim takes up the first two mysteries of Christian initiation: Baptism, by which we are reborn out of the waters into the humanity of the new Adam, and Chrismation, by which the Holy Spirit Himself is sealed upon us. Drawing on his own background as a former Baptist minister, he traces the two great modern misconceptions about baptism — that it is only a symbol, and that it can only be administered to those old enough to consent — back to the Radical Reformation, and refutes both from a long line of New Testament passages. He then walks through the Orthodox baptismal rite moment by moment. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GSl_XdilbI9lDmaZYKufyh6pITpxmMni?usp=sharing Music Used: 11 Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8 Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

Introduction to the Holy Mysteries: What's with All This Stuff?

Every visitor to an Orthodox church eventually asks the same question — why so much stuff? The icons, the candles, the incense, the relics, the bread and wine and water and oil. In this episode Dcn Seraphim argues that the question itself is the wrong one, and that the Orthodox question is never "what is the bare minimum?" He diagnoses the quiet, unstated gnosticism that has shaped modern American religion and then lays out the central thesis that will frame the rest of the series: that the Holy Mysteries of the Church are the recapitulation, in Christ, of what God did with Adam in Genesis 1–3. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xZEu9Y48xE8Z4A_XC7bKLjxbK39ZTreB?usp=sharing Music Used: 11 Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8 Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

The Moral Life (Part 2): Sexuality, the Sanctity of Life, the Tongue, and Possessions [EP. 9]

Picking up the framework from Part 1, Dcn Seraphim applies it to the specific moral questions where the Church's teaching most visibly cuts against the assumptions of our age. He begins by rejecting the quiet gnosticism of the modern world and affirming the goodness of the body, then takes up sexual ethics at length, working from Genesis 1 and Ephesians 5 to chastity, marriage as the icon of Christ and the Church, fornication, pornography, and the image of God in the human person. Finally, he talks about the discipline of the tongue: lying, gossip, judgment, and the new domain of online conduct. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16IQ-i3cukC75VMFRqGP1q9oLoED_uXa-?usp=sharing

The Moral Life (Part 1): The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Transformation of the Heart [EP. 8]

In the first of two episodes on the moral life, Dcn Seraphim works through the two great moral texts of Scripture — the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Sinai, and the Sermon on the Mount given by Christ to His disciples on a mountain in Galilee — and shows how Christ does not abolish the law given to Moses but fulfills it, taking it inward into the dispositions of the heart. The Decalogue marked off Israel by clear external standards of conduct; the Sermon on the Mount addresses a new community, the Church, in which God is concerned not only with our outward actions but with our inner thoughts, our affections, and the very movement of our wills. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1z-OVpbdZqhEDT0v3M9tipcdb-_frY4zP?usp=sharing