Be the Bee (Video)

When people pass away, we pray that their memory will be eternal. We're not simply asking God to think about them: we're asking Him to save them (and us) and bring us all into His Kingdom. It's the Church's answer to the loneliness and emptiness of death.

Living Orthodoxy is about love. Here are six ways you can deepen your love for Christ. Are you ready to start?

Parishes across the country will host their annual festivals and offer great food, music, and dancing to their neighbors. We also have something even more amazing to offer: Christ and the Good News of salvation.

A new study from the Pew Research Group has some interesting numbers. Do they show that Christianity is shrinking? While it's true that people are leaving the Church, we can't panic. Instead, we should use these numbers as a challenge. Our challenge is to be the bee and live Orthodoxy: to help people find God and to live the Faith everyday.

We sometimes describe people as cradles or converts; but instead of describing people, that can divide us. And they're a bit misleading: we aren't born into the Church, and there isn't a specific moment in the past when we enter the Church. We're actually pilgrims, making our way to Christ, growing closer to Him everyday.

Christ took on all that is ours so that we can have all that is His. One of those blessings is the ability to call God the Father our Father. That doesn't just affect the way we relate to God; it affects how we relate to all people, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Liturgy is the work of the people: our work. It brings us from a bunch of "me's" to a single "we" in Christ. Every episode is a great reminder of this, since Be the Bee comes from the love and work of so many people, including you!

We can summarize salvation in three words: Christ is Risen! Salvation, our participation in God's true and eternal life, only happens in the divine-human person of Christ. He took on all that is ours so we could have all that is His.

Many people think that heaven and hell are the places God sends us to either reward or punish us. But Orthodox Christians don't believe in this "two story" model of the universe. We believe that God is "present in all places and filling all things," and that what we interpret as salvation or damnation is actually our response to, and experience of, God's unconditional love.

Jesus Christ is our savior, but what does He save us from? To answer that, we need to take a closer look at Creation and the Fall. God made us neither mortal nor immortal, but with freedom: we could choose to either move closer to God, the source of life, or away from Him, and find death. When Adam and Eve sinned they separated themselves from God and each other, creating the wounded, sick humanity that they passed down to us.