How to Be an Orthodox Christian

Matins begins in darkness with six psalms read in profound stillness and ends with the Church singing, “Glory to Thee who hast shown us the light.” Dcn Seraphim follows this morning watch from the Hexapsalmos — with its voices of waking, suffering, thirst, abandonment, mercy, and hope — through the proclamation “God is the Lord,” the appointed psalms and hymns, and the Sunday Gospel carried into the midst of the people. He explains how the eleven Resurrection Gospels gather frightened, doubting, grieving, and guilty disciples around the risen Christ, and how the canon teaches the Church to read the songs and images of the Old Testament as fulfilled in Him. The Magnificat, the Praises, and the Great Doxology finally summon the whole creation into the light.

Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yqEFAz7rAhqN4aFRoIt07lFBN7V2cOQM?usp=sharing

Music Used:

Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8

Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

Outside, the sun is going down; inside the church, a new day has already begun. In this introduction to the daily cycle of Orthodox worship, Dcn Seraphim explains why the Church begins each day at sunset and how Vespers teaches Christians to experience time not as an empty succession of appointments but as a creation filled with memory, prayer, fasting, and feasting. He follows the service from Psalm 103 and the open doors of Paradise through humanity's exile, the evening incense and changing hymns, the entrance of the clergy, and the ancient hymn “O Gladsome Light,” in which the setting sun points to Christ, the uncreated Light. Old Testament readings, litanies, and the Song of Symeon lead the congregation toward peaceful rest after beholding the beginning of Christ's salvation. Along the way he explains how the service books and liturgical cycles fit together and offers newcomers practical guidance for attending, listening, and allowing Vespers to prepare them for Sunday and the great feasts.

Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14R60JXC6Gv2pUdg9yPcjvcwb2X6VZkKM?usp=sharing

Music Used:

Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8

Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

Remembering his first Divine Liturgy, Dcn Seraphim describes his realization that an Orthodox church is already full before the visible congregation arrives: Christ and His Mother, the angels, apostles, prophets, martyrs, and saints surround the earthly Church in worship. Beginning with the image and likeness of God and the Orthodox teaching of theosis, he explains who the saints are, why death does not remove them from the body of Christ, and why asking their prayers neither replaces direct prayer to Jesus nor diminishes His unique mediation. He then distinguishes veneration from the worship owed to God alone, grounds the honor given to icons and relics in the Incarnation and resurrection of the body, and considers the special place of the Theotokos, the recognition of saints by the Church, and the relationship between Christians and their patrons. The saints are not a decorative addition to Christianity, but human lives in which the grace of Christ has become visible.

Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wc1D4LJgS2EO-cL2pc4fakIXOQxCDUAP?usp=sharing

Music Used:

Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8

Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

In Orthodox funerals, we simultaneously embody two realities the world has difficulty holding together: this is terrible, and Christ is risen. Dcn Seraphim explains why death is an enemy rather than a harmless transition, why the Christian hope is the resurrection of the whole human person rather than the soul's escape from the body, and how Christ destroys death from within by entering it Himself. He offers practical counsel on preparing for death and calling the priest, then walks through the care of the body, the funeral service, the final kiss, burial, and the Church's continuing prayer for the departed. Along the way he considers cremation, organ donation, miscarriage and stillbirth, suicide, and other difficult circumstances that require pastoral care rather than speculation. The episode closes with the grain of wheat planted in the earth: the baptized body laid in the grave in grief, reverence, and the hope of resurrection.

Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13Un05dLcuZ5AQ4EOARP4yyEPSLPGhyS3?usp=sharing

Music Used:

Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8

Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

Whose hand rests upon a man's head at ordination? Beginning with his own ordination to the diaconate, Dcn Seraphim explains that the priesthood belongs to Christ, the one eternal High Priest, and that bishops, priests, and deacons receive particular ministries within His priesthood rather than possessing spiritual authority of their own. He shows how ordained ministry serves rather than replaces the royal priesthood of every baptized Christian, traces apostolic succession from Christ and the apostles through the laying-on of hands, and describes the distinct work of the bishop, priest, deacon, reader, and subdeacon. The episode then walks through the Orthodox ordination rite: the procession around the altar, the prayer that divine grace heals what is infirm and completes what is lacking, the cry of “Axios,” and the vesting of the newly ordained man. Dcn Seraphim closes by considering what clergy and people owe one another — faithful teaching, reverent service, prayer, honesty, accountability, practical support, and mercy — as they work out their salvation together in the body of Christ.

Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ub5iFJAGN6hCXhyfKSWoPA11qudSLKaA?usp=sharing

Music Used:

Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8

Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

Beginning with the rite of monastic tonsure, Dcn Seraphim presents monasticism as a total offering of one's life to God and a counterpart to the self-offering of Christian marriage. He traces its roots through Christ's counsels in the Gospels, St. Paul's teaching on celibacy, and the life of St. Anthony the Great, then explores the communal, skete, and eremitic forms of the monastic life. Drawing on St. John Climacus, St. Basil the Great, St. Paisius Velichkovsky, and the sayings of the desert fathers and mothers, he explains the promises of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability without romanticizing either asceticism or spiritual authority. Finally, he shows how monasteries have preserved the Church's daily worship, the Jesus Prayer, the Philokalia, and the practice of spiritual counsel, and what Christians living in the world can learn from their witness without pretending to be monks themselves.

Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1chsUEqgt-1Be9u00Orh0qHYs9NzVnN3r?usp=sharing

Music Used:

Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8

Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

Why does the Orthodox wedding service place crowns on the heads of the bride and groom, sing a hymn to the martyrs, but includes no vows? Dcn Seraphim traces marriage from its institution in Eden through the wedding at Cana and St. Paul's vision of Christ and the Church, then walks through the rites of betrothal and crowning: the rings, candles, common cup, joining of hands, and threefold procession around the Gospel. With the help of St. John Chrysostom and the prayers of the service, he shows that Christian marriage is God's act of joining two lives into one, a royal vocation whose authority takes the form of sacrifice. The episode then turns from the church building to the household, where the icon corner, family prayer, fasting, hospitality, forgiveness, and the shared table make the home a domestic church, and closes with a pastoral word about struggle, divorce, and the married saints who carried their crowns faithfully to the end.

Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jxEjqQR6tymRYJHjIF3gF3YBzZtip79q?usp=sharing

Music Used:

Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8

Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

Beginning with the hymn that names the Mother of God "more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim," Dcn Seraphim asks what a human being is worth and what a human being is for. He returns to the creation of man and woman in Genesis, showing that both bear the image of God fully, share the same human nature and destiny, and possess distinct forms of glory that domination and rivalry have obscured but not erased. Drawing on the three offices of Christ — Prophet, Priest, and King — he presents a contemporary Orthodox proposal for understanding the particular vocations of manhood and womanhood. Christ and the Theotokos reveal the New Adam and New Eve, and the lives of Sts. John the Baptist, Adrian and Natalia, Catherine of Alexandria, and Mary of Egypt show what manhood and womanhood look like when carried through the Cross into glory.

Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MXGXFbGlIwn6Dri8RQeWsRDtmYkZ8uPi?usp=sharing

Around a small table set with wheat, an unlit lamp, seven cotton-wrapped wands, and the book of the Gospels, seven priests gather to do one of the oldest things the Christian Church does — and, Dcn Seraphim suggests, the single most ignored sacrament in the modern West. Beginning from the plain apostolic command of James 5 — "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church" — he shows that Holy Unction (the Euchelaion, "the oil of prayer") has been practiced without interruption since the time of the Apostles.

Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Ho4j_MC2k61Trud3vcZ3-aSjZwjw5FbJ?usp=sharing

Music Used:

Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8

Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

Taking up the first of the Mysteries of healing, Dcn Seraphim presents Confession not as a courtroom but as a hospital — the place where the oldest human reflex, Adam hiding among the trees, is finally undone. He recovers the meaning of repentance as metanoia, a change of mind and a turning toward home rather than a religion of guilt, and distinguishes the godly sorrow "mingled with joy" from the worldly sorrow that ends at the noose. Drawing on St. John Climacus and St. Symeon the New Theologian, he explains why the Fathers dare to call confession a "second baptism" — the renewal, not the repetition, of baptismal grace — and walks through the Church's gallery of penitents as the Triodion sets them before us: the Publican, the Prodigal, David and Psalm 50, the sinful woman, Peter, and Zacchaeus, gathered up in the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete.

Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AaCqRelseFV8Uc9DzYKymwVC94kZ4q7y?usp=sharing

Music Used:

Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8

Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA