How to Be an Orthodox Christian

Epizode

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  Matins: Awaiting the Resurrection [EP. 23] 28.09.2026

  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
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  Vespers: The Evening Sacrifice [EP. 22] 21.09.2026

  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
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  The Communion of the Saints: The Great Cloud of Witnesses [EP. 21] 14.09.2026

  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
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  Christian Death and Burial: Memory Eternal [EP. 20] 07.09.2026

  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
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  Holy Orders: The Priesthood of Christ [EP. 19] 31.08.2026

  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
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  Monasticism: The Angelic Life [EP. 18] 24.08.2026

  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
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  Holy Matrimony: The Domestic Church [EP. 17] 17.08.2026

  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
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  Glorious Manhood and Womanhood: What We Are, and What We Are For [EP. 16] 11.08.2026

  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
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  Holy Unction: The Healing of Soul and Body [EP. 15] 03.08.2026

  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
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  Confession: Holy Repentance and the Second Baptism [EP. 14] 20.07.2026

  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
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  The Holy Eucharist (Part 2): Worthy Preparation [EP. 13] 13.07.2026

  In the second of two episodes on the Eucharist, Dcn Seraphim turns from what the Mystery is to how an Orthodox Christian prepares to receive it. He begins with St. Paul's sober warning that whoever eats and drinks unworthily is "guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" and "eats and drinks judgment to himself" (1 Corinthians 11), and draws the Church's careful distinction: no one is ever worthy of the Eucharist, but we are asked to come in a worthy manner. He walks through the converging disciplines of preparation — a life of continual repentance, confession, the Eucharistic fast, the pre-Communion prayers, and reconciliation with the brethren (Matthew 5) — and then closes with the practical mechanics of approaching the chalice, the prayers of thanksgiving, and the Christian live as lived from chalice to chalice. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kqqYoHZK-q8yWVDqT9gbqdt6PkkWE7CI?usp=sharing Music Used: Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8 Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA
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  The Holy Eucharist (Part 1): The Mystery of All Mysteries [EP. 12] 06.07.2026

  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
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  Baptism and Chrismation: The New Birth and the Breath of Life [EP. 11] 29.06.2026

  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
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  Introduction to the Holy Mysteries: What's with All This Stuff? [EP. 10] 23.06.2026

  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
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  The Moral Life (Part 2): Sexuality, the Sanctity of Life, the Tongue, and Possessions [EP. 9] 15.06.2026

  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
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  The Moral Life (Part 1): The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Transformation of the Heart [EP. 8] 08.06.2026

  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
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  Holy Tradition: Scripture, Councils, Fathers, and Liturgy [EP. 7] 01.06.2026

  Where does all of it come from — the eastward-facing altar, the icons, the hymns, the precise theological claims woven into every prayer? In this episode Dcn Seraphim takes up the question of Holy Tradition: not a rulebook or a second Bible, but the whole living transmission of the Christian faith from the Apostles to today, the river in which Scripture itself flows. Drawing on St. Paul, St. Irenaeus, the ecumenical councils, and the witness of saints from St. Athanasius to St. Sophrony of Essex, he shows how the Church discerned the canon, defined the faith at councils like Nicaea and Ephesus, and continues to confess that faith in her worship under the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi — the law of prayer is the law of faith. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CD0DyDFbR8DEr1yNyb_N2tdrrX8PCmUL?usp=sharing Intro: 0:00 Two Modes of Transmitting Tradition: 4:04 Scripture in Tradition: 6:45 St. Irenaeus on Tradition: 12:06 Conciliary Principle/Councils : 13:56 Fathers of the Church: 21:45 What the Church pray is what we believe: 26:14 tradition vs. “T”radition: 30:36 Closing statements: 32:16
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  How to Read the Holy Scriptures [EP. 6] 26.05.2026

  In this episode, Dcn Seraphim explores the Orthodox understanding of the Holy Scriptures as a verbal icon of Christ — a living encounter with the One who speaks through every page, from Genesis to Revelation. He looks at how the Church gave us the Bible, why Orthodox Christians use the Septuagint, what is meant by reading Scripture with the Fathers, and why typological reading is not an invention of the Fathers but an extension of the way the New Testament teaches us to read the Old. Along the way he draws on St. Irenaeus, St. Theodore the Studite, St. Isaac the Syrian, and St. John Chrysostom, and shows how the hymns and readings of the Divine Liturgy are themselves the Church's living school of biblical interpretation. The episode ends with practical guidance for daily Scripture reading at home.
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  Almsgiving: How to Be Like God [EP. 5] 18.05.2026

  In this episode, Dcn. Seraphim takes up the third great discipline of the Sermon on the Mount and shows why the Orthodox Church understands almsgiving not as an optional extra but as the practice by which we become like the God who gives Himself away. Drawing on Christ's teaching in Matthew 6 and 25, the Book of Tobit, the parable of the Widow's Mite, and the writings of Sts. Basil, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, and Clement of Alexandria, he traces almsgiving back to its roots in the very nature of the Trinity. He then turns to the practical questions: tithing, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, parish stewardship, and how the whole Divine Liturgy forms us as a school of giving. Show notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WENS_5xjgyLnr5kJQPTiK3qqYTgi5Hd6/view?usp=sharing
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  Fasting: The Second Wing of the Christian Life [EP. 4] 11.05.2026

  Dcn Seraphim traces fasting back to the first commandment given in Eden — a commandment about food — and shows how the Fall itself was a failure of fasting, answered in the wilderness by the New Adam who refuses to turn stones into bread. Drawing on Basil, Chrysostom, John Climacus, and John Cassian, he distinguishes Orthodox fasting from dieting or self-punishment and presents it instead as the rider's training of the horse: a medicine for the soul whose dose must be fitted to each person through the Church's principle of oikonomia. Then, he walks through the Orthodox fasting calendar — the four great fasts, Wednesdays and Fridays, the approximately forty percent of the year spent in fasting — while pairing Christ's "when you fast" in Matthew 6 with Isaiah 58's warning that a fast without mercy is no fast at all. Practical guidance follows on how to live a fasting day, how cravings become occasions for prayer, and how every act of bodily restraint is oriented toward the Eucharistic table, where food is at last received on God's terms rather than seized on our own.