Orthodoxy Live Mailbag Edition - October 18, 2026

This is Orthodoxy Live with Father Evan Armitage, a live interactive call-in program where your questions about the Orthodox faith are addressed. Father Evan is the priest at St. Spirit and Greek Orthodox Church in Loveland, Colorado. Call in your question at 1-855-AF-RADIO. That's 1-855-237-2346. Father now is Father Evan. And welcome to Orthodoxy Live, your live call-in show about the Orthodox faith, your teachings and traditions. I'm your host, Father Evan, and we're streaming with you tonight on Ancient Faith Radio. I'm glad you're with us. But tonight is one of our special mailbag episodes. So if you call the number announced by our announcer, you're just going to get blank air. I apologize about that. But today, I've got Simon in studio with me. And Simon, you're taking Mike's place this evening. I am. Yeah, Mike gets a day off, which are, you know, those are in short supply sometimes. I'm glad you're in studio. I know we've done this before. And obviously, this is an opportunity for us to look over some questions that have come to us, you know, either by email, you know, we get questions at Orthodoxy Live at ancientfaith.com. We get questions while we're streaming with our listeners who are either on YouTube or Facebook. And they kind of pile up. Yeah. And so it's kind of nice to take a moment and answer some of them. Yeah. And we've done a bunch of these prerecords at this point. So this should be old news. But yeah, there's always more questions in the YouTube chat than we have time for in the live show. Yeah, for sure. I know I was telling Mike just a couple episodes back that, you know, I took a look in my folder for Orthodoxy Live on my email inbox. And I've got questions going back like eight years that I just never been able to get to. It's just the way it is. And you know, funny thing, I'll go up after the show. My wife will usually say, you know, all right, you know, what were the questions tonight? And she's always surprised that although there are questions that come up, you know, again and again, sometimes are asked in a different way and that's fine. But she's always surprised that there's another question that, you know, never been asked before. And that seems to be always the case. Do you think that either through this show or also through just your ministry at your parish that maybe the questions and concerns that inquires have or, you know, or Orthodox Christians have had have kind of changed a little bit over the years? That's a good question. You know, I think here's what I would say. Some of the questions for especially inquires remain the same. You know, they approach the church and so they're going to have questions about, you know, how does the church view salvation? You know, what's the role of scripture? How about tradition? What about Mary and the saints? How about sacraments and priesthood? Those tend to be, you know, on people's minds. It's not as if people who have been in the church, maybe even their whole lives don't have those questions, but they approach them a little bit differently. Right? Yeah. But then I would say what I'm surprised about is that whether it's either an inquirer or someone who's been in the church, you know, life is complicated and complex, right? Yeah. And so whether it's a question about a question about vocation or relationship, a past hurt, learning to forgive, you know, or a specific question about a theological concept that they've encountered or spiritual practice, you know, there just seems to constantly be, you know, a new question to ask. But the one thing that I would say that has changed over time is the fact that because orthodoxy is becoming, you know, not only well known amongst those who have never heard of it, but even for those who grew up in it, there's this, I think, general renewal of faith and faithfulness in practice. And so as a result, that brings new questions. I mean, if you're just every once in a while Christian, right, you take your faith topically, you know, tangentially, right? In a surfaced way, if I could use that phrase. But when you're invested, well, that opens up a whole new reality. And I think that's also what I think I've seen, you know, over time. But yeah, anyway, for those of you listening tonight, again, you're listening to Orthodoxy Live here in ancient faith. We're streaming, not live because this is a mailbag episode. We pre-recorded. So if you dial in to the 800 number, you're not going to get anybody. But for future reference, you know, you can jot this down. It's 1-855-AF radio when we're back on air live. I'm sitting in studio with my counterpart, Simon, and we're going to ask some questions and answer some questions that have been sent to us either by email or in the chat room for people who are streaming. So Simon, why don't we jump in with our first question? Sure. Yeah. This is one of those questions, which kind of like you were alluding to probably relates to to like inquires really looking for ways to to be very involved on a daily level. And so from some someone with the username best way to learn asked, how should one begin practicing nightly repentance? Oh, you know, I think what's interesting to me, Simon, is for people who have come at Christianity with a fresh set of eyes, right, they they're walking into the church having never really investigated or practiced, you know, Christianity. This is a sort of a practice that not only is something new to them, but really opens up their lives in ways that they don't expect. I mean, I was visiting with somebody this past week in my office who lived outside the church, right, was very, very opposed to the idea of a religion or specifically Christianity had become embittered, dealt with a lot of anger, cynicism, regret. I mean, you kind of name it mid mid 20s, right. And, you know, lived in the world, you know, educated, but bitter, you know. And one of the things that really surprised him was this practice of daily repentance and forgiveness. And there was a bunch of things that he's been carrying in his life that he felt, you know, there's really kind of no hope he's regretted. And then there's a bunch of hurts that have happened to him or that he's, you know, imposed on others. And so this act of repentance has just been liberating, you know, and he described sort of a new way of life where he has meaning and purpose, even joy, where he looks at others, not with, you know, a skeptical eye or his potential threats, but as fellow, you know, creatures made in the image and likeness of God. And when people make mistakes, he remembers his own and he has this new ability to be merciful and patient. He's not perfect in any of that. Like none of us are. But it's been this just complete 180 for him. And he's just blown over by what this does, right. So, you know, it's certainly something just on a larger scale, life giving, right. And so I don't I don't want to go into an answer on this, thinking, well, this is a sort of backward looking exercise that sort of self-flagellating, you know, maybe even depressive or a real downer. No, this is all about liberation. This is all about learning to practice something that transforms our lives completely, right. And so, you know, I'll give you a personal example. You know, my wife and I go through ups and downs, you know, where our relationship is really just humming. And then, you know, in the middle of our day, maybe something happens where one of us acts poorly towards the other, right. And, you know, this happened yesterday. You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I woke up, you know, I was getting ready for work. I said something not, you know, it wasn't cruel. I just was less than thoughtful. And I could see my wife's countenance change. Now, I had to get out the doors. I got to work. I texted her and she texted back and said she was, you know, she was hurt. And so on my way home, you know, you know, I mean, one of the things you can do in daily repentance is you could you could decide, no, I didn't do anything wrong, right. Defend. You can accuse back. Well, you, right. You can disassociate, you know, anger or just ignore someone, right. On my way home, you know, I stopped by our card, bought our flowers and got home in the card. I owned up to what I had done and just said, I'm so very sorry that I can I can do better. Please forgive me. It was a daily act of repentance. And, you know, she just you could see on her face like how much I meant to. Now, that's something we've done throughout her marriage, right. It's not like that was new to us, you know, sometimes at night, you know, we might pray together and I might ask and turn to her or before a Sunday liturgy, right. We know that we might go to those in our family or our friends that we've hurt or wronged and we might ask it. So those are those are ways that daily repentance can come up, right. There's those also, you know, in the middle of a conversation or in the middle of an action, you might notice something and then you just sort of stop and own up to what you've done and ask for forgiveness from somebody. It's a little act of repentance. But thankfully, whether we ignore all of that and we're not attentive to our actions and we're not attentive to our thoughts and we're not attentive to our words yet in the office of prayer, the daily office of prayer in the evening, there is an opportunity for us to examine our day, right. And so, you know, four nights ago, I'm kneeling besides the bed with my son and he's 15 now, going on 16. And so we don't necessarily say evening prayers together every night. He can do them and has been doing them on his own. But every once in a while, you know, I pop in his room and I'll say, hey, let's pray together. We'll kneel and pray. And so there it is, right. In his prayer book, he gets to that point of his prayers where he is asking for forgiveness of the things that he has done, of thought, word, indeed known and unknown. And then there's a sort of pause there where the prayer book says, you know, reflect on your day, recall any sense that you may have committed or actions and repent of them before God. And so there it is, right. There's that stop in the day to say, what did I do today? And I would say for me personally, there's rarely a night where when I get to that part of my prayers, I don't catch something. And I go, oh, there's, I mean, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, and so now another thing that I challenged this, challenged my community with this about two months ago. You know, one of the Psalms that is present in almost every Orthodox service is the Psalm of David that begins, have mercy upon me, oh God, according to thy great mercy. It's known in many people's Bibles as Psalm 51, and that's the Masoretic numbering. And in other people's Bibles, if they're using the Septuagint numbering, it's Psalm 50, it's David's great Psalm of repentance. And this is something that again, is found within, if you're doing your prayers within the church using the daily office, you're gonna come across this Psalm, or if you're attending a service, you're gonna come across this Psalm. Like so we had Liturgy yesterday, it's in the Matins service, it's again in the Liturgy. So it's said twice. That's when the priest is sensing the chapel, right? Yeah, right before the great entrance. So you know, there's the small entrance where we bring the scriptures out, right? The gospel and process it. And then there's the point in the service where the gifts, the bread and the wine are processed to the altar. And right before that, the priest does the great sensing and the 50th Psalm is read. Usually inaudibly or sometimes softly. I encourage the people in the pews to read it in the pews. And then those words of David, right? Those aren't just, those are David's words. Those are the things that David did. Those become our words. And so there's another daily practice that we can do that helps us repent each and every day. Then of course there's something more simple. There's the Lord's prayer. Forgive us our trespasses is the phrase as we forgive others, there's, right? There's one. There's the Jesus prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner. That's, you're asking for God's mercy. And so it's there. It's in the Trisayan prayers, you know, all Holy Trinity. As we go through that set of prayers, you know, partner transgressions, right? It's in there, right? And then I want to say one more thing. People don't often think about, and that is a prostration. Okay, yeah. Right? That physical act of standing before God and bending at the waist, if one's unable to go all the way to the ground, bending at the waist, touching one's right fingers, four fingers to the ground, standing upright again and making the sign of the cross, that has been known for millennia as a matanya, which is basically the word root for repentance. It's a physical act, but it recalls that through sin we fall, but through Christ and His redemption cross, we come to stand upright again. If you want to do the full version of that, you know, you bend at the waist, go to your knees, touch your forehead to the ground, and then stand up, make the sign of the cross. And that might be repeated several times, right? People might do that several times, but yeah, that's a great question. What's a daily act of repentance look like? Lots of things to talk about there. It turns out there's a lot of ways where we just do this. You know, in our prayers or our services just all the time, right? Yeah, or just in our actions when we say I'm sorry and when we reflect upon the ways that we've acted. And let me see one more thing, because this really has stirred something inside of me. That's good. One of the biggest things that we need to guard against is becoming defensive, accusatory or dissociative. What I mean here is this. You come to me, Simon, and you say, hey, Father Evan, when you blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, right? What's my move at that point? I can get defensive. I didn't do that. You misunderstood me, right? Okay, I can get accusatory. Well, what you did that started that, right? See, or I could get dissociative, right? I can just check out. I can ignore what you said. I can turn my attention elsewhere, right? Now, of course, when you're attacked it's hard to stay responsive and not reactive. But perhaps in that moment, we can learn to find what is true, right? And as a response to what is true, we can repent and say, Simon, thanks for sharing that with me. I didn't notice that I did that or I didn't see that my words were not carefully chosen, right? And then there's grace. Yeah, plain and simple, then we grow. So, yeah, anyway. Okay, Mike. I think it might be time to move on from this question, huh? There's just too much to say. Yeah, we can go to the next one. Sure. This one's about dogs. It's from a... Dogs. DOGS? Yes. Okay. Someone with the user name Jesse Pup said, Father, I'd appreciate guidance on anticipatory grief. Oh. Regarding a nine-year-old dog who's currently healthy, but I'm assuming this is a she. She says, while struggling to conceive a child, my fear of losing the dog feels overwhelming. How can I approach this through faith? Well, first of all, this is a pastoral question and we should never be dismissive of such things, right? This is someone's life. This is someone's situation. And whatever and whomever is asking it, the church should stop and see the person in the situation, right? And so what I hear this person saying is, I have this dog. It's been a companion for nine years. I'm also attempting to conceive and that hasn't happened. And as a result, the idea of losing this dog, which has become part of my life, and not having a child, it's sort of like a cauldron, right? There's several layers to the person's question. And so first of all, it's just to say, yeah, that's a hard situation. I'm sorry that someone's gone through it, you know? And there are a couple of strands here to address. The first of them is that, human beings' relationship with the created order should be one of stewardship, right? We shouldn't ever become dismissive or abusive of creation. So plants, trees and rivers, right? We should treat them as stewards, caretakers, right? And we should live in a way that respects the creation. We shouldn't try to exploit it. And then it's true of animals, right? I have this wonderful prisoner who has a beautiful home garden and she recently lost her doggy and she said that was really hard for her. They had this dog for a long time and it went through an illness and she just was really, you know, saddened by watching the dog go through and took on a lot of the pain, the suffering the dog was going through. And she said, I don't know that I could ever have a dog again, because it was just so hard. And so she's really turned to her garden and connecting with the animals that are in her garden. So she was telling me how beautifully, like there's this little bunny rabbit that comes, she's named him Timothy and Timothy has gotten, you know, somewhat okay with this person coming out and doesn't run right away. And some of the birds that visit the garden and the bees and she said, you know, I'm developing this really beautiful relationship with the created order that wasn't there before. And so anyway, I'm just stating that how important it is that we have a relationship with the created order and you know, dogs, cats, right, birds, you know, people domesticate pets and have them. And I know I had a person who had a pig, you know, in their home and you could probably live, right? I've had my dog right now, Theo, I've had him for, I think it's five years. And you know, before I got on the show, he was, you know, he comes right into my bedroom, you know, wants to check in, you know, he's got his habits and his favorite toys and all that. So how to deal with this anticipatory grief? Well, on the one hand, I would just simply say, keeping good care of your pet from now until the time that it dies is one way that we can deal with it is we stay present to, you know, the reality at hand. You know, yeah, this pet for a certain amount of time and be good to it, take it on walks and play with it and pet it and be kind and feed it, right? And care for it. That's one way we deal with it. It's just to be present to the reality we have. And when we get into a modality of thinking too far into the future, or even becoming nostalgic about the past, try to gently call yourself back into the present. Those spaces are not particularly helpful spiritually, right? There are some limited ways in which they can be. So for example, you know, thinking about the past and maybe reconsidering how we could have acted as a, you know, we were talking about this in the previous question, right? You know, considering how we could repent and change our actions based on things we've done in the past or thinking about the things to come that God has promised, those are some limited ways where we can move into the past or the future. But in general, spending too much time in the future will make us anxious, right? And fearful, too much time in the past will make us regretful and maybe even dip into a disfiguring type of nostalgia. And so staying present, that's one way we can just sort of prepare ourselves. Just stay present to the reality, enjoy the moments we have, right? I tell young parents that, you're a young parent, Simon. Yes. Holder of the kiddos. Three and little over half a year. Yeah, so you're in it, right? That's a lot, right? Two under three. I think at some point we had three under four or something like that. It's a lot. And you can disconnect from the present moment, especially when you're tired, right? You can just sort of look for an escape hatch on your phone or with a movie or who knows, right? All sorts of things