Many people criticize our church for being stuck in the dark ages and lacking reform. I am one of those people, when it comes to practical aspects of our faith; things like allowing cremation or encouraging lay and particularly female leadership in the sacramental life of the church. However, in the essential tenets of our…
As we approach the Christmas birth and revelation of our Lord, our church sacred calendar is very densely populated by saints’ days. Some of these saints are well known; we celebrated James and John, Peter & Paul, Ephrem and Stephen this week. Many of these saints are less know, we celebrated Eustratius, Auxentius, Eugenius, Orestes…
For God had something better in mind for us, so that (the saints) would not reach perfection without us. (Heb 11:40) Tomorrow is All Saints Day in the Western Church, and in the coming weeks the Armenian Church will celebrate All Saints in our own way. Of course, in our church the name for all Saints…
As I am sure most of you are aware by observing your own families or looking around church, America is undergoing a generational crisis of faith. Where only 10% of those people born in the 1930s & 1940s called themselves religiously unaffiliated, a whopping 40% of millennials said that they had no religion. Ironically the…
Our children are brushing up on the Hayr Mer in Sunday School, which led to a good question from the kids: Why do we open our arms and turn up our palms as we pray the Lord’s Prayer? I don’t know if you have wondered that, but there is much significance in this detail. Because…
Nearly a thousand years after his death, his influence is still felt every day in the Armenian Church. The soaring hymns that praise God, the sensitive prayers that beg His forgiveness, the policies of mercy and outreach that guide the operations of the church—all bear the mark of St. Nersess Shnorhali. His title Shnorhali means “full of grace”—and the…
A pastoral message from Fr. Daniel Findikyan, Primate of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern).