Tag: Western Rite

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Lent and Easter Kids’ Book and Gift Recommendations

Do you guys make Easter baskets for your kids or godchildren? We do! I think it’s a super fun reward for all of the hard work the kids have been doing to make sacrifices for Jesus during Lent. Our Easter baskets usually have a book for each kid, some favorite candy and snacks, and a religious item. Last year my family did this Lenten Devotional together, and I really loved it. The book was geared toward older children (not little ones) and follows the Eastern Rite observance of Great Lent. However, we still found it useful as Western Rite Orthodox Christians, and we learned so much. Here are my favorite suggestions for reading books together during Lent and Easter or for filling those Easter baskets!

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Prepping for Lent and Easter

Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.

As we enter our pre-Lenten season in the Western Rite, I’ve put together some of my favorite tips, materials, and go-tos for Lent. Like with everything on my blog, this is what one Western Rite Orthodox family does, but please, use whatever is most helpful for you and your family. In my next post I will cover my favorite Lenten books for kids and ideas for Easter baskets.

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On Becoming an Orthodox Godparent

A gift for my god-daughter – an icon of her patron saint

Becoming a Godparent by Chrismation

My husband, Mark, and I were blessed to become godparents for the first time on Christmas 2015 when our friends the Mathwin family converted to Orthodoxy from Anglicanism. Like us, the Mathwins followed the lead of the father of their family, a man who had wanted to become Orthodox for twelve years. Although the Mathwins had attended the same large, Anglican church that our family attended prior to our Chrismation, we had not known each other. Yet, here we were. God led us all to the same place: a tiny, Western Rite Orthodox mission in rural Bealeton, Virginia.

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On Choosing Godparents: New Convert Probs

Baptism day for our son, together with his loving god-family and our dear priest

As a former evangelical Protestant, I didn’t grow up with godparents, but I had seen them in the movies, so I figured I pretty much understood what it was all about. To me, godparents seemed to be close family friends or extended family members who would be willing to adopt your child in the event that you and your spouse were dead. So, in hindsight, I may have been a little off.

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Celebrating a Name Day

Finding a Patron Saint

As a convert to Orthodoxy, celebrating “Name Days,” or the feast days of patron saints, was a new concept for me. I had heard that Orthodox converts often adopted a patron saint at their Chrismation and were even called by that name thereafter, in some churches. I wasn’t given a “Christian” name at birth. Frankly, I was named after a Russian neighbor because my mom liked the sound of her name. Some people I knew had a “baptismal name,” but I was baptized at age 12, and it wasn’t a custom in my denomination to change your name at baptism. Until becoming Orthodox, I had never even heard of the martyr St. Adrian of Nicomedia (306AD) from which the name Adrienne is derived, and I likewise knew nothing of St. Emmelia of Caesarea (375AD), called the “Mother of Saints”, who was to become my patron saint.

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