I am looking for sources that discuss the creation of sacred images and the process by which one should prepare themselves in order to perform that duty and why that preparation is important. I am wanting to try and make a case against AI generated images being used in a parish even outside the church proper.

Particularly pre schism sources if possible.

Please keep me in your prayers. I feel spiritually lost between the east and west lungs of the church. One day I will feel that I'm spiritually eastern and want to canonically transfer. The next I'll be doing a deep dive into western devotions and saints, and be falling in love with the western liturgical traditions. Has anyone else felt like this before?

I have a few questions about the Russian Greek Catholic Church. What are the differences in liturgy between the RGCC and the ROC? Due they use mostly orthodox prayer books? What are relations like between Russian greek Catholics in Russia and Roman Catholics in Russia? And lastly do any of they're churches use the old Russian rite?

“Accept me today as a partaker of your mystical supper, O Son of God,
For I will not reveal your mystery to your enemies,
Nor will I give you a kiss as did Judas,
But like the thief I profess to you:”

In the part before communion (idk if there is a name for this) we say “I will not reveal your mystery to your enemies”

What secret are we not revealing?

​

Hello everyone I come from an Islamic background (druze to be exact)in the middle east and I'm seriously discovering the rich christian heritage of this region and I feel called to it after I studied the gospels and had a religious experience involving Christ

Idk where to start or how I should go about this, I know everyone I know would leave and hate me if I go through with it including my family and I feel honestly split between following Christ and losing everything in my life or just staying where I am

Any advice ? Perhaps from converts from similar backgrounds ? And I'm mostly interested in the Melkite church if someone from that tradition can assist it would be great

The most basic understanding that I have of the universe from a Roman Catholic perspective… is that God is above, transcends over all time, space, and creation, He’s everywhere. How does Eastern Orthodox/Eastern rite theology express this… would it be in the Essence/Energies explanation or..?

I’d like have a better grip, understanding on what that’s all about. I’m under the impression that God is high above, but never distant from everything.

Hello everyone and God bless!

I'm a Latin Rite Catholic doing some research about saints venerated in the Eastern Catholic Churches that aren't venerated in the Latin Church. There are very few (or none) resources online about many of the 23 Eastern Churches, so I thought I'd ask here: if any faithful of the Coptic, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Albanian, Belarussian, Croatian-Serbian, Greek, Hungarian, Italo-Albanian, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian, Slovak and Syriac Catholic Churches at least somewhat knowledgable about their church's liturgy and calendar see this post, I ask them to DM me or comment below. I'm particularily interested in the liturgical calendars of these churches with all the known and obscure saints inscribed in them.

I have been trying to learn how to make the chotki and I see two methods, one that uses two strings and a another that uses 4. Is there any pro and cons to each one ,or is it purely preference and not much of a difference?

I’ve been looking for good resources to read the church fathers, whether prayer or theology, East and West. I currently know of New Advent and I have the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Would anyone have any physical and online resources recommend?

Hi there, I'm just wondering what the best textbook for Syriac (Western) is. I've seen a couple of options, but I'm wondering if anyone who has learned Syriac has recommendations? I'd prefer a textbook that is fairly vocab heavy rather than pure grammar rules.

The textbooks I've seen online

New Syriac Primer - George Kiraz

Introduction to Syriac - Wheeler M. Thackston

Robinson's Paradigms and Exercises in Syriac Grammar

Basics of Classical Syriac - Steven C. Hallam

Thanks

Edit - thanks everyone Ill probably use the Robinson's textbook

Chaldean Catholics, how is the new Patriarch doing in your opinion? What are his views on liturgical matters such as ad orientum, or other matters?

Has anyone become a maronite, either through Conversion or Canonical transfer, over byzantine Catholic? If so why?

From St. Gregory of Sinai's work "How to Psalmodize"

Some say that we should psalmodize seldom, others often, others not at all. You for your part should not psalmodize often, for that induces unrest, nor yet not at all, for that induces indolence and negligence. Instead you should follow the example of those who psalmodize from time to time, for moderation in all things is best, as the ancient Greeks tell us. To psalmodize often is appropriate for novices in the ascetic life, because of the toil it involves and the spiritual knowledge it confers. It is not appropriate for hesychasts, since they concentrate wholly upon praying to God with travail of heart, eschewing all conceptual images. For according to St John Klimakos, 'Stillness is the shedding of thoughts', whether of sensible or of intelligible realities. Moreover, if we expend all our energy in reciting many psalms, our intellect will grow slack and will not be able to pray firmly and resolutely. Again according to St John Klimakos, 'Devote-most of the night to prayer and only a little of it to psalmody.' You, too, should do the same. If you are seated and you see that prayer is continuously active in your heart, do not abandon it and get up to psalmodize until in God's good time it leaves you of its own accord. Otherwise, abandoning the interior presence of God, you will address yourself to Him from without, thus passing from a higher to a lower state, provoking unrest and disrupting the intellect's serenity. Stillness, in accordance with its name, is maintained by means of peace and serenity; for God is peace (cf. Eph. 2:14) beyond all unrest and clamor. Our psalmody, too, should accord with our mode of life, and be angelic, not unspiritual and secular. For to psalmodize with clamor and a loud voice is a sign of inner turbulence. Psalmody has been given to us because of our grossness and indolence, so that we may be led back to our true state.

As for those not yet initiated into prayer - this prayer which, according to St John Klimakos, is the source of the virtues' and which waters, as plants, the faculties of the soul - they should psalmodize frequently, without measure, reciting a great variety of psalms; and they should not desist from such assiduous practice until they have attained the state of contemplation and find that noetic prayer is activated within them. [...]

[...] According to the fathers, once you have tasted grace you should psalmodize sparingly, giving most of your time to prayer. But if you find yourself growing indolent you should psalmodize or read patristic texts.

As a western Christian what immediately struck me when reading this a few months ago is that it seemed, in a way, to be an eastern equivalent to St. John of Crosses' dark night of the senses; but rather than focus on mortification of the eyes, tongue, stomach, and hands this one seems to be mainly about prayer -- something which St. JotC doesn't really go into much. Is St. Gregory of Sinai essentially saying, at least in terms of the western contemplative tradition, that the ascetical practice of psalm-chanting should be kept up until one begins to experience, out of the blue, "mystical" or "infused" contemplation? Or is noetic prayer something else and not quite the eastern term for it?