Fr. Michael Winn

Jul

13

2013

55 Maxims

Christian Life

by Fr. Thomas Hopko. Be always with Christ. Pray as you can, not as you want. Have a keepable rule of prayer that you do by discipline. Say the Lord’s Prayer several times a day. Have a short prayer that you constantly repeat when your mind is not occupied with other things. Make some prostrations when you pray. Eat good foods in moderation. Keep the Church’s fasting rules. Spend some time in silence every day. Do acts of mercy in secret. Go to liturgical services regularly Go to confession and communion regularly. Do not engage intrusive thoughts and feelings. Cut…

Jul

12

2013

By Fr. Michael Winn

An Introduction to the Eastern Catholic Churches

Faith

with Fr. Thomas Loya The Catholic Church is a communion of churches. It is made up of churches from the Eastern Tradition and Western Tradition. Every Catholic has a responsibility for understanding the fullness of the Catholic Church. Blessed Pope John Paul has said "the Church must learn to breathe again with its two lungs, its eastern and western one" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFIzumjrEjc

Jul

02

2013

By Fr. Michael Winn

Holy Mystery of Marriage

Liturgy

O Lord our God Crown them with Glory and Honour! [alert style="info"]Please Note: As of the day of this post there is no official English translation of this Rite for the Ukrainian Catholic Church. This translation is provided until such time.[/alert] The Betrothal The couple to be crowned in marriage and their attendants assemble in the narthex before the doors of the church. When everything is ready, the clergy go out to meet them. The priest signs with the Cross three times, and then exclaims: Priest: Blessed is our God always, now and ever and for ages of ages. All:…

Jun

20

2013

By Fr. Michael Winn

The Family Altar: Establishing a Place of Prayer

Christian Life, Prayer

by Deacon Michael Hyatt As a young junior high school student, I wasn't fast enough to run most track and field events. But one event I could participate in was the relay race. A large part of our training was concerned with handing off the baton. The idea was to sprint as fast as you could to the next runner on your team. His job was to meet you about fifteen yards before the hand-off and run with you, being careful to match your pace exactly. In this way, you didn't have to stop to hand him the baton; you…

Jun

20

2013

By Fr. Michael Winn

iWitness: Youth Evangelizing Youth

News

The Eparchy of Edmonton has put together an exciting online program where students can show their faith to their peers in order to spread the Good News and possibly win great prizes. Much like reality TV programs, people will be able to view and vote for their favourite submissions. The submissions with the most votes in each age category will be declared winners. Winners receive prizes for themselves and a cash prize for their class room. For more details and to see the project, please go to www.iwitness.edmontoneparchy.com

Jun

19

2013

By Fr. Michael Winn

Isaiah: The Fifth Gospel

Faith

In Winter of 2004, I followed a graduate course on Eastern Christian Hermeneutics and Exegesis in the Prophecy of Isaiah. It was taught by an excellent man and professor, Fr. Andrew Onuferko. At the time he was also the Acting Director of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at Saint Paul University, Ottawa. One section of the course highlighted the early Church and their use of the only Scriptures they knew of at the time what we Christians now call the Old Testament. The author, John Sawyer in his excellent book, The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the…

Jun

19

2013

By Fr. Michael Winn

What is the Liturgical Year?

LiturgySeptember 1

In a pastoral letter issued at the close of the Second Vatican Council (1965), our Bishops, together with Cardinal Joseph Slipyj, defined the Liturgical Year as: “A liturgical cycle of the universal or some particular Church, that consists of Sundays, weekdays, the feasts of our Lord, the Mother of God, the saints and the periods of fasting and forbidden times.” We call the Liturgical Year the Ecclesiastical or Church Year, because it contains the Church Calendar, which in some respects is similar to and in others differs from the civil calendar. In the Eastern Church the Church Year differs from…

May

26

2013

By Fr. Michael Winn

It Smells Like Love – A Short Story

Christian Life

The five bells began to ring. Their sweet notes grew in size as they floated over the snow-covered neighbourhood. A squirrel, more interested in gathering food than hibernating, stopped in its tracks to listen. The voice of the bells seemed to call for the neighbourhood to awaken from its mid-winter slumber. The morning sunlight struck their eyes with a sharp intensity as they left the church. Shading his eyes with his hand on his brow, Roman searched for his children finding them playing in the freshly-fallen snow. Taking the hand of his wife, Olenka, they began to walk slowly to…

May

25

2013

By Fr. Michael Winn

Purgatory and the Christian East

Christian Life, Faith

It is often asked of Eastern Catholics what it is they believe about Purgatory. (At least it is a question that I myself have been asked on more than one occasion!) Roman Catholics, after all, speak in quite definitive terms about it, while the Orthodox explicitly reject the doctrine. Consequently, it might be supposed that Eastern Catholics either fall right in the middle of the two positions, or that they simply adhere to Latin definitions. I would argue, however, that neither of these options is the case, and that what Eastern Catholics can do today is reflect upon the truth…

May

24

2013

By Fr. Michael Winn

The Language of the Liturgy: Speaking God’s Kingdom

Faith, Liturgy

The issue of religion and language has been with us since at least the third century BC, when the books of what we now call the Old Testament were first translated from Hebrew into Greek. Three centuries later, by the time the apostles began to move out from Jerusalem and carry the message of Jesus across the known world, each of them will likely have known Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. Subsequently, as the Gospel spread and the liturgies of the Church developed, the languages of the Church multiplied. As we might expect, Latin was almost immediately added, but so was…