About: Elijahmaria

Beginnings and Background Sketch

Twelve years ago, I transferred my canonical jurisdiction from a see in the Roman Church to the Byzantine-Ruthenian Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh. I chose that jurisdiction because it was the jurisdiction of my spiritual father, and incidental to that fact there were two parishes and the Penn State mission near to where I was living at the time. I was able to continue to keep my teaching commitments in my Roman rite parish and still begin to attend liturgies with the students at the Ruthenian Penn State mission community. Those were inspired times for me and I will always be grateful for them. The memories sustain in the dry times.

I had a spiritual father because I had returned to the Church in the 1990's after a 20 year absence and was coordinating my parish's RCIA, and catechizing the inquirers, and I thought that I'd better find someone who would make sure I was teaching orthodox Catholic doctrine. I had a spiritual father from the eastern Catholic tradition because in a period of formation in secular Carmel, I discovered through the writings of St. Teresa of Avila that I had a strong affinity to the teachings of the desert fathers as well as to the reformed saints, and prophetic patron Elijah, of the discalced Carmelites. The early years were full of liturgies and liturgical prayer, expanding doctrinal understanding, developing spiritual disciplines, and many many spiritual comforts and encouragements from all quarters. I was inebriated by God, and befriended by genuine believers, and gifted priests and monastics. Simply put, I was blessed.

Since I was praying daily holy hours then as well, I began to look around for a place to pray with a parish community somewhere, even if only now and then. The only parish community offering vesperal services was the local OCA parish, and so I began to attend. That set off an oddessy that has still not reached its denouement. After a time that parish became my liturgical home and I moved from the heart of one Church to the liminal edges of two confessions. The boundaries are permeable. Communion is not.

And there begins this current time of personal and ongoing religious desertification and the quest for Irenikon.

There is more and I will get to it in time. I will be moving this blog along slowly. Starting it during the end of Lent and through this past glorious Paschal season has guided my initial postings, and I expect that as I continue to warm to the project it will take on the character that it needs to have to do what I pray it might do, become that which I hope it will become for myself and all who come to read here.

I will expand the posting here on this page periodically as the muse strikes, as I think of things I want my reader to know or think about as they read Irenikon.

Always feel free to comment or ask questions.

The photo is of the front porch, just outside my office window.

Mary

About: Elijahmaria