Greetings from Serbia ☦ In Serbia we also write the names of our beloved ones so that priests can mention them in prayers during the Holy Liturgy. We didn't use to celebrate our birthdays (which came from the west), but we would celebrate our name days as every baptized Orthodox Cristian receives a name after a Saint. In Serbia, we also celebrate our family Holy Protector. We've been passing that tradition from generation to generation and by somebody's last name you can tell which Saint Protector the family celebrates. We also read akathists which I believe is common in every Orthodox church. We also wear a rosary bracelet which is traditionally made of wool colored in black.

I continue to be astonished by how impeccable your English is! And you explain things better than most native speakers (of which I am one).

So elegant it is to dress modestly and cover the hear in a beautiful way.

I am evaluating Orthodoxy and you did a great job with the 2 lists you made. I found this very, very helpful. Answers some questions, yet provoked new ones.

I am new to Orthodoxy and to say it's been interesting would be an understatement,lol! I would love a video of what you do in your home differently as an Orthodox Christian!

I recently learned that we seem to make the sign of the cross differently in each church. We Ethiopians use 2 fingers, the middle finger bent (which we do to make a cross with our fingers, and I've heard others say that the bent middle finger refers to how Christ condescended to our lowly state). Loving this introduction to our Armenian brothers and sisters❤

bowing to God 41 times every day I go down on knee while praying. that's how we practice in Ethiopia Orthodox

Yes please keep making videos about Orthodox Christianity. I would love to learn more.

very informative Sona! Thank you for your clear explanations. Yes a video about Orthodox home practices seems like a good idea.

Thank you, Sona! I was baptized into the Orthodox Church in June, and am so grateful. Glory to God!

I have loved these videos. part I was so inspirational. Although I am not orthodox, so many of the things you do were inspiring for me to introduce into my own home. Thank you for sharing your faith with us.

Yes I would also appreciate an at home video. We are recently converted and I would like to know more about Orthodox education for children.

Thank you for your video, I am a life long Catholic, though I pray ultimately for a reunion of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.... now, just a clarification of purgatory... Sins that have been confessed do not contribute to purgatory... in contrast, venial sins that have not been confessed and for which no penance was done are what gets a person in purgatory.... If you are not sure what a venial sin is... it is essentially a sin done without malice for God, think of a child lying because they would get in trouble with their parents for eat candy before dinner.. is it a sin to lie? Sure, but does the child bear the full responsibility? No. Also, I would point out that while we do believe that Mary was conceived immaculately, while we differ on the notion of the meaning of Original Sin... the idea is that Mary received Christ's Grace at conception so that she could be a suitable vessel as the theotokp s....

I’m very new to Orthodoxy! Thank you for sharing, would love a video on the home prayer life!

Thanks for the video! Yes, a video about what you do differently in your home would be interesting!

Please keep making more videos on this. I am a catechumen and I am learning so much from your videos. Thank you!!!

Yes would love to see the home and what you do!

Thank you, it was such interesting to hear about Armenian Church in US. I'm Eastern Orthodox from Ukraine, and by the way, we have two main churches, wich celebrate Christmas in different days: UOC in 7th January and OCU in 25th December

Thanks for another video. Now I finally understand that aspect about crossing oneself.

Greetings from an Egyptian orthodox mother. I love your content ❤

Thank you such a beautiful share❤

Thank you for this video. Very interesting!

Thank you Sona!

Please do make a video about the Orthodox home 😊

Interesting and informative!!! if possible Please make a video on each Orthodox church in detail, Please start with Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahido Church just after Armenia, thank You.

God bless ☦️🙏🏿

This was a good video. I learned a lot. Thank you 💯☦️

Excellent video, thanks very much for fhe post 👏

As a Greek Orthodox from Greece, I can say that the crucifix is not really common. I've never actually seen any Greek wearing a crucifix. I first saw this jewelry from Orthodox Syrian people. In Greece also we don't wear a veil at church. We celebrate Christmas together with the Catholics on December 25th whereas we kept the old tradition for Easter later than them.

Fantastic videos! Please make more videos on the Orthodox Church!! ❤

Just to further preface what she already said, Armenian Orthodox Church is not the EO (Eastern Orthodox). Historically the EO considers the Oriental very heretical. This is very important as many people are interested in the EO especially in America and do not know the difference. Personal opinion after reading about the military campaigns the EO approved of against the Oriental has made me extremely sympathetic to the Christians of the OO. Beautiful people That have been discriminated against especially by other Christians.

You are mistaken about the reason for why Nativity is celebrated on December 25. There is no record of this pagan "Sol Invictus" feast prior to Christianity. It is not that we moved the holiday to compete with the pagans, but rather that the pagans invented a new feast to compete with the Christians. Note also that the winter solstice in not on the 25 - it usually on the 21st or 22nd. People today, either because of an anti-Christian agenda, or simply because Greco-Roman paganism is long dead like to attribute all sorts of Christian things to the pagans. However, in the 4th Century, Greco-Roman paganism was a living religion competing with Christianity (and losing) for the hearts and minds of the people of the oikumene. It was not a static religion/philosophy at the time, and its adherents were not just content to fade away quietly. There was even an Emperor who tried to re-institute paganism as the state religion (Julian the Apostate - r. 361-63). People assume that the feast of Sol Invictus had always existed in Greco-Roman paganism, and because paganism pre-dates Christianity, they conclude that Sol Invictus also pre-dates Christianity then jump to the conclusion that the Church set the date of Christmas because of this pagan feast. It doesn't occur to them that there was a period of time when paganism and Christianity co-existed (in the sense of both existing, not necessarily getting along), and there is no reason to believe that former was not also influenced by the latter. The reason why Nativity is on the 25th is because Annunciation is on March 25th. It is possible to calculate the date of the Resurrection because we know that Jewish Passover is on 14 Nissan, and this led the Church to conclude that in the year Christ was crucified, 14 Nissan began on a Thursday evening (because we know that the Last Supper took place on a Thursday evening). The Church was therefore able to calculate that the Friday on which Christ was crucified was March 25. There is a pious Jewish belief that prophets enter and leave the world on the same day; applying this to Christ, if Good Friday was March 25, then the Anunciation was also on March 25. December 25 is nine months after March 25, so that was the date set for the feast of the Nativity. One holiday that might have been set on a day of a previously existing pagan feast would be Halloween. Certainly, contemporary Halloween traditions owe much of their flavor to the Celtic pagan feast of Samhain. However, there could be as more pedestrian reason for this. Originally, the Feast of All Saints was celebrated in the West on the Sunday after Pentecost, as it still is in the East, so why was it moved? It is possible it was moved to encourage people from the countryside to go to Church since they would be in the cities to sell the fruits of the harvest - the harvest having occurred sometime in September or October. It is safe to assume that the countryside held on to paganism longer than the cities because the word "pagan" itself comes from the Latin word "paganus," meaning "rural" or "rustic." If all these people from the countryside were going to be in town anyway, why not use the opportunity to evangelize by celebrating an important, non-geographically specific (individual saints die somewhere in particular and the Pope would have wanted a feast that was relevant to people regardless of where they were from) feast in impressive fashion. Obviously, the dates of the feasts having to do with Christ's life, and that of feasts derived from those feasts couldn't be moved, but All Saints could. Note also that the feast itself is the Feast of All Saints on November 1. The word Halloween reflects its connection to this feast - All Hallows (i.e. saints - sacred - hallowed, like "hallowed ground") Even (evening - the day before). The Latins then made a special important feast for the souls of the faithful departed, All Souls Day, and reasonably connected it to All Saints Day by placing it the day after (in the east, special feasts for the dead are spread out to several Saturdays during the Triodion and Pentecostarion periods). It is therefore also possible that Halloween's occurrence with Samhain is a lucky accident. As for celebrating Christmas and Easter on different dates than the West, there is a reason for this as well. Note first, that on the Julian Calendar, Nativity is also celebrated on December 25, but is 13 days after Western Christmas because the Julian and Gregorian calendars are not in synch with each other. By the 14th Century, scholars in Constantinople had realized that the date prescribed as the vernal equinox, June 21, was falling behind the astronomical equinox. There was an effort to reform the calendar to get these back into alignment, but the guy who was tasked with doing this, Nikephoros Gregoras, ended up on the wrong side of the Hesychast controversy, so his work was not adopted. A couple centuries later, when the Pope Gregory XIII of Rome wanted to reform the calendar for the same reasons scholars in the West came up with a solution, and thus we have the Gregorian Calendar. The problem is largely due to leap years. The earth completes its orbit around the sun in 365.24291 days. This is roughly 365.25 days, so the Julian Calendar has a leap year every four years. Because this is not exact, however, by the late 16th Century, this had resulted in a drift of 10 days. The Gregorian Calendar has a leap year every year in which the year date with the number 4 as a factor, but not if 100 is also a factor, but if 400 is a factor, it remains a leap year. The new calendar was put into effect (in Catholic countries, anyway) in 1582, in which October 4 was followed by October 15 that year, thereby eliminating the drift and allowing the new calculation to keep the date of September 21 in line with the astronomical equinox. In 1600, 1700, and 1900, therefore, it was a leap year on the Julian Calendar but not on the Gregorian Calendar, leading to 13-day difference in the 20th Century. However, the year 2000 is divisible by 400, so it was a leap year on both, meaning that the difference will remain 13 days for the rest of this century. All of this matters because the Vernal Equinox is important for calculating the date of Easter. The formula set forth at the Council of Nicea is that Pascha will be celebrated on the first Sunday, after the first full moon, on or after the Vernal Equinox, defined as March 21. The Council also prescribes that we are not to celebrate Pascha "with the Jews." It seems in the West, they took this to mean that 14 Nissan is irrelevant to the calculation; in the East, it means that Pascha may not be on 14 Nissan, and if it is, Pascha is bumped back a week. Both the East and the West use this formula, but because they are working from different days dated as "March 21," the dates can coincide, be off by a week, or be off by around a month. If the first full moon (also determined by formula, not by actual astronomical observation) falls after both Gregorian and Julian March 21, East and West will celebrate Pascha on the same day, unless this day falls before 14 Nissan on the Jewish Calendar, in which case they will be off by a week. However, if the first full moon occurs is the (currently) 13-day period between Gregorian March 21 and Julian March 21, then that full moon is not actually on or after March 21 on the latter, meaning that the first full moon will be the next one, roughly a month later, and so the celebrations of Western Easter and Orthodox Pascha will be off by about a month.

Thank you for these videos! I really appreciate your explanations of some of the unique Orthodox practices, and I also as a Latin Catholic appreciate your update about the Immaculate Conception at the end. I in no way want to try to convince you of our belief, but I would like to clarify that we believe the Holy Mother was preserved from sin through the death and resurrection of her Son; His saving work reverberates throughout time and eternity which is how we believe she could be preserved by His work even before the Passion occurred. It's as though she was washed in the waters of baptism from the moment she began to exist; we see this as making her more, not less, human, because a full and whole humanity is holy and obedient to God. Certainly the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception would not make sense without a theology of original sin. I've never thought about the significance of the locations we touch as we say the name of each Person of the Trinity - the Sign of the Cross is so beautiful and it's so important not to take it for granted but to notice every bit of meaning and symbolism.

As a traditional Roman Catholic I really enjoy listening to your synopsis of your acts of Faith and reasoning. Thank you soo much! Iv always wondered about the ways you celebrate and venerate the Sacraments. And I was under the impression that Orthodox did not go to Confession on a regular basis and thought it was a rarity! Relieved to hear that it is not. Maybe I thought this because you dont have Confessionals... lol idk. The 2 most popular differences that I was aware of were 1. the Filoque 2. Purgatory - just as you made obvious. While I completely understand that you have firm belief in your teachings, I beg to ask : 1. As to how you come to believe that the Holy Spirit does not come from BOTH the Father and Son? It just does not make any logical sense to me as to how such a strong Faithful could conclude that the Holy Spirit does come from the Son as well? Most obviously because we know without any possible doubt that our Lord is the MOST HIGH and sits at the Right Hand of the The Father therefore there is no possible way for the Holy Spirit to proceed only from The Father if they are enthroned together.. It just does not make any sense to me whatsoever how this could be an argument or cause of debate. Because we both know without doubt that The Father is in The Son and the The Son is the exact same representation as the Father. Moreover, the Son only does the Will of the Father... therefore there is no way in my perspective that the Holy Spirit only resides/comes forth from the Father - AND it is because they are ONE. It would be as though The Father is keeping secrets from Iesu to logically conclude that the Holy Spirit only proceeds from ABBA. Does this reside with you in any manner? 2. Purgatory for Catholics in general, not just Roman Rite, is same as the Tolls as taught by Orthodox in my perspective. I see no differences. Otherwise, there would be no need to pray for the Dead because their Souls would be maturely developed and they would be able to ascend after Death. So while I understood your take on things, your use of different definitions/terms to explain them, they are still the same. And while I won't beg to differ on teachings of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Mother, I just need to emphasise that, NO, as Roman Catholics, we do not believe Mother Mary is/was 'Immaculate' in flesh as you mentioned. We believe The Lord formed her soul to perfection so that HE could reside within her during conception/conceivement. Also, so that she could spiritually acknowledge HIS divinity and be able to relate to HIS mission/teachings/practices etc. We do not believe she could have ascended without HIM and/or HIS sacrifice either... To conclude, we heartily believe in Angel Gabriel, being that she was truly "Blessed" among women because her Soul was Immaculately created... specifically for Iesu!

If Orthodox don't believe in original sin, but do believe that Mary was sinless, then why would Mary need salvation?

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine just recently switched to the Gregorian Calendar. The Ukrainian church was granted autocephaly in 2018, which has lead to schism between Moscow and Constantinople.

I am looking into different forms of Christianity and appreciate this informative video. However, you may not be right about Dec.25th being chosen to replace a pagan holiday. It is exactly 9 months after the annunciation, which was celebrated by the ancient church. Ancient Faith ministries has a good blog post that addresses this and other arguments sometimes used to label Christmas pagan.

Can you explain what you mean by not crossing legs?

What advice do you have for people who cannot attend orthodox (what is it called?) services?

Did you had the blessing of your Father to speak on youtube about Orthodoxy?

Which Orthodox Church do you attend?

Non voglio risultare sgarbata, ma non ho ben capito la dottrina sull'aldilà: voi Ortodossi credete solo nel giudizio universale o anche in quello particolare come noi Cattolici? Se credete solo in quello universale, non credete nel purgatorio e credete che la santità si raggiunga solo nella vita terrena, allora perché pregare per le loro anime? Voglio dire, se una volta defunti, le nostre anime aspettano il giudizio universale così come prospettato in Matteo 25, quindi sono già destinate o all'inferno o al paradiso e tutto ciò che abbiamo fatto sulla terra ha già determinato la salvezza o la pena eterna, è inutile che i vivi preghino per noi. Anche noi cattolici preghiamo per i morti, ma per le anime di quelli che stanno in purgatorio, per abbreviare la loro permanenza lì; non per quelle che stanno già in Paradiso né per quelle che sono già all'Inferno, perché né le une né le altre ne hanno bisogno. La mia non vuole essere una critica della fede ortodossa per difendere a tutti i costi quella cattolica, è solo una ricerca di conoscenza genuina, perché vorrei capire veramente qual è la Chiesa più fedele agli insegnamenti trasmessi dagli Apostoli. Ti ringrazio se troverai il tempo di rispondere o se mi indicherai le fonti o le risorse per trovare queste risposte. P.S. Anch'io non condivido totalmente la dottrina sulle indulgenze e il fatto che anche pentendosi e confessando tutti i peccati mortali non si vada direttamente in paradiso. Condivido invece che se si muore non in peccato mortale, ma non totalmente in grazia di Dio, allora possa essere necessario un periodo di purificazione prime di accedere al Paradiso (Mt 5, 25-26)

I have good Greek Orthodox friends. We agree on so much. What separates the East from the West is, I believe that we Western Catholcs had to deal with the Heretical Protestants. There was no Reformation in the East. So, you stayed pure, we got tainted. We had to react, and we're tainted by it. But we still have Catholic beliefs. I shall remain where I am, but let us be friends as we are brothers and sisters in Christ.

I am a Catholic who is dejected and considering orthodox. What can you tell me?

Girl, get yourself a good mic. Put down some carpet for those reflections.

Why are you not saying that you belong to the Armenian Orthodox church which Belongs to the Oriental Orthodox church (non-Chalcedonic) and is different from Eastern Orthodox Church. Because obviously you are confessing a different style of Holy Trinity whcih the Other churches sees that a bit heretical.

In addition to this, as an orthodox chrstian, as Saint & apostle paul wrote, it is better to cover your Head & most of your body with an appropriate cloth properly, Even when you make this kinde of video too.

Armenian or Syrian are not otorhodox!!!!!! Where did you learn about Orthodoxy???????