Fr. Justin just forwarded this blog site to me. I would preface it, but it's better just to go there and read.
www.reallivepreacher.com/node/1422
I think I know how he felt the first time he visited.
After becoming disenchanted with Christianity, or rather the churches I was attending, or rather the form of worship and lack of tradition, I began a quest to find out what happened to the original Christian church. I was constantly reminded and deeply saddened of the ongoing splintering of the Christian Churches and I was tired of listening to why this church was better than that one or this pastor was more exciting than the other. I decided to do my own research to find out, more than anything else, what had, and was continuing, to happen to the Christian churches.
I won't go into my conversion story right now, but suffice it to say that after doing research on the early church and christian history, reading my Bible, and praying, I found out that the early church was still in existence. I had to visit.
My first visit to an Orthodox Church was a Hierarchical Liturgy with our precious Vladyka Dmitri and it blew me away. While some non-orthodox see a bunch of pomp and circumstance in the liturgy, I saw, and heard, theology. Old and New Testament theology. I saw reverence, humility, love, truth, tradition. I smelled the incense. I saw burning candles, ladies with their heads covered. I heard the reader chanting the Psalter and the Epistle, the priest reading the Gospel, the choir singing beautiful songs of worship and truth, the censer tinkling. I saw beautiful iconography. I heard children crying, chattering.
It was rich and colorful. It was humbling and glorious. It was truth. It was home and I never left.
As the pastor at this blog site says, I too "loved it, loved it, loved it."
