St. Spyridon WV

09/01/2026

08/24/2026

Our St. Barbara and St. Markella Philoptochos Chapter hosted the 4th Annual WV Philoptochos Get Together on Saturday, August 22. Chapters from Charleston, Morgantown, and Weirton joined us for a wonderful day of fellowship, friendship, and sharing ideas.

Our morning began with a prayer from Fr. Stelyios, followed by Irene Sellas sharing information from the National Philoptochos Convention held this summer. After some discussion, the ladies headed to the church for a group picture before enjoying lunch together.

The afternoon was filled with each chapter sharing ideas about fundraising, membership, meeting times, and so much more. We learned new ideas, laughed a lot, and made new friends along the way!

It was truly an awesome opportunity for our chapters to bond and discuss the unique challenges and joys of serving in our small chapters across West Virginia. We are grateful for the encouragement, support, and fellowship shared throughout the day.

We ended our time together with encouraging words from Father and a blessing with myrrh from St. Nectarios.

A HUGE thank you to our Philoptochos Board for all their hard work and to Kostaki Alex for preparing our delicious meal. ❤️
It was an awesome day of fellowship and sharing!

May God continue to bless our chapters, our friendships, and the work of Philoptochos throughout West Virginia!

08/21/2026

For those wishing to pre-order, phone orders are now being taken. Contact us at (304) 624-5331.

Order online by visiting wvgreekfestival.com.

Hope to see you on Friday, September 11th!

08/15/2026

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE GOD I SERVE
Let me tell you about the God I serve. I love Him, but He will always love me more. I fail Him daily, and when I turn back to face Him, He awaits me with open arms. He helps me up, gives me courage to overcome my shame, wisdom to learn from my errors, and direction. He holds my hand tight–and I, tighter–for fear of losing this beautiful moment. How do I know He has made everything right with me? I cannot explain it. It is impossible to put into words. I just know that the simple things in life fall into place throughout my day after I invite Him into my world, and the experience of this simplicity is plain enough for me to finally see Him and touch Him amid life's complexities.

He never abandons; we do. When we have Him, we are at the summit of human existence. We find meaning. We begin to love. We begin to live. Problems remain, but in our minds and hearts, they are transformed into common challenges by which God will be glorified, and we will triumph. When I say common, I mean that God shares our hurt and pain. Why? Because God is vulnerable, for He is divine love, embodied in Jesus Christ. Think of that: God is vulnerable, because perfect love is vulnerable. But when we choose the way of love, as Christ chose self-sacrifice on the Cross, all power, all victory, all triumph is unleashed.

And we are transformed, not for the world to see but for God, the angels, and the saints to rejoice. In our vulnerability to have our love accepted or rejected, we build His kingdom within our hearts, and then outwards when two or three gather in His Name. That is why the Kingdom of God that we bless at the beginning of the Holy Liturgy in the church is the Kingdom that God is expanding into the cracks and crevices of human existence. Don't be fooled: the frail and the broken among us, under construction, are used by God nevertheless to sanctify the world. There is no greater miracle than this, because it ties in to the oxymoronic frailty and power of God in the woman and man and child who believes and loves.

Please know God adores you. He is beautiful and powerful and kind. And the Lord wants you to be beautiful and powerful and kind. The fallen world around you, the devil's playground made up of beautiful yet susceptible children, would have you believe otherwise. You are beautiful as you are. Give yourself to the Lord, so that you may believe in Him as much as you believe in yourself, so that you can love Him as much as you love yourself.

Begin to live. Begin to love. Begin with Him. There is absolutely nothing we cannot do when we come to realize He has never left our side–only that we kept our eyes shut for fear of beautiful change.

Much love and blessings to you all!

+FrDr Stel

08/06/2026

As we cross Nantucket Sound this evening, I realize that I wrote this essay 12 years ago … and it seems to never grow old. Thank you to my friend and colleague, Dr. Christy Ma, for preserving trust in my work.

THE LITURGICAL COLLECT IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN WORSHIP
(PART I OF III)
Introduction
In our modern society, much hype is often created by the media with regard to trends, fashion, technology, and similar nascent innovations. Over the course of the past few decades, clever idioms have surfaced that express how people feel about such developments. Even in religious circles, a more “culturally acceptable” language has been formed to give expression to basic credos of faith or matters of spirituality. A case in point is the familiar “talk the talk” and “walk the walk” juxtaposition, but I believe that this is simply a rephrasing of the earlier and more liturgically astute lex orandi, lex credendi or, in more generic terms, orthodoxia (esti) orthopraxia. In other words, it is not enough to simply believe in and teach the Gospel; it is as important to live the Gospel.
These categories then and the relationship between them – talking the talk and walking the walk – can be extended to the important Christian ascetic practice of prayer and specifically, prayer in the context of liturgical worship. We may “talk the talk” of Christ with one another and we may certainly “walk the walk” in following Christ and witnessing to Him before others; but how successful are we in “praying the prayers” of the Church? Due to their lofty expressivity and their obvious positioning within the typical flow of the Eucharistic liturgy, not to mention their usual silent recitation by celebrant clergy (an act not only counterproductive but contradictory to the ancient manner of offering the model for all liturgical collects – the Eucharistic Prayer), it is often difficult to pay particular attention to the sublime meaning and structure of each liturgical prayer. The sad obsession with time in executing an act possessing a timeless character has often resulted in these liturgical collects being either recited hurriedly and thus meaninglessly by the ordained celebrant or completely omitted altogether. In such a case, by excluding the ordained laity (cf. 1 Pt 2.9) completely from full meaningful participation in these prayers, the Eucharistic celebration ceases being a leitourgia, a divine “work of the people”, and is reduced to none other than a personalized rite for the clergy, or at most a rite in which individual prayers are simply heaved at God from both sides of the iconostasis without any sense of proper order or unity.
The purpose of this essay is to introduce the collect as the central component of the liturgical prayer unit in Orthodox Christian worship, to discuss in brief its biblical origins, its structure, and its fundamental role in “summarizing” or “reaffirming” the prayers of the local Eucharistic community. A final intent will be to emphasize how the liturgical collect reinforces the unity of the worship gathering.

Definition of the Liturgical Collect
The collect is the central component of the liturgical prayer unit, which is made up of: (1) specific petitions, or intentions; (2) the collect itself; and (3) the doxological conclusion to the unit. It derives from the Latin collectus, or “gathering”; more specifically, from (oratio ad) collectam, “(prayer at) the gathering.” The collect is the typically succinct liturgical prayer that summarizes the petitions (intentions) of the faithful or a specific section of the Eucharistic (or any other) liturgy. Additionally, it “re-collects” or “re-gathers” the individual prayer requests and praises of the local worshipping community and transforms them into the one united prayer of the Church. For the sake of order, it is recited by the chief celebrant on behalf of the people and never in their place. (to be continued) --- FrDr Stel

08/02/2026