Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America

Rome has a succession of bishops and Peter.

In the Orthodox Church, the Antiochian succession comes from Peter.

That's one of the identifiers of the true marks of the church, of the four.

Apostolic, not just meaning generically apostolic teaching, but the entire apostolic deposit.

also say, this is why we have to have community.

In our church, we have the Antiochian women.

And so, I'm sorry, when you have Antiochian women events, many of them could be events that we invite the teen girls to.

Mm-hmm.

Because they need to watch.

So we formed a friendship and so forth.

And that ministry from the Archdiocese has grown.

So it is a ministry that now has chapters in a great many places.

It is growing.

And so his two books, I'm sure you can find them online.

Steps of Transformation by Father Meletios Weber.

He is a priest of the Antiochian Archdiocese.

And like I said, he wrote that book On the Steps a long time ago, and it's still, it's a classic.

But one thing you get, I think especially if you...

In the, in the Antiochian Orthodox tradition that's kinda based in Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian Orthodox, they tend to be more familiar with religious liberty because they were all brought down to the same level.

There were two other Christian churches and then eventually three when the, uh, when the Roman Catholics showed up, and they were all placed on equal level.

Whereas before that, they had been kind of favored by the Byzantine government.

So, um... [sighs] Anyways, what I wanted to say, I really [chuckles] did not wanna get emotional at all, but Father Athanasius was a great man.

And, uh, I saw that the An- [sighs] the Antiochian Archdiocese actually put something out, um, as a memorial to him.

And, uh, I'll just tell you a little bit about what we know in regards to, uh, his passing, him reposing.

Now, Father Athanasius, um, he had, he had been having trouble lately, uh, just getting around.

He is survived by his daughter, Deborah, six grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

He was fondly known by them as Papaw.

[lips smack] His Eminence, Metropolitan Saba, the bishops, the clergy, and the faithful of the Antiochian Archdiocese express their love and sympathies to the family and friends of Father Athanasius.

May his memory be eternal.

And there's a precedent for that in some ways.

And Metropolitan Philip in the Antiochian, that was his policy for a long time.

I know that's changed in some ways too.

So again, I, the church has flexibility.

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the YouTube channel.

Today we are at St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church with Theophan.

I asked them, I said, "Give me your most Frank-like person." If you watch the channel, [laughs] there's a guy named Frank that loves to do church tours, and so they said this is their version, that Theophan is in the church giving tours all the time.

He lives this, breathes this.

Mm-hmm.

What is the difference...

This one is an Antiochian-

Yeah

Correct.

So my mother, my late mother, was an Antiochian Orthodox Christian.

My brother, who is an art curator at a museum on the Columbia River Gorge, is an Orthodox Christian.

And so you can imagine that we have had-