www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Wedding Ring on right hand

Dear Henri,

Very good point!

The only problem, these days, is if a woman who wants a good time with a 'safe man' then she'll actually go after a married man!

Then, at least, if our culture considers wearing the ring on the right hand a sign of being a widow/widower, if we are approached by a beautiful woman in a bar, we can actually flash our rings and say, "Sorry, been there, done that - no more!"

Seriously though, if a woman wants you, Henri (you have a French-sounding name after all), then she'll come after you, married or not.

Or else you could start up a discussion about the Byzantine tradition of the wedding ring.

Guaranteed turn off for loose women!

Alex

Alex,

I'm surprised at you, you know that we deacons do not impart blessings.

Bless, Father Deacon!

Well, you may impart a layman's blessing using three fingers, as Orthodox Abbesses do.

Bring three fingers together, then go from the top of the computer screen down to the bottom, etc. . . .

I bless everything this way and throughout the day.

I sometimes feel like blessing my wife - but I know that, in that case, I should use holy water . . .

And I have no formal theological training whatever, Father Deacon.

This is simply a passionate hobby for me and there are all sorts of gaps in what I think I know . . .

Alex

That reminds me of one of my favorite T-shirts--

"Loose women tightened here."

John

Dear Doctor John,

I'm sure you are great at healing men of all kinds of dysfunctions!

Alex

Joe Thur said: Hi Joe, good to hear from you.

It is interesting that you should mention this. I just had a letter to the editor published in America magazine (a Jesuit rag). In their November 3 edition they had an "article" entitled "Christ in the Margins" which featured "icons" of such people as Albert Einstein, Johann Sebastian Bach, and the such. My point could be boiled down to: in order for an icon to be an icon, it must portray perfection. And such perfection is only so when it is proclaimed by the consensus of the faithful. Therefore, these were merely funny pictures of influential people and nothing more.

However, the same can be said for many presumed legitimate icons. The icon of the Romanov "martyrs" (for the faith?)immediately comes to mind.

John

Well as a contrarian I think the culture can go to hell (or back to hell rather since most of it originated there these days) and we should keep our traditions. I was betrothed (and crowned! glory to God!) on the right hand in August, and thus will I keep it. If anything, it can be an evangelical opportunity to explain things to people.

Dear Doctor and Reverend Father Deacon John,

Well, the Romanov Passion-Bearers are legitimately canonized as saints by Orthodoxy - whether we like it or not - and so icons of them are made and venerated highly by thousands of Orthodox Christians (and some Eastern Catholics ).

More than 90% of all Saints in the various Apostolic Christian Churches that have the doctrine of the veneration of Saints are of a local character. If we visited the churches in which their feasts are kept, we wouldn't recognize them for their sanctity - but the people who honour them would, to be sure.

An icon of the Buddha, however, would not make much sense since the Buddha himself would have resisted any attempt to "Byzantinize" him. The same is true of John Calvin and Martin Luther, although I know "High Church" Protestants who do invoke saints and who invoke their Protestant founders.

Certainly, the Black Madonna type of icon is directly related to the image of "Mother Earth" as one explanation is that the Black Madonna represents the spiritually fertile black earth in the person of the Mother of God in which grew the Untilled Wheat Who is Christ.

Another explanation is that she represents the "Mother of Light" whose skin is darkened by being "clothed with the Sun" Who is Christ.

Alex

I wear mine (actually it is my mother's) on my left hand. This isn't a political or religious statement - I've been married almost 20 years, and it's only in the last couple of years that I heard any sort of rumor about the right hand being traditional amongst "us." I ain't gonna change now.

Fr. Dr. Deacon dear, I prefer my latest T-shirt - the one that says "Well behaved women rarely make history."

Ta,


Sharon

Dear Adam;

You are obviously younger than I. I agree with Alex that before you even get "Byzantine" completely out of your mouth, the eyes of the unwashed begin to glaze over, they dart back and forth looking for the most convenient escape route, and a cucko-clock at the stroke of 12 appears above their heads.

To Sharon;

Just to be clear, it wasn't my T-shirt.

To Alex;

I like the cult of the local saint. After all, they are the people directly touched by the various saints' lives. I am not real fond of our ongoing habit of making saints out of men who actively persecuted anybody, let alone other Christians.

Perhaps we should beatify only well-behaved women for awhile.

John

Dear Doctor John the Deacon,

Yes, the five patron saints of Sicily are all women.

Our tour guide told us that is because all the men are . . .mafiosi!

The local saint is truly very precious and I think the Pope has affirmed this by his many local beatifications - he recently beatified an Italian couple, but for veneration to be limited just to the City of Rome (as Bishop of Rome etc.).

I believe the next step for the RC Church is to return to the tradition of allowing the local bishop or bishops' conference to beatify their local saints for veneration in their own jurisdictions - as obtains in the Orthodox Church.

The local bishop may still canonize a miraculous image of the Mother of God or other saint - and this is really no different from a local canonization.

The vast majority of saints in the Roman calendar were, in fact, locally beatified and Rome, in many cases, simply placed them into the calendar after ascertaining the nature and period of time of local veneration.

In Greece, there are saints who are honoured as such in the view of one village alone - and perhaps in the view of the next. And that is where the local veneration stops.

Recently near Kharkiv, a floor in a monastery opened up by accident and the relics of a holy nun, long forgotten, were revealed - the Ven. Pelagia. Miracles are now being recorded and her local veneration has started up once again.

A similar thing happened on the Greek island of Chios where the family that owned the island started getting dreams about the martyrdom of certain individuals.

These dreams actually led them to a place where three saint-martyrs were once honoured annually on Bright Tuesday - Sts. Raphael, Nicholas and Irene.

Raphael and Nicholas were tied to trees facing each other by the marauding Turks. They put a tree saw to Raphael's mouth and sawed through to the other side . . . Nicholas had a heart attack watching this martyrdom of his Father in Christ.

Irene was the daughter of the mayor of Chios and she was boiled alive in oil - they found the cauldron in which she died and the relics of all the Saints.

The iconographer Kontoglou visited the island and wanted to write an icon of the newly revealed Saints.

And he did so on the basis of powerful dreams he too had while on the island . . .

Dreams concerning the nun St Olympias began to occur and when her life and veneration were ascertained, she too is now honoured with the above three.

Alex

Andata tutti a'f****lo!

Siciliani uomini sono molto religiosi! (Ok, jk...that's not true, at least judging from my male Mafia relatives!)

Logos Teen

Alex,

Actually, the patron saints of Sicily include St. Nicholas of Myra, St. Andrew Avellino, St. Albert of Trapani, St.Calogero, St. Ciro the Money-less Doctor, St. Joseph, and St. Michael the Archangel.

Many years,

Neil

Alex,

In regard to the local cult of saints, one of the things I like most being Byzantine Catholic is our usurpation of everyone else's saints. We don't much care if the saints were proclaimed so by the Orthodox or the Romans, if we like them, we will venerate them.

John

Dear Neil,

Yes, not Sicily, but the city of Palermo in Sicily. It has five women patron saints, as our priestly tour guide explained.

Alex