How to Be an Orthodox Christian
This podcast offers an introduction to Orthodox Christian catechism. Deacon Seraphim Richard Rohlin presents a series of lessons and materials. These are used in the catechism program at St. Seraphim Cathedral in Dallas, Texas.
Episodes
Holy Matrimony: The Domestic Church [EP. 17]
Why does the Orthodox wedding service place crowns on the heads of the bride and groom, sing a hymn to the martyrs, but includes no vows? Dcn Seraphim traces marriage from its institution in Eden through the wedding at Cana and St. Paul's vision of Christ and the Church, then walks through the rites of betrothal and crowning: the rings, candles, common cup, joining of hands, and threefold processi
Glorious Manhood and Womanhood: What We Are, and What We Are For [EP. 16]
Beginning with the hymn that names the Mother of God "more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim," Dcn Seraphim asks what a human being is worth and what a human being is for. He returns to the creation of man and woman in Genesis, showing that both bear the image of God fully, share the same human nature and destiny, and possess distinct forms of glory tha
Holy Unction: The Healing of Soul and Body [EP. 15]
Around a small table set with wheat, an unlit lamp, seven cotton-wrapped wands, and the book of the Gospels, seven priests gather to do one of the oldest things the Christian Church does — and, Dcn Seraphim suggests, the single most ignored sacrament in the modern West. Beginning from the plain apostolic command of James 5 — "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church" — h
Confession: Holy Repentance and the Second Baptism [EP. 14]
Taking up the first of the Mysteries of healing, Dcn Seraphim presents Confession not as a courtroom but as a hospital — the place where the oldest human reflex, Adam hiding among the trees, is finally undone. He recovers the meaning of repentance as metanoia, a change of mind and a turning toward home rather than a religion of guilt, and distinguishes the godly sorrow "mingled with joy" from the
The Holy Eucharist (Part 2): Worthy Preparation [EP. 13]
In the second of two episodes on the Eucharist, Dcn Seraphim turns from what the Mystery is to how an Orthodox Christian prepares to receive it. He begins with St. Paul's sober warning that whoever eats and drinks unworthily is "guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" and "eats and drinks judgment to himself" (1 Corinthians 11), and draws the Church's careful distinction: no one is ever worthy o
The Holy Eucharist (Part 1): The Mystery of All Mysteries [EP. 12]
In the first of two episodes on the Eucharist, Dcn Seraphim explores what the Holy Eucharist is according to Holy Tradition: the fruit of the Tree of Life given again to the children of the new Adam, the sacrifice of Melchizedek brought to its perfection, the anamnesis of the Lord's passion, the very Body and Blood of the incarnate Christ made present by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the gif
Baptism and Chrismation: The New Birth and the Breath of Life [EP. 11]
Dcn Seraphim takes up the first two mysteries of Christian initiation: Baptism, by which we are reborn out of the waters into the humanity of the new Adam, and Chrismation, by which the Holy Spirit Himself is sealed upon us. Drawing on his own background as a former Baptist minister, he traces the two great modern misconceptions about baptism — that it is only a symbol, and that it can only be adm
Introduction to the Holy Mysteries: What's with All This Stuff? [EP. 10]
Every visitor to an Orthodox church eventually asks the same question — why so much stuff? The icons, the candles, the incense, the relics, the bread and wine and water and oil. In this episode Dcn Seraphim argues that the question itself is the wrong one, and that the Orthodox question is never "what is the bare minimum?" He diagnoses the quiet, unstated gnosticism that has shaped modern American
The Moral Life (Part 2): Sexuality, the Sanctity of Life, the Tongue, and Possessions [EP. 9]
Picking up the framework from Part 1, Dcn Seraphim applies it to the specific moral questions where the Church's teaching most visibly cuts against the assumptions of our age. He begins by rejecting the quiet gnosticism of the modern world and affirming the goodness of the body, then takes up sexual ethics at length, working from Genesis 1 and Ephesians 5 to chastity, marriage as the icon of Chris
The Moral Life (Part 1): The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Transformation of the Heart [EP. 8]
In the first of two episodes on the moral life, Dcn Seraphim works through the two great moral texts of Scripture — the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Sinai, and the Sermon on the Mount given by Christ to His disciples on a mountain in Galilee — and shows how Christ does not abolish the law given to Moses but fulfills it, taking it inward into the dispositions of the heart. The Decalogue marke
Holy Tradition: Scripture, Councils, Fathers, and Liturgy [EP. 7]
Where does all of it come from — the eastward-facing altar, the icons, the hymns, the precise theological claims woven into every prayer? In this episode Dcn Seraphim takes up the question of Holy Tradition: not a rulebook or a second Bible, but the whole living transmission of the Christian faith from the Apostles to today, the river in which Scripture itself flows. Drawing on St. Paul, St. Irena
How to Read the Holy Scriptures [EP. 6]
In this episode, Dcn Seraphim explores the Orthodox understanding of the Holy Scriptures as a verbal icon of Christ — a living encounter with the One who speaks through every page, from Genesis to Revelation. He looks at how the Church gave us the Bible, why Orthodox Christians use the Septuagint, what is meant by reading Scripture with the Fathers, and why typological reading is not an invention
Almsgiving: How to Be Like God [EP. 5]
In this episode, Dcn. Seraphim takes up the third great discipline of the Sermon on the Mount and shows why the Orthodox Church understands almsgiving not as an optional extra but as the practice by which we become like the God who gives Himself away. Drawing on Christ's teaching in Matthew 6 and 25, the Book of Tobit, the parable of the Widow's Mite, and the writings of Sts. Basil, Gregory the Th
Fasting: The Second Wing of the Christian Life [EP. 4]
Dcn Seraphim traces fasting back to the first commandment given in Eden — a commandment about food — and shows how the Fall itself was a failure of fasting, answered in the wilderness by the New Adam who refuses to turn stones into bread. Drawing on Basil, Chrysostom, John Climacus, and John Cassian, he distinguishes Orthodox fasting from dieting or self-punishment and presents it instead as the r
Prayer: The First Wing of the Christian Life [EP. 3]
Beginning with the desert story of Abba Macarius — "Lord, as You will, and as You know, have mercy" — this episode grounds Orthodox prayer in the simple act of turning toward God and asking for mercy. Dcn Seraphim moves from the definition of prayer as communion (Evagrius, Gregory Palamas, Anthony Bloom) into the Sermon on the Mount, walking phrase by phrase through the Lord's Prayer with the help
Entering the Church of God [EP. 2]
Orthodox Churches are laid out very differently from almost any other kind of church you're likely to walk into in North America. Why are there so many icons? What's with the wall and curtain between me and the altar? Why are people lighting candles? How should you stand, behave, dress, and orient yourself in Church? These are things that our ancestors took for granted -- and things that are often
Introduction [EP. 01]
Dcn. Seraphim opens the series by arguing that Orthodoxy is fundamentally a life to be lived — in the nave, at the icon corner, at weddings and deathbeds — rather than a body of information consumed on a screen. Drawing on the tradition of the martyrs and the Celtic threefold martyrdom (red, green, and white), he frames the goal of catechesis as the making of witnesses to Christ in whatever state
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