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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Christianity > Christian worship > Christian prayer
We experience Orthodox Joy most prayerfully and powerfully during
the Divine Liturgy. Focusing on seven virtues, this book offers
practical advice for our daily journey by calling us to strive
towards living a different virtue every day. After receiving the
Eucharist with a deep and abiding joy during Mass, our most joyful
union and communion with God, we dedicate each day of the week to
these virtues: Monday, Humility; Tuesday, Purity; Wednesday,
Holiness; Thursday, Love; Friday, Longsuffering; Saturday, Prayer;
and Sunday, our return to Joy: The Joy of Orthodoxy. Deacon David
Lochbihler, J.D., celebrated The Joy of Orthodoxy on the day of his
Diaconate Ordination during the Feast of Saint Patrick in 2019 at
Saint Patrick Orthodox Church in Virginia. He also teaches fourth
grade at The Fairfax Christian School in Northern Virginia. After
graduating summa cum laude from the University of Notre Dame and
cum laude from the University of Texas School of Law, Deacon David
worked as a Chicago attorney for three years before becoming a
teacher and coach for three decades. He earned Master's degrees in
Elementary Education, Biblical Studies, and Orthodox Theology. His
varsity high school basketball and soccer teams captured four
N.V.I.A.C. conference championships. Deacon David authored Prayers
to Our Lady East and West in 2021.
Is Christian 'tradition' to be maintained as the absolute body of
truth? Can it be used selectively depending on the preferences of
individual believers? What can 'religious truth' possibly mean in
our age of opinions and overwhelming cultural diversity? These are
unsettling questions for Christians, their effect aggravated by our
daily encounter with non-western cultures and non-Christian
religions, and by the increasing presentation of secularism and
atheism as the 'normal' way of life. In Never-Ending Prayer, Bert
Hoedemaker outlines the continuing importance of tradition, while
showing that in facing these challenges our understanding of
tradition needs a 'reset'. Drawing on his own experiences of world
Christianity, he reconstructs the Christian tradition in such a way
that it no longer defines and defends itself as a specific body of
concepts and practices over against 'the world' but as a living
community originating in and remaining in interaction with
humanity's permanent struggles. It is presented as a system of
religious imagination in which prayer is the driving force and
reconciliation is seen as the destination of humankind.
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