Mother Alexandra has put together a wonderful, well researched guidebook* to aid in understanding and comprehension of the true meaning of holy angels to the faithful. She reminds us that, although we can never fully understand them, we do acknowledge they came from our Creator, as we state in the Nicene Creed “Maker of all things visible and invisible”.
She takes great care to gently help you in understanding how far we’ve strayed from understanding these heavenly hosts of God, which is in opposition to the infantile cherubs we see in today’s commercialism. Holy angels transcend time and space and therefore “are beings without form”. They only take a visible intangible human form when they are fulfilling God’s will ministering to people. Also, there are tens of thousands of them divided into hierarchies depending upon their position of the many tasks they oversee.
Mother Alexandra, then continues to explain their presence throughout all Scripture, theology, and how their invisible presence has a direct effect on our lives daily. She is so comprehensive in her explanations, there may be time you may question its association with the topic at hand. Rest assured, she ties the evidence or proof together with each aspect of the church, as well as connecting the past, present and future. This guide will truly help guide you to greater familiarity and understanding of these precious beings giving you a greater affinity and appreciation for all they do in our lives to connect us with God.

*This is a review of Fifth Edition published in 1985

I got the audiobook version of this, firing it up for my daily walks. How to measure its value? Besides the good Father's southern charm mixed with his good-natured zeal for the Orthodox Christianity he converted to from a Baptist upbringing, consider that I found myself losing weight as my walks extended beyond the usual half-hour to hours, so delighted, amused, illuminated, and encouraged in my own Ancient Faith journey did I find myself.
Fr. Joseph can spin a modern-day tale somewhere between a flight of imagination-go-off-the-rails and a parable to sneak in personal revelation hidden in the luggage of humor. In doing so, he exposes the foibles of ethnocentrism in the faith exhibited by some "cradle Orthodox," as well as self-righteous, sometimes judgmental zeal of new American converts.
He's not afraid to strip away such surface human cultural and ecclesiastical embellishments to get to the core of the faith, Christ and the perpetual work of salvation, even as he yearns for the day when there will truly be an American Orthodox Church birthed from the faithful immigrant foundations laid in the New World by Greeks, Russians, Slavs, Arabs, Africans and other.
So, get this book, in print, ebook or audiobook. Laugh and learn, about the faith given once and for all 2,000 years ago . . . and yourself, on the road to union with the Lord of All.

This is my third of fourth pocket prayer book. I've given one away, got one wet, and so on. Small enough to take with me whenever I travel. I wouldn't be without one.

Beautifully illustrated and covers all aspects of prayer

Anyone who has experienced real suffering in their life will appreciate this book. Sometimes catastrophes bring clarity ' something very hard to see or even believe when you are going through it ' but God is good even if the suffering comes by our own hand. How He is good is something that the author discovered and explains very well.

Wonderful! It is an essential prayer book for Orthodox Christians.

I've read two other books by Matthew the Poor- (Words for our Lives and Words for our Time) and this one is a little different than the others. It is a set of essays, rather than transcribed talks. What is lost of the intimacy from the talks is more than made up for in the robustness and thoroughness in the essays presented here.

The focus in this book is on being a Servant of Christ and His Church. And to be a christian servant, the focus is on service in love, as love. And it's hard.

This book is a challenge- it challenges those of us who like to read books and fill our heads with Christian ideas, but filling your heads with Christian intellectual knowledge is not the same as filling your heart with Christian service. He challenges us to pray, fast, read the scriptures and the patristic fathers, and to put God and others before ourselves.

There are long sections on various stumbling blocks of the Christian life, and these are written with the wisdom that comes from having witnessed them - Abba Matthew has seen people go astray, even when they think they are serving the church, and his warnings are worth heeding.

I'll come back to this book again, in a couple of months. It is full of hard and practical advise, and after I've lived with it a few months it will be good to re-explore.

Beautiful !! 😇

Compassionate and inspiring. As an Orthodox convert with same sex attraction, this book for me offers insight, wisdom and support in the mind of our faith.

I’ve heard a lot of great things about Fr. Barnabas Powell's writing. Friends and co-workers tell me that his subjects are interesting and his writing style is easy to follow without talking down to the reader. In those respects, this book does not disappoint. Each page consists of a scripture reference, a title and subtitle, a little illustration or commentary on the scripture, and an encouragement for the reader. If these sound like something you could use to help you give a little more thought to the scripture readings of the daily lectionary, you may really enjoy this book.

I found it a little bit shallow for me, and the illustration / commentary sections were not as clearly connected as I would have liked, sometimes skipping from topic to topic in what seemed to me to be a random fashion. I'm afraid I really felt like the encouragement for the reader could have been used to provide some great challenges or uplifting ideas, but they read very much like the old Guideposts magazine articles that I used to read decades ago, to full of cliches and religious terminology to be very helpful.

For example, the "Today" portion for Matthew 9:36-38 where Jesus says the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few reads as follows: "Do you have the spiritual maturity to govern your use of time to align with eternal priorities? Let's use the precious, dwindling gift of time to become harvest laborers. Let's allow our Faith to truly shape our lives." So if you are hoping for quotations from the Holy Fathers of the Church or inspirational stories from the lives of the saints that connect with the scripture readings, you may want to look elsewhere. I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed reading about a man whose heart is so full of love for God and his Orthodox faith.

I like the fact that we have the leathersoft version (though I am partial to the Nelson quality bonded leather bibles) as I don't like hardcover for daily use and carrying around. 3 things I would recommend to make this a comparable bible to other Nelson ones : 1. Better line spacing to make reading easier 2) make a note-taker's version 3) Red lettering. Character studies for each book would also be beneficial. Otherwise, a lovely bible with icons, useful for prayers.

I gave as a gift..to a woman with child to be...she is reading..and has told me ,that it is the Best book she has ever read..and it is giving her much joy..and helping her in this day to day.. waiting..for the baby to arrive..+++

I first encountered the life and legacy of Father Nicola Yanney in 2016. I was learning about Saint Raphael of Brooklyn and his missionary efforts. There was an anecdote about ordaining a Syrian widower to minister to an area that spanned east-west from Wisconsin to the Dakotas, and North-South from those states at the Canadian border down to Oklahoma, and all this as a humble parish priest! More recently, I missed the opportunity to join the pilgrimage commemorating the 100th anniversary of his blessed repose. Thank God, this fantastic book is one of the items that seems to have come out of the renewed interest in his life coinciding with his centennial, and I was blessed to receive a reviewer's copy.

Fr Nicola's life is awe-inspiring and a vital piece of our American Orthodox heritage. This is the legacy of the fullness of the faith on the frontier: a widower ministering to an area greater than 600,000 square miles, taking a pauper's wages, preaching the gospel in the language of the faithful people -- both English and Arabic! -- and ultimately dying in service to those very same faithful. We see saints, hunger, illness, joy, loss, and the hope of the resurrection throughout. We even see a preview of the messy jurisdictionalism that still plagues American Orthodoxy. I want to write more about Fr Nicola's life in this review, but I could not do justice to it the way that the St Raphael Clergy Brotherhood does in this delightful volume. In short, Fr Nicola's life is sketched out in some detail beginning before his immigration to America and ending after his death. This book is a fitting tribute to a man who is undoubtedly praying for us as a saint before the throne of God, and who should be, as the title of this book implies, known by the fitting honorific "Apostle to the Plains."

As an Orthodox Christian in the upper Midwest, this account of Father Nicola's life makes plain how indebted we our to the saints who here laid the foundation of our faith, laboring in these strange wilderlands for the building up of the body of Christ and the fulfillment of the Great Commission. To any Orthodox Americans, Antiochian or otherwise, Midwestern or not, zealous or lukewarm, I highly recommend picking up this excellent book.

This book is so beautifully written and I enjoyed reading it even though I’m not pregnant right now. The author was able to connect a mothers journey to Gods truths in way that encourages one through every week of pregnancy. I want to give this is every Christian pregnant women I know! What a sacred calling we have as mothers to be co creator with God!

Excellent tool in teaching youth

Purchased for an Orthodox friend whowas my doula and has six children of her own, all home births.
She is thrilled with the book and appreciates how is supports and expands her faith.

The commentary is good, but it certainly could be developed more, especially in the Old Testament.

I enjoy seeing the icons, but the citations with URLs are sometimes broken. They should switch to permanent short URLs that they can manage.

very good. recommendation!

Such a beautiful and comforting akathist.