Really beautiful book👍🏼

I received a review copy from Ancient Faith Publishing in exchange for my honest review.

Ever since I first heard the story of St. Eustathius and his family, about 10 years ago, I have been intrigued by these saints. When I read saints’ lives, I often lament the lack of detail that has come down to us. It’s so much easier to connect with saints as real people, part of the “great cloud of witnesses” who are cheering me on, when I can know some of the vivid details and twists and turns of their real lives. When it comes to St. Eustathius’s family, I can really connect with their story and see it as a source of strength for my own.

Before reading Gabriel Wilson’s graphic novel, The Cross and the Stag, I was concerned that it might extrapolate and add details to St. Eustathius’s life that would fictionalize it. However, I was quite pleased to observe that all of the events were very true to what I knew about St. Eustathius, and any dramatizations felt like realistic interpretations of the story.

The members of this holy family are commemorated for the faithfulness that they all maintained amidst their trials, despite separation and loss. Reading about them was perfect timing for me, as I am facing my own difficult time and having a great need to hold onto my faith despite adversity. It was definitely God’s plan, through the intercessions of His saints, that this book should come to me right now.

I love that St. Eustathius’s wife received the name “Theopiste” at her baptism. This name means “faith in God.” What an interesting name for someone whose faith was going to be severely tested beginning soon after her baptism! I think that if my name were “faith in God,” it might feel a tiny bit easier to hold onto that faith. I’m so glad that I can pray and ask for St. Theopiste’s intercessions, and that I can imagine how she is cheering me on to keep practicing trust in God’s plans, confusing as they may seem. In her own life, she was separated from her husband and sons for years, and yet she clung to God. I want to be like that, firm enough in my knowledge of His goodness that no circumstances can shake my belief in Him.

While I am not someone who is typically drawn to graphic novels, I was immediately attracted to the cover of this one, and I wasn’t disappointed. Overall I thought the art was very well done and helped to bring the story to life.

So, I highly recommend The Cross and the Stag, the first in Ancient Faith Publishing’s new series Among the Saints, and I am looking forward to the next one!

As a transplant from Evangelical Protestantism, I grew up in a tradition that chased a vision of the Early Church and was known to somewhat fetishize Jewish practices. Entering the Orthodox Church four years ago, I was impressed with the continuity of worship, and latched on to the oft-repeated meme that “Orthodox worship hasn’t changed.” When I agreed to review this book, I was hoping it would provide the evidence that Orthodox Christianity was essentially just first-century Jewish worship with a Christological core, thereby proving to my Evangelical friends and family that the Orthodox Church was really what they were looking for all along. Coming at it with that mindset, I was disappointed (and that probably serves me right).
Orthodox Worship is really two short books. The first hundred pages trace the history of worship and its development (Yes, Orthodox worship has developed) from pre-Christian times. Throughout the book, the discussion comingles the practices of worship with the spirituality of worship. The second hundred pages offer a look at the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, from start to finish.
This book is not simply the facts and figures of Orthodox Christian worship (as I had mistakenly imagined); the text is filled with spiritual wisdom that directly relates to praxis and shows that how we worship collectively directly influences how we worship individually.
The text is written to appeal to the average Christian, and the authors remain cognizant of the fact that many readers will not be familiar with Orthodox Christian practices. They quickly dispel the myth that Orthodox Christian worship is changeless, as they focus on the idea that it is timeless.
My only criticism of the work is that I wish it delved deeper into some of the historical facts about Jewish temple worship. There are citations within the footnotes, but I occasionally found myself wanting just a little more information or justification, but not enough to go track down and slog through another (probably less accessible) work. For example, Chapter 2 mentions “Baptism was also present in Jewish religious practice as a personal repentance for sin.” I wish they had explored the Jewish understanding of baptism, and how this understanding was transformed to the Christian model. There is, unfortunately, no index to see if maybe this was explored elsewhere in the text and I just missed it.
The last half of the book (that works through the current form of the Divine Liturgy) made me wistful for the more ancient practices that are touched upon. So much of why we do what we do is obscured by the current practice. E.g. the little entrance, which used to include all the people processing into the church with the Gospel and the Gifts, has been reduced to the clergy exiting the sanctuary and quickly returning, in an action reminiscent of a cuckoo clock. There is still theological symbolism to be gleaned, but it is much less obvious in the current form.
I did gain some practical, liturgical knowledge. (For example, in processions and entrances, the members of importance come at the end.) Mostly, I gained a deeper understanding and appreciation of Orthodox Christian worship, both public and private, and a deeper gratitude to God for leading me to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

I could guarantee if parents would love their kids, read to them from the Word, follow this book and Dazzling Your Children with the Love of Jesus their children would turn out into excellent people. The world needs more of this and so do parents and children. I'm reading it to my teens as part of Home Ec and Family Sciences for when they become parents.

As a Sunday School teacher I’m using this book as the main textbook for teaching the Divine Liturgy this year. I feel that the activity suggestions are extremely helpful.

I am an Evangelical Presbyterian pastor who has learned a lot from Eastern Orthodoxy. This is one of the best treatments of the subject of the atonement that I've read. Seeing the atonement in the light of the incarnation is a needed corrective to the tendency'endemic, I'm sad to say, among evangelical Protestants'to separate the death and resurrection of Christ from His incarnation. I am eagerly awaiting the next volume of Fr. Reardon's trilogy.

Perhaps I’m not the only mother of a child who struggled to read, nor the only to find that graphic novels, comics, and Big Nate style hybrid books were part of the key to helping such a child to ease into reading, spurred on by visual story to decode the text that would give the key to understanding.

When I met the author of The Cross and the Stag, Gabriel Wilson, at a writer’s conference, I was intrigued by his project with Ancient Faith, the Among the Saints Series. Graphic novels with beautifully rendered illustrations that tell the stories of our beloved saints? I immediately thought of my newly-illumined eleven year old son and how much he’d appreciate this way of learning about the saints.

The Cross and the Stag tells the story of the life of St. Eustathius, his wife, and two sons through their conversion to Christianity, their seemingly insurmountable trials and tests of faith, and their martyrdom circa AD 118-126. I had heard his story before, but somehow seeing it illustrated placed and grounded my imagination into the scene, the horrors he faced as he lost all that he held dear were inescapably before my eyes, indelible as ink.

As a mother raising six children, I am so incredibly grateful for every tool available to teach my kids about the heroes of our faith. Finishing the book in one sitting, my eleven year old wrote out his thoughts, among them: “Never give up God, even in the hardest times. It’s hard for me to find God when I miss a playdate or something, but St. Eustathius lost his cattle, servants, grain, and got his wife taken away from him. He thought his kids were dead, but he kept praying to God.” What a powerful example of perseverance for all of us to aspire to!

Great prayer book.

Great prayer book.

There is a line, towards the end of the ninth chapter in this collection of informal talks by Abba Matta, that captures what I love about him: I am neither a preacher nor a professor. I am simply a traveler on the road, pointing out the steps I have trodden and say "Come, let us go together and walk upon the way the fathers have shown us." This is exactly what he does. He was a pharmacist who felt called to leave his profession and worldly life to pray, and he ran to the desert and did so. He had never read the bible in full before becoming a monk, and he realized this was a failing and set about to correct it. These talks are the fruit of his study, and he is happy to share with all of us what his years of study taught him.

The sections on the Psalms are particularly compelling.

Who should read this book? Big Box Store Evangelicals who don't know that there is a contemporary and compelling Christian witness in the desert - that there is a suffering Christian witness that say following Christ is hard but you have to do it anyway.

Also, Eastern Orthodox Christians. My church is not in communion with Matthew the Poor's church, the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church. Reading from and learning about the great spiritual masters in these other Orthodox churches, I hope that it will help heal the schism between us and that one day our bishops will right this great wrong.

This isn't a traditional bible study. It doesn't dive in with a verse by verse interpretation. What it is, instead, is a chapter by chapter pastoral review of the book.

He reflects on each chapter a number of different ways - each very valuable. He comments on why the information matters within the story of the Jewish people. He connects the narrative to the New Testament, both by looking forward from the text of Numbers as well as at those passages in the NT that look back at Numbers. He ties the message to how we should respond to it in our contemporary lives.

There are also a few addendum essays interspersed within the book. The essay comparing Job and Moses I found to be particularly compelling.

Numbers isn't the book of the bible that any of us would call a favourite, but the rules and regulations, as well as the journey through the desert itself, have a huge impact on later books. Being familiar with the contents of Numbers helps illuminate those later stories.


This is a good guide to read along with a personal study of Numbers.

There is a line, towards the end of the ninth chapter in this collection of informal talks by Abba Matta, that captures what I love about him: I am neither a preacher nor a professor. I am simply a traveler on the road, pointing out the steps I have trodden and say "Come, let us go together and walk upon the way the fathers have shown us."

This is exactly what he does. He was a pharmacist who felt called to leave his profession and worldly life to pray, and he ran to the desert and did so. He had never read the bible in full before becoming a monk, and he realized this was a failing and set about to correct it. These talks are the fruit of his study, and he is happy to share with all of us what his years of study taught him.

The sections on the Psalms are particularly compelling.

Who should read this book? Big Box Store Evangelicals who don't know that there is a contemporary and compelling Christian witness in the desert - that there is a suffering Christian witness that say following Christ is hard but you have to do it anyway.

Also, Eastern Orthodox Christians. My church is not in communion with Matthew the Poor's church, the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church. Reading from and learning about the great spiritual masters in these other Orthodox churches, I hope that it will help heal the schism between us and that one day our bishops will right this great wrong.

One of my favorite prayer books!! I take this prayer book everywhere with me and the prayers to the Theotokos are so beautiful and so pertinent and reassuring to read in this present day of age. Thank you for publishing this gem of a prayer book!!

Great reminder that God is completely in control. Everything that happens to us both good and bad is for our salvation. God is love. Very short but very powerful message.

Very practical but also with theological explanations. I am also going to read some books by Schmemann on death - O Death Where is Thy Sting and The Liturgy of Death.

What really drew me to this graphic novel was the cover art, it promised an interesting story of faith & conflict and it delivered. I thought it was faithful to the Saint's story. I really appreciated the final pages of the graphic novel that showed actual icons of the Saint with his family and their Troparion & Kontakion. It's a great way to connect the lives of the Saints to popular culture in the form of a graphic novel.

It is very unique and has beautiful prayers.

Really enjoyed this book.

Perfect! I love it!

Beautiful icon and nicely made