I got my first Beauty First Films Liturgical Seasons calendar in 2023. And it was such a joy to use, having the whole liturgical season laid out before me. I just got my 2024 calendar and I'm even happier. The photography in this calendar is phenomenal. The Summer Saints spread is particularly lovely. And the mood of the seasons is reflected in the photos too--the movement to the dark interior of the Decani Monastery for the Church Year spread is excellent, for example, as is the red Pec Patriarchate church on the Path to Nativity. Highly recommend using this calendar to walk yourself and your family through the church year!

This is a quick read, but is so rich you'll want to read it multiple times.

I first read through this book after being received into the Church. Initially, I felt overwhelmed by the whole idea of fasting. This book helped give me some solid recipes to build off of and they are ones I still use regularly. Even just ideas liked eating smoked oysters were not things I really thought about since I didn't grow up with this diet. There's a lot of good information in this book in addition to the recipes. I definitely recommend this over just looking through vegan recipes online or in cookbooks. Those can leave you feeling really overwhelmed and do not have the same goal or mindset.

Behold the Great Light is a wonderful daily devotional to help us prepare for our Lords Nativity. The book is a collections of Contemplations brought together by some of the names that any Ancient Faith Publishing fan would be familiar with. Authors like Fr. Basil Aden, Fr. Stephen De Young, Fr. Stephen Freemen, Brandi Willis Schreiber and many others this devotional is truly a gift. Each Author takes a week through the Nativity Fast to Theophany. Each Chapter has a Scripture quote, a reflection from the author, and a hymn our prayer. The book is an easy read, yet has some deep reflections. Most chapters take less than 10 minutes to read. It was a joy to review this book and it will be one of my daily readings from now on during this Fast of our church. I highly recommend this book for all Orthodox Christians and anyone who has a need for spiritual fulfillment during this period of our Liturgical calendar. Do not fail to add this one to your shelf of Orthodox readings.

Review of “The Lord of Spirits” book:

I loved this book, but to be honest, I bought it mainly because I like to support the ministries of Fr Andrew and Fr Stephen since they’ve done so much to help me on my spiritual path. I fully expected this to be a re-hash of the podcast, which would have been just fine. What I got instead is a book I would proudly give to anyone who struggles with seeing why the Orthodox tradition is so different than any other type of Christian tradition they’ve ever encountered.

This book has dragons and sea monsters, Titans and Beowulf, but what I loved about it is the simple, practical insight into how participating in physical activities changes us for better or worse. Actions, even very simple actions, change our minds and hearts much more dramatically than emotionalism or intellectual arguments, but even more importantly, these actions change our culture, our civilization. Civilization is a product of religious participation, this is something archeologists are learning as they dig up the past, but it’s something we’re all seeing before our eyes today as the civilization we live in becomes increasingly divided.

This book could have been titled “the power of participation”, (although that’s a terrible title) because the history of human spirituality, from ancient Göbekli Tepe right up until today, has been about people actively participating in one story or another. Civilizations were formed FROM this participation, not the other way around, and this is something that has surprised the secular world in the last few decades. Places like Göbekli Tepe were first religious centers, then cities. The religion, or worship, or ritual came first, then the culture and civilization. The spiritual comes first, then culture. The worship, the ritual, the myth, the stories of the gods that people interacted with, formed them, shaped them spiritually, and this in turn formed their cultures. If you participated with gods who were immoral or violent, you and your whole culture became that way too. If you’ve read Tom Holland’s book Dominion, you’ll already know how much Western civilization was transformed by Christianity.

Maybe history is not your thing, that’s okay, because this book brings this down to where the rubber meets the road. Say you couldn’t intellectually “believe this or that” therefore you dismissed religion; this is a question faced here in the West so often where we have been trained from birth to think religion is about believing a set of propositions. What Fr Andrew brings out so clearly in this book is this: religion was never centered on thoughts or the intellect. That doesn’t mean that the intellect has no place in religion, but it was never the focus of religious activity. Religion has always been focused on the actions that people did, not the thoughts that they argued about. Religion as practiced throughout the world in every culture, was defined by active participation with a god, or many gods though ritual, it was literally communion with the spiritual by sharing in a communal practice like a ritualized meal. This physical participation united the worshipper with the object of his/her worship and it also united him/her to the community they lived in.

This idea that religion is a physical participation instead of a mental exercise is a much bigger deal than it seems at first glance. To someone, like me, who has come from a Protestant background, seeing faith, worship, religion as something to participate in, first and foremost, then trusting that this participation itself will transform my thoughts and beliefs, instead of the other way around, has been a concept that has been hard to get a hold on for me. I’m learning more and more, by experience since becoming Orthodox. I’m seeing for myself how participation in prayer, in giving, in liturgy is changing me in ways I’ve never been able to change myself by the force of my willpower alone. Of course, I’m never going to stop pursuing the intellectual side of this, but that side of things never helped me as much as participation has.

When we help someone, when we pray, when we give, we are literally participating in the energies of the Lord and at the same time, we are actively driving the demons away from ourselves and our world. Our participation opens our lives up to the power of the Holy Spirit to transform us in ways we could never do on our own. Communion with the Lord Jesus Christ and our fellow man allows us to reoccupy the territory around us and drive out the evil spiritual powers that plague our world.

I highly recommend this book for those of you who struggle with faith from an intellectual perspective and have let your doubts stop you from going to church. This book will help you see how participation in a community by actively practicing charity, prayer, and fasting have always been the historic path to the spiritual world. It is the way into that world that’s open to anyone who is willing to take part in it physically, regardless of intellectual doubts. I also recommend this book for Orthodox people who have family members and friends who don’t understand why our church is so different. This is a well written book that will go a long way to answer their questions.

What a wonderful book! It can be a great gift for Christmas, but also for a baptism of a child!! It's a great book for Sunday School as well, the size of the book is pretty large and it has beautiful pictures, each page has a few sentences and you can keep it short, but it can also be a great chance to open discussions. Like for example, the book starts with the questions who do we say we are when people ask us about our faith, what do we tell them and then each page says a few words when and where did our faith start and about our spiritual family tree, the saints and gives example of the saints, who were regular people, like teachers, doctors, mothers, etc. and at the end of the book, there's a glossary about these saints, a short description of their life. Simply wonderful! Highly recommend it!

In this newest devotional from Ancient Faith Press, 8 Orthodox authors have written seven short meditations that can be read on each of the days from the Nativity fast through Theophany. The book opens with writings from Fr. Stephen Freeman, and is closed with another Father Stephen, De Young.

The authors give their reflections on both the spiritual importance and the calendar correlation for this season of Orthodox worship. A sampling of my favorite meditations include: December 8th “Turning Eastward” by author Brandi Willis Schreiber. Her imagery pulls the reader inwards creating space to imerse. I also very much enjoyed the December 17 reflection called “wonders unfolding” by host and author Elissa Bjeletich Davis. It hit home as a busy parent who while often full of wonder, gets distracted with the pulls of anger or resentment. I think the authors have been well paired with the topics, for instance Laura S Jansson, Nov 28, writes about St Elizabeth and pregnancy (she is a doula and childbirth educator). Dr. Nicole Roccas writes about despair, suffering, also grief and pain (Sunday after the Nativity, Dec 28, Dec. 30).m, a topic she has written on in her other publications.

Chapters are short enough to read in about 15 minutes. Each meditation begins with a scriptural quote and concludes with a relevant hymnal text (from vespers, matins, and troparion/kontakion of feast days) relating to the date or topic. Some chapters focus on a specific Saint (St John the Forerunner, St Elizabeth, and St Spyridon are examples) and other chapters focus on feast days (Protomartyr Stephen, The Holy Innocents, Circumcision of Christ) or scripture (Luke 1:38, Ezekiel 44:1-3, and Isaiah 9:5-6) that relates to the coming of Christ.

What I like about the format of this Nativity devotional is that I can easily read a chapter or two after my kids have gone to bed. I also like the reminder of both scripture and hymns that relate to each of the meditations. Some of them are more familiar than others, and those that aren’t have certainly been helpful in reminding myself of the importance of this season.

When You Give is a concise but rich encouragement to all Christians about the discipline of almsgiving.
Letendre does a great job of challenging the reader without discouraging them.
He breaks down how and why we give, and then provides practical (although not necessarily easy) advice.
I think the best part of this book is the brevity. Almsgiving can be a bottomless subject to address, but Letendre does a fantastic job of distilling the principles and practices of Christian almsgiving into a digestible and useful work.
I definitely recommend this for anyone interested in Christian perspectives on giving!

Many books on giving are coupled with a (possibly) veiled comment to encourage readers to give to a cause. This may one of the first books I have read that give a wonderful theology of giving. This book does a great job of informing and challenging the reader, not to give money to a cause, but to search the depths of your heart to grow closer to Christ through the ascetic of almsgiving. At 72 pages, it can be read in a short time and all would do well to take the time to help grow in understanding this fundamental and oft forgotten principle of almsgiving.

Once again, L. Joseph Letendre has given a helpful, easy to read, manual for a particular element of the Christian life. Just like the previous volumes in this series, When You Pray and When You Fast, When You Give offers thoughtful answers to the philosophical questions of who, what, how, to whom, and why to offer alms, while also giving eminently concrete and simple-to-implement suggestions. After situating the work of almsgiving as part of being fully humane and human, he offers clarity on the role of tithing within the whole spectrum of Christian almsgiving.

While this is addressed to an Orthodox Christian audience, it could be helpful to any Christian hearing God's call to become more generous. Also, while it is an excellent read for an individual, particularly during the seasons of the Church set aside for spiritual renewal (Advent/Nativity Fast, Lent, and the other fasts of the Church), it could be used well in a parish book group setting. It is short and a fast read (note: I also listened to the audiobook, which is a quick 1-1/2 hours), but both deep and practical without being difficult to understand.

Like Mr. Letendre's previous books, this is one I look forward to re-reading.

I bought both the new and old calendar versions (my parish switched to old calendar in 2023). Very pleased with the calendars. I have bought these each of the last several years.

This book is hands down the greatest resource for new converts that exists right now. It lays out in plain English why Orthodoxy is so different from western Christianity, and how to understand the frame of mind of Orthodox Christians. I have been recommending this book to literally all of my friends interested in Orthodoxy and will be buying extra copies so I can lend and gift them to inquirers. Absolutely incredible work that Im sure I will be reading again and again during my journey. For $22, this book is a steal.

Great book. Would be even better if it comes in a pocket size version.

Very nice assortment
Those that receive our cards always enjoy them

It is simple, effective, and beautiful! Only issue is the fact that it has a dip at the bottom that the incense or charcoal can sometimes fall into.

This little book will benefit nearly everyone. Those new to the faith will have a guide to prayer, while others will be reminded and strengthened. It’s a helpful and very pleasant read.

I'm evangelical-background. I found this book to be an engaging window into lived Orthodoxy (vs. also helpful written accounts of Orthodox theology on Ancient Faith and other sources). It's one of probably about 5-10 books in my lifetime that I've "binge-read", being reluctant to put it down. All the stories were engaging, and the ones that stick with me the most are those about the honest canniness of Father Nathaniel and Abbot Alipius, the humility of Father John Krestiankin and "the prodigal bishop", and dedication of Father Raphael and Mother Frosya. So many different people, but images of the same God.

I'm a thoughtful protestant, considering how much more clearly I see God when I read Orthodox authors. What a blessing to meditate with Fr. Stephen Freeman on the reality of God's presence and a one-storey world

Explanations are age-appropriate. The activities are varied, interesting, and accurate. I'm very happy with this purchase. Using it with children in grades 3-6.

I was given this as a gift. The pictures are beautiful. I love the grouping by seasons. It will help me get the big picture of the liturgical season.