The Catalog of Good Deeds

We have received an email from someone which goes as follows:

"Hello,

I was just wondering if you could give me your opinion on a question about entering into the monastic life.

If one was married in the past and had a child, and now the two are divorced and she re-married and he has not can he enter the monastic life? Become a monk?

Thanks for your time! God Bless you!"

Here is our understanding of the matter.

We assume that you live in the United States. You are subject to U.S. civil and criminal law as a citizen of the state in which you live. Hence, whatever you do religiously, you are subject to the civil and criminal laws of your jurisdiction. The matter is the same, with the necessary changes, for whatever legal jurisdiction you live in.

Assuming that there is no impediment in regard to civil or criminal law—for example a court order concerning child support or some other matter—then according to the tradition of the Orthodox Church and Orthodox canon law (as far as we know; we are not an expert in Orthodox canon law), there is no impediment to your becoming a monk having been once married, having fathered a child and then having been divorced.

However, the question would arise of the status of your marriage in the eyes of the Orthodox Church. This is especially true if you originally married in the Orthodox Church but obtained a civil divorce. Historically, the Orthodox Church has treated the monastic tonsure as dissolving an existent marriage, and without the consent of the spouse, but it is doubtful whether today any Orthodox jurisdiction would apply this principle without an investigation of the particular situation. This is a matter you would have to discuss with the senior members of the Orthodox jurisdiction to which you presently belong.

There is also the question of the welfare of the child—whether you have any legal or spiritual responsibility that would interfere with your becoming a monk in a particular monastery. This is again something you would have to discuss with the senior members of your Orthodox jurisdiction.

The next problem is that to become a monk in the Orthodox Church, you have to become a monk in a specific monastery–there is no such thing as an Orthodox monk of nowhere in particular. But that means that the superior of the monastery and possibly the council of senior monks of the monastery would have to be satisfied with your bona fides. They would make their own assessment of you and your marital history. Normally, a monastery is not obliged to accept any particular postulant so this will be an assessment independent of whatever the senior members of your jurisdiction decide. However, if the senior members of your jurisdiction have decided that you have an impediment then the monastery would normally acquiesce and refuse you. This phase of personal assessment will vary from monastery to monastery and jurisdiction to jurisdiction and country to country. We could only suggest that you discuss the matter with the superior of the monastery which you are interested in entering.

Finally, both the senior members of your Orthodox jurisdiction and the monastic superior together with the senior members of the monastery will want to assess the significance of your marital history for your personal psychological and spiritual condition with regard to the possibility of your entering the monastic life and of remaining in that state until death. There is no dispensation from vows in the Orthodox Church.

Hence, there is no theoretical impediment to your becoming a monk per se, but both the ruling bishop and the monastic superior would have to judge the merits of your particular case before you could receive permission.

Source: https://orthodoxmonk.blogspot.com/2008/12/can-divorced-man-become-orthodox-monk.html

And the child grew, and waxed strong

in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the

grace of God was upon him. (Luke 2:40).

We know almost nothing about the early years of our Savior’s life. Holy Evangelists don't say anything about it, so it might have been God's will for the earliest years of Jesus Christ to remain hidden. The silence kept by canonical Gospels led many religiously unstable people in the first centuries of the existence of the Holy Church to concoct fake stories about our Savior's childhood. The stories are teeming with nonsensical miracles and evident inventions of their authors, which serves to confirm that they're fake and have no bearing on the genuine Church tradition.

Uninformed minds and hearts always yearn for miracles, and the more miracles they hear about, the better. People like those have a hard time accepting the simple words of Evangelist Luke, And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him (Luke 2:40). That's all there is! The Lord came into the world not to perform countless miracles but rather to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28).

This is why we have no idea of the early years of Jesus's life: it has nothing to do with our salvation. The Lord lived like a human child, hiding His Messianic dignity and divine nature from people and waiting until He finally made Himself known and began His redemptive ministry.

Jesus is God, so how could He grow up and wax strong in spirit? How could He become filled with wisdom, given that God already possesses full knowledge and perfection? That’s what Saint Cyril of Alexandria, a great saint, a pillar of Orthodox faith and a Doctor of the Church, responds to these questions:

“To say that the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him, must be taken as referring to His human nature. And examine, I pray you, closely the profoundness of the dispensation: the Word endures to be born in human fashion, although in His divine nature He has no beginning nor is subject to time: He Who as God is all perfect, submits to bodily growth: the Incorporeal has limbs that advance to the ripeness of manhood: He is filled with wisdom Who is Himself all wisdom. And what say we to this? Behold by these things Him Who was in the form of the Father made like unto us: the Rich in poverty: the High in humiliation: Him said to "receive," Whose is the fulness as God. So thoroughly did God the Word empty Himself! For what things are written of Him as a man shew the manner of the emptying. For it were a thing impossible for the Word begotten of God the Father to admit ought like this into His own nature: but when He became flesh, even a man like unto us, then He is born according to the flesh of a woman, and is said also to have been subject to the things that belong to man's state: and though the Word as being God could have made His flesh spring forth at once from the womb unto the measure of the perfect man, yet this would have been of the nature of a portent: and therefore He gave the habits and laws of human nature power even over His own flesh” (Exegesis on the Gospel according to Luke).

We know of precisely one story from the life of a twelve-year-old Jesus accounted of in a canonical Gospel. The story goes that Saint Joseph the Betrothed and the most holy Virgin Mary were on their way home after celebrating Passover in Jerusalem. They were thinking that Jesus was traveling with His other relatives but He wasn’t. They had lost the young Jesus in Jerusalem. They had to return and spent three days looking for Him until they finally found Him in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. (Luke 2:46-50).

His response implicitly communicates the fact that He is extremely close to the Heavenly Father because the Jews never dared to call God “my Father”. If they had to use the word Father to indicate God, they would always say Our Father or Our Father in Heaven.

Mary and Joseph, like other disciples of Christ, didn’t understand His words and actions during the first years of His ministry up to the point at which the Savior finally accomplished the purpose of His coming to the world. The Lord poured out the Holy Spirit on the great day of the Pentecost on His disciples and apostles, laying the foundation of his Church and essentially making us the Father’s children who worship Him in Spirit and in Truth and call Him Abba, Father (See Mark 14:36).

We can figure out certain biographical facts of the Savior’s life prior to His public ministry only putatively. We read in the life of the Holy Apostle Judas, son of James, that Joseph the Betrothed decided at his deathbed to divide his land among his sons from his first marriage and Jesus, Son of Mary. However, the older brothers, including Judas Thaddaeus, vehemently opposed the father’s decision. Only James, the Lord’s brother, was inclined to share his part with Jesus. When Lebbaeus Thaddaeus (Judas Thaddaeus’ alternative name) found out that Jesus truly was the promised Messiah, he was really sorry for his past actions. The Lord later chose him as one of the Twelve Apostles but Lebbaeus, forever ashamed of his sin, never dared to call himself the Lord’s brother, like James. Instead, he referred to himself as Judas the brother of James.

Biblical scholars still argue about the lineage of Lebbaeus Thaddaeus and whether he really was James’s brother or son. Medieval authors tended to confuse him with James the son of Alphaeus. It is also dubious that Jesus could have inherited any property from Joseph. The Lord himself claimed, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head (Luke 9:58). It is hardly likely that Joseph, who was a simple carpenter from the poor village of Nazareth, had enough land to divide it among his sons. Joseph was so poor that he was allowed to bring only two doves to the Temple as the offering for Mary’s purification as prescribed by the Law of Moses.

Therefore, we should treat even those stories that we read in the lives of the Apostles clearheadedly and cautiously, especially if they contradict the Word of God somehow.

Given that the Holy Evangelists didn’t leave us any memories or details about the Savior’s childhood and adolescence years, while various narratives of the life of Jesus prior to His public ministry don’t always tally with the absolute authority of the Holy Scripture, we can safely assume that Jesus lived a modest life in Nazareth with His most holy Mother and the righteous Joseph. The Scripture says that Jesus was subject unto them (Luke 2:51). Following His own commandment of honoring one’s parents, He helped Joseph and learned to be a carpenter. Let us follow the Lord’s example and hearken to the words of Apostle Paul, Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honor thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:1-4).

By John Nichiporuk,

a Bachelor of Theology,

specialized in Biblical Studies.

The Catalog of Good Deeds, 2019

See full Nativity infographics here.

In Orthodox spirituality, we recognize two basic types of prayer: liturgical (that is, worship); and personal prayer. In our Church both of these types of prayer are understood as corporate acts — they are carried out by believers as a single body, the body of Christ.

Liturgical prayer is obviously corporate. A group of brothers and sisters in the faith gather together in one place to offer hymns and prayers to God. However, even when we pray in private, we do not pray alone. Rather, we join our voices to the countless other Orthodox Christians throughout the world who are also lifting their hearts to God in prayer at that time. Christianity is always lived out as a group, never as an isolated individual.

Liturgy and private prayer are interdependent. It is not enough for us only to pray by ourselves, because every human being has an innate need for community, a need to belong. Our liturgical worship also gives us the order and structure that we need to have stability in our spiritual lives.

At the same time, our liturgical prayer is truly vibrant and life-giving only when those present are "people of prayer" outside the services as well. Our faith is not "Sunday-only" and our prayer life shouldn't be Sunday-only either. Each type of prayer, liturgical and personal, compliments and supplements the other.

In both worship and personal prayer, structure is important. Worship services have a set structure of fixed and variable parts. Although our private prayer can be much more simple and "customized" than worship services, we still structure it as part of our daily lives. In our personal prayer life, we need to develop a habit of praying regularly at certain times during the day. This habit of regular prayer is called a "rule of prayer."

Ancient Christian sources instruct Christians to pray three times a day: in the morning, at mid-day and in the evening. In this way we keep God on our minds and hearts throughout the day — upon waking up, in the midst of our daily tasks and upon retiring for the night. This regularity is very important because, at its core, a life or prayer is a life lived in the constant remembrance of God.

The Saints teach us that our prayers should include the following four elements, in this order:

1 and 2) glorification and thanksgiving: the primary work of prayer is to glorify God and thank Him for His great blessings, both know and unknown;

3) confession of sins: we ask God for His forgiveness for when we fall short of the life that He calls us to;

4) supplication: we ask God to be merciful and grant our petitions for others and for ourselves.

This structure helps us remember that God’s blessing are giving to us not because we have earned them, but in spite of our imperfections and faults. It also helps us avoid looking upon God as a spiritual "bell boy" who is there merely to answer our requests — the last thing we do is ask for things, not the first.

Prayers do not have to be long or complicated to be effective. Some of the most powerful prayers in history have been sentences of only a few words. The Thief on the Cross merely had to say, "Remember me, Lord, in Your Kingdom", to hear Jesus' promise, "today you shall be with me in Paradise."

When trying to develop a habit of daily prayer in your life remember this: it is far better to spend five minutes each day in private devotions, than to "bank" the time and take in 35 minutes of personal prayer once per week.

By Fr. Andrew Jarmus

Source: http://orthodoxwayoflife.blogspot.com/2009/10/prayer-is-test-of-everything.html

Priest Andrew Malakhovsky, a cleric of St. Elisabeth Convent and a father of two, answers some nagging questions about parenting and education.

1. Shall we send our kids to a kindergarten (public or private) or educate them at home?

My own children went to a state-funded kindergarten and then a public school. It was in the early 2000s. Our financial standing was so disastrous at that time that people could never even begin dreaming of private kindergartens. We were happy just to have enough food on the table.

The private kindergartens that spring up in many parishes or are launched by people who know each other well are a fairly good type of preschool education. They organise a small group of children of various ages. All children stay together, and the older kids can look after the younger kids while the younger kids can follow the example set by the older kids.

Relationships in a family with many children are different. Children in such families learn to back down, make friends, or stand up for themselves. If you raise just one or two children, going to a kindergarten will improve your child’s social skills.

It’s hard to tell which way is better. It is great if you send your kid to an Orthodox kindergarten but some priests have noted that you can teach Christian values to your children even if they go to a public kindergarten.

We’re talking about raising children in a certain environment, and I’ve recalled a book titled “Tsar’s Children.” It gives an account of the role that the future Emperor Nicholas II and his brother George’s teacher and one of her sons Volodya Ollongren played in the upbringing of the young princes. We see that boys in the Imperial Family didn’t grow in isolation. They were able to fight for themselves and endure offence. They could defend others or yield to someone, if necessary.

2. What is your attitude to corporal punishments?

Speaking of the traditional approach, it’s undesirable to punish children often. You could spank your kid once or twice a year as a serious punishment, but no more than that. You should better talk with your children and try to get your point through. They’ll understand that if they are obstinate and disobedient, they’ll run into some problems. What about whims? As soon as a child gets an opportunity, he or she starts playing up. You need discipline to avoid it. The child must be aware that, for instance, we watch cartoons from 7 pm to 8 pm. You don’t have to encourage or cave in to all their whims.

3. What should we do with the rebelliousness, which is so typical of adolescents?

You should make sure that you maintain contact with your child. You shouldn’t insist on talking about controversial topics. Think of what interests them: music or some hobby. Listen to their favourite songs or make something with your hands—just be there with him or her.

Many parents are worried because their children become less interested in the faith. You must always remember that this period of critical attitude to everything will eventually come to an end. If you lose contact with your kids, you’ll have a hard time trying to bridge the gap. Children can hide their feelings, and parents will be in trouble… Your best choice is to maintain mutual understanding to the best of your abilities.

I know girls and boys who sank into a veritable abyss by Orthodox standards. And then, you see, once they turn 25, they return to the Church and start going to the services again. You see, this period is inevitable so you should make sure to set the right example to your child and show the right way to go in an indirect manner instead of imposing your point of view on them, trying to push your viewpoint at them by repeating it all the time.

You shouldn’t expect positive reactions, though. Young people of that age submit all incoming information to their personal scrutiny. They are trying to connect the dots between the facts of their own lives, their friends’ lives, or someone else’s lives that they’ve read about. They learn by real-life examples. Don’t be confident that your teenager will immediately succumb to your words. Your words will come to fruition later.

4. What should we do if a child is in trouble at school due to his or her faith?

My children had the same problem, too. I taught my son to defend himself, so no one dared to bully him for his faith. Sadly, my daughter had to experience some unpleasant moments. Other kids bullied her and didn’t want to talk with her because she attended church.

In a situation like that, your home must be a safe haven for your child. We created a peaceful environment for our daughter at home so that she could relax. We got her engaged in lots of family activities like hiking, sightseeing, or strolling in the woods. Our daughter went to music school and to a swimming pool, that is, she could switch to alternative activities. Finally, the situation at school dissolved somehow after summer vacations.

If your child says that he or she is able to endure that situation, he or she should stay in the same school. Remember those geniuses who stood out from the crowd? They weren’t happy at school, either. Weren’t many of them bullied? Situations like those teach children to forgive and foster their growth. If your kid doesn’t have friends, the time that could be wasted on socializing will be spent on creative efforts. Well, and if the situation is critical, e.g., the teacher is against the child or doesn’t do anything to bridle bullying, then you should send your kid to a different school.

5. What kind of school should we choose: a secular one or a religious one?

Gymnasia are the best schools. There is an Orthodox gymnasium in our Convent but in fact, teachers make a lot of difference, too. They have to be true Christians, and not just call themselves Christians, because it’s easy to ruin a child’s faith by a nonchalant approach.

First of all, a child gets most of his or her education and upbringing in the family. Moral purity and proper values—that’s the crux of what the family must plant and teach their kids.

St. Elisabeth Convent

December 24, 2018

Christ is born! Glorify Him! Merry Christmas!

Our family has enjoyed a wonderful Christmas, spent with extended family and friends, celebrating the birth of Christ and enjoying each other’s warm company while the cold winds blew outside.

Those of us who are converts or who married converts, will have spent some of the time during the holidays with family members who are not Orthodox. These beloved people will have come into our homes and eyed our icons nervously, looking vaguely uncomfortable when we crossed ourselves and blessed the food.

Many of us come from Protestant traditions where icons and crossing oneself and talking about Mary are very much taboo. We were raised with a suspicion that holy images and gilded grandeur have distracted well-meaning Christians from Christ Himself, replacing faith in Him with empty idol worship.

This year, my mom (who remains Protestant), stayed with us for a wonderful week and we had a great time running around with the kids and relaxing in the living room and catching up on a million great stories. We also had a long conversation about icons, which in all these years of having an Orthodox daughter still trouble my mom.

Why do we kiss them? Why do we love them so much? Aren’t we afraid that somehow the icons and the Saints and (yes, of course) Mary herself will take up so much of our attention that we will forget Christ altogether?

When I first saw an Orthodox church, I admit that I too thought, “wow — look how interested they are in all of the Saints and all of these creepy faces on the wall. They are not lucky like me to sit in an empty white room where I can contemplate Christ and Christ alone.”

It should be pretty obvious that by now I’ve not only come around to accepting icons, but in fact I love them. My home has an icon in every room, and features a gorgeous prayer corner full of beloved icons. My mom still isn’t quite sure what to make of it all.

As we sat on my couch one night after Christmas talking, our foreign exchange student from Montenegro (an Orthodox girl from an Orthodox nation) asked us about Protestantism and what that’s like, trying to understand what her classmates in her Texas public school would be thinking and doing and believing, and in the conversation I noted that they didn’t have any icons. She literally had never heard of Christians who didn’t love icons.

She was utterly confused. Why no icons? I told her that they’re concerned that you might love the icons more than God — to which she gave an incredulous gasp, totally unable to imagine how anyone could even come to such a suggestion. Not having grown up around a multitude of Christian denominations, she was trying to work it out in her head but the idea was really totally inconceivable.

My mom and I were talking the next day, and she thought it was odd that this girl couldn’t even imagine such an argument. I tried to explain it about 100 different ways. Those of you who are converts have been there, and have probably also tried many ways to phrase the same thing, always looking for a door in.

We all probably have fantasies that our families will recognize the One True Church and be joyfully baptized or chrismated into the faith, but it’s not just about conversion. It’s hard when your family is Christian and they raised you to be Christian and they just don’t understand or approve of the way that you’re doing it. It is very painful to have found the pearl of great price, only to find that your family cannot see it at all. Many of us spend a lot of energy trying to express the holy ancient faith to our parents and siblings.

In the course of the conversation, I hit upon a metaphor that I really love and which I think can be useful, both for defending the faith against critics and for teaching our kids about icons.

Old Glory, the American Flag

(or any nation’s flag, surely)

My mom is an immigrant to this country, and like many people who braved hardships to obtain citizenship in this great nation, she is an avid patriot. You should see my mom on the Fourth of July. She waves the flag like nobody’s business, and she tears up at every sentimental patriotic tune, from God Bless America to The Star-Spangled Banner. My mom loves the USA.

So I asked her,

“Mom, whenever you see an American flag do you salute it? Do you cringe when it’s treated disrespectfully? Do you take offense when it’s burned in the square or desecrated? You adore it so much that you sing songs about that flag: Old Glory and The Star-Spangled Banner and Stars and Stripes Forever. You adorn yourself in the red white and blue. What would you say if I asked you, aren’t you afraid that you are so in love with that flag that you have forgotten America? Could that question ever make sense to you?

When you pledge your allegiance to the flag are you pledging your allegiance to cotton and grommets, or are you pledging your allegiance to a nation? Are you honoring the brave men and women who gave their life for your freedom, or have you forgotten them and come to love merely a pretty piece of fabric as it flies gracefully in the wind? Is it even possible to salute the flag without saluting the nation?”

Have you ever worried that you loved the flag so much that you stopped loving America? That question doesn’t make any sense, because we are loving the nation through its flag. When we hear the patriotic songs and watch the Fourth of July fireworks, our love for the nation is rekindled; these patriotic icons are a part of reinforcing our love for country.

That’s how Orthodox icons are, and then some.

My mom’s not making an appointment for catechism classes, but I think she feels a little bit better about icons today.

Likewise, when we see the American flag burning in a protest across the globe, we understand immediately that this is an aggressively anti-American statement. Abusing our flag is a means of protest and of attack. Do we think that a person who burns the flag has burned our nation? Of course not, but we are injured and offended nonetheless. In the same way, we understand that the icon is not actually Jesus Christ or the Saint in the image — but those who attack icons are attacking the Church and Christ and His Saints. Though they haven’t harmed a hair on any person’s head, the aggression and the insult is registered. Saying that an icon is simply wood and paint is like saying that the flag is merely cotton and grommet — it is and it isn’t.

When I was in Holland a couple of years ago, I went to a church in Utrecht that was originally a Catholic Church until the Reformation, when Luther’s followers burst in and violently desecrated it. There were statues of Jesus and Mary and the Saints and Apostles and a beloved local bishop, and they came in and hacked the heads off the statues. They smashed them up with chains and with hatchets and hammers and anything they could find. There is a statue of Mary holding Jesus and both of their faces have been demolished and hacked, but the bodies remain, literally a defaced Jesus in the arms of his defaced mother. In most churches, I imagine that the damaged statues have been taken away, thrown into the dustbin of history, but in this church the statues remain as a testament to the glory of the Reformation. The people are proud of them and proud of the way that they slaughtered the statues. It’s really troubling. Of course, we don’t have statues in Orthodox Churches, but we know how to look at an image and understand that it is somehow tied to the person it represents. When I see an icon of Christ I see Christ, and if someone desecrates the icon I know that they’ve attacked Christ. When these people beheaded statues, it felt like they were attacking Christ and His Saints and His Mother. The place looked like a gory battlefield with dead Christians all over it, like the scene of a massacre (and indeed, many living Christians were hacked up on that day to be sure.) I suddenly understood: the Reformation was violent.

While it’s not the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, the feast of our Lord’s Nativity, His Incarnation, is a good time to consider icons — for it is His incarnation that made Him visible in human form, made Him an appropriate subject for iconography. Indeed, His very presence as human flesh sanctifies human bodies and all of the material stuff of creation — which means for us that paint and wood can be sanctified, that the stuff of this world can be made holy.

On the Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan website (goarch.org) you’ll find the following text from the Vespers for the Sunday of Orthodoxy:

“Inspired by your Spirit, Lord, the prophets foretold your birth as a child incarnate of the Virgin. Nothing can contain or hold you; before the morning star you shone forth eternally from the spiritual womb of the Father. Yet you were to become like us and be seen by those on earth. At the prayers of those your prophets in your mercy reckon us fit to see your light, “for we praise your resurrection, holy and beyond speech. Infinite, Lord, as divine, in the last times you willed to become incarnate and so finite; for when you took on flesh you made all its properties your own. So we depict the form of your outward appearance and pay it relative respect, and so are moved to love you; and through it we receive the grace of healing, following the divine traditions of the apostles.”

“The grace of truth has shone out, the things once foreshadowed now are revealed in perfection. See, the Church is decked with the embodied image of Christ, as with beauty not of this world, fulfilling the tent of witness, holding fast the Orthodox faith. For if we cling to the icon of him whom we worship, we shall not go astray. May those who do not so believe be covered with shame. For the image of him who became human is our glory: we venerate it, but do not worship it as God. Kissing it, we who believe cry out: O God, save your people, and bless your heritage.”

“We have moved forward from unbelief to true faith, and have been enlightened by the light of knowledge. Let us then clap our hands like the psalmist, and offer praise and thanksgiving to God. And let us honor and venerate the holy icons of Christ, of his most pure Mother, and of all the saints, depicted on walls, panels and sacred vessels, setting aside the unbelievers’ ungodly teaching. For the veneration given to the icon passes over, as Basil says, to its prototype. At the intercession of your spotless Mother, O Christ, and of all the saints, we pray you to grant us your great mercy. We venerate your icon, good Lord, asking forgiveness of our sins, O Christ our God. For you freely willed in the flesh to ascend the cross, to rescue from slavery to the enemy those whom you had formed. So we cry to you with thanksgiving: You have filled all things with joy, our Savior, by coming to save the world.”

By Elissa Bjeletich,

a mother and Sunday school director

in Austin, Texas

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/raisingsaints/old-glory-icons/

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