About this episode
This episode discusses the theme of waiting in life and its connections to the Gospel and Orthodox traditions.
We spend a lot of our lives waiting. And it can be really tough. We’re waiting for justice. We’re waiting for, I don’t know, an appointment at ICBC or something like that. We’re waiting for the fruition of some sort of hope. And what we see in the Gospel reading today is, well, a lot of waiting. It begins, of course, with Mary and Joseph. Mary has been waiting 40 days. She’s had a firstborn son under the Levitical law with its categories of clean and unclean. She was unclean for a time, with these categories understood as being connected to moments of, well, lack of bodily integrity, shall we say, but also also connected to the significance of some of those moments. And in this case, it’s a fairly significant moment. She’s just given birth to her firstborn son, and having given birth to a son, she now waits 40 days, which is the time of her purification. Interestingly, in the Levitical law, the period of purification after giving birth to a girl was 80 days, while we, as Orthodox Christians, retain the custom of giving the woman 40 days off from church when she has a baby, whether it be a boy or a girl. I suspect that’s because the Levitical law, with its categories of clean and…
People in this episode
Host: Fr. Justin (Edward) Hewlett
Topics covered
- waiting
- justice
- purification
- Christianity
- Orthodox tradition
Keywords
- waiting
- justice
- purification
- Mary
- Joseph
- Orthodox
- Levitical law
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: ICBC, Orthodox Christians, Levitical law
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