Transfigure Baton Rouge

Mother Maria of Paris: A Saint for our Day

2009-10-05T09:56:00.002-05:00

Just happened online across this excerpt from Metropolitan ANTHONY Bloom's Forward to Sergei Hackle's Pearl of Great Price: the Life of Mother Maria Skobtsova, 1891-1945.

Infinte pity and compassion possessed her; there was no suffering to which she was a stranger; there were no difficulties which could cause her to turn aside. She could not tolerate hypocrisy, cruelty or injustice. The Spirit of Truth which dwelt in her led her to criticize sharply all that is deficient, all that is dead in Christianity and, particularly, in what she mistakenly conceived to be classical monasticism. Mistakenly, for what she was attacking was an empty shell, a petrified form. At the same time, with the perception of a seer, she saw the hidden, glorious content of the monastic life in the fulfillment of the gospel, in the realization of divine love, a love which has room to be active and creative in and through people who have turned away from all things and – above all – from themselves in order to live God’s life and to be his presence among men, his compassion, his love. ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life’: this she understood, this she lived for. This is also what she died for.

Mother Maria is a saint of our day and for our day: a woman of flesh and blood possessed by the love of God, who stood fearlessly face to face with the problems of this century.

ANTHONY
Metropolitan of Sourozh

What to Make of This?

2009-09-22T11:12:00.002-05:00

For those who still wander onto this site, please forgive the lack of posting in recent months. Much of my attention is now devoted to cultivating our mission parish, St. Matthew the Apostle Orthodox Church. Please take the time to visit with us if you have the opportunity!

The article below is a fairly calm and measured report of recent meetings that have generated all sorts of speculation. My own sense is that we may be entering a season of greater cooperation and common witness amongst Russian Orthodox and the Vatican in response to the moral decline of Europe - but any talk of "inter-communion" or a "healing of the 1000 year old schism" is vastly premature. Nonetheless, we should give thanks for the opportunity to explore renewed contact and pray for the courage to be steadfast in the faith and open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. - Fr. M

Will the "Third Rome" Reunite With the "First Rome"?

By Robert Moynihan

WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPT. 21, 2009 (Zenit.org)- Sometimes there are no fireworks. Turning points can pass in silence, almost unobserved.

It may be that way with the "Great Schism," the most serious division in the history of the Church. The end of the schism may come more quickly and more unexpectedly than most imagine.

On Sept. 18, inside Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's summer palace about 30 miles outside Rome, a Russian Orthodox Archbishop named Hilarion Alfeyev, 43 (a scholar, theologian, expert on the liturgy, composer and lover of music), met with Benedict XVI, 82 (also a scholar, theologian, expert on the liturgy and lover of music), for almost two hours, according to informed sources. (There are as yet no "official" sources about this meeting -- the Holy See has still not released an official communiqué about the meeting.)

The silence suggests that what transpired was important -- perhaps so important that the Holy See thinks it isn't yet prudent to reveal publicly what was discussed.

But there are numerous "signs" that the meeting was remarkably harmonious.

If so, this Sept. 18 meeting may have marked a turning point in relations between the "Third Rome" (Moscow) and the "First Rome" (Rome) -- divided since 1054.

Archbishop Hilarion was in Rome for five days last week as the representative of the new Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.

One key person Archbishop Hilarion met with was Cardinal Walter Kasper. On Sept. 17, the cardinal told Vatican Radio that he and Archbishop Hilarion had a "very calm conversation."

Cardinal Kasper also revealed something astonishing: that he had suggested to the archbishop that the Orthodox Churches form some kind of "bishops' conference at the European level" that would constitute a "direct partner of cooperation" in future meetings.

This would be a revolutionary step in the organization of the Orthodox Churches.

Read it all here.

Pondering Hart

2009-06-12T13:33:00.002-05:00

Now that Great Lent, Holy Week, and the Great Fifty Days have transpired and we're able to breathe a bit more easily and deeply in the afterglow of it all, I'm hoping to get around to some books I've allowed to gather dust on the shelf -- among them, David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions.

This passage from the introduction has certainly whetted my appetite:

I think one must grant, though, that to communicate a personal vision one must do more than prove or refute certain claims regarding facts; one must invite others to see what one sees, and must attempt to draw others into the world that vision descries. At a particular moment in history, I believe, something happened to Western humanity that changed it at the deepest levels of consciousness and at the highest levels of culture. It was something of such strange and radiant vastness that it is almost inexplicable that the memory of it should have so largely faded from our minds, to be reduced to a few old habits of thought and desire whose origins we no longer know, or to be displaced altogether by a few recent habits of thought and desire that render us oblivious to what we have forsaken. But perhaps the veil that time draws between us and the distant past in some sense protects us from the burden of too much memory. It often proves debilitating to dwell too entirely in the shadows of vanished epochs, and our capacity to forget is (as Friedrich Nietzsche noted) very much a part of our capacity to live in the present. That said, every natural strength can become also an innate weakness; to live entirely in the present, without any of the wisdom that a broad perspective upon the past provides, is to live a life of idiocy and vapid distraction and ingratitude. Over time, our capacity to forget can make everything seem unexceptional and predictable, even things that are quite remarkable and implausible. The most important function of historical reflection is to wake us from too complacent a forgetfulness and to recall us to a knowledge of things that should never be lost to memory. And the most important function of Christian history is to remind us not only of how we came to be modern men and women, or of how Western civilization was shaped, but also of something of incalculable wonder and inexpressible beauty, the knowledge of which can still haunt, delight, torment, and transfigure us. (xiv)

Sounds promising. May God grant us the grace to see truly the incalculable wonder and inexpressible beauty of the cosmos redeemed by Christ our God. And may we open our hearts to be haunted, delighted, tormented, and transfigured by the wondrous grace of Pentecost.

Christ is in our midst!

"A Pascha of Incorruption"

2009-05-01T11:28:00.002-05:00

Christ is Risen!

Rejoice in this passage from a recently translated essay by the new Hieromartyr HILARION, available in its entirety on the blog, Ora et Labora:

"Salvation is healing. Salvation is freedom from corruption. Salvation is the return to the original goodness of incorruption, for man was created for incorruption. Man’s nature needed to be restored to health. This restoration to health was given in the Incarnation of the Son of God. “We could not have become incorrupt and immortal if the Incorrupt and Immortal One had not done so before us.” The Incorrupt and Immortal One took “my nature, held by corruption and death,” into the unity of His Person. Corrupt nature received the vaccination of incorruption, and the process of the renewal of nature began, the process of the deification of man, the formation of divine-manhood began. The sting of death was blunted. Corruption was defeated, for the antidote against the disease of corruption was given. The Pascha of incorruption brings to mind the mystery of the Incarnation. The gates of death had been impassable. All of earthly creation invariably approached these gates, hiding behind them in trepidation and horror. But now Christ is Risen! What does this mean? It means that salvation has indeed been wrought. For human nature has been united with the Divine nature in the Person of Christ, “inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.” It was not God that passed through the gates of death, it was not before God that “the bridal chamber of eternity was thrown open,” it was not for the sake of God that the stone was rolled away from the door of the grave, but for the sake of the God-Man. Our human nature passed through the mysterious gates of death along with Christ. Death reigns, but not for eternity!"

Gospodi Pomilui! Lord Have Mercy!

2009-02-07T20:24:00.001-06:00

I just happened upon this really delightful YouTube clip:

Enjoy!

February 6: Saint Photios the Great

2009-02-06T12:19:00.004-06:00

Saint Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, "the Church's far-gleaming beacon," lived during the ninth century, and came from a family of zealous Christians. His father Sergius died as a martyr in defense of holy icons. St Photius received an excellent education and, since his family was related to the imperial house, he occupied the position of first state secretary in the Senate. His contemporaries said of him: "He so distinguished himself with knowledge in almost all the secular sciences, that it rightfully might be possible to take into account the glory of his age and compare it with the ancients."

Michael, the young successor to the throne, and St Cyril, the future Enlightener of the Slavs, were taught by him. His deep Christian piety protected St Photius from being seduced by the charms of court life. With all his soul, he yearned for monasticism.

In 857 Bardas, who ruled with Emperor Michael, deposed Patriarch Ignatius (October 23) from the See of Constantinople. The bishops, knowing the piety and extensive knowledge of Photius, informed the emperor that he was a man worthy to occupy the archpastoral throne. St Photius accepted the proposal with humility. He passed through all the clerical ranks in six days. On the day of the Nativity of Christ, he was consecrated bishop and elevated to the patriarchal throne.

Soon, however, discord arose within the Church, stirred up by the removal of Patriarch Ignatius from office. The Synod of 861 was called to end the unrest, at which the deposition of Ignatius and the installation of Photius as patriarch were confirmed.

Read more here.

Follower of the Apostles' way
And teacher of mankind:
Intercede, O Photius, with the Lord of all,
To grant peace to the world
And to our souls great mercy!
(Troparion-Tone 4)

Many Years...

2009-02-01T15:24:00.003-06:00

...to His Holiness KIRILL,

Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia!

Eis Polla Eti, Despota!

By MANSUR MIROVALEVMOSCOW (AP) - A new patriarch took charge of the Russian Orthodox Church on Sunday, formally becoming the first leader of the world's largest Orthodox church to take office after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Patriarch Kirill, 62, has been a cautious advocate of change and a prominent figure in trying to reconcile with the Roman Catholic Church.

He became the 16th person to bear the title in a solemn ceremony at Christ the Savior Cathedral. The original 19th-century church was dynamited under Stalin but rebuilt after the Soviet collapse. The ceremony was broadcast live on national television and attended by President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and scores of other officials from Russia and ex-Soviet states...

(from the AP Newstory)

Olivier Clement: Memory Eternal!

2009-01-23T08:44:00.004-06:00

On the evening of January 15, 2009, the noted Orthodox Christian theologian and historian Olivier Clément fell asleep in the Lord at the age of 87 years. Clément, one of the most significant witnesses of Orthodoxy in the West in the second half of the twentieth century, was a member of the faculty of St. Sergius Institute in Paris.

Olivier Clément was born in 1921 in the south of France. He grew up a non-believer, but at age 27, under the influence of Orthodox theologians Vladimir Lossky and Nikolai Berdiaev, he embraced the the Orthodox Christian faith.
He leaves a vast collection of writings, including some thirty works on theology, Church history, and spirituality, as well as numerous articles published in "Contacts," a theological journal in which he had an editorial hand since 1959. Among his English language works are "The Roots of Christian Mysticism," "On Human Being: Spiritual Anthropology," and "You are Peter: An Orthodox Reflection on the Exercise of Papal Primacy." Two of his books were published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press: "Three Prayers: The Lord's Prayer, O Heavenly King, and the Prayer of St. Ephrem," and "Conversations with Patriarch Bartholomew I."

Clément entered into dialogue on major contemporary spiritual themes with Patriarch Athenagoras, Pope John Paul II, the Romanian priest and theologian Dumitru Staniloae, and Brother Roger of Taizé, with whom he had built trusted friendships. He was especially attentive to questions of modernity, which he sought to address through powerful and creative poetic reflection rooted in Church Tradition.

Funeral services took place in Paris on Tuesday, January 20, 2009.

May the memory the newly-reposed servant of God, Olivier, be eternal!

(from www.oca.org)

Do Not Resent...

2009-01-09T07:44:00.002-06:00

... Do Not React

... Keep Inner Stillness

This remarkable reflection on the disciplined spiritual life according to the Great Tradition of the Orthodox Christian Church is a must-read. It comes from His Beatitude, Metropolitan JONAH, who served as abbot of the Monastery of Saint John in Manton, California and who has recently been elected as Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in America.

Here's an excerpt:

When we look at all the inner clutter that is in our lives, hearts and souls, what do we find? We find resentments. We find remembrance of wrongs. We find self-justifications.

We find these in ourselves because of pride. It is pride that makes us hold on to our justifications for our continued anger against other people. And it is hurt pride, or vainglory, which feeds our envy and jealousy. Envy and jealousy lead to resentment.

Resentfulness leads to a host of problems. The more resentful we are of other people, the more depressed we become. And the more we are consumed with the desire to have wha they have, which is avarice. Often we’ll then engage in the addictive use of the substance of the material world – whether it’s food or alcohol or drugs or sex or some other thing – to medicate ourselves into forgetfulness and to distract ourselves from our resentments.

Read it all here.

On the Insufficiency of Human Strength

2008-11-10T07:24:00.003-06:00

The Nativity Fast begins on Saturday. In preparation, consider these words from Colliander's The Way of the Ascetics, Chapter 2:

The holy Fathers say with one voice: The first thing to keep in mind is never in any respect to rely on yourself. The warfare that now lies before you is extraordinarily hard, and your own human powers are altogether insufficient to carry it on. If you rely on them you will immediately be felled to the ground and have no desire to continue the battle. Only God can give you the victory you wish.

This decision not to rely on self is for most people a severe obstacle at the very outset. It must be overcome, otherwise we have no prospect of going further. For how can a human being receive advice, instruction and help if he believes that he knows and can do everything and needs no directions? Through such a wall of self-satisfaction no gleam of light can penetrate. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight, cries the prophet Isaiah (5:21), and the apostle St. Paul utters the warning: Be not wise in your own conceits (Romans 12:16). The kingdom of heaven has been revealed unto babes, but remains hidden from the wise and prudent (Matthew 11:25).

We must empty ourselves, therefore, of the immoderately high faith we have in ourselves. Often it is so deeply rooted in us that we do not see how it rules over our heart. It is precisely our egoism, our self-centeredness and self-love that cause all our difficulties, our lack of freedom in suffering, our disappointments and our anguish of soul and body.

Take a look at yourself, therefore, and see how bound you are by your desire to humour yourself and only yourself. Your freedom is curbed by the restraining bonds of self-love, and thus you wander, a captive corpse, from morning till eve. "Now I will drink," "now I will get up," "now I will read the paper." Thus you are led from moment to moment in your halter of preoccupation with self, and kindled instantly to displeasure, impatience or anger if an obstacle intervenes.
If you look into the depths of your consciousness you meet the same sight. You recognize it readily by the unpleasant feeling you have when someone contradicts you. Thus we live in thralldom.

But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (11 Corinthians 3:17).

How can any good come out of such an or biting around the ego? Has not our Lord bidden us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and to love God above all? But do we? Are not our thoughts instead always occupied with our own welfare?

No, be convinced that nothing good can come from yourself. And should, by chance, an unselfish thought arise in you, you may be sure that it does not come from you, but is scooped up from the wellspring of goodness and bestowed upon you: it is a gift from the Giver of life. Similarly the power to put the good thought into practice is not your own, but is given you by the Holy Trinity.

Bishop HILARION's Saint Matthew Passion

2008-09-23T12:34:00.002-05:00

I just came across this brief, six minute sample of His Grace, Bishop HILARION of Vienna's St. Matthew Passion - what a delight!

Lord Have Mercy... Gospodi Pomilui...

2008-08-08T21:12:00.002-05:00

According to the Washington Post, among other news sources, Russian and Georgian military forces clashed in the separatist province of South Ossetia on Friday, with Russian tanks and troops pushing in after a Georgian assault on the disputed area.

Significantly, this report has been posted on Interfax:

Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia urges parties in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict to show wisdom and sit down at negotiating table.

"I learned about armed clashes in Tskhinvali and its localities and I urge the opposing parties to cease fire and renew the dialogue," Alexy II's statement is quoted by the Moscow Patriarchate's official website.

"Today blood is shed and people are killed in South Ossetia and my heart deeply laments over it. Orthodox Christians are among those who have raised their hands against each other. Orthodox peoples called by the Lord to live in fraternity and love confront each other," the Church primate stresses.

Referring to the appeal of Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia who urged to peace, Patriarch Alexy also turned his "ardent call" to those "who are blind with enmity": "Stop! Don't let more blood shed! Don't let today's conflict boil over! Show wisdom and courage: come to negotiating table to respect traditions, outlook and hopes of Georgian and Ossetian people."The Patriarch has stated the Russian Orthodox Church is ready to unite its efforts with the Georgian Church to help peace come.

"May Our God, Who is "not a God of disorder but of peace," be our Assistant in it," Alexy II's statement says.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: Memory Eternal!

2008-08-04T12:21:00.004-05:00

"It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations."

The renowned novelist, dramatist,and historian Alexandr Solzhenitsyn reposed on Sunday, August 3. Through his writings, he made the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet labour camp system, and for these efforts, Solzhenitsyn was both awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 and exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He returned to Russia in 1994.

Solzhenitsyn followed in the slavophile tradition of Dostoevsky, deeply criticial of Renaissance and Enlightenment developments in the West which came to support a radical individualism at the expense of public virtue. Over the years, his life and thought became increasingly shaped by Orthodoxy. For a number of years during Solzhenitsyn's exile in the United States, Fr. Alexander Schmemann served as his father confessor.

May his memory be eternal!

UPDATES:

For more commentary, consider Daniel Larison's post here.

And also the fine post by Andrew Cusack, available here.

2008-07-28T07:59:00.001-05:00

There is much wisdom in this passage from a recent article by Fr John Breck:

As it is used in patristic tradition, "watchfulness" implies an inner attentiveness or vigilance. It requires wariness in the face of attacks from both within and without, from our worst inner impulses and from the onslaught of demonic temptations. Accordingly, watchfulness is a key element in spiritual warfare.

The eighth century ascetic writer Hesychios of Sinai composed a remarkable treatise on "watchfulness and holiness," included in the Philokalia. He begins with this description: "Watchfulness is a spiritual method which, if sedulously practiced over a long period, completely frees us with God's help from impassioned thoughts, impassioned words and evil actions. It leads, in so far as this is possible, to a sure knowledge of the inapprehensible God, and helps us to penetrate the divine and hidden mysteries. It enables us to fulfill every divine commandment in the Old and New Testaments and bestows upon us every blessing of the age to come. It is, in the true sense, purity of heart..."

Read it all here.

Bishop HILARION on the Faith of the Fathers

2008-07-14T14:14:00.003-05:00

The works of the Fathers are not a mere museum exhibit, just as the “patristic faith” should not be understood as only a heritage of past centuries. The opinion that the holy Fathers are the theologians of the past is quite widespread nowadays. This “past” itself is defined in varying ways. According to some, the patristic age ends in the 8th century with St John of Damascus’s Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, summing up several centuries of theological dispute. Others situate its end in the 11th century with the final schism between the first and the second Rome , or mid-way through the 15th century, when the second Rome , Constantinople, fell, or in 1917, with the fall of the “third Rome ”, Moscow , as the capital of an Orthodox empire. Therefore a return to “patristic roots” is conceived as a return to the past and the restoration of the 7th, 15th or 19th century.

This point of view must be rejected. In the opinion of Fr. Georges Florovsky, “The church is still fully authoritative as she has been in the ages past, since the Spirit of Truth quickens her now no less effectively than in the ancient times;” therefore it is not possible to limit the “patristic age” to one or other historic era. A well-known contemporary theologian, Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia states, “An Orthodox must not simply know and quote the Fathers, he must enter into the spirit of the Fathers and acquire a “patristic mind”. He must treat the Fathers not merely as relics from the past, but as living witnesses and contemporaries.” Bishop Kallistos does not consider the patristic age to have ended in the 5th or 8th century; the patristic era of the church continues to this day:

Indeed, it is dangerous to look on “the Fathers” as a closed cycle of writings belonging to the past, for might not our own age produce a new Basil or Athanasius? To say that there can be no more Fathers is to suggest that the Holy Spirit has deserted the church.

Hence the confession of a “patristic faith” not only implies the study of patristic writings and the attempt to bring the legacy of the Fathers to life, but also the belief that our era is no less “patristic” than any other. The “Golden Age” inaugurated by Christ, the apostles and the early Fathers endures in the works of the church fathers of our days, to last as long as the church of Christ will stand on this earth and as long as the Holy Spirit will animate it.

- from a paper, "The Patristic Heritage and Modernity" delivered at the 9th International Conference on Russian monasticism and spirituality, Bose Monastery (Italy), 20 September 2001

Fr. Georges Florovsky on Pentecost

2008-06-13T23:10:00.003-05:00

The Church is one. This does not merely mean that there is only one Church, but that the Church is a unity. In it mankind is translated into a new plane of existence so that it may perfect itself in unity in the image of the life of the Trinity. The Church is one in the Holy Spirit and the Spirit "construes" it into the complete and perfect Body of Christ. The Church is predominantly one in the fellowship of the sacraments. Putting it in another way, the Church is one in Pentecost, which was the day of the mysterious foundation and consecration of the Church when all the prophecies about her were fulfilled. In that "terrible and unknown celebration" the Spirit-Comforter descends and enters the world in which He was never present before in the same way as He now begins to dwell. Now He enters the world to abide in it and to become the all-powerful source of transfiguration and deification. The bestowal and the descent of the Spirit was a unique and unrepeatable Relevation. On that day, in a moment, an inexhaustible source of living water and Life Eternal was disclosed here on earth.

Pentecost, therefore, is the fullness and the source of all sacraments and sacramental actions, the one and inexhaustible spring of all of the mysterious and spiritual life of the Church. To abide or to live in the Church implies a participation in Pentecost.

Moreover, Pentecost becomes eternal in the Apostolic Succession; that is, in the uninterruptibility of hierarchical ordinations in which every part of the Church is at every moment organically united with the primary source. The lines of power proceed from the Upper Room. Apostolic Succession is not merely, as it were, the canonical skeleton of the Church. Generally speaking, the hierarchy is primarily a charismatic principle; that is - a "ministry of the sacraments," or "a divine economy." And in this capacity precisely the hierarchy is an organ of the Catholic unity of the Church. It is the unity of grace. It is to the Church what the circulation of the blood is to the human body. Apostolic Succession is not so much the canonical as the mystical foundation of Church unity. It is associated with the divine rather than with the human side of the Church. Historically the Church remains actually one in its priesthood. It is precisely by this Apostolic uninterruptibility of successive ordinations that the whole Church is bound into a unity of the body from a unity of the Spirit. And there is only one way and one approach: to draw near and to drink from the one spring of life, once revealed.

The peculiar function of bishops is to be the organ of Apostolic Succession. The bishop differs from the priest in his power to ordain, and in this alone. Nor is this only a canonical privilege and only a power of jurisdiction. It is a power of sacramental action beyond that possessed by the priest. In the celebration of the Eucharist the bishop has no precedence over the priest and can never have it, for the priest has full power to celebrate, every priest being primarily appointed for the purpose of offering the Eucharistic Sacrifice. It is as the celebrator of the divine Eucharist that the priest is the minister and the builder of Church unity. The unity of the Body of Christ springs from unity in the Eucharistic meal. But in addition to this the bishop has his own particular duty in the building up of Church unity, not as the offerer of the Bloodless Sacrifice but as the ordainer. The Last Supper and Pentecost are inseparably bound up with one another. The Comforter descends when the Son has been glorified in His death on the Cross. But still they are two sacraments which cannot be merged the one into the other.

The same applies to the two degrees in orders: the bishop is above the priest and it is through the episcopate that Pentecost becomes universal and eternal. Moreover every particular Church through its bishop, or, to put it more exactly, in its bishop, is included in the Catholic fullness of the Church as a whole. Through its bishop it is linked up with the past and with antiquity. Through its bishop it forms a part of the living organism of the Body of the Church Universal. For every bishop is ordained by many bishops in the name of the undivided episcopate. In its bishop every single Church outgrows and transcends its own limits, and comes into contact with and merges into other Churches, not in the order of brotherly love and remembrance alone, but in the unity of mysterious and gracious life.

Every local Church therefore finds its center and its unity in the bishop, not so much because he is its local head and pastor, but because through him it is included in the mysterious "sobornost" ["catholicity"] of the Church-body for all times.

"We affirm that the order of bishops is so necessary for the Church that without it the Church is not a Church and a Christian is not a Christian, and that they cannot be even so called. For the bishop is a successor of the Apostles through the laying on of hands and invocation of the Holy Spirit, having successively received the power bestowed from God to loose and to bind. He is a living image of God on earth, and owing to the divine activity and power of the Holy Spirit is the abundant source of all the sacraments of the Church Universal through which salvation is obtained. We consider that a bishop is as essential to a Church as breath is to man and the sun to the world" (the Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs to the Bishops of Great Britain, 1723, par. 10).

On the Day of Pentecost the Spirit descends not only on the Apostles, but also on those who were present with them; not only on the Twelve but on the entire multitude (compare Chrysostom's Discourses and his interpretation of Acts). This means that the Spirit descended on the whole of the Primitive Church then present in Jerusalem. But though the Spirit is one, the gifts and ministrations in the Church are very varied, so that while in the sacrament of Pentecost the Spirit descends on all, it is on the Twelve alone that He bestows the power and the rank of priesthood promised to them by Our Lord in the days of His flesh. The distinctive features of priesthood do not become blurred in the all-embracing fullness of Pentecost. But the simultaneity of this Catholic outpouring of the Spirit on the entire Church witnesses to the fact that priesthood was founded within the sobornost of the Church.

It is with this that the direct prohibition of ordination in a "general" or "abstract" sense (viz., without a definite appointment to a Church or a congregation) is directly associated (4 Oecum., rule 6). Secret ordination is also prohibited. It must always be public and open, in the Church itself, before the people and with the people. Moreover, a participation of the "people" in the ordination itself is required, and not only as reverent spectators who follow the prayers. The binding "aksios" or "amen" is not merely an accompaniment, but also a witness, and an acceptance. The power to ordain is bestowed on bishops and on bishops alone. But it is given to them within the Church as to the pastors of a definite flock. And they can and should realize this power only in the sobornost of the Church and in agreement with the entire Body - namely, the priests and the people - and not in a "general" or "abstract" way. This means that the bishop should abide in the Church, and the Church in the bishop.

The ancient stipulation that a bishop should be ordained by two or three bishops is especially significant (Apost. 1). The implication of this requirement is quite obvious (cf. Mt. 18:16, "that at the mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be established"). But to what do the bishops who ordain witness? In the ordination of a bishop no separate bishop can act for himself as a bishop of a definite and particular local Church for as such he remains an outsider so far as any other diocese or bishopric is concerned. He acts as a representative of the sobornost of the co-bishops, as a member and sharer of this sobornost. In addition to this it is implied that these bishops belong to a particular diocese and as ruling bishops are not separated and indeed are inseparable from their flocks. Every co-ordainer acts in the name of Catholic sobornost and fullness (cf. 1 Oecum., rule 4: "it is most seemly for a bishop to be appointed by all the bishops of that region; but if this happens to be inconvenient either for some special reason or owing to the distance, let at least three of them assemble in one place, and let those who are absent signify their acquiescence in writing, and then let them proceed with ordination").

Again, these are not only canonical, or administrative, or disciplinary measures. One feels that there is a mystical depth in them. No realization or extension of Apostolic Succession is otherwise possible, apart from the unbreakable sobornost of the whole Church. Apostolic Succession can never be severed or divorced from the organic context of the life of the entire Church, although it has its own divine root. In the Roman rite one bishop alone ordains, but the presence of "witnesses" or "assistants" is required, who thus confirm the fullness and the sobornost of the sacramental act.

The main point lies here in the co-operation of the whole Church, even though it may be taken for granted and represented symbolically. Under normal conditions of Church life Apostolic Succession should never become reduced to an abstract enumeration of successive ordainers. In ancient times Apostolic Succession usually implied first of all a succession to a definite cathedra, again in a particular local sobornost. Apostolic Succession does not represent a self-sufficient chain or order of bishops. It is an organ and a system of Church oneness. Moreover, not only "holy orders" [ordo], but also the "priestly power" [jurisdictio] are congruent in grace. "Jurisdiction" signifies the concreteness of the bishop's power and dignity, and it stands precisely for sobornost, viz. - organic unity with a particular body of Church people. Therefore, apart from "jurisdiction," that is in the mere self-sufficiency of the episcopal rank, the power to ordain cannot be practiced. If such an "abstract" ordination cannot be recognized as "valid" [valida], it is, nevertheless, not only "illegal" [illicita], but also mystically defective. For every rupture of canonical bonds simultaneously implies a certain loss of grace, namely - isolation, estrangement, neglect, mystical forgetfulness, limitation of Church outlook, and decrease of love. For Apostolic Succession has been established for the sake of unity and sobornost, and must never become the vehicle of exclusiveness and division.

The Apostolicity of the Church is not exhausted by the uninterruptibility of this priestly succession from the Apostles. Apostolic Succession must not be severed from Apostolic Tradition, and in fact never can be. Apostolic Tradition is not only a historical reminiscence, nor does faithfulness to Tradition mean simply an obstinate insistence on what is ancient, still less does it demand an archaic adaptation of the present to the manners or standards of the past. Tradition is not Church archeology but spiritual life. It is the memory of the Church. It is, firstly, an uninterrupted current of spiritual life proceeding from the Upper Room. Nor is faithfulness to Apostolic Tradition faithfulness to antiquity alone, but a living link with all the fullness of Church life. Faithfulness to Tradition is similarly a participation in Pentecost, and Tradition represents a fullfilment of Pentecost - "Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come. He shall guide you unto all truth" (Jn. 16:13). Generally speaking, Tradition is not so much a safeguarding and conservative principle, as a progressive and educible one - the beginning of life, renewal, and growth. Apostolic times are not only an external example for imitation or repetition, but an eternally renewed spring or experience and life in grace. Tradition is the power to teach, confess, witness, and proclaim out of the depth of the experience of the Church, which remains always the same and unimpaired. And this "power to teach" [potestas magisterii] is included in Apostolic Succession and based on it. The power to teach is conferred precisely on the episcopate - it is the most apostolic "power."

But this "power" is a function of the Catholic fullness of the Church. "De omnium fidelium ore pendeamus, quia in omnem fidelem Spiritus Dei spirat." The hierarchy in its teaching capacity represents, as it were, the lips of the Church. This does not mean that the hierarchy acquires its teaching credentials from the people of the Church, for it has them from the Holy Spirit, as an "anointing of truth" [charisma veritatis certum], according to the expression of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, in the sacrament of ordination. But this is the right or power to express and witness to the faith and experience of the Church. The hierarchy teaches as an organ of the Church. Therefore it is limited by the "consent of the Church" [e consensu ecclesiae], and again not so much in the order of canonics as of spiritual life and evidence. To the hierarchy alone is given the right to teach and witness in the Church.

But the hierarchy is not a self-sufficient and complete "teaching body" in the Church. The hierarchy then only teaches in a Catholic way when it truly holds and contains the Church within itself. Every local Church has the right to a "teaching voice" only in the person of its bishop, which, however, does not exclude the right to freedom of opinion. On the other hand the bishop also has the "power to teach" only within the Church, only within the actual sobornost of his people and flock. The bishop receives this power and ability to teach, not from his flock, but from Christ Himself, in Whose ministry of teaching he participates through the grace of Apostolic Succession. But the power to be, as it were, the heart of his people is conferred on him, and therefore the people also have a right and duty to witness, to consent, and to refuse consent, in the search for full unanimity and the fullness of sobornost.

The power to teach is therefore based on a two-fold continuity. Firstly, the uninterruptibility of spiritual life in the Church as the "fullness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:23). All the meaning and grandeur of the Christian life lies in the acquiring of the Spirit. We enter into communion with the Spirit in the sacraments, and we must strive to be filled with the Spirit in prayer and action. This constitutes the mystery of our inner life. But even in this it is assumed that we belong to the Church and are part of its very texture. Each individual way of life is also included in sobornost, and this means that it is conditioned and limited by Apostolic Succession. Secondly, a universal communion for all time or a union in the sacraments is only possible through the uninterruptibility of priestly succession. The historical development of the Church, its organic integrity in revealing the fundamental "depositum fidei" are alike based on Apostolic Succession. The Catholic fullness of the teaching of the Church is only possible for us through Apostolic Succession which supersedes the historical relativity of separate epochs, and which also acts as a check for an inner differentiation between what is varying and what is permanent. The freedom of theological investigation and opinion finds support and a foundation for itself in this hierarchical "anointing of the truth." It is precisely Apostolic Succession which allows us in our theology to rise above and beyond the spirit of our times and enter into the fullness of truth.

Generally speaking, the efficacy and the reality of the sacraments does not depend on the faith of those who partake of them. For the sacraments are accomplished by the power of God, and not of man, and the frailty and imperfection of an individual priest is made good by the mysterious participation of the entire Church in his actions - the Church which has appointed him and authorized him to fulfil the "ministry of the Sacraments." However, in spite of this, it is hardly possible to isolate completely the objectively-gracious moment of the sacraments. For example, how can Apostolic Succession be preserved when Apostolic Tradition has been broken together with the continuity of the spiritual life? In any case an injury to faith cannot but be reflected in one way or another in the hierarchy of such communities in which the Apostolic "deposit of faith" has not been safeguarded, and where the fullness of Tradition has been diminished by breaches in historical continuity. Especially does this apply to cases where the injury affects the basic motives of the "succession" itself, when Eucharistic faith becomes dimmed, and when the idea of priesthood becomes vague.

One might add that in such cases the empirical link with the fullness of Church life both past and present is usually severed, and the community becomes self-contained and isolated, so that an empirical separation or schism takes place. Such a will to isolation and, as it were, solitude cannot but affect that ministry of the Church the whole meaning of which lies in the preservation and expression of unity. Again this is not only a question of legality or "jurisdiction." Not so much canonically as mystically every priest acts on behalf of and in the name of the whole Church - and only thus is his Divine ministry full of mystical value. The Eucharist is one and undivided and can only be celebrated within the mystical limits of the Catholic Church. How can a "dissenter" celebrate the Eucharist?

Still more equivocal is the continuity of the Apostolic Succession in schismatic bodies, particularly if it has been continued, or even "re-established" precisely for the sake of making the separation permanent. How can the hierarchical chain persist in division, when its very raison d'être is unity? And how can schismatic hierarchs act on behalf of and in the name of the Catholic Church? Yet Church life in practice witnesses to the fact that this is possible, and that the life in grace in schismatical bodies is not extinguished and exhausted, at any rate, to be sure, not immediately. However, we cannot think it possible that it should go on unimpaired, precisely for the reason that one cannot sharply isolate different aspects of the organic whole of Church life. Human and historical isolation, even if they do not altogether lead to the severing of Apostolic Succession, must at any rate weaken it mystically. For the unity in grace can only come to be revealed in the "mystery of freedom," and only through a return to Catholic fullness and communion can every separated hierarchical body recover its full mystical significance. Simultaneously with this return there is the acceptance of the Apostolic "deposit of faith" in all its completeness. Apostolic Succession is only strengthened by faithfulness to and fulfillment of Apostolic Tradition. In their inseparability lies the fullness of Pentecost.

"The Sacrament of Pentecost" originally appeared in the Journal of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, No. 23 (London, 1954; p. 29-35). Reprinted by permission of the author. "Consensus Ecclesiae" appeared in No. 24 of the same. From the magnificent website, www.fatheralexander.org

Khristos Voskrese! Christ is Risen!

2008-04-28T11:28:00.003-05:00

It's been much too long since I've posted, so now that Pascha has come, enjoy this video from Serbia.

The hymn is by St. Nikolai, the subject of the previous post. Here's the translation:

People rejoice, nations hear:
Christ is risen, and brings the joy!
Stars dance, mounts sing:
Christ is risen, and brings the joy!
Forests murmur, winds hum:
Christ is risen, and brings the joy!
Seas bow*, animals roar:
Christ is risen, and brings the joy!
Bees swarm, and the birds sing:
Christ is risen, and brings the joy!

Angels stand, triple the song:
Christ is risen, and brings the joy!
Sky humble yourself, and elevate the earth:
Christ is risen, and brings the joy!
Bells chime, and tell to all:
Christ is risen, and brings the joy!
Glory to You God, everything is possible to You,
Christ is risen, and brings the joy!

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

(hat tip to Father Stephen at "Glory to God for all Things")

March 18: Saint Nicholas of Zhicha

2008-03-18T11:55:00.004-05:00

Saint Nicholas of Zhicha, "the Serbian Chrysostom," was born in Lelich in western Serbia on January 4, 1881 (December 23, 1880). His parents were Dragomir and Katherine Velimirovich, who lived on a farm where they raised a large family. His pious mother was a major influence on his spiritual development, teaching him by word and especially by example. As a small child, Nicholas often walked three miles to the Chelije Monastery with his mother to attend services there.

Sickly as a child, Nicholas was not physically strong as an adult. He failed his physical requirements when he applied to the military academy, but his excellent academic qualifications allowed him to enter the St Sava Seminary in Belgrade, even before he finished preparatory school.

After graduating from the seminary in 1905, he earned doctoral degrees from the University of Berne in 1908, and from King's College, Oxford in 1909. When he returned home, he fell ill with dysentery. Vowing to serve God for the rest of his life if he recovered, he was tonsured at the Rakovica Monastery on December 20, 1909 and was also ordained to the holy priesthood.

In 1910 he went to study in Russia to prepare himself for a teaching position at the seminary in Belgrade. At the Theological Academy in St Petersburg, the Provost asked him why he had come. He replied, "I wanted to be a shepherd. As a child, I tended my father's sheep. Now that I am a man, I wish to tend the rational flock of my heavenly Father. I believe that is the way that has been shown to me." The Provost smiled, pleased by this response, then showed the young man to his quarters.

After completing his studies, he returned to Belgrade and taught philosophy, logic, history, and foreign languages at the seminary. He spoke seven languages, and this ability proved very useful to him throughout his life.

St Nicholas was renowned for his sermons, which never lasted more than twenty minutes, and focused on just three main points. He taught people the theology of the Church in a language they could understand, and inspired them to repentance.

At the start of World War I, Archimandrite Nicholas was sent to England on a diplomatic mission to seek help in the struggle of the Serbs against Austria. His doctorate from Oxford gained him an invitation to speak at Westminster Abbey. He remained in England for three short months, but St Nicholas left a lasting impression on those who heard him. His writings "The Lord's Commandments," and "Meditations on the Lord's Prayer" impressed many in the Church of England.

Archimandrite Nicholas left England and went to America, where he proved to be a good ambassador for his nation and his Church.

The future saint returned to Serbia in 1919, where he was consecrated as Bishop of Zhicha and was later transferred to Ochrid. The new hierarch assisted those who were suffering from the ravages of war by establishing orphanages and helping the poor.

Bishop Nicholas took over as leader of Bogomljcki Pokret, a popular movement for spiritual revival which encouraged people to pray and read the Bible. Under the bishop's direction, it also contributed to a renewal of monasticism. Monasteries were restored and reopened, and this in turn revitalized the spiritual life of the Serbian people.

In 1921, Bishop Nicholas was invited to visit America again and spent two years as a missionary bishop. He gave more than a hundred talks in less than six months, raising funds for his orphanages. Over the next twenty years, he lectured in various churches and universities.

When Germany invaded Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941, Bishop Nicholas, a fearless critic of the Nazis, was arrested and confined in Ljubostir Vojlovici Monastery. In 1944, he and Patriarch Gavrilo were sent to the death camp at Dachau. There he witnessed many atrocities and was tortured himself. When American troops liberated the prisoners in May 1945, the patriarch returned to Yugoslavia, but Bishop Nicholas went to England.

The Communist leader Tito was just coming to power in Yugoslavia, where he persecuted the Church and crushed those who opposed him. Therefore, Bishop Nicholas believed he could serve the Serbian people more effectively by remaining abroad. He went to America in 1946, following a hectic schedule in spite of his health problems which were exacerbated by his time in Dachau. He taught for three years at St Sava's Seminary in Libertyville, IL before he settled at St Tikhon's Monastery in South Canaan, PA in 1951.

He taught at St Tikhon's and also served as the seminary's Dean and Rector. He was also a guest lecturer at St Vladimir's Seminary in NY, and at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

On Saturday March 17, 1956 Bishop Nicholas served his last Liturgy. After the service he went to the trapeza and gave a short talk. As he was leaving, he bowed low and said, "Forgive me, brothers." This was something unusual which he had not done before.

On March 18, 1956 St Nicholas fell asleep in the Lord Whom he had served throughout his life. He was found in his room kneeling in an attitude of prayer. Though he was buried at St Sava's Monastery in Libertyville, IL, he had always expressed a desire to be buried in his homeland. In April of 1991 his relics were transferred to the Chetinje Monastery in Lelich. There he was buried next to his friend and disciple Fr Justin Popovich (+ 1979).

English readers are familiar with St Nicholas's PROLOGUE FROM OCHRID, THE LIFE OF ST SAVA, A TREASURY OF SERBIAN SPIRITUALITY, and other writings which are of great benefit for the whole Church. He thought of his writings as silent sermons addressed to people who would never hear him preach. In his life and writings, the grace of the Holy Spirit shone forth for all to see, but in his humility he considered himself the least of men.

Though he was a native of Serbia, St Nicholas has a universal significance for Orthodox Christians in all countries. He was like a candle set upon a candlestick giving light to all (MT 5:15). A spiritual guide and teacher with a magnetic personality, he attracted many people to himself. He also loved them, seeing the image of God in each person he met. He had a special love for children, who hastened to receive his blessing whenever they saw him in the street.

He was a man of compunctionate prayer, and possessesed the gift of tears which purify the soul (St John Climacus, LADDER, Step 7). He was a true pastor to his flock protecting them from spiritual wolves, and guiding them on the path to salvation. He has left behind many soul-profiting writings which proclaim the truth of Christ to modern man. In them he exhorts people to love God, and to live a life of virtue and holiness. May we also be found worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven through the prayers of St Nicholas, and by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory forever. Amen. - from the menologion at www.oca.org

"Does the West Have an Orthodox Problem?"

2008-02-21T19:37:00.004-06:00

This provocative question - along with the equally provocative and stunning photo - is posed on the blog of the journal Foreign Policy. The scene is Kosovo; the protesters are Serbian Orthodox Christians reacting to the United Nations' recent decision to support an emerging Islamic nation at the expense of an historically Christian one.

Quoting a recent cover story, the writer notes:

"The culture of the Orthodox Church differs sharply from the Western post-Enlightenment ethos, which emphasizes secularism, capitalism, and the primacy of the individual. It still maintains residual fears about the West that parallel in many ways current Muslim insecurities: fears of Western missionary proselytism, a tendency to perceive religion as a key vehicle for the protection and preservation of their own communities and culture, and a suspicion of the 'corrupted' and imperial character of the West. Indeed, in an Orthodox Christian Middle East, Moscow would enjoy special influence, even today, as the last major center of Eastern Orthodoxy. The Orthodox world would have remained a key geopolitical arena of East-West rivalry in the Cold War. Samuel Huntington, after all, included the Orthodox Christian world among several civilizations embroiled in a cultural clash with the West."

An increasingly-religious Russia is backing their Serbian Orthodox brethren, while an increasingly-secular Western Europe, along with the religiously-quixotic United States, is backing the Albanian Muslims.

Somehow, I can't imagine relations between the US and Orthodox Christianity improving in the near future, given that the next president is either going to be a Democrat Liberal Protestant without meaningful foreign policy experience or a Republican former-Episcopalian who has repeatedly taken a hawkish line towards Russia.

Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.

Orthodoxy, Western Europe, and Sharia Law

2008-02-15T10:26:00.002-06:00

The uproar over recent comments made by Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams regarding Islamic Sharia Law in Great Britain has subsided - but only somewhat.

For those interested in what was said, one of many news accounts is available here and the text of his lecture is here.

Orthodox Bishop Hilarion of Vienna, who represents the Moscow Patriarchate in Western Europe, reflected on these events in a recent address covered by the news agency Interfax:

Geneva, February 14, Interfax - The values of other religions, just as secular ones, should not be advocated by the heads of Christian Churches, said Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, who represents the Russian Orthodox Church at European international organizations.

"Our role is not to protect Sharia law, to glorify an alternative style of behavior or to preach secular values. Our sacred mission is to announce what Christ announced, to teach what his disciples taught," Bishop Hilarion said at the opening of a session of the World Council of Churches (WCC)'s Central Committee in Geneva.

He was commenting on a recent statement by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams that it was inevitable that several aspects of Sharia law will have to be included in British law. His speech caused a public uproar in the UK.

"Many Christians around the world are looking up to Christian leaders with hope that they will defend Christianity against all the challenges it faces," Bishop Hilarion said.

He also criticized ‘liberal’ and ‘politically correct’ Christianity which Protestant and Anglican communities started promoting several dozens years ago. The Russian Church’s representative said that the gap between ‘traditional’ and ‘liberal’ Christianity grows so dramatically that today it's impossible to speak about one moral system preached by all Christians.

‘Politically correct Christianity will die. We have already been watching the process of liberal Christianity’s gradual decline as newly introduced moral norms lead to splits, discrepancies and confusion in several Christian communities,’ the bishop said.

Memory Eternal to Archbishop Christodoulos!

2008-01-29T08:28:00.000-06:00

From the AP News Report:

New York, NY – With great sorrow and deep heartfelt emotion the entire flock of the Holy Archdiocese of America learned of the passing of the late Archbishop of Athens and all Greece, Christodoulos of blessed memory.

The late Archbishop Christodoulos reposed in the peace of God at 5:15 a.m. (Greek time), today, Monday, January 28, 2008, at his residence, after battling with a disease that lasted many months and which required lengthy medical treatments administered to him at home, which is where he desired to be, despite the swift deterioration of his health.

His Eminence, Archbishop Demetrios of America, as soon as he was informed of the passing of the late Archbishop Christodoulos, issued this statement:

"The passing of the late Archbishop of Athens and all Greece, Christodoulos of blessed memory, saddens us deeply, for with his departure from this world the Church has lost an exceptional and highly esteemed Hierarch, as well as a brilliant champion of Orthodoxy and of the universal values of the Hellenic cultural tradition. I had the special honor to know him from the time he attended high school, and afterwards, to appreciate his dynamism, his kindness, his intellect and his great offering to the Church in important areas such as the divine worship, pastoral and social care, as well as inter-Orthodox and inter-Christian relations. I pray fervently to the Lord for the repose of the soul of the distinguished and ever-memorable brother and concelebrant, the late Archbishop Christodoulos, in the tabernacles of the saints and of the righteous."

The illness of the late Archbishop was diagnosed on June 9, 2007, when he was admitted to the “Aretaio” Hospital of Athens. On August 18, 2007, the Archbishop traveled to Miami, Florida, with the prospect to receive a liver transplant, which in the end was not possible, and for which reason he returned to Greece on October 26.

Immediately after the announcement of the passing of the late Archbishop Christodoulos, a four day mourning period was declared. The funeral service will take place in the Cathedral of Athens on Thursday, January 31, 2008.

Archbishop Demetrios of America will depart for Athens tomorrow, Tuesday January 29th, in order to accompany His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the funeral services of the late Archbishop Christodoulos.

The Art of Bell Ringing

2008-01-21T12:37:00.000-06:00

This is a great article from the Boston Globe describing a wonderful Orthodox tradition - JMC

Bell Ringers Gain Resounding Lesson
By Peter Schworm
Globe Staff / January 21, 2008

The sacred Russian bells at Harvard University's Lowell House rang forth yesterday as they have most Sundays since Easter 1931, their deep, resonant rumble a haunting hymn to their improbable survival of the Stalinist era.

But high in the belfry on this Sunday, the Harvard students struck the 17 bronze bells with a newly forged skill and deeper understanding of the ancient art of bell-ringing. They were fresh from an 11-day training session with renowned Russian bell-ringers at the Danilovsky Monastery in Moscow, the bells' historic home and the residence of the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Newly certified by Russian masters and versed in the lore of church bells, the ringers sounded the bells by nimbly manipulating an intricate series of ropes, pulleys, and pedals. Benjamin Rapoport, a Harvard Medical School student and a resident tutor at Lowell House, gently tugged at crisscrossed ropes like a puppeteer to strike a series of smaller bells in time with the ringing reverberations of the massive mother bells. Despite a bracing wind that whipped through the bell tower, he pulled the ropes and heavy wire cables with his bare hands.

"Good Russian weather," he said.

Read it all here.

Der Spiegel Interviews Metropolitan Kyrill

2008-01-15T13:53:00.000-06:00

As you can tell from this photo that accompanied the recent interview in Der Spiegel, Russian Orthodox Metropolitan KYRILL is no pushover.

In fact, His Eminence (who oversees external church affairs for the Russian Orthodox Church) is startlingly forthright on a whole host of topics, many of which were broached in a recent free-wheeling, bare-knuckle conversation covering everything from post-Soviet Russian politics, evolution, homosexuality, and Orthodox-Catholic relations.

According to various online news sources, Metropolitan KYRILL has been discussed as a potential successor to present Moscow Patriarch ALEXEI II.

To read the interview on the Der Spiegel website, go here.

The Crisis in Kenya

2008-01-11T12:52:00.001-06:00

Listen to Father Martin Ritsi of the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC) discuss the ongoing crisis in Kenya on "Come Receive the Light," a program of the Orthodox Christian Network:

Click here for a Real Audio link, or here for an mp3.

And pray for the people of Kenya.

Icons will save the world

2007-12-21T11:15:00.000-06:00

What a delightful Christmas gift!

Treat yourself to reading this article on the First Things website:

"Icons Will Save the World," by Susan Cushman

Here's a snip:

SANCTIFYING THE SENSE OF SIGHT

Icons point to beauty and art as a means of experiencing God. In a time when our senses are bombarded with the base things of this world at every turn, now, more than ever, we need for those senses to be sanctified. Saint John of Damascus called sacred images “the books of the illiterate,” and asserted that icons sanctify the sense of sight for those who gaze upon them.

Suppose I have few books, or little leisure for reading, but walk into the spiritual hospital—that is to say, a church—with my soul choking from the prickles of thorny thoughts, and thus afflicted I see before me the brilliance of the icon. I am refreshed as if in a verdant meadow, and thus my soul is led to glorify God. I marvel at the martyr’s endurance, at the crown he won, and, inflamed with burning zeal, I fall down to worship God through His martyr, and so receive salvation.

If this description of a first-millennium saint’s experience seems too removed from our contemporary life, I wonder if that’s because we have lost the concept of the Church as a spiritual hospital? Or because, in our fast-paced lives, we have forgotten how to slow down and let the beauty of God’s house touch and heal our fragmented psyches?

I have a dear friend from a life-long evangelical background who has been visiting my parish for several years. Although she usually goes with her family to their Presbyterian church on Sundays, she frequents St. John for some of the weekday services. She has told me that, as much as the prayers themselves (usually Third Hour, a short service of Psalms and prayers observed at nine on weekday mornings) bless her, it’s the icons that are having such a powerful effect on her heart. Sitting alone in the nave after the prayers, gazing at the icon of Christ on the cross—the one the priest carries in procession on Holy Friday—she is sometimes moved to contrition. At other times, she feels a longing for a deeper relationship with Christ. She is almost always filled with a sense of his love and peace, on a deeper level—one that transcends emotions. And yes, sometimes her eyes are filled with tears.

Anton Vrame would say that my friend has had an encounter with icons, that the icon actually invites a response: “There is a psychological dimension to the icons in that they sanctify vision, and through it, all bodily senses, pointing to a holistic approach to knowledge and Christian living.”

Enjoy!

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Many Years!

2007-12-11T08:31:00.000-06:00

Today is the birthday of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the renowned Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian. His work made the world aware of the Gulag - the Soviet labor camp system. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 and exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He returned to Russian in 1994, the same year he was elected as a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Department of Language and Literature.

The following quotation is characteristic of his thought:

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward.

- from "A World Split Apart," an address given at Harvard University on June 8, 1978

"Forgiveness is Healing" by Fr George Morelli

2007-12-06T14:40:00.000-06:00

And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).

In almost every spiritual text anger is listed as one of several deadly sins. In his classic work, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John of the Ladder discusses anger in the eighth step of the ladder; and anger's dependent vice malice in the ninth step of the ladder. St. John tells us: "Anger is an indication of concealed hatred, of grievance nursed. Anger is the wish to harm someone who has provoked you. Irascibility is an untimely flaring up of the heart. Bitterness is a stirring of the soul's capacity for displeasure. Anger is ... a disfigurement of the soul."

- read it all on Orthodoxy Today

Orthodox and Catholics at Ravenna

2007-11-20T14:18:00.000-06:00

The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church was held October 8-14, 2007 in Ravenna. Their statement is titled "Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church: Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority."

Sadly, the Russian Orthodox delegation did not participate due to an intra-Orthodox disagreement about the status and participation of the Estonians. Due to the size and influence of the Moscow Patriarchate, their participation will be vital to any future progress in these conversations.

It's difficult to know what to make of this document. Perhaps the most interesting section is paragraph 39, which reads:

Unlike diocesan and regional synods, an ecumenical council is not an "institution" whose frequency can be regulated by canons; it is rather an "event", a kairos inspired by the Holy Spirit who guides the Church so as to engender within it the institutions which it needs and which respond to its nature. This harmony between the Church and the councils is so profound that, even after the break between East and West which rendered impossible the holding of ecumenical councils in the strict sense of the term, both Churches continued to hold councils whenever serious crises arose. These councils gathered together the bishops of local Churches in communion with the See of Rome or, although understood in a different way, with the See of Constantinople, respectively. In the Roman Catholic Church, some of these councils held in the West were regarded as ecumenical. This situation, which obliged both sides of Christendom to convoke councils proper to each of them, favoured dissentions which contributed to mutual estrangement. The means which will allow the re-establishment of ecumenical consensus must be sought out.

That last sentence calls for a project of overwhelming immensity. Discerning such a consensus after a thousand years of separation would be, well, miraculous. Of course, we do believe in miracles...

We'll keep saying our prayers.

Read the entire document here.

Who are the Orthodox Christians?

2007-11-08T10:04:00.000-06:00

There are many, many ways to answer this question.

One way is to examine the Diptych (a kind of prayer list) read at a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy with the Metropolitan presiding.

The Orthodox are those Christians who are under the pastoral care of the Patriarchs, Archbishops, and Metropolitans named on the Diptych.

This is the Diptych as read in the Orthodox Church in America, under Metropolitan HERMAN:

To His Holiness, BARTHOLOMEW, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch: Many Years!

To His Beatitude, THEODOROS, Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa: Many Years!

To His Beatitude, IGNATIUS, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East: Many Years!

To His Beatitude, THEOPHILUS, Patriarch of the Holy City of Jerusalem and All Palestine: Many Years!

To His Holiness, ALEKSY, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia: Many Years!

To His Holiness, ILIA, Catholicos and Patriarch of All Georgia: Many Years!

To His Holiness, PAVLE, Patriarch of Serbia: Many Years!

To His Holiness, DANIEL, Patriarch of Romania: Many Years!

To His Holiness, MAXIM, Patriarch of Bulgaria: Many Years!

To His Beatitude, CHRYSOSTOMOS, Archbishop of New Justiniana and All Cyprus: Many Years!

To His Beatitude, CHRISTODOULOS, Archbishop of Athens and All Greece: Many Years!

To His Beatitude, ANASTASIOS, Archbishop of Tirana and All Albania: Many
Years!

To His Beatitude, SAWA, Metropolitan of Warsaw and All Poland: Many Years!

To His Beatitude KRYSTOF, Metropolitan of the Czech Lands and Slovakia: Many Years!

To His Beatitude, HERMAN, Archbishop of Washington and New York, Metropolitan of All America and Canada: Many Years!

To all Orthodox Metropolitans, Archbishops, and Bishops: Many Years!

To all Orthodox Christians: Many Years!

Orthodoxy, Materialism, and Anthropology in the New Millenium

2007-11-06T20:15:00.000-06:00

Orthodox Leadership in a Brave New World

Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse

This article originally appeared in AGAIN Vol. 29 No. 3, Fall 2007.

Almost thirty years ago Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivered an address at Harvard University that still ranks as one of the most trenchant and inspired critiques of Western culture ever given. Although some of the political references are dated, two observations remain as true today as when they were first spoken. The first is that the philosophical materialism that shaped communism and led to the Gulags now operates in the Western world. The second is that mankind stands at an anthropological threshold.

What is philosophical materialism? To use Solzhenitsyn's definition, it is the belief that man has no touchstone other than himself:

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth . . . we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.

Philosophical materialism has concrete cultural ramifications. To social utopians, it means that persons have no enduring value -- so society can be forcibly arranged around notions of the common good. To hedonists, it means that the body is primarily a pleasure machine. To nihilists, it means that because the death of the body is also the end of existence, we should exalt death and violence.

These themes shaped much of the course of the last century. Solzhenitsyn had firsthand experience of Marxist social utopianism, but he was not the first to sound the alarm. Almost a century earlier, Dostoevsky heard the rumblings that would make Russia susceptible to communist tyranny and warned, "Without God, everything is permitted."

Read it all at OrthodoxyToday.org

More insight from Father Georges Florovsky

2007-10-22T12:56:00.000-05:00

In the Gospel of St. Matthew (5:16) it is our Lord who uses the terminology of "good works." " Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and may glorify your Father who is in heaven" Contextually these "good works" are defined in the preceding text of the Beatitudes. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." "Blessed are they who are hungering and are thirsting for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Is it not an integral part of the monastic goal to become meek, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, and to become pure in heart? This, of course, must be the goal of all Christians but monasticism, which makes it an integral part of its ascetical life, can in no way be excluded. Are not the Beatitudes more than just rhetorical expressions? Are not the Beatitudes a part of the commandments of our Lord? In the Gospel of St. Matthew (5:19) our Lord expresses a deeply meaningful thought—rather a warning. "Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. And it is in this context that our Lord continues to deepen the meaning of the old law with a new, spiritual significance, a penetrating interiorization of the "law." He does not nullify or abrogate the law but rather extends it to its most logical and ontological limit, for he drives the spiritual meaning of the law into the very depth of the inner existence of mankind.

"You heard that it was said to those of old ... but I say to you." Now, with the deepening of the spiritual dimension of the law, the old remains, it is the base, but its spiritual reality is pointed to its source. "You shall not kill" becomes inextricably connected to "anger." "But I say to you that everyone being angry with his brother shall be liable to the judgment." No longer is the external act the only focal point. Rather the source, the intent, the motive is now to be considered as the soil from which the external act springs forth. Mankind must now guard, protect, control, and purify the inner emotion or attitude of "anger" and, in so doing, consider it in the same light as the external act of killing or murder. Our Lord has reached into the innermost depth of the human heart and has targeted the source of the external act. "You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who is seeing a woman lustfully, has already committed adultery with her in his heart. From a spiritual perspective the person who does not act externally but lusts within is equally liable to the reality of "adultery." "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and you shall hate your enemy’. But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those persecuting you so that you may become sons of your Father in heaven."

- from THE ASCETIC IDEAL AND THE NEW TESTAMENT: Reflections on the Critique of the Theology of the Reformation

Orthodoxy and the 2008 Presidential Race

2007-10-16T13:07:00.000-05:00

It is not the practice of the Orthodox Church in America to endorse political candidates.

And while the moral teaching of the Church is clear on a multitude of controversial issues, it is entirely appropriate for faithful believers to debate the merits of the various candidates and to argue vigorously about which candidate is best suited for leadership.

That being said, I just came across an interesting open letter by Dr. Clark Carlton in support of Rep. Ron Paul's presidential bid. Dr. Carlton is a Southern Baptist convert to the Orthodox Church with degrees from Carson Newman College, St. Vladimir's Seminary, and the Catholic University of America. He teaches undergraduate philosophy at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee.

This passage, among others, caught my eye:

"I have never contributed to a presidential campaign before. I have never put a political bumper sticker on my car before. And I have never written a letter like this before. I have done all three because for the first time in my life I truly believe that there is a chance to return this nation to the rule of law under the Constitution. Traditional Republicans feel betrayed by the Bush Administration, and anti-war and pro-civil liberties Democrats are beginning to see through the hypocrisy of their own candidates. The time is right for a man like Ron Paul, and Ron Paul is precisely the man we need for these times. As Judge Andrew Napolitano recently commented..., 'We need a Ron Paul in the White House more desperately now than we ever have at any time in our history.'"

Read Dr. Carlton's entire letter here.

(I'd be very interested in seeing other arguments from Orthodox Christians in support of any of the other candidates. If you find one, email me)

Orthodoxy... a balm for Europe?

2007-10-12T15:17:00.000-05:00

From the pages of the Christian Science Monitor:

An Orthodox Balm for Europe

By Nicolai N. Petro Thu Oct 11, 4:00 AM ET

Kazan, Russia - For decades, many social scientists had pretty much two things to say about Eastern Orthodox Christianity: 1) that like all religions, it was disappearing with the advance of modern civilization; 2) that it derived most of its support from the reactionary tides of authoritarianism and nationalism.

Those pronouncements are being proved wrong. Today, as in the parable of the prodigal son, throughout Eastern Europe people are returning to the Orthodox Church in droves, and the effect in the public sphere, contrary to most expectations, is quite benign.

Though historically viewed with suspicion by Catholic and Protestant Europe, Orthodox Christianity can actually help bridge the Russia-West gap.

At the heart of much of the miscommunication between Russia and Europe today lies the unacknowledged and untapped longing of Orthodox Christians to be recognized as part of a common European cultural family again. The latest effort to bridge this divide was Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II's remarks in France, where he spoke poignantly of how the Christian identity Europeans historically share should promote dialogue on issues like human rights and peace, even with atheists and members of other faiths.

The patriarch was pointing out that, while they may differ on specific political issues today, a profound religious bond actually underpins Western and Eastern European cultural and political values...

Read it all here.

Classic Quotation from Fr Georges Florovsky

2007-10-03T22:59:00.000-05:00

“Thus, ‘tradition’ in the Church is not merely the continuity of human memory, or the permanence of rites and habits. Ultimately, ‘tradition’ is the continuity of the divine assistance, the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. The Church is not bound by ‘the letter.’ She is constantly moved forth by ‘the spirit.’ The same Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, which ‘spake through the Prophets,' which guided the Apostles, which illumined the Evangelists, is still abiding in the Church, and guides her into the fuller understanding of the divine truth, from glory to glory.”

Protopresbyter Georges Florovsky, “The Ethos of the Orthodox Church,” The Ecumenical Review, Vol. XII, No. 2, January 1960

Orthodoxy and the... NFL?

2007-10-01T13:19:00.000-05:00

I don't often think of the Orthodox Church coming up in interviews with players from the National Football League, but you just never know.

Here's an excerpt of an interview conducted by Yahoo! Sports reporter Jason Cole with Orthodox Christian and Pittsburgh Steeler strong safety Troy Polamalu:

Cole: Do you have a routine you follow on your day off?

Polamalu: We work out together because that's our only day off together. It's a pretty decent workout. She does a lot of running and I do a lot of stretching. Tuesday is also our only opportunity to go to church together, so we do that.

Polamalu: It starts at 8:30 (a.m.). … It's the Nativity of the Theotokos monastery (in Saxonburg, Pa.).

Cole: I know you're devoutly Christian (Polamalu has a carefully arranged series of religious items in his locker at Heinz Field), but exactly which denomination?

Polamalu: Greek Orthodox. Theotokos literally means the Mother of God.

Cole: How long are you in services?

Polamalu: They usually go to about 12:30.

Cole: That's a four-hour service. Is that a normal service?

Polamalu: Pretty much, especially at a monastery.

Cole: Can you describe it?

Polamalu: What's really neat about the Orthodox church is that it's like walking back in time 2,000 years to the time of the Apostles, when they created these services. You walk into that and it's really like … living it. They have maintained the truth ever since the beginning.

Cole: You're Polynesian. How did you end up at a Greek Orthodox church?

Polamalu: There are different ethnicities, like Russian Orthodox. My wife is Greek. I was a non-denomination Christian before we got married. So we sit around there and meet with our spiritual mother and then we go home, maybe take a nap, work out and then go home and have dinner.

Cole: Who's making dinner?

Polamalu: My wife; I cannot cook at all. I've tried. I'm terrible. When I cook, it's something nobody else would enjoy.

Cole: You only cook specialty things for yourself?

Polamalu: No, it's not that nobody else will make it for me, it's that I'm the only one who is going to enjoy it. I'll look at the other people and say, "Did you like it?" They say, "Noooooooo."

Cole: Do you have any other hobbies or things you do away from the field? Maybe bowling?

Polamalu: No, not really. The single guys go bowl. The guys who are married go home, mostly. I really focus on spending time with my wife.

Cole: How hard is it to get time at home during the season? I know guys like (Miami Dolphins linebacker) Zach Thomas stay at the facility until very late studying film and (Indianapolis Colts quarterback) Peyton Manning is watching film at home.

Polamalu: First of all, I'm a Christian so my prayer life really comes first. Second of all, I'm a husband so my wife comes before anything else. If I have time to do anything else after that, I do it, but I don't sacrifice any time with her.

(hat tip to GetReligion and Fr Joseph)

Christian Unity, Cultural Decline, and Trinitarian Hope

2007-09-25T15:35:00.000-05:00

On his Blog, Second Terrace, Father Jonathan Tobias offers a profoundly moving reflection on Christian unity, cultural decline, and Trinitarian hope.

Here's an excerpt:

We have come full circle, in the history of the Church, back to the experience of the Apostolic generation. They, too, were faced by a society in decadence and decline. They, too, had to demonstrate, by the sign of spirituality and unity, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Here is where Eastern Christianity has its profound vocation and opportunity. This is probably the reason why Eastern Christians have intermingled with Western culture in such significant numbers. It is also the reason why Eastern Christianity has garnered such an appeal for many in the West, to the extent that many Protestants, even, are magnetically attracted to icons, and flock to presentations at Evangelical campuses on Eastern Christianity.

This is happening because Eastern Christianity offers a life of spirituality, where eternity may be experienced, even on this world. It is a life where passions may be successfully conquered, where the vision – or theoria -- of reality and universals may be gained, and where communion with the Holy Trinity may be known existentially...

Read it all here.

Pray for something similar in Louisiana...

2007-09-18T13:06:00.000-05:00

Russian Orthodox Church quadrupled her parishes during two decades

Moscow, September 14, Interfax - Today there are four times as many parishes and almost four times as many monasteries as it was twenty years ago in the Russian Orthodox Church.According to the figures, announced by Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia during his meeting with members of Valday Discussion Club held in Moscow on Thursday, in 1987 the Russian Orthodox Church had 6800 parishes, 19 monasteries, and three theological colleges, while by January 1, 2007 the church had 27300 parishes, 716 monastic houses, and 70 theological colleges and universities.

Many parishes on the Moscow Patriarchate have been established abroad, the primate said, yet ‘it should not scare or surprise anybody.’

The recent two decades made Russia experience fundamental changes in all spheres including spirituality, he noted.

‘Those who were in the Soviet Union twenty years ago and come here again can hardly recognize the country. There are a new country and new possibilities, the people have new rights and new freedoms,’ the patriarch said.

Spiritual life ‘miraculously’ revives in Russia, he said, and this proves that ‘the faith survived in people’s hearts and passed on from generation to generation even under the godless regime.’

The patriarch called the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, where he met the club’s members, a symbol not only of religious revival ‘but also of a new Russia.’
The number of younger people coming to church today has also substantially raised, Alexy II noted.

‘When we traveled abroad in 1960s or 1970s we could often hear, ‘Who comes to your churches but old ladies?’ Now everything has changed. We have many children, youth, and middle-aged people,’ the primate said.

‘Yet we gratefully remember those old ladies who bought up their grandchildren as believers in Christ. It is due to them that the faith survived in our people,’ he noted.

- from the Interfax Religion site

Evangelicals and Orthodoxy

2007-08-24T08:43:00.000-05:00

I was startled to see this article in The New Republic - JMC

Evangelicals Turn Toward... the Orthodox Church?

The Iconoclasts

by Jason Zengerle

When Wilbur Ellsworth ministered at First Baptist, a typical Sunday service--held inside the church's immense but unadorned white-walled, burgundy-carpeted sanctuary--went something like this: Wearing a suit and tie, Ellsworth would stand at a pulpit and preach. Aside from occasionally rising in prayer and joining the church choir and orchestra in some traditional Protestant hymns, the congregants would largely refrain from any activity during the one-hour-and-15-minute service--except for once a month, when they would receive communion.

The service Ellsworth now leads at Holy Transfiguration, by contrast, has an entirely different feel. Wearing his priestly vestments and standing inside the church's small sanctuary--which boasts yellow walls covered with hundreds of tiny iconic pictures of saints and Oriental rugs on the floor--Ellsworth conducts much of the service from behind the iconostasis (or icon wall) where he is out of view of the congregation. The congregants stand for most of the two-hour service, constantly prostrating and crossing themselves, and the only music is rhythmic Byzantine chanting. At the end of the service, they file up to the front of the sanctuary--as they do every Sunday--and take communion. It's easy to see how, for someone reared in an evangelical church, the Orthodox Church might seem like something not just from another culture, but another world.

And yet it is precisely that otherworldliness that is part of what is attracting a growing number of evangelicals to the Orthodox Church. Since the late nineteenth century, when fundamentalism emerged as a response to the increasing cosmopolitanism of mainline Protestant denominations, evangelicalism has been an anti-modern movement. But, at the same time, with its belief in the importance of saving lost souls, evangelicalism hasn't been able to completely divorce itself from modern culture--and, in the latter half of the twentieth century, it began to increasingly try to employ or co-opt aspects of the modern world in its efforts to lure "seekers" and others to the faith. As Ellsworth explains, one of the principal attractions of the Orthodox Church for him is its solidity--and lack of interest in integrating modern life. "There is, in the Orthodox Church, an enormous conservatism," he marvels. "There is not going to be a radical change in the worship life of the church next week."

Read it all on The New Republic website here.

God's Law: Threat or Promise?

2007-08-22T14:41:00.000-05:00

by Fr John Breck, August 2007

Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, to the glory of God!" (Rom 15:7)

When he wrote his various letters to churches around the Mediterranean and throughout Asia Minor, the apostle Paul used a literary convention widespread in the Hellenistic world. He began with a personal identification and blessing, followed by a word of thanksgiving for all that God had accomplished through his ministry in the life of that particular community. Then he moved on to the body of the letter, combining proclamation of the Gospel with practical teachings. This was followed toward the end by a series of exhortations: directives indicating practical, concrete ways his teachings should be put into effect within the church. Finally, he concluded with greetings to members of the community and a final benediction.

We find a good example of the apostle's exhortations in the brief passage, Romans 15:1-7. Based on the Gospel proclamation that makes up the body of the letter, these words draw out specific consequences for believers, consequences that take the form of responsibilities or obligations. He concludes the passage, "Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, to the glory of God."

There are two very different ways we can read exhortations of this kind. They can be taken, as they so often are, in a legalistic sense, as commands that tell us how to conform our behavior to the will of a just and righteous God. Or they can be seen as means of grace, by which God Himself works out a transformation in our life, leading to our eternal sharing in His very existence.

Read it all on the OCA website here.

August 9: Venerable Herman of Alaska

2007-08-09T13:16:00.000-05:00

Venerable Herman of Alaska, Wonderworker of All America, was among the members of a spiritual mission organized in 1793 to preach the Word of God to the native inhabitants of northwestern America, who only ten years before had come under the sovereignty of Russia.

St Herman came from a family of merchants of Serpukhov, a city of the Moscow Diocese. His name before he was tonsured, and his family name are not known. The monastic name is given when a monk takes his vows. He had a great zeal for piety from youth and at sixteen he entered monastic life. This was in 1772, if we assume that Herman was born in 1756, although sometimes 1760 is given as the date of his birth. First he entered the Trinity-Sergius Hermitage, which was located near the Gulf of Finland on the Peterhof Road, about 10 miles from St Petersburg.

From the menologion of the Orthodox Church in America. Read it all here.

Harry Potter and Orthodox Piety

2007-07-26T16:13:00.000-05:00

This letter from Douglas Cramer, Managing Editor of AGAIN Magazine, appears on the Conciliar Press website. It refers to the fact that many faithful Orthodox Christians differ markedly on their perceptions of JK Rowling's Harry Potter series. I just finished the seventh installment, having now read the entire series along with our oldest daughter (now age 10). While I certainly understand the reservations some may have about the series, I heartily concur with Douglas' observations. - MC

Dear Reader,

Thank you for taking the time to write and express your concerns. I'd be happy to address any specific critiques you have of the interview we published with John Granger. The interview originally appeared in our quarterly magazine, AGAIN, in December 2005, at which time other articles in the issue on the general topic of Faith, Fantasy and the Christian Imagination were reproduced on our web site and the web site of the Antiochian Archdiocese. We reproduced the interview this past week because of all the attention countless Americans, including our Orthodox brethren, will be giving the series with the release of the final book.

Certainly there are differences of opinion amongst sincere and dedicated Orthodox Christians regarding the stance that believers should take towards literature in general, and the works of JK Rowling in particular. We at Conciliar Press believe that a crucial part of our mission is to "equip the saints for ministry". One way in which we strive to accomplish this is by presenting to our readers a range of respected Orthodox Christian teachers and writers and their thoughts on how we can take advantage of teachable moments in our society to witness to the truth of the Gospel. It was in this spirit that we originally published the interview that Matushka Donna Farley, wife of theologian and Conciliar Press author Fr. Lawrence Farley, conducted with John Granger.

As a father myself of three sons who have enjoyed the Harry Potter books immensely, I believe that they can provide wonderful opportunities to speak to deep Christian truths of loyalty, love, forgiveness and sacrifice. I have not found the use of magic to be any more troubling than the magic of the Ghosts in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. JK Rowling herself has publicly professed her Christian faith, and her admiration for the works of other British Christian authors of mythical literature, like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. I personally do think that she is sincere. I find myself even more convinced of this having read the conclusion to the series, where Harry Potter gives up his life without a fight for the sake of all his friends, goes beyond death to King's Cross, and returns to literally disarm and overthrow the evil one who thanks to the sacrifice Harry has made can no longer harm the good people he is attacking. The book is more packed even then its predecessors with Christian imagery, going even so far this time to include direct Scripture quotations at several critical points in the story.

It can certainly be a wonderful and godly choice for a Christian to avoid literature like that of JK Rowling, or Charles Dickens, or the King Arthur myths, or anything similar. But countless Orthodox Christians do choose to embrace such stories, and if they do it is important that they know of other Orthodox Christians who have wrestled with the kinds of questions they themselves may have as well.

In closing, let me share this passage from the lead article of the issue of AGAIN Magazine in which the interview originally appeared. The full article is available online.

FROM LONGING FOR OTHER WORLDS:

We may think of the tradition of heroic epics as a tradition of “men of the west,” Tolkien’s evocative image for the good guardians of civilized society. While legendary tales are found in the folklore of all ages and places, the epic fiction of the traditional lands of Orthodoxy is little known to us in America today. Most of us have read about King Arthur and at least heard of Beowulf, but how many know The Lay of Igor or Ruslan and Ludmila, the great epics of medieval Russia? The heroic fantasy that forms a part of our cultural heritage is primarily that of the West.

But does this fact make such literature irrelevant to our lives as Orthodox Christians? One Orthodox authority who has given this topic much thought is Bishop Kallistos Ware of Oxford, England. In an interview recorded in Kyriakos Markides’ wonderful new book Gifts of the Desert, he encourages a careful but wholehearted engagement with the best that Western culture has to offer. “Christ is the lord of history,” reflects Bishop Kallistos. He continues:

“We must look, then, for signs of the Truth, traces and footprints of the Truth, throughout our modern culture. . . . We Orthodox, particularly those of us who are Western converts, are often in danger of becoming church mice. We just live inside the church and nibble at the crumbs in the church, but we don’t look outside at the presence of Christ in the world as well. We Orthodox who live in the West are heirs to the entire cultural and intellectual tradition of the West, much of which indeed is profoundly Christian. We are heirs to Dante, to Shakespeare, to Milton, to Wordsworth. Of course we have our own Orthodox interpretation of their work. But if we are to play our role as Orthodox in the Western world we must be willing to listen and to learn from the spiritual masters of the Western tradition. . . . [Some] of us must surely engage in a dialogue with Western culture. Otherwise we are betraying our roles as Orthodox placed here in the West as mediators and witnesses.”

Orthodox Christians can hold their heads high, and unashamedly embrace the traces of Truth found in our cultural heritage—including the tradition of heroic fantasy—without compromising our allegiance to our Faith. We are, after all, Orthodox of the West. With that comes an obligation to develop an Orthodox understanding of the great stories of the West, to witness to the Truth of Christ present in them.

The American monk Fr. Seraphim Rose understood this need for Orthodox to serve as mediators, bridging Christ’s presence in both the East and the West in our own lives. “In general,” he wrote, “the person who is well acquainted with the best products of secular culture—which in the West almost always have definite religious and Christian overtones—has a much better chance of leading a normal, fruitful Orthodox life than someone who knows only the popular culture of today. . . . Everything good in the world, if we are only wise enough to see it, points to God, and to Orthodoxy, and we have to make use of it.”

. . .

Orthodoxy has always been able to embrace and renew pre-Christian understanding. St. Basil the Great spoke of the potential value of the epic legends of the pagan Greeks, saying, “No source of instruction can be overlooked in the preparation for the great battle of life, and there is a certain advantage to be derived from the right use of the heathen writers.”

Fr. Alexander Schmemann explains the reason for this “certain advantage” in his book For the Life of the World. “Before Christ came, God had promised Him to man,” he explains. “As Christians we believe that He, who is the truth about both God and man, gives foretastes of His incarnation in all more fragmentary truths. We believe as well that Christ is present in any seeker after truth. Simone Weil has said that though a person may run as fast as he can away from Christ, if it is toward what he considers true, he runs in fact straight into the arms of Christ.”

AGAIN columnist Fr. Michael Oleksa, drawing on his own long experience with the native culture of Alaska, explained the relationship to me. “I'll take a good pagan any day,” he said. “The Church knows how to deal with pagans. You find some common ground and bless it. You find some points of agreement and enlarge them. You find something good, true, and beautiful in a belief or practice and affirm it, endorse it, celebrate it.”

Christ Bless,

Douglas Cramer

Managing Editor, AGAIN Magazine

againeditor@conciliarpress.com

Bishop HILARION on Recent Catholic Teachings

2007-07-17T16:48:00.000-05:00

Orthodox Say Unity Must Be Priority

VIENNA, Austria, JULY 11, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The breach of Eucharistic communion between East and West is a common tragedy, and the quest for unity should be of equal importance to both, said Bishop Hilarion.

The Orthodox bishop of Vienna and Austria, and the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions, spoke with ZENIT about the document released Tuesday by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The document is titled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church."

The document, Bishop Alfeev said, "brings nothing new in comparison with previous documents of similar kind, such as 'Dominus Iesus.'"

Closer

Bishop Alfeev acknowledged that the document's explanation of the Church, and precisely that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, is an idea that the Orthodox do not accept.

"The distinction between 'subsists' and 'is present and operative' is probably meaningful from the point of view of Latin theological tradition, but it makes not much sense for an Orthodox theologian," he said.

"For us," Bishop Alfeev explained, "'to subsist' means precisely 'to be present and to be operative,' and we believe that the Church of Christ subsists, is present and is operative in the Orthodox Church."

However, the prelate also affirmed that the Orthodox Churches share the Catholic Church's understanding of other ecclesial communities.

"With regard to the Orthodox Churches," he said, "the document states that 'these Churches, although separated [from Rome], have true sacraments and above all -- because of the apostolic succession -- the priesthood and the Eucharist.' Thus, apostolic succession and the sacraments are indicated as essential marks of the Church.

"The Orthodox also believe that apostolic succession and the sacraments are essential marks of the Church.

"This is why the Orthodox will agree that those ecclesial communities which do not enjoy apostolic succession and have not preserved the genuine understanding of the Eucharist and other sacraments cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense."

"The division between the Orthodox and the Protestants," Bishop Alfeev underlined, "is therefore much more profound and substantial than the division between the Orthodox and the Catholics."

Read it all at Directions to Orthodoxy

"The difference is in man, not in God"

2007-06-28T23:06:00.000-05:00

God is Truth and Light. God's judgment is nothing else than our coming into contact with truth and light. In the day of the Great Judgment all men will appear naked before this penetrating light of truth. The "books" will be opened. What are these "books"? They are our hearts. Our hearts will be opened by the penetrating light of God, and what is in these hearts will be revealed. If in those hearts there is love for God, those hearts will rejoice seeing God's light. If, on the contrary, there is hatred for God in those hearts, these men will suffer by receiving on their opened hearts this penetrating light of truth which they detested all their life.

So that which will differentiate between one man and another will not be a decision of God, a reward or a punishment from Him, but that which was in each one's heart; what was there during all our life will be revealed in the Day of Judgment. If there is a reward and a punishment in this revelation — and there really is — it does not come from God but from the love or hate which reigns in our heart. Love has bliss in it, hatred has despair, bitterness, grief, affliction, wickedness, agitation, confusion, darkness, and all the other interior conditions which compose hell (I Cor. 4:6).

The Light of Truth, God's Energy, God's grace which will fall on men unhindered by corrupt conditions in the Day of Judgment, will be the same to all men. There will be no distinction whatever. All the difference lies in those who receive, not in Him Who gives. The sun shines on healthy and diseased eyes alike, without any distinction. Healthy eyes enjoy light and because of it see clearly the beauty which surrounds them. Diseased eyes feel pain, they hurt, suffer, and want to hide from this same light which brings such great happiness to those who have healthy eyes.

But alas, there is no longer any possibility of escaping God's light. During this life there was. In the New Creation of the Resurrection, God will be everywhere and in everything. His light and love will embrace all. There will be no place hidden from God, as was the case during our corrupt life in the kingdom of the prince of this world. The devil's kingdom will be despoiled by the Common Resurrection and God will take possession again of His creation. Love will enrobe everything with its sacred Fire which will flow like a river from the throne of God and will irrigate paradise. But this same river of Love — for those who have hate in their hearts — will suffocate and burn.

"For our God is a consuming fire", (Heb. 12:29). The very fire which purifies gold, also consumes wood. Precious metals shine in it like the sun, rubbish burns with black smoke. All are in the same fire of Love. Some shine and others become black and dark. In the same furnace steel shines like the sun, whereas clay turns dark and is hardened like stone. The difference is in man, not in God.

The difference is conditioned by the free choice of man, which God respects absolutely. God's judgment is the revelation of the reality which is in man.

- from "The River of Fire," by Alexandre Kalomiros

Biship HILARION on the Call of God

2007-06-14T15:30:00.000-05:00

"It has never been easy to hear the message of faith. In our day we are usually so engrossed in the problems of earthly existence that we simply have no time to listen to this message and to reflect on God. For some, religion has been reduced to celebrating Christmas and Easter and to observing a few traditions for fear of being ‘torn away from our roots’. Others do not go to church at all because they are ‘too busy’. ‘He is engrossed in his work’; ‘work is everything to her’; ‘he is a busy man’. These are some of the best compliments that one can receive from friends and colleagues. ‘Busy people’ are a breed peculiar to modern times. Nothing exists for them other than a preoccupation which swallows them up completely, leaving no place for that silence where the voice of God may be heard.

"And yet, however paradoxical it may seem, in spite of today’s noise and confusion, it is still possible to hear the mysterious call of God in our hearts. This call may not always be understood as the voice of God. It may strike us as a feeling of dissatisfaction or of inner unease, or as the beginning of a search. For many, it is only after the passing of years that they realize their life was incomplete and inadequate because it was without God. ‘You have made us for Yourself’, says St Augustine, ‘and our hearts are restless until they rest in You’. Without God there can never be fulness of being. It is therefore crucially important for us to be able to hear and to respond to the voice of God at the very moment when God is speaking, and not years later. If someone identifies and responds to the call of God, this may change and transfigure his or her whole life.'"

- from Bishop HILARION Alfeyev's catechism, The Mystery of Faith

May 29: A Day That Will Live in Infamy

2007-05-31T07:40:00.001-05:00

A Dark Day in History

by Srdja Trifkovic

On May 29, 1453, the city of Constantinople fell to the Muslims. It was a dark day for Christendom and for all civilized humanity. His pleas ignored in the West, his supplies running out after six weeks’ siege, his soldiers outnumbered 15 to one, Emperor Constantine XI Dragas knew that his cause was hopeless. Like Prince Lazar at Kosovo 64 years earlier, he chose martyrdom.

On May 22 the moon, symbol of Constantinople since its founding, rose in dark eclipse, fulfilling an old prophecy on the city’s demise. Four days later the Bosphorus was shrouded by thick fog, a phenomenon unknown in eastern Mediterranean in late spring. When the final assault started on the 29th and the walls of the city were shattered, the Emperor discarded his purple cloak and led the last defenders to charge into the breach. The Turks were never able to identify his body; the last Roman Emperor was buried in a mass grave along with his soldiers.

When it was all over, bands of Turks went on a rampage. Pillaging and killing went on for three days. The blood ran down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn. All the treasures of the Imperial Palace were promptly removed. Books and icons were burnt on the spot, once the jeweled covers and frames had been wrenched off. In the monastery of the Holy Savior, the invaders first destroyed the icon of the Mother of God, the Hodigitria, the holiest icon in all Byzantium, painted—so men said—by Saint Luke himself. When the Turks burst into the Hagia Sophia, Sir Steven Runciman tells us in his Fall of Constantinople,

The worshippers were trapped. A few of the ancient and infirm were killed on the spot; but most of them were tied or chained together. Many of the lovelier maidens and youths and many of the richer-clad nobles were almost torn to death as their captors quarreled over them. The priests went on chanting at the altar till they too were taken . . . The inhabitants were carried off along with their possessions. Anyone who collapsed from frailty was slaughtered, together with a number of infants who were held to be of no value . . . [The city] was now half in ruins, emptied and deserted and blackened as though by fire, and strangely silent. Wherever the soldiers had been there was desolation. Churches had been desecrated and stripped; houses were no longer habitable and shops and stores battered and bare...

Read it all here.

Artwork: Siege of Constantinople, by Jean Chartier

Monks, Madness, and Virginia Tech

2007-05-24T08:36:00.001-05:00

"I do not know what might have been done differently to prevent the Virginia disaster. It is impossible to determine what led Seung-hui Cho to his final terrible moments or if he was capable of making any clear choices at that point in his life. But it is the source of some hope to know that in a world where such horrors can happen within any human heart, people still make the sign of the Cross and sit in silence before God, whose love has called both the monk and Seung-hui Cho into existence."

- Father John Garvey, an Orthodox priest and columnist for Commonweal Magazine. Read the entire piece here.

The Liturgy in Moscow

2007-05-17T09:39:00.000-05:00

Maxim Marmur/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Here's the story as it appears in today's NY Times:

MOSCOW (AP) -- Church bells pealed as leaders of the Russian Orthodox faith signed a pact Thursday healing a historic, 80-year schism between the church in Russia and an offshoot set up abroad after the Bolshevik Revolution.
After a choir sang hymns, Moscow Patriarch Alexy II, leader of the main Russian Orthodox Church, led the ceremony with a sermon praising the end of the formal division.
''Joy illuminates our hearts,'' Alexy said, addressing worshippers in the vast Christ the Savior Cathedral. ''A historic event awaited for long, long years has occurred. The unity of the Russian church is restored.''
Alexy later signed the reunion agreement with Metropolitan Laurus, head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Worshippers wept and incense wafted up into the cathedral's soaring cupola.

Read it all here.

An Ascension Day to Remember...

2007-05-17T08:32:00.000-05:00

By God's grace and mercy, and through the prayers of the Theotokos and all the Saints, today will mark the closure of one of the most difficult chapters in the history of the Orthodox Church in Russia and her diaspora around the world.

Division among brethren is painful and scandalous. The 2oth century offered far too many opportunities for both pain and scandal, but also for the witness of martyrdom.

The apologist Tertullian once wrote that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. Pray that the blood of the countless martyrs will indeed bring a new season of growth for Holy Orthodoxy in the 21st century.

The following news article by Sophia Kishkovsky appeared in today's International Herald Tribune:

MOSCOW:
The atmosphere was tense, laced with nearly a century of mistrust and bitter feelings, when President Vladimir Putin met in New York with leaders of an émigré church that had broken with the Russian Orthodox Church after the Bolshevik Revolution. The breakaway church had vowed never to return as long as the "godless regime" was in power.

"I want to assure all of you," Putin said at the 2003 meeting, "that this godless regime is no longer there." Then, recalled the Reverend Serafim Gan, a senior priest of the breakaway church, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Putin added: "You are sitting with a believing President."

That meeting set in motion years of difficult negotiations that on Thursday are expected to be capped by the signing of a canonical union at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was dynamited by Stalin in 1931 and rebuilt in the 1990s. Church members are calling the signing - which coincides with the feast of Ascension - the symbolic end of Russia's civil war and confirmation of the Russian Orthodox Church's central role in post-Soviet society.

Read it all here.

Exactly...

2007-05-07T10:25:00.000-05:00

I've been reading around in the recent festschrift for Bishop Kallistos (Timothy) Ware, Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West, and the material is excellent.

There are those rare occasions when a passage describing another's pilgrimage resonates profoundly with one's own - and such was my experience when reading the following excerpt from Father Andrew Louth's biographical sketch of His Grace:

"In 1954, Timothy offered himself for ordination in the Church of England, went to a selection board organized for what was then called CACTM (The Church's Advisory Countcil for Training for the Ministry), and was accepted for ordination. During his time at Magdalen, especially through Brother Peter of the Anglican Franciscan order, Society of St Francis, he came to know and experience much of the best of the Anglican tradition, with its combination of deep devotion, both personal an liturgical, a sense of mission, and an energetic concern for the needs of the poor and underprivileged. By the time he finished Greats, his doubts over Anglicanism were beginning to grow, and he chose to stay on at Magdalen to read for the Honour School of Theology, rather than begin his theological studies at an Anglican Theological College. For during his time at Oxford his interest in Orthodoxy had deepened and developed. He received little encouragement in his journey to Orthodoxy: far from it, he had been very much discouraged, both by his English friends (who warned him of 'life-long eccentricity'), and by the Orthodox bishop he had approached (Bishop James [Vivros] of Apamaea, of the Greek Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom in London). But Anglicanism itself he came to feel he could no longer embrace. What troubled him was the diversity of Anglican faith, leaving him with the oddness of affirming as an individual preference what he saw as something to be received as Tradition. Anglican involvement with the Church of South India, which troubled many fellow Anglicans, seemed to underscore such openness to ambiguity. The pull of Orthodoxy - its unambiguous embrace of Tradition, the continuing witness of its martyrs, its profound life of prayer, as well as the bonds of friendship being forged with such as Nicolas and Militza Zernov, and the influence of the theological insights of theologians like Vladimir Lossky, Fr Georges Florovsky and Fr John Romanides - became overwhelming." (pp 15-16, italics and bold added)

Pondering recent events in Russia...

2007-04-26T09:07:00.000-05:00

The above photo is Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, where the recent funeral for former Russian President Boris Yeltsin was held. It's tempting to make either too much or too little of the swirl of events concerning Russian Orthodoxy in post-Communist Russia.

Terry Mattingly over at Getreligion.org does a great job at pondering what it all may (or may not) mean...

Click here to read his reflections.

April 25: The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark

2007-04-25T07:36:00.000-05:00

The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark, also known as John Mark (Acts 12:12), was one of the Seventy Apostles, and was also a nephew of St Barnabas (June 11). He was born at Jerusalem. The house of his mother Mary adjoined the Garden of Gethsemane. As Church Tradition relates, on the night that Christ was betrayed he followed after Him, wrapped only in a linen cloth. He was seized by soldiers, and fled away naked, leaving the cloth behind (Mark 14:51-52). After the Ascension of the Lord, the house of his mother Mary became a place where Christians gathered, and a place of lodging for some of the Apostles (Acts 12:12).

St Mark was a very close companion of the Apostles Peter and Paul (June 29) and Barnabas. St Mark was at Seleucia with Paul and Barnabas, and from there he set off to the island of Cyprus, and he traversed the whole of it from east to west. In the city of Paphos, St Mark witnessed the blinding of the sorcerer Elymas by St Paul (Acts 13:6-12).

After working with the Apostle Paul, St Mark returned to Jerusalem, and then went to Rome with the Apostle Peter. From there, he set out for Egypt, where he established a local Church.

St Mark met St Paul in Antioch. From there he went with St Barnabas to Cyprus, and then he went to Egypt again, where he and St Peter founded many churches. Then he went to Babylon. From this city the Apostle Peter sent an Epistle to the Christians of Asia Minor, in which he calls St Mark his son (1 Pet 5:13).

When the Apostle Paul came to Rome in chains, St Mark was at Ephesus, where St Timothy (January 4) was bishop. St Mark went with him to Rome. There he also wrote his holy Gospel (ca. 62-63).

From Rome St Mark traveled to Egypt. In Alexandria he started a Christian school, which later produced such famous Fathers and teachers of the Church as Clement of Alexandria, St Dionysius of Alexandria (October 5), St Gregory Thaumatourgos (November 5), and others. Zealous for Church services, St Mark composed a Liturgy for the Christians of Alexandria.

St Mark preached the Gospel in the inner regions of Africa, and he was in Libya at Nektopolis.

During these journeys, St Mark was inspired by the Holy Spirit to go again to Alexandria and confront the pagans. There he visited the home of Ananias, and healed his crippled hand. The dignitary happily took him in, listened to his words, and received Baptism.

Following the example of Ananias, many of the inhabitants of that part of the city where he lived were also baptized. This roused the enmity of the pagans, and they wanted to kill St Mark. Having learned of this, St Mark made Ananias a bishop, and the three Christians Malchos, Sabinos, and Kerdinos were ordained presbyters to provide the church with leadership after his death.

The pagans seized St Mark when he was serving the Liturgy. They beat him, dragged him through the streets and threw him in prison. There St Mark was granted a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who strengthened him before his sufferings. On the following day, the angry crowd again dragged the saint through the streets to the courtroom, but along the way St Mark died saying, "Into Your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit."

The pagans wanted to burn the saint's body, but when they lit the fire, everything grew dark, thunder crashed, and there was an earthquake. The pagans fled in terror, and Christians took up the body of St Mark and buried it in a stone crypt. This was on April 4, 63. The Church celebrates his memory on April 25.

In the year 310, a church was built over the relics of St Mark. In 820, when the Moslem Arabs had established their rule in Egypt and oppressed the Christian Church, the relics of St Mark were transferred to Venice and placed in the church named for him.

In the ancient iconographic tradition, which adopted symbols for the holy Evangelists borrowed from the vision of St John the Theologian (Rev 4:7) and the prophecy of Ezekiel (Ez. 1:10), the holy Evangelist Mark is represented by a lion, symbolizing the might and royal dignity of Christ (Rev 5:5).

St Mark wrote his Gospel for Gentile Christians, emphasizing the words and deeds of the Savior which reveal His divine Power. Many aspects of his account can be explained by his closeness to St Peter. The ancient writers say that the Gospel of Mark is a concise record of St Peter's preaching.

One of the central theological themes in the Gospel of St Mark is the power of God achieving what is humanly impossible. The Apostles performed remarkable miracles with Christ (Mark 16:20) and the Holy Spirit (Mark 13:11) working through them. His disciples were told to go into the world and preach the Gospel to all creatures (Mark 13:10, 16:15), and that is what they did. - From the menologion of the Orthodox Church in America

Troparion - Tone 4

From your childhood the light of truth enlightened you, O Mark,
and you loved the labor of Christ the Savior.
Therefore, you followed Peter with zeal
and served Paul well as a fellow laborer,
and you enlighten the world with your holy Gospel.

Kontakion - Tone 2

When you received the grace of the Spirit from on high, O Apostle,
you broke the snares of the philosophers and gathered all nations into your net,
bringing them to your Lord, O glorious Mark,
by the preaching of the divine Gospel.

Pray for me, Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark, for you are the sure helper and intercessor for my soul!

Moving Beyond Faith and Doubt...

2007-04-24T14:42:00.000-05:00

One of the great conflicts of the so-called "modern world" has been the battle between religion and science, or faith and doubt, or gullibility and skepticism, or... well, you get the picture. The increasing spitefulness and anger manifested in these arguments may be yet another sign that the present "post-modern" era is really a kind of heightened, intesified modernism rather than a new epoch or historical period.

The recent published work of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have made the best seller lists, and more than a few religious writers have sought to counter their attack.

I'm seldom satisfied with such polemic, finding this insight from Father John Garvey to be a helpful recasting of the argument:

"There has been an interesting recent debate about faith and doubt, religious belief and atheism. Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic and the author of The Conservative Soul (HarperCollins), and Sam Harris, author of Letter to a Christian Nation (Alfred A. Knopf), have had at it on the Web site Beliefnet. Harris argues that all religion is lethal, and that those Christians who are not fundamentalists don’t really understand that religion inherently tends toward fundamentalism and intolerance. Sullivan counters this, in his book and in the course of this debate, by emphasizing the role that reasonable doubt plays in any serious theology. Doubt is, in a sense, a form of humility.

On the whole, I agree with Sullivan’s approach, although there is a danger here. This approach could be seen more as a way of hedging your bets than as a form of faith-a way of half believing, as it were: after all, you could be wrong.

And of course you could be. Sullivan is right to stress humility and a respect for the opinions of others. But there may be a more effective way to approach this. Rather than emphasize doubt, it might make more sense to speak of the place out of which one believes-the community of faith, the tradition, the thing handed on to you.
Rather than say that I know what I believe, I think it is closer to the truth to say that I know the framework within which I believe, and doubt, and wonder. I know the persons who move and compel me-Paul, the saints, people I have known whose lives and witness matter deeply to me, all of them gathered in sometimes complicated ways in an assembly into which we are baptized, and within which we share the Eucharist...

Read it all here.

Patriarch PAVLE of Serbia: 2007 Pascha Message

2007-04-17T21:22:00.000-05:00

The Serbian Orthodox Church to her spiritual children at Pascha, 2007

P A V L E

By the grace of God, Orthodox Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci and Serbian Patriarch, with all the Hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church – to all the clergy, monastics, and all the sons and daughters of our Holy Church: grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, with the joyous Paschal greeting:

CHRIST IS RISEN!

"This is the day of resurrection.
Let us be illumined, O people.
Pascha, the Pascha of the Lord.
For from death to life and from earth to heaven
has Christ our God led us."
(The Canon of Pascha, Ode I)

With these verses of the Paschal hymn, dear spiritual children, we, the believing people of God, begin the Celebration above all celebrations, song above all songs, about the Event above all events: The Resurrection of Christ. The Resurrection, like the Crucifixion, is a stumbling block for the Jews and foolishness for the Greeks, but we experience and celebrate it as the deepest experience of our faith and life. This is the experience which was first encountered by the holy myrrh-bearing women and the holy apostles, which they have graciously passed down to us and which we have received with faith, with the faith that becomes the power of life.

Filled with joy by this fact of the new life, the holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian proclaims his experience to Christians of every time with these words: "That which we have heard, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled," is that which is "Life made manifest and we declare to you that Eternal life." The Day of Resurrection is the day of Life. Therefore, let us rejoice and be glad in it! We celebrate the Life-giver, Christ the God-Man!

The day of Resurrection, dear spiritual children, begins a new era. If Great and Holy Friday was the particular "terrible judgment" by fallen man against God Himself, then the day of the Resurrection is the Day of the victory of God’s love and goodness. The Resurrection took place on the first day of the week. Thus it has received its beginning in time and space, just as on the first day of creation the world received the dimensions of existence of everything visible and invisible. The Day of Resurrection is not, as some would want and wish, only a spiritual and poetic event, but above all it is a historical-eschatological Event that has changed the history of the world. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: old things have passed away and all things have become new," said the holy Apostle Paul.

The Day of Resurrection is filled with Divine light: a light with which the Risen Lord Himself enlightens us. "Come, receive light from the unwaning Light!" are the first words with which the Church invites us to the beginning of the celebration of Christ1s Resurrection. If anyone would truly celebrate the Resurrection of Christ as his own life experience, he must first be illumined with the light of Christ. The gladsome light of the unfading Light is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ. He rose from the tomb as the sun rises in the east out of the darkness of night to shine upon the whole earth, to warm it and renew a life on it. Let us be illumined with the Light of the Resurrection, the light which has shone from the tomb. This is the light of the God-Man Christ, Who said of Himself: "I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life." Today and always, through His Holy Church, He calls us to the enlightening of our mind, heart, and our whole being.

Pascha, the Pascha of the Lord! The Jewish people passed through the Red Sea in order to be delivered from sin-poisoned Pharaoh. How? With God’s help. For, "The Lord went ahead of them on the road as a pillar of cloud during the day, and at night as a pillar of fire, giving them light so that they could travel day and night." This pillar of cloud and of lightening fire was exactly the radiant Light of the unfading Light, the Logos of God. Having crossed the Red Sea, those who until then had been slaves entered into freedom, exclaiming to the Lord: "Gloriously has he been glorified; a horse and a rider he threw into the sea!" This was the Passover (Pascha) of God’s chosen people, that seed of Abraham’s faith. And the Passover (Pascha) which we celebrate today is the Passover of the Lord – truly the Passing Over of Him Who led the Jewish people from slavery into freedom. So this is His Pascha, which has a universal character. This is why the church hymnographer calls upon all people from every nation and time, and not just one nation, to celebrate the Pascha of the Lord, that is, Christ’s Passover from death and the tomb into the Resurrection, so that we all may pass with Him from slavery to sin and death into the freedom of life.

Seeing this dimension of the feast of Christ’s Resurrection, dear spiritual children, let us lay aside all earthly cares, and together with the angels of heaven and the choirs of the saints, let us live this new reality of divine life in Christ Jesus, let us sing and praise the Cause of our salvation! Our song is victorious because death has been destroyed by death! The death-dealing poison of sin has lost its power to kill. How? Through the love and goodness of the God-Man Christ, for He as a blameless Lamb took the sins of the world upon Himself and gave Himself to be crucified. Sin and death are no longer the alpha and omega of life. The Resurrected Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of our sanctification. With divine virtues and ascetic efforts, let us hasten into a new, virtuous life in the Resurrected Jesus Christ!

Living in time and space, we Christians measure everything and everybody with Christ’s values. We do not disregard this world and life, nor do we despise them. On the contrary, we sanctify them with the all-sanctifying grace of God. This world can be transformed by the energies of the Resurrected God-Man Christ. This is why our Lord unambiguously said to Christians: "You are light of the world." This means: only with you and through you can this world be transformed and saved. The Savior said this as well: in this world you will have many tribulations! You will be persecuted as I was persecuted and crucified; the cup from which I have drunk, you also will drink! But do not be afraid, for I have conquered the world. And despite all the suffering which the Church of Christ has experienced throughout the centuries, and is going through even today, Christians remain "the light to the world", just as He Himself was the only Light of the world to shine in the darkness that covered Jerusalem on Great and Holy Friday.

Just as at that time the whole Jewish Sanhedrin (the chief priests and leaders of the people) was against Christ the Savior and aroused many people against Christ, so in our time, the "new Sanhedrin" fights against Christ and His Church. This new Sanhedrin fights against Good in this world. It is doing everything it can to make this world its sinful fiefdom and to conquer everything under its authority, by any and all methods and means. This is why it is imperative that all Christians carry on a spiritual warfare for this world and for the dominion of Good in it. The Good that the God-Man has brought and granted to the world by His Resurrection will not be conquered. "Do not fear!" said the Savior. Let us therefore rejoice and be glad as did the chosen people after they crossed the Red Sea exclaiming: Christ is Risen – Gloriously has the Lord been glorified!

Unfortunately, we are witnesses of great sins being committed daily in the world. From conception, the innocent child in its mother’s womb fears for its life. Millions of ordinary people are victims of poverty and hunger, while a few live in unlimited riches and carnal pleasures. Many nations are defending their freedom, earned with blood and suffering, from the aggression of globalization. In the name of false freedom and democracy, preplanned solutions (packaged in advanced) are being imposed. We are witnesses of the newest drama – again, the drama of us Orthodox Serbs – in Kosovo and Metohija. Our people are also afflicted with many tribulations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Croatia, and sadly, in Montenegro.

We cannot go without mentioning this Pascha the Golgotha and Great Friday of our Kosovo and Metohija; and the darkened conscience of all those who give themselves the right, trampling upon the world’s legal order, to cold-bloodedly pass sentence not only on imposed changes in the status of Kosovo and Metohija, but upon our whole history and culture, and the sovereignty of Serbia! In Kosovo and Metohija the Golgotha of the Serbian people has been taking place for centuries. This is seen by all and known by all except by those who are blind to seeing the truth and deaf for hearing justice. We hear "blacksmiths" speedily forging new nails and new spears with the intention to repeat and prolong the Golgotha of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija. All this they do with the “blessing” of those who swear upon justice, freedom, and democracy, but only for themselves! However, we still believe in the conscience of objective mankind, which was recently confirmed by the international Tribunal of Justice in the Hague. Even though the highest Court of justice decided this after having reviewed all the documents for and against, the shouts can still be heard: crucify, crucify the Serbian people!

But we, dear spiritual children, cannot give up, cannot fear, because of injustice. Rather, let us commend our whole life to Christ our God! Christ did not commit sin, nor was there deceit in His mouth, and yet He was condemned and crucified. But, He also gloriously resurrected. If, God forbid, the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija undergo one more crucifixion, more terrible than the others, let us remain with Christ: do not slander, do not think evil; rather let us pray, and from the Cross let us witness to God’s love for all and everybody. Let us witness to Christ, the Victor over death, sin and all injustice. Those who do evil to others, do even worse to themselves. Sooner or later, if they do not repent, they will weep bitterly.

Celebrating the Resurrection of Christ with all the world's Christians, today we rejoice and are glad with them and with all of God’s creation, and joyously exclaim to one and all:

Christ is Risen!

Given at the Serbian Patriarchate in Belgrade at Pascha 2007; text from the ERPKIM Archive.

Paschal Homily of ALEXY II, Patriarch of Moscow

2007-04-13T20:15:00.000-05:00

Thou did descend into the nether regions of earth, O Christ,
and did shatter the eternal bars which held the prisoners captive;
and like Jonah from the sea-monster,
after three days Thou did rise from the grave.

-Irmos of Canticle Six of the Paschal Canon

Christ is risen!

I address now these triumphant words, full of rejoicing, to each of you, Your Graces my brothers the archpastors, most-honourable pastors and deacons, God-loving monks and nuns, and pious laity of our Holy Orthodox Church.

Christ's Passover has once more come to our churches and homes, to our towns and villages, to our parish communities and monastic houses, to our souls and hearts, and has illumined us with the unfading Light, the Light of the kingdom of God, the Light of exultant Paschal joy.

The redemptive sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ and his Bright Resurrection has brought to humanity incomparable freedom - freedom from sin and destruction. Yet it is only he who entrusts himself to Christ the Saviour, who accepts him as 'the way, the truth, and the life' (Jn 14:6), - only he acquires this freedom, for as the Gospel says, 'If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free' (Jn 8:31-32). This truth is our risen Lord Jesus Christ who has destroyed the power of Hades and death and who grants us the freedom to choose life eternal. In his Paschal Homily, which is read in every church on this radiant feast, St John Chrysostom says: 'Let no one fear death, for the death of our Saviour has delivered us from it.' Let us then, together with the Holy Mother Church, sing praises to the Saviour's victory over death, let us be exultant, rejoicing in the redemption wh! ich has been granted to us, let us endeavour to share this feast with those who yet abide in the slavery to sin so that we may bring them to liberty in Christ and to life eternal. Let us keep 'the perfect law of liberty' (Jas 1:25) and teach it to those near and far, recalling that the keeping of this law in our hearts and its fulfilment allow the human person to stand without shame before the face of the Righteous Judge.

There are many people alongside us who believe that freedom is brought by money or power, strength or health, by a cult of 'all is permitted' and immorality. In worshiping these idols of this age, in outdoing each other in pride and egoism, they ever let out of sight the fact that they are becoming ever more mired in slavery - the slavery of self-love, vice and passions. Good comes to those who visit God's church and here realize what true freedom is and how to embark on the way of perfection. Good comes to those who, for the sake of acquiring this freedom, labour diligently for their salvation, keeping fidelity to Christ amidst the turbulence and afflictions of this age.

Our Church goes steadily along the path of regeneration. In a society, where until quite recently people renounced God and then exerted much effort in pursuit of the deceptive goods of this world, the number of people who try to live as Orthodox Christians is growing. Yet so that perfect joy, the joy of the risen Lord may grow from year to year in the hearts of compatriots, we are faced with having to grow in virtue and to call our neighbours to do likewise.

In his great and ineffable mercy the Lord blesses our endeavours in building up parish and monastic communities. In all spheres of life in our society - in the economics, politics, and in the family - the understanding that we need to build our lives according to the foundations of Christian morality is gaining ground. Yet we still have to labour much. We ought to be especially concerned for the strengthening of the family in order to make it strong and harmonious, capable of educating new generations in righteousness and honour, in Spirit and in Truth. If our families truly become 'little Churches,' strong in a single faith, replete with the mutual love of husbands and wives, parents and children, then our people will forget about the moral crisis and the many calamities engendered by this crisis.

In all places - whether in church or at home, or in the work place where we labour - wherever the Lord directs us, we are to be witnesses of Christ crucified and risen, we are to illumine the world with the light of spiritual joy, wisdom, peace and liberty. Herein lies our mission to the world where there is still much suffering, lack of faith, enmity, injustice, vice and unrighteousness. Let us then vanquish them with the Light of Christ and the power of his grace! Let us fulfil the apostle's commandment to 'stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage' (Gal 5:1). And let us always recall the words the Lord said to his disciples as he appeared to them after the Resurrection: 'Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: a! nd, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.' (Mt 28:19-20).

From the depths of my heart I congratulate you, beloved archpastors, fathers, brothers and sisters, on the feast of Christ's Bright Resurrection. I send Paschal greetings to all Orthodox Christians who are 'from end to end of the universe.' I hasten to share the joy of Holy Pascha with everyone who confesses the risen Christ, with all people amidst whom God has judged us to live. May joy, peace and his gracious succour in good deeds be granted to all of you, my beloved ones, by the Saviour of the world who has risen from the tomb.

Christ is risen! He is truly risen!

- from Directions to Orthodoxy

Holy Week Schedule at St. Matthew Orthodox Church in Baton Rouge

2007-04-02T11:50:00.000-05:00

Father Sergius Clark will be leading services from Great and Holy Thursday through the morning of Holy Pascha.

The full schedule is detailed on the Church's website.

Come and pray with us!

Atheism and the Experience of God

2007-03-27T22:30:00.000-05:00

As has often been the case, my Lenten prayers and devotional reading have been fitful and sporadic. I've been working slowly through a little book by Archimandrite Sophrony on Saint Silouan the Athonite. It's been slow going -- I am distracted by many things and my mind is prone to wander. There are times I read and re-read the same paragraph, even the same sentence, before even coming close to grasping the meaning and significance.

Pray for me and my scattered mind and heart.

Recently, I was intrigued to find two short pieces by Father John Breck addressing the phenomenon of atheism and the Orthodox experience of God that refer to the legacy of Saint Silouan.

They're worth pondering.

Here are the links:

Atheism and the Experience of God (Part I)

Atheism and the Experience of God (Part II)

Love means always having to say you're sorry...

2007-03-22T08:08:00.000-05:00

...and meaning it.

...and doing something about it.

Great Lent is the season of saying "I'm sorry." And then saying it again, and again, and...

Here's a snippet from a magnificent reflection by Fr Jonathan Tobias, from his blog "Second Terrace."

"It goes without saying that “sorry” requires spiritual poverty. Physical poverty probably helps. That's why our Lord said that thistle-y thing about the camel.

The best source for sorry, of course, is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The Holy Tradition is replete , like Mother Mary of Egypt, with examples of how sorry should be done. There should be little confusion in the Church about what my mood should be when I confess my sins. I should be embarrassed and ashamed, and frightened at the inevitabilities of the consequences. There should be no bravado, nor nonchalance, nor soliciting.

Absolution should always come as a surprise.

I should never expect the Crucifixion.

There can be no “of course” to the Cup.

I should feel, escaping from the Mystery, as though I were a death row inmate, whose injection was stopped at 2359, and whose sentence was commuted, who’s been sent to a cottage on the sands for the rest of his days, with my family in flipflops, watching the dolphins pirouette in the blue argent tide, in the Trinitarian sun.

Well, now, that was just too personal, wasn’t it?

But I think some more personal is needed in sorry these days. Myself, I’ve been too doctrinaire in a bureaucratic sort of way, thinking of sin as transgression in some cosmic juridical drama: you know, Christ as my Perry, old Louis the Officer as the DA.

To help with sorry, I’ve found a surprising source. It is Homer, no less, from the Iliad. Here is Phoenix, Achilles’ old tutor, trying to prevail upon his former protégé to join the battle line against Hector and company:
We do have Prayers, you know, Prayers for forgiveness,
daughters of mighty Zeus … and they limp and halt,
they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side,
can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty,
trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin.
But Ruin is strong and swift –
She outstrips them all by far, stealing a march,
leaping over the whole wide earth to bring mankind to grief.
And the Prayers trail after, trying to heal the wounds.
Here and I thought my prayers for forgiveness, and all my sorry’s, were quite noble, aristocratic works. I was proud of my confessions, because it was, after all, a great condescension on my part to actually kneel down and admit I was wrong, that mistakes were made … or to say that, God, if I offended You, or if You took offense at anything I did (without my knowing) … or to admit that I failed the Fast last Wednesday by eating margarine with whey in it (I should have consulted the label first).

He should have been pleased that I was so articulate, that I fell, rhetorically and oh so Wagnerianly on my mea culpa sword.

But Homer says that my prayers for forgiveness are old ladies, limp and halt, who stumble, wrinkled and squinty, after the mad Ruin of my sin.

Sin is not so much crime, or even disease, as it is ruin. It is the ruin of Creation, logos and telos, meaning and destiny ... it is the shriveling of hypostasis, the schizophrenification of time.

Truly, sin is mad Ruin.

And the Prayers trail after, trying to heal the wounds.

And by His stripes alone are we healed.

Read it all here.

St Benedict of Nursia on Humility

2007-03-14T07:26:00.000-05:00

Today we commemorate St Benedict of Nursia, the Father of Western Monasticism and author of the Rule. The quotation below the icon is from his chapter on humility.

Holy Scripture, brethren, cries out to us, saying,
"Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled,
and he who humbles himself shall be exalted" (Luke 14:11).
In saying this it shows us
that all exaltation is a kind of pride,
against which the Prophet proves himself to be on guard
when he says,
"Lord, my heart is not exalted,
nor are mine eyes lifted up;
neither have I walked in great matters,
nor in wonders above me."
But how has he acted?
"Rather have I been of humble mind
than exalting myself;
as a weaned child on its mother's breast,
so You solace my soul" (Ps. 130:1-2).

Hence, brethren,
if we wish to reach the very highest point of humility
and to arrive speedily at that heavenly exaltation
to which ascent is made through the humility of this present life,
we must by our ascending actions
erect the ladder Jacob saw in his dream,
on which Angels appeared to him descending and ascending.
By that descent and ascent
we must surely understand nothing else than this,
that we descend by self-exaltation and ascend by humility.
And the ladder thus set up is our life in the world,
which the Lord raises up to heaven if our heart is humbled.
For we call our body and soul the sides of the ladder,
and into these sides our divine vocation has inserted
the different steps of humility and discipline we must climb.

For more on his life, click here.

icon from the website of the Orthodox Church in America

Bishop HILARION on Pope and Putin

2007-03-13T09:55:00.000-05:00

Interfax-Religion has posted an interesting interview with Bishop HILARION on the upcoming visit of His Holiness Benedict XVI and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Here's a snippet:

Does the Russian Orthodox Church expect anything of the meeting between President Putin and Pope Benedict XVI?

I dare to hope that this meeting will help some further warming in relationships between the Vatican and Russia. It is going to be a meeting of the two heads of their respective states, both of whom have a handful of common tasks to deal with. However, it is also going to be a meeting between two Christians, each of whom bears high responsibility for the lives of the others.

Nowadays, the whole long-established people’s life-mode is traumatized due to total liberalization of morals influenced by secular and atheistic ideology. The most fundamental features of human existence, such as family and birthgiving are no longer enjoy priority in among the modern person’s values and are therefore put under threat. This results in an extreme demographic crisis that both Russia and Western European nations are facing.

In this circumstances Russia and the Vatican have many things to do jointly to defend traditional moral values, and I hope that the meeting between the Russian President Putin and Pope Benedict will contribute into our common cause...

Read it all here.

Saint Helen: Pilgrim Archaeologist

2007-03-06T07:15:00.000-06:00

On March 6, we commemorate the Holy Empress Helen, who uncovered the Precious Cross and Nails of our Lord Jesus at Jerusalem in 326.

At the beginning of the reign of St Constantine the Great (306-337), the first Roman emperor to recognize Christianity, he and his pious mother St Helen decided to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. They also planned to build a church on the site of the Lord's suffering and Resurrection, in order to reconsecrate and purify the places connected with the Savior's death and Resurrection from the foul taint of paganism.

The empress Helen journeyed to Jerusalem with a large quantity of gold. St Constantine wrote a letter to Patriarch Macarius I (313-323), requesting him to assist her in every possible way with her task of the restoring the Christian holy places.

After her arrival in Jerusalem, the holy empress Helen began to destroy all the pagan temples and reconsecrate the places which had been defiled by the pagans.

In her quest for the Life-Creating Cross, she questioned several Christians and Jews, but for a long time her search remained unsuccessful. Finally, an elderly Hebrew named Jude told her that the Cross was buried beneath the temple of Venus. St Helen ordered that the pagan temple be demolished, and for the site to be excavated. Soon they found Golgotha and the Lord's Sepulchre. Not far from the spot were three crosses, a board with the inscription written by Pilate (John 19:19), and four nails which had pierced the Lord's Body.

Now the task was to determine on which of the three crosses the Savior had been crucified. Patriarch Macarius saw a dead person being carried to his grave, then he ordered that the dead man be placed upon each cross in turn. When the corpse was placed on the Cross of Christ, he was immediately restored to life. After seeing the raising of the dead man, everyone was convinced that the Life-Creating Cross had been found. With great joy the empress Helen and Patriarch Macarius lifted the Life-Creating Cross and displayed it to all the people standing about.

adapted from the menologion at www.oca.org

St John Cassian: February 29

2007-02-28T07:33:00.000-06:00

Although his feast day falls on February 29, provision is often made to remember St John Cassian a day early on February 28.

I recall reading his Institutes in a Church History class almost twenty years ago in my first semester of seminary. He was the first significant Orthodox writer to capture my imagination...

Here's an excerpt from his entry in the OCA menologion:

When Chrysostom was exiled from Constantinople in 404, Sts John Cassian and Germanus went to Rome to plead his case before Innocent I. Cassian was ordained to the holy priesthood in Rome, or perhaps later in Gaul. After Chrysostom's death in 407, St John Cassian went to Massilia [Marseilles] in Gaul (now France). There he established two cenobitic monasteries in 415, one for men and another for women, based on the model of Eastern monasticism.

At the request of Bishop Castor of Aptia Julia (in southern Gaul), Cassian wrote THE INSTITUTES OF CENOBITIC LIFE (De Institutis Coenobiorum) in twelve books, describing the life of the Palestinian and Egyptian monks. Written between 417-419, the volume included four books describing the clothing of the monks of Palestine and Egypt, their schedule of prayer and services, and how new monks were received into the monasteries.The last eight books were devoted to the eight deadly sins and how to overcome them. Through his writings, St John Cassian provided Christians of the West with examples of cenobitic monasteries, and acquainted them with the asceticism of the Orthodox East.

Cassian speaks as a spiritual guide about the purpose of life, about attaining discernment, about renunciation of the world, about the passions of the flesh and spirit, about the hardships faced by the righteous, and about prayer.

St John Cassian also wrote CONFERENCES WITH THE FATHERS (Collationes Patrum) in twenty-four books in the form of conversations about the perfection of love, about purity, about God's help, about understanding Scripture, about the gifts of God, about friendship, about the use of language, about the four levels of monasticism, about the solitary life and cenobitic life, about repentance, about fasting, about nightly meditations, and about spiritual mortification. This last has the explanatory title "I do what I do not want to do."

Books 1-10 of the CONFERENCES describe St John's conversations with the Fathers of Sketis between 393-399. Books 11-17 relate conversations with the Fathers of Panephysis, and the last seven books are devoted to conversations with monks from the region of Diolkos.

In 431 St John Cassian wrote his final work, ON THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD, AGAINST NESTORIUS (De Incarnationem Domini Contra Nestorium). In seven books he opposed the heresy, citing many Eastern and Western teachers to support his arguments.

In his works, St John Cassian was grounded in the spiritual experience of the ascetics, and criticized the abstract reasoning of St Augustine (June 15). St John said that "grace is defended less adequately by pompous words and loquacious contention, dialectic syllogisms and the eloquence of Cicero (i.e. Augustine), than by the example of the Egyptian ascetics." In the words of St John of the Ladder (March 30), "great Cassian reasons loftily and excellently." His writings are also praised in the Rule of St Benedict.

St John Cassian lived in the West for many years, but his spiritual homeland was the Orthodox East. He fell asleep in the Lord in the year 435. His holy relics rest in an underground chapel in the Monastery of St Victor in Marseilles. His head and right hand are in the main church.

Holy John Cassian, well-pleasing to God, pray for us!

Listen and be Edified!

2007-02-12T11:59:00.000-06:00

The talks from the recent Colloquium on Orthodoxy for Anglicans held in Detroit are now available online!

Presenters included His Eminence Archbishop Nathaniel of the OCA's Romanian Episcopate, Father Stephen Freeman, Father John Parker, Father Patrick Henry Reardon, and Father Gregory Mathewes-Green.

Thanks to the wondrous generosity of Ancient Faith Radio, you may listen to the talks or download them in mp3 format by clicking here.

What's Wrong with Spirituality?

2007-02-02T09:18:00.000-06:00

Khouria Frederica Mathewes-Green has posted a very perceptive essay on modern understandings of "spirituality." Here's a snippet:

"I don’t like the category 'spirituality.' It sounds so external. It sounds so optional. It isn’t a concept I find in the first millennium, or anywhere in Eastern Christianity. As far as I can tell, what people today mean by 'spirituality' is what St. Paul meant by 'life in Christ.'

This is a transformation that every Christian is supposed to be experiencing, because we are all 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Peter 1:4). As we partake of the life of Christ and discipline ourselves, seeking to assimilate that life, it affects both our souls and bodies. His light spreads within us like fire spreading through a lump of coal, and so we become Christ-bearers to the world. This is such an essential, foundational element of life in Christ that to extract it and label it seems to deaden it..."

Read it all on her website here.

Orthodoxy in America: Diaspora or Church?

2007-02-01T18:46:00.000-06:00

This article by Archpriest Leonid Kishkovsky reviews the history of Orthodox jurisdictionalism in North America and soberly acknowledges the perils and promise of a path ahead.

Worth reading. Again.

"The most common image of Orthodoxy in America is the image of immigrant communities, of parishes and dioceses gathered according to the organizing principle of cultural and linguistic heritages. Often, this is the view of Orthodoxy in America held in the patriarchates and "mother churches" of Europe and the Middle East. Often enough, this is the view of Orthodoxy held by the mass media in the United States and Canada. And it is all-too-common for many Orthodox Christians in America to see themselves in light of the "immigrant image."

As a result, any definition of Orthodoxy in America built on the "immigrant model" has more in common with sociological interpretations and cultural categories than it does with ecclesiology. This makes the question "Is Orthodoxy in America Diaspora or Church?" a relevant starting point for my paper on the Orthodox understanding of the Church in the American experience.

The historical origins of the Orthodox Church in North America are connected not to immigration but to mission and evangelization. In 1794 missionary monks from Valaam Monastery arrived on Kodiak Island in Alaska. The mission they inaugurated brought the Gospel of Christ to the native tribes of Alaska. At the center of their endeavor was the evangelization of the Alaskan peoples, and not the dissemination of Russian language and culture. Indeed, at the heart of the missionary approach of the monks from Valaam was a respect for the native cultures and customs and a desire to baptize what was legitimate and valid in the native cultural traditions.

Thus the first dimension of Orthodoxy in America was the apostolic dimension, a genuine missionary impulse to evangelize..."

Continue reading on the Orthodox Europe website by clicking here.

January 25: Saint Gregory the Theologian

2007-01-25T11:19:00.000-06:00

Today the Church remembers St Gregory Nazianzen, one of the few Fathers to be honored with the title "Theologian." In the icon to the left, he is pictured with St Basil the Great and St John Chrysostom, the Three Hierarchs, who will be commemorated together on January 30.

On of my favorite passages from St Gregory's writings is this excerpt from his second Easter oration, in which he discusses the "ransom theory" of the atonement -- that is, to whom the precious Blood of Christ was offered on the Cross:

"Now we are to examine another fact and dogma, neglected by most people, but in my judgment well worth enquiring into. To whom was that Blood offered that was shed for us, and why was It shed? I mean the precious and famous Blood of our God and High Priest and Sacrifice.

We were detained in bondage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered, and for what cause?

If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, then it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether!

But if to God the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed. And next, on what principle did the Blood of His only-begotten Son delight the Father, who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being sacrificed by his father, [Abraham,] but changed the sacrifice by putting a ram in the place of the human victim? (See Gen 22).

Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him; but on account of the incarnation, and because Humanity must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant (i.e., the devil) and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son who also arranged this to the honor of the Father, whom it is manifest He obeys in all things."

January 24: Saint Xenia of Petersburg

2007-01-24T08:36:00.000-06:00

Saint Xenia lived during the eighteenth century, but little is known of her life or of her family. She passed most of her life in Petersburg during the reigns of the empresses Elizabeth and Catherine II.

Xenia Grigorievna Petrova was the wife of an army officer, Major Andrew Petrov. After the wedding, the couple lived in St Petersburg. St Xenia became a widow at the age of twenty-six when her husband suddenly died at a party. She grieved for the loss of her husband, and especially because he died without Confession or Holy Communion.

Once her earthly happiness ended, she did not look for it again. From that time forward, Xenia lost interest in the things of this world, and followed the difficult path of foolishness for the sake of Christ. The basis for this strange way of life is to be found in the first Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:18-24, 1 Cor. 2:14, 1 Cor. 3:18-19). The Lord strengthened her and helped her to bear sorrow and misfortune patiently for the next forty-five years.

She started wearing her husband's clothing, and insisted that she be addressed as "Andrew Feodorovich." She told people that it was she, and not her husband, who had died. In a certain sense, this was perfectly true. She abandoned her former way of life and experienced a spiritual rebirth. When she gave away her house and possessions to the poor, her relatives complained to the authorities. After speaking to Xenia, the officials were conviced that she was in her right mind and was entitled to dispose of her property as she saw fit. Soon she had nothing left for herself, so she wandered through the poor section of Petersburg with no place to lay her head. She refused all assistance from her relatives, happy to be free of worldly attachments.

When her late husband's red and green uniform wore out, she clothed herself in rags of those colors. After a while, Xenia left Petersburg for eight years. It is believed that she visited holy Elders and ascetics throughout Russia seeking instruction in the spiritual life. She may have visited St Theodore of Sanaxar (February 19), who had been a military man himself. His life changed dramatically when a young officer died at a drinking party. Perhaps this officer was St Xenia's husband. In any case, she knew St Theodore and profited from his instructions.

St Xenia eventually returned to the poor section of Petersburg, where she was mocked and insulted because of her strange behavior. When she did accept money from people it was only small amounts, which she used to help the poor. She spent her nights praying without sleep in a field outside the city. Prayer strengthened her, and in her heart's conversation with the Lord she found the support she needed on her difficult path.

When a new church was being built in the Smolensk cemetery, St Xenia brought bricks to the site. She did this in secret, during the night, so that no one would know.

Soon her great virtue and spiritual gifts began to be noticed. She prophesied future events affecting the citizens of Petersburg, and even the royal family. Against her will, she became known as someone pleasing to God, and nearly everyone loved her.They said, "Xenia does not belong to this world, she belongs to God." People regarded her visits to their homes or shops as a great blessing. St Xenia loved children, and mothers rejoiced when the childless widow would stand and pray over a baby's crib, or kiss a child. They believed that the blessed one's kiss would bring that child good fortune.

St Xenia lived about forty-five years after the death of her husband, and departed to the Lord at the age of seventy-one. The exact date and circumstances of her death are not known, but it probably took place at the end of the eighteenth century. She was buried in the Smolensk cemetery.

By the 1820s, people flocked to her grave to pray for her soul, and to ask her to intercede with God for them. So many visitors took earth from her grave that it had to be replaced every year. Later, a chapel was built over her grave.

Those who turn to St Xenia in prayer receive healing from illness, and deliverance from their afflictions. She is also known for helping people who seeking employment.

Troparion - Tone 8

In you, O mother was carefully preserved what is according to the image.
For you took up the Cross and followed Christ.
By so doing, you taught us to disregard the flesh for it passes away,
But to care instead for the soul since it is immortal.
Therefore, O Blessed Xenia, your spirit rejoices with the Angels.

Kontakion - Tone 7

Having loved the poverty of Christ,
You are now being satisfied at the Immortal Banquet.
By the humility of the Cross, you received the power of God.
Having acquired the gift of miraculous help, O Blessed Xenia,
Beseech Christ God, that by repentance
We may be delivered from every evil thing.

From the website of the Orthodox Church in America.

Dragons are there... but there too is God

2007-01-19T08:34:00.000-06:00

On January 19 the Church remembers Saint Makarios the Great, one of the most important teachers of the spiritual life from the fourth and fifth centuries.

An excerpt from one of his homilies:

"The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. There are rough and uneven roads; there are precipices; but there too is God, the angels, life and the Kingdom, light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and treasures of grace. All things are within it."

Troparion - Tone 1

Dweller of the desert and angel in the body
you were shown to be a wonder-worker, our God-bearing Father Macarius.
You received heavenly gifts through fasting, vigil, and prayer:
healing the sick and the souls of those drawn to you by faith.
Glory to Him who gave you strength!
Glory to Him who granted you a crown!
Glory to Him who through you grants healing to all!

For more on Saint Makarios, visit the website of the Orthodox Church in America.

January 18: Saints Athanasius and Cyril

2007-01-18T07:28:00.000-06:00

Saints Athanasius and Cyril were Archbishops of Alexandria. These wise teachers of truth and defenders of Christ's Church share a joint Feast in recognition of their dogmatic writings which affirm the truth of the Orthodox Faith, correctly interpret the Holy Scripture, and censure the delusions of the heretics.

St Athanasius took part in the First Ecumenical Council when he was still a deacon. He surpassed everyone there in his zeal to uphold the teaching that Christ is consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father, and not merely a creature, as the Arians proclaimed.

This radiant beacon of Orthodoxy spent most of his life in exile from his See, because of the plotting of his enemies. He returned to his flock as he was approaching the end of his life. Like an evening star, he illumined the Orthodox faithful with his words for a little while, then reposed in 373. He is also commemorated on May 2 (the transfer of his holy relics).

Troparion - Tone 3

You shone forth with works of Orthodoxy and quenched all heresy,
and became victorious trophy-bearers, hierarchs Athanasius and Cyril.
You enriched all things with piety and greatly adorned the Church,
and worthily found Christ God,
who grants His great mercy to all.

(From the website of the Orthodox Church in America)

More Americans Join Orthodox Churches

2007-01-12T08:20:00.000-06:00

It's always heartening to see stories like this one in USA Today:

By Tom Breen, Associated Press

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Greg Mencotti worried he would never find a spiritual home.

The Sunday school teacher grew up Roman Catholic, lost his faith and became an atheist. Eventually, he returned to Christianity, this time as a born-again Christian, spending years worshipping in a Methodist congregation. Still, he felt his search wasn't over.

That led him to the Holy Spirit Antiochian Orthodox Church in Huntington, W. Va., a denomination with Mideast roots that, like all Orthodox groups, traces its origins to the earliest days of Christianity.

Today, Mencotti is one of about 250 million Orthodox believers worldwide — and among a significant number of newcomers attracted to this ancient way of worship. The trend is especially notable since so few in the United States know about the Orthodox churches here.

Read it all here.

The Orthodox Church - A visual journey

2007-01-11T07:36:00.001-06:00

Magnificent video from the OCA mission in Valdosta, Georgia!

Watch and take delight that the Lord is good!

Celebrating Theophany in Baton Rouge

2007-01-04T11:09:00.000-06:00

Over at the Church website, we've just posted the schedule of services for the coming weeks at
Saint Matthew the Apostle Orthodox Church:

ocabatonrouge.blogspot.com

Troparion - Tone 1

When You, O Lord were baptized in the Jordan
The worship of the Trinity was made manifest
For the voice of the Father bore witness to You
And called You His beloved Son.
And the Spirit, in the form of a dove,
Confirmed the truthfulness of His word.
O Christ, our God, You have revealed Yourself
And have enlightened the world, glory to You!

The Fathers, the Scriptures, and the transfiguration of all things...

2007-01-03T02:29:00.000-06:00

The feast of Saint Benedict is still two months away, but I'm posting his icon because I just read and deeply appreciated R. R. Reno's recent First Things essay, "The Return of the Fathers."

Professor Reno notes the curious counter-cultural movement in some segments of the western academic and ecclesiastical worlds to return to an examination and analysis of our patristic inheritance, the corpus patronum. This examination, in turn, is driving a re-immersion in the world of Holy Scripture.

Such, of course, is one of the defining hallmarks of Orthodoxy...

Here are the last several paragraphs of the essay:

In 411, Alaric sacked the city of Rome. Through the next three centuries, the western Roman empire was shattered by invasion after invasion. It was a hard time dominated by fierce men as cultural fragmentation and turmoil gave the upper hand to cunning and strength. Yet the warriors who so dominated the affairs of men were not, finally, in control of their future. For it was during this time that a young man named Benedict rallied the power of love. Benedict was a son of Old Narnia, a noble Roman by birth. He was born to assume a position of power and responsibility in a world both civilized and Christianized. But that world was being destroyed, and, instead of trying to find a fragment or piece to hang on to, Benedict retreated to a cave outside Rome in order to purify his soul and dwell more fully in the way of Christ.
Holiness is a powerful magnet, and others came to Benedict for guidance and inspiration. He eventually came out of his cave with a small force of men and founded a monastery on Monte Cassino. He wrote a rule for the community, the Rule of St. Benedict. Shorn of metaphysics, shorn of classical rhetoric, shorn of the glories of a great culture Christianized, the Rule was the pure essence of the patristic project. Plain, direct, and simple, it organized life around unending daily prayer and prepared the souls of the monks for obedience. The Rule and its life of discipline impaled generations of monks upon the sword of Scripture. In this way, their hearts were, to recall Augustine’s image of his own and his friend’s conversion, pierced by God’s love.
The issues preoccupying editorial pages and the evening news are not trivial or unimportant. We have a duty to fight for moral truth in a Western culture increasingly committed to a velvet barbarism. This will certainly involve defending and buttressing fragments of a Christian culture now being eroded. The libraries of the great monasteries that sprang from the renewing power of St. Benedict’s Rule preserved the intellectual and literary achievements of antiquity, and the vision of mutual submission and cooperation given flesh in the working communities of monks gave a bloody world hope of peace. We owe our own age nothing less.
But we should not confuse what we must do for the defense of life and social sanity with the deeper task of renewing Christian culture in the West. St. Benedict’s Rule did far more than any battle or palace coup to shape the future of what was to become Europe. We must do what we can to limit the damage done by the barbarians of our time, but the renewal of the culture they now control will require the revolutionary power of people whose lives are immersed in Scripture. Men and women saturated by Scripture are as explosive as rags soaked in gasoline, but, unlike Molotov cocktails, the fire of divine love transforms and perfects rather than destroys and consumes. This the Fathers knew, and this they teach us as they return.

An Orthodox Colloquium for Anglicans

2006-12-21T17:35:00.000-06:00

DETROIT – In response to numerous enquiries, St. Andrew House Center for Orthodox Christian Studies will host “Faith of Our Fathers: A Colloquium on Orthodoxy for Anglicans” Jan. 29-30 for clergy of the Episcopal Church in the United States, the Anglican Church of Canada, and other churches in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

While the colloquium is designed for Anglican clergy, it is also open to Anglican laity, and to clergy and laity from other Christian faiths. Seating is limited, however, and priority will be given to Anglicans on a first-come, first-served basis.

The purpose of the colloquium is educational, according to the Most Rev. Nathaniel, Archbishop of Detroit and the Romanian Episcopate of the Orthodox Church in America, and founder and president of St. Andrew House.

“’Faith of Our Fathers’ will be an opportunity to explain who we Orthodox are to our Anglican brethren, and to show our love and concern for them in their time of trial,” Archbishop Nathaniel said, referring to doctrinal divisions within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, and among the member churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion. “We hope Orthodoxy might be a salve that can help begin a process of healing,” he said.

Read the Religion News Service report here.

See the official website here.

Father Stephen Freeman on Salvation...

2006-12-16T11:38:00.000-06:00

I've mentioned Fr Stephen Freeman's blog, Glory to God for All Things, several times in the past months. He has an especially helpful series of posts on the Orthodox Christian understanding of salvation, which has engendered quite a bit of discussion in the comments.

The series begins with "Are You Saved?"

and continues with

"Inside and Out"

"Whose Fault is it Anyway?"

"The Atonement: It's Still About God"

Highly recommended!

Pope and Patriarch to join in talks?

2006-12-06T08:45:00.000-06:00

Catholic/Orthodox theological discussions have frequently been derailed by various issues embedded in the complex history of eastern/western relations. Part of the problem is that both Catholic and Orthodox interlocutors are divided within their own communions regarding all that is at stake in the dialogues. For example, Orthodox Bishop HILARION of Vienna was decidedly opposed to language pertaining to the proper understanding of hierarchy in the Church proposed by Orthodox Metropolitan JOHN of Pergamum in a most recent gathering.

Nonetheless, this recent news indicates that the profile of these talks may rise considerably -- even if the substance remains controversial.

Constantinople, Dec. 4, 2006 (CWNews.com and AsiaNews Service) - Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople has disclosed that he made an important, concrete proposal for Orthodox-Catholic cooperation during his November 30 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI.

Speaking to the Italian daily Avvenire after the conclusion of the Pope’s trip to Turkey, the Orthodox leader said that he could not disclose the nature of the suggestion he had made, but reported that the Pope seemed quite interested. He said that he is now “waiting for an official response.”

Read it all on Directions to Orthodoxy.

December 4: Saint John of Damascus

2006-12-04T22:18:00.000-06:00

Saint John of Damascus was born about the year 680 at Damascus, Syria into a Christian family. His father, Sergius Mansur, was a treasurer at the court of the caliph. John had also a foster brother, the orphaned child Cosmas (October 14), whom Sergius had taken into his own home. When the children were growing up, Sergius saw that they received a good education. At the Damascus slave market he ransomed the learned monk Cosmas of Calabria from captivity and entrusted to him the teaching of his children. The boys displayed uncommon ability and readily mastered their courses of the secular and spiritual sciences. After the death of his father, John occupied ministerial posts at court and became the city prefect.

In Constantinople at that time, the heresy of Iconoclasm had arisen and quickly spread, supported by the emperor Leo III the Isaurian (717-741). Rising up in defense of the Orthodox veneration of icons [Iconodoulia], St John wrote three treatises entitled, "Against Those who Revile the Holy Icons." The wise and God-inspired writings of St John enraged the emperor. But since the author was not a Byzantine subject, the emperor was unable to lock him up in prison, or to execute him. The emperor then resorted to slander. A forged letter to the emperor was produced, supposedly from John, in which the Damascus official was supposed to have offered his help to Leo in conquering the Syrian capital...

Read it all at the OCA website.

Common Declaration by Patriarch Bartholomew I and Pope Benedict XVI

2006-12-01T09:32:00.000-06:00

The website of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople (Istanbul) has posted the declaration issued yesterday, November 30, the Feast of Saint Andrew the First-Called.

Read it here.

The photos from the event are really quite breath-taking. Some of them are available in the photo galleries available here.

November 30: Holy Apostle Andrew the First Called

2006-11-30T09:06:00.000-06:00

The Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called was the first of the Apostles to follow Christ, and he later brought his own brother, the holy Apostle Peter, to Christ (John 1:35-42). The future apostle was from Bethsaida, and from his youth he turned with all his soul to God. He did not enter into marriage, and he worked with his brother as a fisherman. When the holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John began to preach, St Andrew became his closest disciple. St John the Baptist himself sent to Christ his own two disciples, the future Apostles Andrew and John the Theologian, declaring Christ to be the Lamb of God.

After the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, St Andrew went to the Eastern lands preaching the Word of God. He went through Asia Minor, Thrace, Macedonia, he reached the River Danube, went along the coast of the Black Sea, through Crimea, the Black Sea region and along the River Dniepr he climbed to the place where the city of Kiev now stands.

He stopped overnight on the hills of Kiev. Rising in the morning, he said to those disciples that were with him: "See these hills? Upon these hills shall shine forth the beneficence of God, and there will be a great city here, and God shall raise up many churches." The apostle went up around the hills, blessed them and set up a cross. Having prayed, he went up even further along the Dniepr and reached a settlement of the Slavs, where Novgorod was built. From here the apostle went through the land of the Varangians towards Rome for preaching, and again he returned to Thrace, where in the small village of Byzantium, the future Constantinople, he founded the Church of Christ. The name of the holy Apostle Andrew links the mother, the Church of Constantinople, with her daughter, the Russian Church.

Read it all at the OCA website.

Photos from St. Matthew's Day in Baton Rouge

2006-11-29T22:26:00.000-06:00

We've just posted some photos from St Matthew the Apostle Orthodox Church's first Patronal Feastday - see them over at

ocabatonrouge.blogspot.com

Prayers for the upcoming meeting in Turkey

2006-11-28T17:34:00.000-06:00

I ask your prayers as Pope Benedict XVI travels to Turkey to meet with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. No one knows what (if anything) will come from this meeting, but the potential ramifications for the future of (post-) Christian Europe are staggering.

Rod Dreher has an excellent editorial in the Dallas Morning News on the visit. Here's a snippet:

It's never far from the Orthodox mind that the West – particularly the Roman Catholic Church – carries significant fault for the loss of Byzantine Christian lands to the Muslim Ottoman empire. The Crusaders sacked Constantinople, as Istanbul was then known, in 1204, fatally weakening Eastern Christian imperial government, which Muslim forces finally overthrew two centuries later. Orthodox memory of this atrocity – for which Pope John Paul II graciously apologized – is long. Yet the hour is late indeed for the Orthodox to dwell on this history, as a resurgent Islam pushes what is left of Christianity in Muslim lands further to the brink of extinction...

Read it all here.

Adult Catechism at St Matthew Orthodox Church

2006-11-25T10:08:00.000-06:00

The Adult Catechism Class meets at 9:15 AM on Sunday Mornings at St. Matthew the Apostle Orthodox Church in Baton Rouge (see the sidebar for map and location). We're studying Archbishop DMITRI's The Doctrine of Christ: A Handbook for Laymen. Everyone is welcome to attend; children's Sunday School meets at the same time.

The adults will also be looking at the Jesus Prayer.

Check out the church website for explanatory material on the Jesus Prayer from Fr Thomas Hopko.

The Banquet of the Kingdom of God

2006-11-23T09:30:00.000-06:00

"Man is what he eats."

With this statement the German materialistic philosopher Feuerbach thought he had put an end to all "idealistic" speculations about human nature. In fact, however, he was expressing, without knowing it, the most religious idea of man. For long before Feuerbach the same definition of man was given by the Bible. In the biblical story of creation man is presented, first of all, as a hungry being, and the whole world as his food. Second only to the direction to propagate and have dominion over the earth, according to the author of the first chapter of Genesis, is God's instruction to men to eat of the earth: "Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed... and every tree, which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat..."

Man must eat in orer to live; he must take the world into his body and transform it into himself, into flesh and blood. He is indeed that which he eats, and the whole world is presented as one all-embracing banquet table for man. And this image of the banquet remains, throughout the whole Bible, the central image of life. It is the image of life at its cretaion and also the image of life at its end and fulfillment: "...that you eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom."

- Fr Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World

New Leadership at St Vladimir's Seminary

2006-11-22T11:54:00.000-06:00

Glory to God for all things!

Fr John Behr and Fr Chad Hatfield have been elected by the St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary Board of Trustees to share in the seminary leadership – Fr John as Dean and Fr Chad as Provost (Chief Executive Officer). As Dean, Fr Behr will preside over the ecclesial and educational life of the seminary, while Fr Hatfield, in his role of Provost, will head the organizational running of the school. Both will report to the Board of Trustees presided over by its President, The Most Blessed Herman, Metropolitan of All America and Canada and Primate of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA).

Read the entire news release on the SVOTS site here.

The Absence of God

2006-11-21T06:32:00.000-06:00

Many years ago a man came to see me. He asked me to show him God. I told him I could not but I added that even if I could, he would not be able to see Him, because I thought--and I do think--that to meet God one must have something in common with Him, something that gives you eyes to see, perceptiveness to perceive. He asked me then why I thought as I did, and I suggested that he should think a few moments and tell me whether there was any passage in the Gospel that moved him particularly, to see what was the connection between him and God.

He said, "Yes, in the eighth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, the passage concerning the woman taken in adultery."

I said, "Good, this is one of the most beautiful and moving passages. Now sit back and ask yourself, who are you in the scene which is described? Are you the Lord, or at least on His side, full of mercy, of understanding and full of faith in this woman who can repent and become a new creature? Are you the woman taken in adultery? Are you one of the older men who walk out at once because they are aware of their own sins, or one of the young ones who wait?"

He thought for just a few minutes then said, "No, I feel I am the only Jew who would not have walked out but who would have stoned the woman."

I said, "Thank God that He does not allow you to meet him face to face."

-Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, in Learning to Pray

New blog site for the St Matthew Church

2006-11-20T21:42:00.000-06:00

We've started a new blog site for St. Matthew the Apostle Orthodox Church in Baton Rouge -

http://ocabatonrouge.blogspot.com

The key word in the address now matches our email address (ocabatonrouge@bellsouth.net) and the slightly shorter address will (hopefully) fit into the religion directory in the Saturday newspaper.

I'll continue to maintain TransfigureBatonRouge as a means of outreach and evangelism. The Church blog will be dedicated primarily to information about the congregation, liturgical commemorations, and announcements.

O Wondrous Day!

2006-11-19T15:42:00.000-06:00

Our patronal feastday liturgy was magnificent -- over twenty present, even on a weekday!

Many thanks to Fr Matthew Jackson and our friends from Christ our Saviour Mission in McComb, Mississippi who joined us for the celebration.

Fr Matthew's sermon from the liturgy is posted here.

Many years to Fr Matthew and Saint Matthew the Apostle Orthodox Mission in Baton Rouge!

(photos were taken... we'll post them as they become available)

Celebrate our Name Day November 16!

2006-11-13T14:20:00.000-06:00

You are cordially invited to join us for Divine Liturgy at 10:00 AM on Thursday morning, November 16 to celebrate the feast of our patron, St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, at the Church in Wedgewood Village on Hewwood Avenue in Baton Rouge.

The liturgy will be served by Fr Matthew Jackson, priest-in-charge of Christ our Saviour Orthodox Church in McComb, Mississippi.

Make plans now to attend!

The book and icon shop will be open for browsing after the service.

Click here for a map to the Church.

November 13: St John Chrysostom

2006-11-13T07:24:00.000-06:00

Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, one of the Three Hierarchs [January 30], was born at Antioch in about the year 347 into the family of a military commander. His father, Secundus, died soon after the birth of his son. His mother, Anthusa, widowed at twenty years of age, did not seek to remarry but rather devoted all her efforts to the raising of her son in Christian piety. The youth studied under the finest philosophers and rhetoricians. But, scorning the vain disciplines of pagan knowledge, the future hierarch turned himself to the profound study of Holy Scripture and prayerful contemplation. St Meletius, Bishop of Antioch (February 12), loved John like a son, guided him in the Faith, and in the year 367 baptized him.

After three years John was tonsured as a Reader. When St Meletius had been sent into exile by the emperor Valens in the year 372, John and Theodore (afterwards Bishop of Mopsuestia) studied under the experienced instructors of ascetic life, the presbyters Flavian and Diodorus of Tarsus. The highly refined Diodorus had particular influence upon the youth. When John's mother died, he embraced monasticism, which he called the "true philosophy." Soon John and his friend Basil were being considered as candidates for the episcopal office, and they decided to withdraw into the wilderness to avoid this. While St John avoided the episcopal rank out of humility, he secretly assisted in Basil's consecration.

During this period St John wrote his "Six Discourses on the Priesthood," a great work of Orthodox pastoral theology. The saint spent four years struggling in the wilderness, living the ascetic life under the guidance of an experienced spiritual guide. And here he wrote three books entitled, "Against the Opponents of Those Attracted to the Monastic Life", and a collection entitled, "A Comparison of the Monk with the Emperor" (also known as "Comparison of Imperial Power, Wealth and Eminence, with the True and Christian Wisdom-Loving Monastic Life"), both works which are marked by a profound reflection of the worthiness of the monastic vocation.

For two years, the saint lived in a cave in complete silence, but was obliged to return to Antioch to recover his health. St Meletius, the Bishop of Antioch, ordained him deacon in the year 381. The following years were devoted to work on new theological writings: "Concerning Providence" ("To the Ascetic Stagirios"), "Book Concerning Virginity," "To a Young Widow" (2 discourses), and the "Book of St Babylos, and Against Julian and the Pagans."

In the year 386 St John was ordained presbyter by Bishop Flavian of Antioch. St John was a splendid preacher, and his inspired words earned him the name "Golden-Mouthed" ("Chrysostom"). For twelve years the saint preached in church, usually twice a week, but sometimes daily, deeply stirring the hearts of his listeners.

In his pastoral zeal to provide Christians with a better understanding of Holy Scripture, St John employed hermeneutics, an interpretation and analysis of the Word of God (i.e. exegesis"). Among his exegetical works are commentaries on entire books of the Holy Scripture (Genesis, the Psalter, the Gospels of Matthew and John, the Epistles of the Apostle Paul), and also many homilies on individual texts of the Holy Bible, but also instructions on the Feastdays, laudations on the Saints, and also apologetic (i.e. defensive) homilies (against Anomoeans, Judaizers and pagans). As a priest, St John zealously fulfilled the Lord's command to care for the needy. Under St John, the Antiochian Church provided sustenance each day to as many as 3,000 virgins and widows, not including in this number the shut-ins, wanderers and the sick.

St John began his commentary on Genesis at the beginning of Great Lent in 388, preaching thirty-two homilies during the forty day period. During Holy Week he spoke of how Christ was betrayed, and about the Cross. During Bright Week, his pastoral discourse was devoted to the Resurrection. His exegesis of the Book of Genesis was concluded only at the end of October (388).

At Pascha in the following year the saint began his homilies on the Gospel of John, and toward the end of the year 389 he took up the Gospel of Matthew. In the year 391 the Antioch Christians listened to his commentary on the Epistles of the holy Apostle Paul to the Romans and to the Corinthians. In 393 he explained the Epistles to the Galatians, the Ephesians, Timothy, Titus, and the Psalms. In his homily on the Epistle to the Ephesians, St John denounced a schism in Antioch, "I tell you and I witness before you, that to tear asunder the Church means nothing less than to fall into heresy. The Church is the house of the heavenly Father, one Body and one Spirit."

The fame of the holy preacher grew, and in the year 397 with the death of Archbishop Nectarius of Constantinople, successor to St Gregory the Theologian, St John Chrysostom was summoned from Antioch, and elected to the See of Constantinople. At the capital, the holy archpastor was not able to preach as often as he had at Antioch. Many matters awaited the saint's attention, and he began with the most important -- the spiritual perfection of the priesthood. He himself was the best example of this. The financial means apportioned for the archbishop were channeled by the saint into the upkeep of several hospices for the sick and two hostels for pilgrims. He fasted strictly and ate very little food, and usually refused invitations to dine because of his delicate stomach.

The saint's zeal in spreading the Christian Faith extended not only to the inhabitants of Constantinople, but also to Thrace to include Slavs and Goths, and to Asia Minor and the Pontine region. He established a bishop for the Bosphorus Church in the Crimea. St John sent off zealous missionaries to Phoenicia, to Persia, and to the Scythians, to convert pagans to Christ. He also wrote letters to Syria to bring back the Marcionites into the Church, and he accomplished this. Preserving the unity of the Church, the saint would not permit a powerful Gothic military commander, who wanted the emperor to reward his bravery in battle, to open an Arian church at Constantinople. The saint exerted much effort in enhancing the splendor of the church services: he compiled a Liturgy, he introduced antiphonal singing for the all-night Vigil, and he wrote several prayers for the rite of anointing the sick with oil.

The saintly hierarch denounced the dissolute morals of people in the capital, especially at the imperial court, irrespective of person. When the empress Eudoxia connived to confiscate the last properties of the widow and children of a disgraced dignitary, the saint rose to their defense. The arrogant empress would not relent, and nursed a grudge against the archpastor. Eudoxia's hatred of the saint blazed forth anew when malefactors told her that the saint apparently had her in mind during his sermon on vain women. A court was convened composed of hierarchs who had been justly condemned by Chrysostom: Theophilus of Alexandria, Bishop Severian of Gabala, who had been banished from the capital because of improprieties, and others.

This court of judgment declared St John deposed, and that he be executed for his insult to the empress. The emperor decided on exile instead of execution. An angry crowd gathered at the church, resolved to defend their pastor. In order to avoid a riot, St John submitted to the authorities. That very night there was an earthquake at Constantinople. The terrified Eudoxia urgently requested the emperor to bring the saint back, and promptly sent a letter to the banished pastor, beseeching him to return. Once more, in the capital church, the saint praised the Lord in a short talk, "For All His Ways."

The slanderers fled to Alexandria. But after only two months a new denunciation provoked the wrath of Eudoxia. In March 404, an unjust council was convened, decreeing the exile of St John. Upon his removal from the capital, a fire reduced the church of Hagia Sophia and also the Senate building to ashes. Devastating barbarian incursions soon followed, and Eudoxia died in October 404. Even pagans regarded these events as God's punishment for the unjust judgment against the saint.

In Armenia, the saint strove all the more to encourage his spiritual children. In numerous letters (245 are preserved) to bishops in Asia, Africa, Europe and particularly to his friends in Constantinople, St John consoled the suffering, guiding and giving support to his followers. In the winter of 406 St John was confined to his bed with sickness, but his enemies were not to be appeased. From the capital came orders to transfer St John to desolate Pityus in Abkhazia on the Black Sea. Worn out by sickness, the saint began his final journey under military escort, traveling for three months in the rain and frost. He never arrived at his place of exile, for his strength failed him at Comana.

At the crypt of St Basiliscus (May 22), St John was comforted by a vision of the martyr, who said, "Despair not, brother John! Tomorrow we shall be together." After receiving the Holy Mysteries, the hierarch fell asleep in the Lord on September 14, 407. His last words were, "Glory to God for all things!"

The holy relics of St John Chrysostom were solemnly transferred to Constantinople in the year 438. The disciple of St John, the venerable Isidore of Pelusium (February 4), wrote: "The house of David is grown strong, and the house of Saul enfeebled. He is victor over the storms of life, and has entered into heavenly repose."

Although he died on September 14, St John's celebration was transferred to this day because of the Feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross. St John Chrysostom is also celebrated on January 27 and January 30.

Text and icon from the OCA website

Visiting Priest This Weekend

2006-11-08T15:09:00.000-06:00

Fr Justin Patterson will be visiting this weekend to serve Great Vespers on Saturday, November 11 at 5:00 PM and Divine Liturgy on Sunday, November 12 at 10:00 AM.

Sunday School for children and Adult Catechism will be as regularly scheduled at 9:15 AM Sunday morning.

Orthodoxy in Mexico

2006-11-07T07:28:00.000-06:00

(The website Directions to Orthodoxy recently posted an article by Matushka Elizabeth Perdomo on Orthodox mission work in Mexico. Missionary outreach into Mexico has been an enduring interest of His Eminence, Archbishop DMITRI of Dallas.)

Last year, after a 14 hour bus ride from the Texas border to Mexico City, Fr. Antonio Perdomo and his two teenaged daughters delivered three large boxes of icons to Orthodox Church in America Bishop ALEJO and Archbishop DMITRI during Vladika DMITRI’s annual Theophany season visit to Mexico. The Hierarchs and Clergy in Mexico received these gifts with great joy and thanksgiving. This year, the Perdomos hope to continue the tradition and to do even more...

Read it all here.

Wilken on Pelikan as Teacher of the Church

2006-11-06T09:37:00.000-06:00

(Several months ago, the esteemed Church historian Robert Wilken wrote a eulogy to his teacher and colleague Jaroslav Pelikan in the journal First Things. I deeply admire the work of both men; the eulogy is a moving witness to the faithful legacy of a great Christian scholar.)

When I walked into the chapel at St. Vladimir’s Seminary on a bright spring morning for the funeral of Jaroslav Pelikan, I saw an open casket in the center of the church. Next to it was a young woman standing at a reading desk chanting a psalm with tears running down her cheeks. As she turned the pages of the psalmbook, her other arm held a young girl standing on a chair to her left. Members of the seminary community had been taking turns through the night reciting psalms as they kept vigil over Jaroslav’s still body.

As I listened to the recitation of the psalms, the eyes of the saints painted on the walls of the chapel looked down on the simple ritual unfolding before them. Soon the building would be filled with mourners, but it seemed that the church was already present to commend Jaroslav to the care of the angels. When people began to take their places, I sensed that on this occasion there would be few reminders of the university world in which Pelikan had lived for so many decades. Besides the Pelikan family, most in attendance were from the local community: students and faculty garbed in the Orthodox inner cassock, called a podryasnik; mothers and wives; women and men carrying infants in arms; two little girls playing quietly on the wood floor close to the casket. The company that gathered that morning was more like a family, the family of the Church, a fellowship united by much deeper bonds than those of the academy. Their words and music and gestures were the solemn liturgy of God’s people who had come to offer praise to the holy, mighty, and immortal God and to celebrate, in the language of the Orthodox Church, a “Divine Service for the Funeral of a Layman During the Forty Days of Pascha.”

It was fitting that Professor Pelikan’s funeral should take place at St. Vladimir’s. He and his wife, Sylvia, had been regular communicants in this chapel, and his final book, a theological commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, was dedicated to “my liturgical family at Saint Vladimir’s” with the inscription, “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42). But there was another reason a theological seminary was the right place. Though Jaroslav Pelikan had a distinguished career in the university, he was a graduate of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, where he taught for several years. He always felt at home in a theological community and saw himself, and was revered by others, first and foremost as a doctor ecclesiae, a teacher of the Church.

Read it all here.

Pondering "Church": Cruciform Ecclesiology

2006-11-03T11:34:00.000-06:00

Several days ago, I mentioned Fr Stephen Freeman's new blog, "Glory to God for all Things." He has posted a reflection on the Orthodox understanding of the Church (or "ecclesiology") entitled "Pillar and Ground of the Truth," which I highly recommend.

Here's a quotation:

"The Orthodox Church has perhaps the weakest ecclesiology of all, because it depends, moment by moment, on the love and forgiveness of each by all and of all by each. Either the Bishops of the Church love and forgive each other or the whole thing falls apart. 'Brethren, let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.' These are the words that introduce the Creed each Sunday, and they are the words that are the bedrock of our ecclesiology.

"We live in a wondrous age of the Church. Having suffered terrible blows at the hands of the Bolsheviks, we were smashed into jurisdictions (they don’t really start until the 1920’s), and often turned on one another in our rage. Today, the Bolshevik has been consigned 'to the dustbin of history.' Moscow and the Russian Church Outside of Russia are actually going to gather at the Lord’s table together. We still have the spectre of a powerful Patriarch of Constantinople bumping into a powerful Patriarch of Moscow here and there, first in Estonia, then in London, who knows where next.

"But in each and every case the only ecclesiology that will work, that will reveal the Church to be the Pillar and Ground of the Truth will be an ecclesiology of the Cross: mutual forgiveness and abiding love. This will be the Church’s boast: that it became like Christ in all ways; or it will have no boast at all.

"I rejoice that I am alive in such a time as this. We stand at the edge of an abyss. We can embrace each other in joy and forgiveness or fall into the abyss itself (I trust Christ’s promise to keep us from such a misstep - though He has pulled us out of such places more than once). I rejoice because I don’t want anything other than to be conformed to the image of the crucified Christ. Let everybody else be excellent if they need to be. I need to die."

Saints, fundamentals, and fighting the good fight...

2006-11-02T22:30:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time, I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church at a wonderful little parish: All Saints Church in Anchorage, Alaska.

One of the hymns we sang fairly frequently was worthy of our patronage: "For All the Saints." A particular verse has been on my mind in recent days, even despite my conversion to Orthodoxy (which, according to the Eastern rite, doesn't celebrate All Saints on November 1, but rather on the Sunday after Pentecost):

"And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia! "

I dredge up all of this because of a recent post by Orthodox priest and blogger Fr Jonathan Tobias, who proposes a series of "fundamentals" of faith on his blog, "Second Terrace." Fr Jonathan has a profound sense of the fierce warfare we all endure in our feeble efforts to proclaim the True Faith. His proposal of the fundamentals of the Orthodox Faith is worth pondering.

Here's a snippet. But be warned: Upon reading it, you may want to shout "alleluia," or break forth into song, or perhaps even go searching for a good single malt scotch:

1. The Holy Trinity is the end of theology, the insurmountable height of knowledge. Theology is not the province of intellectuals (especially as defined here). The Church, in testifying to what it knows from experience (not from dialectic), says that the Trinity is addressed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not any other linguistic triad.*

2. The Holy Trinity is known in salvation through the Son of God, the Word, Whose Mystical Body is the Apostolic Church, articulated through the ages by Holy Tradition. Only the Apostolic Church can sustain Trinitarian theology and a Chalcedonian economy.**

3. The Church can only do Mystery well, because it is derived from Mystery. The Eucharist is the constitution, the Sacraments are sunrise, wind and rain. The Church is the precinct of Salvation, and the door to forever.***

4. Language survives only when it stays true, when it drinks from the mystical spring of the Faith. Time brooks no falsehood: the speech of the agora withers at sundown, when the markets close.****

5. Faith, the Gospel, the Church, and Salvation History are Real. Because these things are Real, they are Symbolic. Miracles happen: memories grow -- root, stalk and flower. They are not private subjective experiences. They are not psychotherapeutically expedient constructs for individual liberation or consciousness-raising. They are not self-tailored and modified justifications of eccentricities and identity-formation. They occupy no place in any narrative, or brand of historicism.

*Not Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. Not Lover, Beloved, and Love. Not Rock, Scissors and Paper. (Somewhere, I think, I ranted about this already.)

**You don’t think so? Where else have you heard sermons on one Person after the union of Two Natures? Where else have you heard the phrase “Three Persons, One Essence”? In this twilight zone of post-America, we need more Christologists and Trinitarians.

***The Church is no good at anything else: like Town Meetings, Lawrence Welk Shows, Amway Pep Rallies, and Unitarian Ashrams. Consultants might spike the traffic count with market analyses and telemarketing and seeker programming, but gains are, 99% of the time, merely lateral moves by malcontents. Besides, anonymity (and freedom from rummage sales) is the main reason for mega-church membership: and anonymity, whether they know it or not, is of the antichrist.

****The inclusivistic, anti-Patriarchal neo-Evangelicals will set, like billy-oh, to the stripping away of “He” from God, and “Man” from humanity. They will rezone anthropology to be more gay-friendly. They will be coached by the spirits of Danton and Robespierre. Of course, they won’t notice that inclusivistic, non-sexist language doesn’t save a single soul. Patriarchalism has, and will. Ask the Mother of God.

*****The Church is the proper judge of culture, as it is, after all, the Pillar and Ground of Truth. That’s pretty fundamental.

Wisdom from Saint Isaac of Syria

2006-11-01T13:48:00.000-06:00

St Isaac of Syria was a 7th century bishop of Ninevah. His spirituality has been the subject of a scholarly work by Bp Hilarion Alfeyev, whom I greatly admire and whose reflections have occasionally been posted on this site.

The following quotations come from a new blog by Fr Stephen Freeman, rector of St. Anne's Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who visited with us back in the early summer.

Let yourself be persecuted, but do not persecute others.

Be crucified, but do not crucify others.

Se slandered, but do not slander others.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep: such is the sign of purity.

Suffer with the sick.

Be afflicted with sinners.

Exult with those who repent.

Be the friend of all, but in your spirit remain alone.

Be a partaker of the sufferings of all, but keep your body distant from all.

Rebuke no one, revile no one, not even those who live very wickedly.

Spread your cloak over those who fall into sin, each and every one, and shield them.

And if you cannot take the fault on yourself and accept punishment in their place, do not destroy their character.

What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation. For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God.

Visiting St Seraphim Cathedral in Dallas

2006-10-26T10:56:00.000-05:00

I had the opportunity to visit with His Eminence this past weekend at St Seraphim Cathedral in Dallas. It was a delightful trip, both because of the generous hospitality of Archpriest Joseph Fester and the Cathedral family and because of the overwhelming iconography in the Cathedral. The resident iconographer, Vladimir Grigorenko, continues his labor of love atop scaffolding that fills the nave. The unfinished project is breath-taking; once completed, it will be heaven on earth.

I've been given permission to petition for admittance into the Orthodox Church in America's late vocations program to prepare for ordination to the diaconate and presbyterate.

Please remember me, my family, and our mission congregation in your prayers.

Service Schedule Change for October 21-22

2006-10-16T14:31:00.000-05:00

We will not gather for Vespers on Saturday evening, October 21.

Sunday morning Typika is still scheduled to be read at 10:00 AM Sunday morning, October 22.

Stay tuned for more updates...

Orthodox Nuns Live for God

2006-10-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

(The Herald Republic newspaper in Yakima, Washington recently featured this article by Adriana Janovich about a nearby monastery of Orthodox nuns)

SATUS PASS -- On a pine-covered patch off U.S. Highway 97, the Pacific Northwest meets the Byzantine Empire.

Evergreens shelter a collection of structures that look more like typical Northwest cabins than a Greek Orthodox monastery.

In the wee hours, the woods are dark. So still, so quiet, so peaceful. Elsewhere, bars are closing, truckers are making the long haul, children have been asleep for hours.

At the roadside monastery at the edge of a forest, Greek Orthodox sisters are praying for them all.

From this remote sylvan setting 10 miles north of Goldendale, more than a dozen nuns pray for the world. Their prayers continue until the stars disappear from the sky, the sun rises and shines, and darkness sets in again...

(Read it all here. Photo googled from Directions to Orthodoxy)

A Convert Reflects on the Church

2006-10-12T22:23:00.000-05:00

Over on the website Beliefnet, Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher has formally announced his conversion to Holy Orthodoxy in a blog post entitled "Orthodoxy and Me."

Much of the post concerns his reasons for departing from Roman Catholicism, which are heart-breaking and obviously deeply painful. But it is profoundly refreshing to read his early impressions as a convert to the Orthodox Faith, especially as embodied in the congregational life at St. Seraphim Cathedral in Dallas (home to His Eminence, Vladyka DMITRI).

The following lines, with which I resonate, were especially striking:

"As far as tradition goes, I have moved with my family to a church that I believe stands a much better chance of maintaining the historic Christian deposit of faith over time. To be more blunt, I have moved to a church that in my judgment within which I and my family and my descendants will be better able to withstand modernity. Basically, though -- and this is as blunt as I can be -- I'm in a church where I can trust the spiritual headship of the clergy, and where most people want to know more about the faith, and how we can conform our lives to it, rather than wanting to run away from it or hide it so nobody has to be offended."

Yes. Exactly.

Welcome home, Rod.

Many Years!

Father Sergius Clark to Visit October 14-15

2006-10-12T10:05:00.000-05:00

This weekend we will welcome Fr Sergius Clark, one of our visiting priests, who comes to us from Saint Justin the Martyr Orthodox Church in Jacksonville, Florida. He will serve Great Vespers at 5:00PM on Saturday, October 14 and Divine Liturgy at 10:00AM on Sunday, October 15.

Father, bless!

October 9: The Glorification of Saint Tikhon

2006-10-09T10:22:00.000-05:00

Today is the commemoration of the glorification of Saint Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and Enlightener of North America. My family was received into the Orthodox Church on this day, so we honor him as our patron. Borrowing from the Serbian Orthodox tradition, that would make today our Krsna Sava!

According to the hagiographical material available on the OCA website, Saint Tikhon was born as Vasily Ivanovich Belavin on January 19, 1865 into the family of Ioann Belavin, a rural priest of the Toropetz district of the Pskov diocese. His childhood and adolescence were spent in the village in direct contact with peasants and their labor. From his early years he displayed a particular religious disposition, love for the Church as well as rare meekness and humility.

When Vasily was still a boy, his father had a revelation about each of his children. One night, when he and his three sons slept in the hayloft, he suddenly woke up and roused them. He had seen his dead mother in a dream, who foretold to him his imminent death, and the fate of his three sons. She said that one would be unfortunate throughout his entire life, another would die young, while the third, Vasily, would be a great man. The prophecy of the dead woman proved to be entirely accurate in regard to all three brothers.

From 1878 to 1883, Vasily studied at the Pskov Theological Seminary. The modest seminarian was tender and affectionate by nature. He was fair-haired and tall of stature. His fellow students liked and respected him for his piety, brilliant progress in studies, and constant readiness to help comrades, who often turned to him for explanations of lessons, especially for help in drawing up and correcting numerous compositions. Vasily was called "bishop" and "patriarch" by his classmates.

In 1888, at the age of 23, Vasily Belavin graduated from the St Petersburg Theological Academy as a layman, and returned to the Pskov Seminary as an instructor of Moral and Dogmatic Theology. The whole seminary and the town of Pskov became very fond of him. He led an austere and chaste life, and in 1891, when he turned 26, he took monastic vows. Nearly the whole town gathered for the ceremony. He embarked on this new way of life consciously and deliberately, desiring to dedicate himself entirely to the service of the Church. The meek and humble young man was given the name Tikhon in honor of St Tikhon of Zadonsk.

He was transferred from the Pskov Seminary to the Kholm Theological Seminary in 1892, and was raised to the rank of archimandrite. Archimandrite Tikhon was consecrated Bishop of Lublin on October 19, 1897, and returned to Kholm for a year as Vicar Bishop of the Kholm Diocese. Bishop Tikhon zealously devoted his energy to the establishment of the new vicariate. His attractive moral make-up won the general affection, of not only the Russian population, but also of the Lithuanians and Poles. On September 14, 1898, Bishop Tikhon was made Bishop of the Aleutians and Alaska. As head of the Orthodox Church in America, Bishop Tikhon was a zealous laborer in the Lord's vineyard.

He did much to promote the spread of Orthodoxy, and to improve his vast diocese. He reorganized the diocesan structure, and changed its name from "Diocese of the Aleutians and Alaska" to "Diocese of the Aleutians and North America" in 1900. Both clergy and laity loved their archpastor, and held him in such esteem that the Americans made Archbishop Tikhon an honorary citizen of the United States.

On May 22, 1901, he blessed the cornerstone for St Nicholas Cathedral in New York, and was also involved in establishing other churches. On November 9, 1902, he consecrated the church of St Nicholas in Brooklyn for the Syrian Orthodox immigrants. Two weeks later, he consecrated St Nicholas Cathedral in NY.

In 1905, the American Mission was made an Archdiocese, and St Tikhon was elevated to the rank of Archbishop. He had two vicar bishops: Bishop Innocent (Pustynsky) in Alaska, and St Raphael (Hawaweeny) in Brooklyn to assist him in administering his large, ethnically diverse diocese. In June of 1905, St Tikhon gave his blessing for the establishment of St Tikhon's Monastery.

In 1907, he returned to Russia, and was appointed to Yaroslavl, where he quickly won the affection of his flock. They came to love him as a friendly, communicative, and wise archpastor. He spoke simply to his subordinates, never resorting to a peremptory or overbearing tone. When he had to reprimand someone, he did so in a good-natured, sometimes joking manner, which encouraged the person to correct his mistakes.

When St Tikhon was transferred to Lithuania on December 22, 1913, the people of Yaroslavl voted him an honorary citizen of their town. After his transfer to Vilnius, he did much in terms of material support for various charitable institutions. There too, his generous soul and love of people clearly manifested themselves. World War I broke out when His Eminence was in Vilnius. He spared no effort to help the poor residents of the Vilnius region who were left without a roof over their heads or means of subsistence as a result of the war with the Germans, and who flocked to their archpastor in droves.

After the February Revolution and formation of a new Synod, St Tikhon became one of its members. On June 21, 1917, the Moscow Diocesan Congress of clergy and laity elected him as their ruling bishop. He was a zealous and educated archpastor, widely known even outside his country.

On August 15, 1917, a local council was opened in Moscow, and Archbishop Tikhon was raised to the dignity of Metropolitan, and then elected as chairman of the council. The council had as its aim to restore the life of Russian Orthodox Church on strictly canonical principles, and its primary concern was the restoration of the Patriarchate. All council members would select three candidates, and then a lot would reveal the will of God. The council members chose three candidates: Archbishop Anthony of Kharkov, the wisest, Archbishop Arseny of Novgorod, the strictest, and Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow, the kindest of the Russian hierarchs.

On November 5, following the Divine Liturgy and a Molieben in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a monk removed one of the three ballots from the ballot box, which stood before the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God. Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev announced Metropolitan Tikhon as the newly elected Patriarch. St Tikhon did not change after becoming the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church. In accepting the will of the council, Patriarch Tikhon referred to the scroll that the Prophet Ezekiel had to eat, on which was written, "Lamentations, mourning, and woe." He foresaw that his ministry would be filled with affliction and tears, but through all his suffering, he remained the same accessible, unassuming, and kindly person.

All who met St Tikhon were surprised by his accessibility, simplicity and modesty. His gentle disposition did not prevent him from showing firmness in Church matters, however, particularly when he had to defend the Church from her enemies. He bore a very heavy cross. He had to administer and direct the Church amidst wholesale church disorganization, without auxiliary administrative bodies, in conditions of internal schisms and upheavals by various adherents of the Living Church, renovationists, and autocephalists.

The situation was complicated by external circumstances: the change of the political system, by the accession to power of the godless regime, by hunger, and civil war. This was a time when Church property was being confiscated, when clergy were subjected to court trials and persecutions, and Christ's Church endured repression. News of this came to the Patriarch from all ends of Russia. His exceptionally high moral and religious authority helped him to unite the scattered and enfeebled flock. At a crucial time for the church, his unblemished name was a bright beacon pointing the way to the truth of Orthodoxy. In his messages, he called on people to fulfill the commandments of Christ, and to attain spiritual rebirth through repentance. His irreproachable life was an example to all.

In order to save thousands of lives and to improve the general position of the church, the Patriarch took measures to prevent clergy from making purely political statements. On September 25, 1919, when the civil war was at its height, he issued a message to the clergy urging them to stay away from political struggle.

The summer of 1921 brought a severe famine to the Volga region. In August, Patriarch Tikhon issued a message to the Russian people and to the people of the world, calling them to help famine victims. He gave his blessing for voluntary donations of church valuables, which were not directly used in liturgical services. However, on February 23, 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee published a decree making all valuables subject to confiscation.

According to the 73rd Apostolic Canon, such actions were regarded as sacrilege, and the Patriarch could not approve such total confiscation, especially since many doubted that the valuables would be used to combat famine. This forcible confiscation aroused popular indignation everywhere. Nearly two thousand trials were staged all over Russia, and more than ten thousand believers were shot. The Patriarch's message was viewed as sabotage, for which he was imprisoned from April 1922 until June 1923.

His Holiness, Patriarch Tikhon did much on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church during the crucial time of the so-called Renovationist schism. He showed himself to be a faithful servant and custodian of the undistorted precepts of the true Orthodox Church. He was the living embodiment of Orthodoxy, which was unconsciously recognized even by enemies of the church, who called its members "Tikhonites."

When Renovationist priests and hierarchs repented and returned to the church, they were met with tenderness and love by St Tikhon. This, however, did not represent any deviation from his strictly Orthodox policy. "I ask you to believe me that I will not come to agreement or make concessions which could lead to the loss of the purity and strength of Orthodoxy," the Patriarch said in 1924.

Being a good pastor, who devoted himself entirely to the church's cause, he called upon the clergy to do the same: "Devote all your energy to preaching the word of God and the truth of Christ, especially today, when unbelief and atheism are audaciously attacking the Church of Christ. May the God of peace and love be with all of you!"

It was extremely painful and hard for the Patriarch's loving, responsive heart to endure all the Church's misfortunes. Upheavals in and outside the church, the Renovationist schism, his primatial labors, his concern for the organization and tranquility of Church life, sleepless nights and heavy thoughts, his confinement that lasted more than a year, the spiteful and wicked baiting of his enemies, and the unrelenting criticism sometimes even from the Orthodox, combined to undermine his strength and health.

In 1924, Patriarch Tikhon began to feel unwell. He checked into a hospital, but would leave it on Sundays and Feast Days in order to conduct services. On Sunday, April 5, 1925, he served his last Liturgy, and died two days later. On March 25/April 7, 1925 the Patriarch received Metropolitan Peter and had a long talk with him. In the evening, the Patriarch slept a little, then he woke up and asked what time it was. When he was told it was 11:45 P.M., he made the Sign of the Cross twice and said, "Glory to Thee, O Lord, glory to Thee." He did not have time to cross himself a third time.

Almost a million people came to say farewell to the Patriarch. The large cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow could not contain the crowd, which overflowed the monastery property into the square and adjacent streets. St Tikhon, the eleventh Patriarch of Moscow, was primate of the Russian Church for seven and a half years.

On September 26/October 9, 1989, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified Patriarch Tikhon and numbered him among the saints. For nearly seventy years, St Tikhon's relics were believed lost, but in February 1992, they were discovered in a concealed place in the Donskoy Monastery.

It would be difficult to imagine the Russian Orthodox Church without Patriarch Tikhon during those years. He did so much for the Church and for the strengthening of the Faith itself during those difficult years of trial. Perhaps the saint's own words can best sum up his life: "May God teach every one of us to strive for His truth, and for the good of the Holy Church, rather than something for our own sake."