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International Orthodox Christian Articles

St. John of Kronstadt

Preachers institute Article

Our righteous father John of Kronstadt was an archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church. Born in 1829, from 1855, he served as a priest in St. Andrew’s cathedral in Kronstadt. Here, he greatly committed himself to charity, especially for those who were remote from the church, and traveled extensively throughout the Russian empire. He was already greatly venerated at the time he died. His feast days are commemorated on December 20 and October 19.

“Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (Jn.1: 47)

Our Lord Jesus Christ said this of a certain Nathanael, an Israelite who dwelt in the Galilean town of Cana, when the latter, on the advice of his friend Philip, went to meet Jesus Christ to be assured whether He was the Messiah promised to Israel.

Philip said to Nathanael,

“Whence knowest Thou me?” Jesus answered him, saying,

“Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee,” i.e., I knew all your thoughts, your faith, your hope for the Messiah, your future ministry. The Lord Who knows the hearts of men apparently touched the very heartstrings of Nathanael, his inmost thoughts, desires, aspirations, showing His divine omniscience plainly to him. Thus was Nathanael brought to faith in Christ, and he cried out,

“Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel!,” and became His disciple.

Why is it that during the Great Fast, on the day called the “Sunday of Orthodoxy,” it is this particular Gospel which is prescribed to be read? Because the Lord’s words to Nathanael reveal the character of the true, or Orthodox, Christian and, in general, the character of the true Church of Christ.

“Behold, an Israelite indeed,” the Lord said of Nathanael, “in whom is no guile,” i.e., behold a man who rightly, directly, firmly thinks, reasons, believes, hopes, speaks and acts, since Nathanael directly, immediately believed in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and never wavered in his faith and hope, never changed his mind concerning His divine Person. Should not the true Christian be like him; should not the divinely instituted society of Orthodox Christians also be such; should not the Orthodox Church be such, and is it not such?

What high praise did He Who searches the hearts and reins render unto Nathanael in the words: “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” What high praise there is for that Christian of whom the Lord says,

“Behold a Christian indeed, in whom is no guile!,”

and for that Church of which the Lord will say, “Behold a Church indeed, in which is no guile, or vain human inventions,” i.e., which is wholly true in all its doctrines, mysteries, divine services, directives, and its entire organization.

And just such men were our holy favorites of God; such has the whole Orthodox Church been from the beginning up to now, as is borne witness by an impartial history of the Church and by God Himself through the divers signs and wonders wrought in the Church. It is, as the Apostle says, “the pillar and ground of Truth,” it is “a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.”

To preserve the Orthodox Faith rivers of the blood of the apostles, the prophets and the martyrs were poured forth; and many tortures were borne by the venerable fathers and other champions of the Faith. But what about us, the children of the Orthodox Church? Are we preserving this precious inheritance, the Orthodox Faith; are we following its teachings, commandments, canons, rules, counsel? Do we love to offer service to God? Are we renewed thereby, are we hallowed each and every day, are we setting ourselves aright, are we attaining the perfection which the saints have reached? Are we becoming perfect in love for God and our neighbors; do we cherish our Faith; do we regard the mercy of God as the greatest thing, and that we have the good fortune to belong to the Orthodox Church is the first and greatest happiness in our life? What answer would we give to these questions if we were to respond according to our conscience?

To our shame, we must admit that in many Orthodox Christians the Orthodox Faith is not only absent in their heart, but it is also not on their tongue; among them it has vanished entirely, or has been turned into total indifference with regard to any religion whatever–Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish, Mohammendan, or pagan. We hear that one may please God in every religion, i.e., that every religion is supposedly pleasing to God, and that falsehood and truth, righteousness and unrighteousness are matters about which God does not care.

This is what ignorance of their own Faith, ignorance of the spirit and history of their Church, estrangement from its life and divine services, has brought many to–an eclipse of any understanding of Orthodoxy, heterodoxy and other religions! The annals of modern events relate that somewhere in Russia a certain headmaster, during the examination of his students, referred to the story of the sacrifice of Isaac as stupid. This is darkness, chaos, pernicious ignorance!

The Christian, as a member of the Church, must know his own Faith and strive to live according to that Faith, to achieve salvation by means of that Faith, because the enemies of our salvation never sleep; they seek our destruction every hour and every day. The Orthodox Christian must not dismiss his Faith as a concern merely of certain people, or as a disposable toy appropriate only for children, or something fit only, as it were, for the uneducated common folk.

It would not be out of place to remind those who think thus of the venerable antiquity of our Faith, which is contemporary with the beginning of the human race, and of its direct origin with Godl and that men of high birth, vocation. position and gender lived and attained salvation in this Faith–glorious kings and wise philosophers, law-givers and the greatest orators, nobles and simple folk, rich and poor, men and women, the beauty and glory of the human race.

To the glory of the Orthodox Faith one ought also to say that no other religion than the Orthodox Faith is capable of bringing man to moral perfection or holiness and the pleasing of God, as is shown by the history of the Church and the incorrupt, wonder-working remains of the holy favorites of God and the miraculous feats of the saints of the Orthodox Church, whereby they became perfectly pleasing unto God, becoming clairvoyant and working wonders even during their lifetime. Thus must it be for the sane mind: only a perfect Faith with all its divine powers, with the full spiritual armor of God, is able to bring one to perfection, against the passion-fraught flesh, the world and the devil.

And if now many even Orthodox Christians live badly, their manner of life, even if truly ungodly, cannot in the least, of course, be held against the Orthodox Faith, which is unshakable in its principles of Truth and holiness, in accordance with the promise of the Savior Himself and the testimony of history. Such people, although they have departed from us, were not ours in essence, but only in name…

Yea, my brethren, only the Orthodox Faith purifies and sanctifies human nature which has been defiled by sin…Do you wish to be assured of this?

Read the history of the lives of the saints, the history of the Church, and you will see this for yourselves.

You will see wolves transformed into lambs, fornicators into angelic righteous men and women, misers into paragons of charity, lovers of pleasure into ascetics; you will see people of power and earthly grandeur and luxury in humble monastic garb…These were true Christians indeed; these were angels in the flesh, citizens of heaven while still on earth… This is what our Orthodox Faith can do with those who sincerely hold to it and follow its direction!

But why does it not produce such a salvific change within us? Because of disbelief and lack of faith, flippancy, depravity and unrepentance of heart, because of the passions which have intensified and gained dominion over us, because we have withdrawn from the Church, and because many are not in the least imbued with the spirit and life of the Church, and many are only weakly, only formally, insincerely, attached to it. Because all the modern lusts have been engendered within us…For us to be genuine Orthodox Christians, we must first of all have living, constant fellowship with the Orthodox Church, i.e., participation in its prayers, teachings, mysteries, we must earnestly study our Faith and become imbued with it, live in its spirit, be guided by its rules, commandments, precepts; and most important, we must restore within us by true and profound repentance the image of the true Orthodox Christian, according to the image of the saints, ancient and recent, according to the model of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, Who says:

“I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you” (Jn. 13: 15), that the Lord may also say to us, as He once said of Nathanael,

“Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!”

Source:

His Eminence Archbishop Stylianos Harkianakis of Australia

Part I

1. Introductory Remarks

Following the totally unexpected escalation in provocations from the Vatican, under BENEDICT XVI, towards other Christians (especially the Orthodox, as we shall see below!), it is as plain as the sun that we are unfortunately entering a period of complete uncertainty, to mention nothing of strange ‘obscurity’.

The medieval audacity of ‘Papism’, which we all believed was a thing of the past – in spite of the highly controversial dogmatism of the ‘doctrine of papal infallibility’ at Vatican Council I (1870) – is making a surprising return, and indeed in a manner that is completely incompatible with the deeper cultivation of persons, and the sincere efforts towards ‘purification’ which the Western Christian world in general has presented during the past two centuries.

Therefore, given the general tendency of the ‘Ecumenical Movement’ on the one hand towards revitalization and reconstitution, coupled with the official decision of the Roman Church expressed through Vatican Council II concerning a substantial purification of ‘institutions’, ‘functions’ and ‘persons’ on the basis of the genuine sources of the common first Christian millennium, the terrible impression may be given that all these things are not only doubted, but in fact ridiculed.

We should then say bluntly: that it appears that the approach of the hard-line cardinals of the Roman Curia has prevailed, which establishes ‘Papism’ (not as the ‘Primacy of one Bishop’, but as an unbearably totalitarian ‘ideology’) as the truly INSURMOUNTABLE OBSTACLE, firstly for the ‘reunification’ of divided Christians, but also simply for peaceful ‘unity’ among themselves. Not to mention with non-Christians and ‘atheists’.

For this reason we are obliged today to make several brief comments and observations in simplified language (as much as this is possible, for the benefit mainly of the everyday Christians of East and West), in relation to the very recent revival of Papal Primacy and Infallibility, under the most unexpected circumstances, and at the expense of Christianity as a whole.

The observations presented here become even more urgent in order to prevent possibly greater problems between the Christian Churches and Denominations, but also in terms of the Churches’ imperative creative relations with the rest of the world, which finds itself before enormous impasses, and for which Christianity still claims to ‘maintain’ unchanged the only saving truth of Revelation for all.

2. Brief overview of the historical evolution of Papism in the Church

Whoever has happened to study Church history seriously, i.e. without prejudices, would no doubt have observed (sometimes with astonishment, but on most occasions with justifiable indignation) an almost incredible fact: Before the Roman Emperors’ frightful persecutions of Christians had ceased on an institutional level (312-313AD), their Bishops – who were considered to be the immediate Successors of the Apostles – began to show signs of an unhealthy ‘ambition’ which was incompatible with the teaching of Christ.

What was initially a reserved rivalry between them for ‘Primacy’, ‘Seniority’ and ‘Presidency’, very soon developed almost into a war of ‘fratricide’, when Christianity became the ‘legal’, and then ‘official’, religion of the State under Constantine the Great.

The insatiable thirst of the Bishops was for Primacy and Seniority, in cases where their ‘Sees’ were in large cities and therefore acquired secular prestige and glory. First in this regard, and without compare for a considerable time, was Rome.

Just as the pagan Roman Emperor of the day was called Augustus (= ‘worthy of respect’, an epithet of the gods!), and Ancient Rome was characterized as Roma aeterna (= ‘the eternal city’!), so it happened that the Bishop of Rome did not delay to gradually claim, first for his local Church and then for his person, analogously impious titles, and indeed to a superlative degree.

The Vicarius Christi (= ‘representative of Christ’) we could say was the approximate translation, in Christian vocabulary, of Pontifex Maximus (= ‘Supreme Bridge-Maker’).

There is perhaps no other issue which has occupied so intensely and continually the Synods of the ancient Church (whether Regional or Ecumenical) during the common first millennium as the order of ‘Seniority’ between the Episcopal Thrones, especially of ‘Rome’ and ‘New Rome’ (Constantinople), before the formation of the well-known Pentarchy of Patriarchs (of Rome Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem).

However it must be stated that the problem is not as simple as it may at first appear to be. It did not only arise out of the practical need for the ‘First among Equals’ (Primus inter pares) to preside, according to the spirit of the 34th Apostolic Canon. There also intervened difficult historical circumstances, according to which the ‘more practical solution’ was a great temptation, with the price in terms of ‘ethical deontology’ being not only heavy, but utterly devastating.

Yet if the 34th Canon, which is relatively old and very ‘Apostolic’ in spirit (although its date is not in fact from the time of the Apostles!), was respected, it is certain that historical Christianity as a whole would have avoided many perils.

An equal number of perils, if not more, would have been avoided also by the non-Christian populations which, for centuries now, have undergone the colonial callousness and invasive exploitation by so-called Christian leaders of the West, accompanied and assisted by so-called missionaries who equally saw material aspirations and interests (look at the peoples of what we call the ‘Third World’ today!).

The concise text of the 34th Apostolic Canon must be quoted here in full, so as to make clear to all the unimaginable ‘renewal of the world’ (!) that might have been achieved over the centuries, had this golden Canon been fundamentally applied by those considered to be ’spiritual’ Fathers and Leaders of Christianity.

This astonishing text is as follows:

“It behooves the Bishops of every nation to know the one among them who is the premier or chief, and to recognize them as their head, and to refrain from doing anything superfluous without his advice and approval; but, instead, each of them should do only whatever is necessitated by his own eparchy and by the territories under him. But let not even such a one do anything without the advice and consent and approval of all. For thus there will be concord, and God will be glorified through the Lord in the Holy Spirit, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

(“The Rudder”, by Priest-Monk Agapios and Monk Nicodemus, translated by D. Cummins, Chicago, 1957)

Already from a first glance, the careful reader of this Canon can see where its theological weight is to be found. The ‘mutuality’ of honour and confidence which is established as an inviolable ‘condition of peace’ in the Church, also safeguards a much higher good. This is the true doxology or glorification of the Trinitarian God, which can only be achieved through ‘concord’ among the Bishops.

In this way, we have vividly before us an Ecclesiology.

Part 2

Following the mystagogical vision of the “primordial Mystery of the Church”, as described with astonishing theological consistency in the 34th Apostolic Canon, it would be a terribly backward step and vain endeavour to comment here on the ‘pseudo-Clementine’ and ‘pseudo-Isidorian’ textual claims concerning primacy, which have long ago been refuted by objective historians and theologians.

These and other manipulations or casuistic interpretations were employed by Rome on more than a few occasions, so as to ‘support’ the ‘primacy’ of the Apostle Peter initially, and of the Bishop of Rome subsequently, who was considered to be the only Successor of Peter.

An exhaustive and systematic negation of what was dared by the Papists of the West was presented in our doctoral thesis (The Infallibility of the Church in Orthodox Theology, Athens, 1965), the English translation of which shall, God willing, soon be published.

We will therefore restrict ourselves to presenting concisely, and directly to the current Pope Benedict XVI, just a few fundamental questions.

These questions should – in spite of his high office – be answered by the Pope himself, as they concern him directly. At any rate, in the dialogue between Christians, and especially Bishops, avoidances are impermissible, in accordance with Christ’s command to say either ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

We consider it just for Benedict XVI to answer personally the questions we present below, for two main reasons:

Firstly, because they bear directly upon the whole of Christianity, as a single body in world history.

Secondly, because a host of the current Pope’s earlier writings, as Professor Ratzinger, had contributed greatly to the intended ‘renewal’ and ‘purification’ of the Western Church, through the Second Vatican Council.

First question:

Can he who made his mark as the Theologian Joseph Ratzinger deny that the function of the ‘First’ in the Church – regardless of whether it refers to the Apostle Peter, or to any other of the sacred group of ‘The Twelve’, or even to the Bishops who are their Successors – had from the outset an absolutely soteriological character, with the corresponding and consequent administrative implications upon the entire ecclesiastical life of the ‘Church militant’ in each local area?

Second question:

Is it possible for the soteriological character of the ‘First’, in general, to be ‘bound’ and indeed ‘predetermined’ by a particular geographic region or city?

If the continually changing underlying historical and geographical conditions, which sometimes lead to decay or disuse, were of such decisive significance for SALVATION, would not the Primacy of Jerusalem have from the very beginning prevailed upon world Christianity, since this is where the saving drama of the divine economy had unfolded historically and geographically, with Christ at the very centre?

Yet in such a case, how are we to understand the radically contrary statements of Christ to the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob? What is the meaning of those striking messages: “neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem” (John 4:21)?

Third question:

From when was it possible, and with which theological arguments, for Rome to be ‘differentiated’ so radically from the common teaching of the Christian Church of both East and West, concerning ‘Apostolic Succession’ (succesio Apostolica), making the succession of the Bishop of Rome such a weighty matter? Would it ever be possible to seriously claim that the local Bishop is the successor of only one specific Apostle (eg. Peter by the Bishop of Rome, Mark by the Bishop of Alexandria, Andrew by the Bishop of New Rome, and so on)?

If this was the meaning of Apostolic Succession, would it not follow that the number of Bishops throughout the entire Church would never be more than 12 in number? And then should not Rome, as a result, be speaking specifically about successio Petrina, rather than insisting on the more comprehensive term Apostolica?

On the contrary, the correct conviction and teaching of Scripture and Tradition concerning succession is that all Bishops succeed the eschatologically significant Group of Twelve, and this is why the Church always essentially included in the meaning of Apostolic Succession not only the Bishops, but also the Presbyters, as differing very little from them in terms of the ‘saving’ mission of the Church.

Fourth question:

Can the current Pope state responsibly as a theologian that the Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church – who as all know are appointed directly by the Bishop of Rome without being elected by the Synod of their local Church – are to be considered as equal in authority to the Orthodox Bishops ‘elected’ by a canonical Synod?

Does the holy Father recall that, as the official Theological Dialogue’s Co-Chair on behalf of the Orthodox delegation for 20 years, I had personally protested to him because the Vatican had still not restored its Bishops in general to their most sacred office, just as the undivided Church [of the first millennium] knew it, and that the Orthodox justly demand it so that we may consider the election of Roman Catholic Bishops ‘valid’? Is it not then highly ‘lenient’ and ‘tolerant’ on the part of Orthodox Bishops that we still – while officially dialoguing with Roman Catholic Bishops – silently accept them as our ‘counterparts’?

Fifth question:

If the non-acceptance by Orthodox of the ‘primacy’ and ‘infallibility’ of the Bishop of Rome constitutes for Pope Benedict XVI a “deficit of Orthodoxy”, in order to be considered by Rome a complete and true Church, then what was the point of the axiomatic common statement concerning the official Theological Dialogue, that it is being conducted “on equal terms”?

Sixth question:

The characterization of the Church militant as a “perfect society” (societas perfecta), which became prevalent among Roman Catholics through the influence of Augustine (civitas Dei) was justly and most correctly replaced in the texts of the Second Vatican Council by the terms “People of God” (populus Dei), to express as a journey of pilgrimage (peregrinatio) the dynamic and evolving character of all categories of faithful (Clergy, Monks, Lay) in the present world. No theologian who has studied the Second Vatican Council can ignore that the Professor of Dogmatic Theology Joseph Ratzinger had also contributed in no small measure to the formulation of the mentioned renewed texts.

How is it that today the same Dogmatic Theologian, now as Pope, proclaims indirectly the reviled theory of societas perfecta which, even if unwittingly, competes with the most secular forms of narcissism in modern globalization?

Seventh question:

In closing with the symbolic number of seven (7) questions arising from today’s ‘isolation’ of Pope benedict XVI (both from his deeper self, as well as from his most sincere friends and admirers which he had acquired by his tranquil and ever-modest presence), we would wish to know the position the theologizing Pope takes at this time on two of his better known works, which also showed the broadest horizons that the name Ratzinger represented for many decades.

We refer to the following enthusiastic and enthusing studies:

‘The influence of the Order of Beggars in the Middle Ages upon the development of the Worldwide Primacy of the Pope’ (Munich, 1957). Therein it is admitted that, in spite of the invoked spirituality of the ascetic Bonaventura, artificial means were employed to achieve the purely strategic goal of Rome.

In ‘Christian Brotherhood’, which was originally delivered as a lecture in Vienna in 1958 and soon became the first book of the young Professor Ratzinger (which was also translated into Greek with a special prologue written by the author), it is emphasized that, in contrast to the various modern groupings which constitute ‘closed societies’, i.e. ‘exclusive’ clubs, Christian Brotherhood remains ‘open’ so as to include all.

Today, unfortunately, it sounds like a tragic irony to hear the praise offered by the Archdiocese of Freiburg, on the occasion of the new edition of that book, and in particular the assertion that “according precisely to this spirit the current Pope still acts and wishes to be understood”!

If only that were the case; nothing indicates that it is.

Source:

The northern province of Moldova — known as Bukovina — is an ethnological and religious enclave intended to symbolize Christianity’s triumph against the paganism.

Many of the Bukovina monasteries were built by the Moldavian voivodes as a token of gratitude to God after each victory in battles against the Turks. The unique beauty of their external frescos, which attract thousands of tourists, prompted the UN to enter seven of them on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1993.

Built in 1532 by voivode Petru Rares, the Moldovita Monastery has the appearance of a fortress because of the six-metre-tall stone walls that surround the compound and four defense towers. The monasteries, centres of sixteenth century education and culture, were often targets for invading Tartars and Ottomans. The church, painted on the outside in a dominant red-brown chromatic with many yellow inlays, has the best-kept frescos of all the monasteries in the region. After the First World War, and almost two centuries of Austrian occupation, Moldovita again became a monastery for the nuns, many of whom now are guides for the flocks of tourists.

The former treasury of the monastery is a museum exhibiting old embroideries, wooden icons, various archaeological findings and religious books. The monastery was a genuine centre for the copying of books and manuscripts. Tourists, who can find accommodation at numerous pensions in the neighborhood, can buy religious souvenirs from the gift shop or traditional artifacts from the craftsmen stalls at the gates.

Historians, noting the different styles in evidence, say the church of the monastery was painted by numerous painters at different times. The historical and religious scenes depicted on the outside walls — such as the Last Judgment, Moses and the burning bush, and the Siege of Constantinople — have an apparent narrative continuity mixed with Byzantine and local elements. The scenes on the southern facade tell the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, with all the related Biblical episodes, from the Annunciation to Jesus’ presentation at the temple.

The only painted monastery not built by a ruling voivode, Sucevita was built in 1584 by the Movilesti, an influential aristocratic family. Locally known as boyars, they later gave Moldova a ruler and pre-eminent ecclesiastic figures, whose graves are on view inside the church. As in Moldovita, the monastery is surrounded by high stone walls and watch towers, one of them also being the bell tower. The painters of Sucevita were historically identified as brothers Ion and Sofronie, who painted the church between 1594 and 1595. The siblings had great skills as miniaturists and highlighted contrasts with strong, vivid colors.

A unique theme can be seen on the outside walls of the church — the all Saints’ prayer, along with the Stair of Virtues — an anti-thesis between good and evil. Since Sucevita was the last of Bukovina’s painted monasteries to be built, its outside painting, in a dominant green chromatic, is the best preserved. Local legend says that a small portion of Sucevita church’s walls remained unpainted after the scaffolding collapsed, killing the painter.

Bukovina is also famous for its ceramics. The village of Marginea, in Suceava County, stands out with its unique black ceramics, a tradition whose beginnings go back to time immemorial. The pottery is admired at many national and international fairs for its color and traditional decorations as well as various shapes and overall symmetry.

Putna, though not painted, carries the greatest religious and symbolical burden of the Bukovina monasteries. It was the first creation of Stephen the Great, probably the most notorious figure in Romanian history, over whose tomb it shelters. Stephen ruled Moldova between 1457 and 1504. In 1459, he finished construction of the monastery, which had unusually large dimensions in those times, probably because Stephen had decided to make it his family’s final resting place.

Stephen, now a saint in the Romanian Orthodox Church calendar, built 43 monasteries and churches during his reign. The museum of Putna exhibits several artifacts, including the shroud of Maria of Mangop, the oldest Moldavian style portrait embroidered in natural size. Also housed there are fifteenth-century religious books and the silver incense dispenser given by the ruler to the priests of the monastery after its inauguration.

The former capital of Moldova, the Suceava seat fortress was built late fourteenth century. After a tumultuous three-century history, during which it was besieged, damaged and consolidated countless times, the fortress fell into oblivion. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Austrian architect Karl Romstorfer undertook the first renovation, along with an archaeological exploration. In 2004 — 500 years after the death of Stephen the Great — the fortress went through another thorough restoration. It now hosts many exhibitions and fairs.

Voronet, also named the Sistine Chapel of the East, is probably the most known of all the painted monasteries, due to its dominant blue which is commonly referred to as “Voronet blue”. The color was obtained from lapis lazuli, but in measures that remain secret. Built at the direction of Stephen the Great in less than four months in 1488, the monastery served as gratitude to God after a notorious 1475 victory against the Ottomans in the battle of Vaslui. One of the most important frescos was painted on the west side of the church and depicts the Last Judgment. The scene contains local elements, such as musical instruments, folk costumes and landscapes.

*This text and photographs are courtesy of the Southeast European Times (SET), a web site sponsored by the US Department of Defense in support of UN Resolution 1244, designed to provide an international audience with a portal to a broad range of information about Southeastern Europe. It highlights movement toward greater regional stability and steps governments take toward integration into European institutions. SET also focuses on developments that hinder both terrorist activity and support for terrorism in the region.

Source:

Patriarch Irinej of Serbia

27/1/2010

The unexpected election of moderate Bishop Irinej Gavrilovic of Nis as the new patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church does not mean the influence of more radical priests, like Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro, will subside. That’s according to Milorad Tomanic, a Belgrade-based expert on the Orthodox Church and author of a recently published book, “The Serbian Church In the War, and The Wars Within It.” RFE/RL’s Podgorica correspondent, Dimitrije Jovicevic, spoke to Tomanic about the future role of the church in Serbia.

RFE/RL: What does the selection of Irinej of Nis say about the direction the church is headed in? Was it a step toward reform and openness? Will the focus be more on morals than ideology?

Milorad Tomanic: As people keep saying, the patriarch isn’t the pope. He has more honor than other priests, but not that much more power – certainly not the kind of power the pope has. And his influence both within the church and outside isn’t that strong. His personality can set an example for people, to focus more on morals, to carry the church into more peaceful times. We can only hope for this.

Three conditions have to be met in order for this to happen. The first is that the bishops keep to their oaths. In particular, I’m talking about the Jeeps and German cars with their tinted windows [that many use for their transportation]. This can all be done without being so flashy.

The next is that they reform their own relations amongst themselves, which should be much better than they are.

And the third thing is that some people who were prominent in the 1990s – the main players in Serbia and elsewhere – have to withdraw from the scene. By that I mean primarily Metropolitan Amfilohije [of Montenegro] and [Bosnian Serb Bishop Vasilije] Kacavenda.

What brought doubt into my heart and my soul was a web video I saw showing the newly chosen patriarch holding hands with Bishop Vasilije, who is looking confident, as though the patriarch belongs to him. This could just be my own fear. Still, I hope that the church is sailing into calmer waters.

RFE/RL: Will the church be able to pacify its radical Bosnian members, who are led by Bishop Vasilije? There’s a YouTube clip of him that has become quite popular, showing him giving chauvinist, almost war-mongering speeches. Is the church ready to objectively assess the role it played in the Balkan wars of the ’90s, and acknowledge that it may be contributing to similar unrest in the future?

Tomanic: That’s why I felt wary when I saw the video of Vasilije walking hand-in-hand with Irinej after he was chosen to be the new patriarch. I even thought that perhaps Vasilije was the one who made it possible for Irinej to be elected patriarch, by using the votes from the Bosnian lobby. The bishops will say that he was chosen by the Holy Spirit. But doubts always exist. There’s always talk of authorities influencing the choice of patriarch. I think this is a big question, and I don’t expect any big solutions in that respect.

RFE/RL: Amfilohije, the metropolitan of Montenegro, was considered one of the key contenders for the patriarchal post. What kind of role and influence do you envision him having in the church now?

Tomanic: Amfilohije was one of the key figures in the church in the ’90s and beyond. We can say a lot of good things about him; I really don’t want to be one-sided. He’s a polyglot. He’s extremely knowledgeable about all things related to the teachings of the church. But he’s one of those people who refuses to stick to his areas of expertise. He also has to have hobbies. And for him, politics is a hobby.

I think that he’ll continue to have a strong influence on the church. Everything he’s gotten his hands on – whether on behalf of Serbs in Bosnia, Serbs in Croatia, or Serbs in Kosovo – has failed. Everything has fallen through. He talked about Serbia and Montenegro staying together as one state. Nothing came of that.

I think it would be good – I dream about this – if he and some of the other bishops just go to Serbia’s Sveta Gora monastery and spend their last years there, giving us great works on theology, the things they know well, and leaving politics to those who are softer and more willing to compromise.

Source:

Rev Fr. Dumitru Staniloae

It is a fact that Orthodoxy is identical in its faith-content and worship with the faith-content and worship of primitive Christianity.

Yet the extraordinary and absolutely genuine fact about it is that, while being essentially the continuation of the faith, worship, and spirituality of the undivided Church of the first centuries, Orthodoxy meets in a perfect manner, the spiritual need of the people who have remained loyal to it down to this day.

Orthodoxy did not change essentially during the historical periods experienced by humanity over two thousand years. But it is due to this fact that Orthodoxy did not become impregnated during these centuries with anything which would require elimination of in our times. Nor did Orthodoxy make an essential feature of its existence out of the temporary element of one historical period or another and hence the need to get rid of it nowadays.

Orthodoxy did not turn ‘middle-aged,’ as happened with Roman Catholicism; nor is it the by-product of the protest movement of the Renaissance as is the case with Protestantism; it does not seek, even today, to reform itself essentially in order to accommodate itself to our times by way of secularization.

Orthodoxy has not introduced into the mysterious sanctuary, long-proven by a simple expression of faith, subtle and complicated innovations of certain maîtres, dominated by the desire for a certain sweetness offered by an intellectual exercise rather than by the abysmal and overwhelming awe of the mystery of the relationship between man and God.

Orthodoxy has never mixed together superfluous patterns of human thought with the simple, mysterious, majestic, permanently and inevitably lived essence of the fundamental data of the mystery of salvation.

One could say Orthodoxy has preserved a mass character, for the people in their simplicity remain very little sensitive to the successive ideologies of the historical periods, but stay open to the real and essential problems of all times.

Orthodoxy needs no secularization today in order to encounter contemporary man. On the contrary, it knows well that, by becoming secularized it would lose sight of man and would no longer respond to the fundamental problems of salvation that keep burning under the ashes in the very depths of man’s being.

Certainly, Orthodoxy has always accommodated itself to the times. It has always helped the loyal faithful in all the circumstances and in their endeavors and struggles to preserve their existence, to free themselves from alien domination. The Romanian Orthodox Church, having introduced the national (vernacular) language in church services over three centuries ago, has helped create a Romanian literary language.

But the accommodation of Orthodoxy to the times did not mean an alteration of its being a mystery, nor did it mean a replacement of the mystery by an ideology determined by one epoch or another. Orthodoxy has done all this by fully understanding the value of creation. It has always remained the mystery of simple data, but fundamental and necessary for the religious life.

Orthodoxy has always done and still does things that way. In this respect it mediates Christ to the faithful, Christ who is “the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb. 13:8).

It is Jesus Christ who, being the same forever answers in a perfect manner today as He did yesterday.

The Ancient Law was subject to alteration since its revelation was ever growing and, by that, it kept on widening its meaning before being, eventually, replaced by Christ. The setting aside of the Law was caused by the latter’s imperfection as a mystery of salvation:

A former command is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness (for the Law made nothing perfect – Heb. 7:18-19).

All human ideologies undergo the same process. Each dies and another one takes its place like “the priests who were many in number” (Heb. 7:23).

But He holds His priesthood permanently, because He continues for ever. Consequently He is able for all time to save those who draw near to God…, since He always lives to make intercession for them (Heb. 7:24-25).

Orthodoxy has understood that it needs no changing for the perfect dignity of the High Priesthood of Christ, nor to add or suppress anything, but rather that its only task is to emphasize time and again this dignity in its fullness. The saying “Ecclesia semper reformanda” (The Church is always reforming) does not apply in Orthodoxy since Orthodoxy communicates Christ integrally, Him who is “semper conformis cum omni tempore.”

The mystery of salvation has always been lived to the full within Orthodoxy. Those few recent terms adopted by the Ecumenical Councils did not mean to bring down the mystery to a rationalistic definition but precisely to guarantee its being a mystery as against those temptations to rationalize and limit it, or to make it disappear altogether.

Those terms were meant to protect permanently the mysterious and salutary fact announced in the New Testament, namely that we are saved by the Son of God, who, to that end, became man and remains eternally the same God and man; also that we are saved by God who at the same time is perfect man and, as such, entirely accessible to us, for that we are saved by a man who, being fully accessible to us as man He is also fully accessible to us as God, or even better to say, as the infinite source of life.

The Ecumenical Councils protected the mystery of our salvation, according to which the infinite source of life was made accessible to us, to the extent that the human person became accessible to us as our neighbor. The Councils drew a line between the pantheistic hellenism under the guise of gnosis, and God as Person in communion, and thereby have confirmed the eternal value of man as Person.

The Councils withstood the rationalist temptation to void the meaning of the mystery of salvation and thereby to make illusory salvation itself by turning God into an essence (ousia) submitted to rational laws, and by foreseeing the disappearance of man in that essence. It is only the person that can escape rationalism and remain an inexhaustible mystery, and at the same time to be nearest to any person in the way God is nearest to us and at the same time an inexhaustible mystery.

A current objection to Orthodoxy is that, like Western Christianity, it accommodated itself to medieval Renaissance and also Byzantine mentality and buried the living kernel of the Christian mystery under a heap of formalist and aristocratic splendor which no longer corresponds to our time.

We do not deny that Orthodoxy experienced a Byzantine influence. But this influence did not touch upon the essence of Christian mystery.

What has been considered to be a Byzantine heritage in the life of the Eastern Orthodox Church is, particularly, the multitude of symbols expressing both the Christian faith and its being as lived in worship, in art, and in life. But the Byzantine impact and influence could only foster the development of a symbolism inherent in the expression of Christian mystery.

The intellectual definitions and the doctrinal expositions whereby the West has tried (and still tries) to replace the exposition of mystery by way of symbols have their point of origin in the conviction that this mystery can be expressed exactly in human words.

In reality this mystery is narrowed down or even diluted wherever one wishes to encapsulate it in the strict meaning of words and intellectual definitions. The paradoxical and apophatic fullness of the mystery of salvation is more exactly rendered by symbols.

To speak of the Cross and Resurrection in a general way, to contemplate them in icons, to express them in symbolic and liturgical gestures suggests in a more realistic and existential way the mystery of salvation than does the satisfaction theory of Anselm or the penal theory of the Protestants who are able to express but one aspect of the incomprehensible mystery of salvation.

If Orthodoxy needs to accommodate itself to the needs of contemporary man, it cannot consist in a total reduction of the symbolic expression. It can only consist in a simplification of this expression in order to see straight away the great symbols of the Christian mystery which correspond to the great, simple, permanent, evidences and spiritual necessities of man.

Namely: God near to us as human person; resurrection through the Cross; glory through humility; power to restrain oneself, and patience; freedom through grace; the value of this life through faith in the hereafter; individuality through communion; development of one’s own personality through self-denial, and so on.

Source:

Holy Poles who were martyred by the Papists

Holy Martyr Peter was born in 1891 in the village of Tarnavatka, in the county Tomasouf. After his general studies he studied at an Agricultural School, from where he graduated in 1908. During the 1st World War years he was working as a teacher.

In his thirties Peter Ohrisko felt his hieratic calling and entered the hieratic school in the city of Cremieniets. After his graduation in 1923 he got married. During the same year in December he was anointed deacon and priest in the city of Cremieniets by Metropolitan Anthony of Loublin. For a decade, he served at different villages of the eparchy of Bolynia.

In 1939 when the atheistic regime prevailed in Bolynia, Father Peter returned to his place of birth, the eparchy of Helm in the county of Tomasouf. He remained at the village of Sumin and was appointed officiating priest of the parish of the village Moresin. During the difficult years of the 2nd World War he continued with zeal his hieratic service, placing more importance on the spiritual progress of the youth. However, the spreading papist propaganda and hate towards the Orthodox of the eparchy of Helm, included him and his parish members, making them various underhanded proposals, with the intention to make them deny Orthodoxy. Seeing that he was not giving in, but only continue supporting his parish members, they unleashed against him persecutions and threats.

Finally, in the year 1944 at the village Tsartoviets of the county Zamosts, on Holy Monday while he was performing the Presanctified Divine Liturgy, and while at the same time confessing the youth that had gathered there, the papist rebels surrounded the church and seized him, fully dressed in his hieratic vestments; they took him outside, tore his hieratic vestments and tortured him horribly while taking him away from the village. Over these tortures he surrendered his soul, remaining always in word and works faithful to Orthodoxy. Many of the parish members met the same fate. The murderers buried his body in place, in the fields and since then the location of his grave with his relics remains unknown.

Holy Poles who were martyred by the Papists
Publications: Orthodox Kypseli
Thessaloniki

Source:

St. Athanasios

By:
the Rev. Dr. George Dion. Dragas

INTRODUCTION

“God became man that we may become gods” (St. Athanasios).

The Incarnation of God is the foundation of the Christian faith. Christ is the Son and Logos (Word) of God who became man. He is not a man who became god, nor a man who stands in a unique and perfect relation with God. If the latter were the truth, Christianity would not differ from Judaism or any other religion. Orthodox Christianity believes that in Christ, God himself (God’s Son and Word) became man without ceasing to be God, so that we may be restored and clothed with God’s perfections.

The Orthodox Church keeps as crucial and essential treasures these classical convictions of the Gospel. There are, however, many contemporary thinkers who regard them as untenable on the basis of certain critical syllogistic arguments. They argue that God as a supreme and absolute power cannot become man if he is really God; that the eternal and unchangeable cannot become temporal and changeable, etc. Thoughtful philosophers have been raising similar points since the early stages of Christian history, both from within and from without the Church’s context. But the Church has always regarded such objections as alien to the Christian truth. Those who propounded them in the past were characterized as heretics, namely who failed to understand Christ’s truth.

The main problem of the ancient heretics and the contemporary critics, as far as the Incarnation is concerned, stems from their assumption that the Church’s faith in this is the result of thoughtful reflection upon or subjective interpretation of the historic event of Christ. For Orthodox Christians and theologians, however, the Incarnation of the eternal Son and Logos of God is a given truth. Both the apostolic kerygma and the patristic dogma project the Incarnation as an objective datum and divine gift.

When the Fathers of the Church wrote about the Incarnation their aim was not to explain away the event of Christ, but rather to expound its soteriological (saving) significance for all humanity. They did not explain the Incarnation from any abstract theoretical standpoint. They rather attempted to bring out the inner logic of it and to bear witness to its saving effects.

It is this kind of exposition that this article is designed to provide. The intention is to lay open the Church’s understanding of the saving meaning for humanity of the event of the Incarnation of God in Christ, which occupies the essential place in the witness of the Gospel, the Apostles and the Fathers. This will be done on the basis of the most famous work of St. Athanasios “On the Incarnation of the Divine Logos.”

ST. ATHANASIOS’ TREATISE ON THE INCARNATION

St. Athanasios’ treatise on the Incarnation is still regarded today as the first thorough and profound exposition of the event of Christ. It is a continuation of another work, which bears the title “Against Paganism” (Contra Gentes), the subject matter of which is summarized in the beginning of the work on the Incarnation. This work “Against Paganism” deals with the problem of idolatry—man’s worshipful attachment to the world (what we call today “secularism”)—caused by man’s fall from the knowledge of his Creator. The substance of the problem is the loss on the part of man of the self‑consciousness that he is ‘logical’ in the sense that he is “made in the image of God’s Logos” and that the world does not have an independent logic of its own apart from the uncreated powers and energies of the Creator Logos.

The results of this problem pertain to man’s existence and knowledge. Man’s existence is subjected to corruption and death and man’s knowledge is alienated from the truth of the world and the vision of God. St. Athanasios maintains that the Christian reply to this problem and its fatal consequences is man’s rediscovery of the Creator Logos, who is the key to the existence of man himself and of the entire world. This is because through this Logos man will be able once again to find the Image of God and the reflection of that image in himself. But man does not turn to the Logos. Hence the Logos’ intervention or turning to man which is achieved through His Incarnation.

The treatise “On the Incarnation” by St. Athanasios is divided into two main parts, the first one dealing with the meaning of the Incarnation and the second being a reply to objections raised against it by Jews and Greek philosophers. It is to the first part that we shall turn our attention here.

THE EVENT OF THE INCARNATION: GOD BECAME MAN

The Incarnation is the Event whereby the Logos of God, through whom God created all and sustains all, has revealed Himself to human beings by becoming a man among them. Yet, says St. Athanasios, the human shape of this revelation, instead of filling men with gratitude, became the occasion for the rejection of the Creator Logos. Men thought it impossible and even irrational that God could become man! They were so used to life without Him that they found it impossible to believe in Him when He was born as a man among them! For man to become God and to surpass the weaknesses and limitations of His created nature was for men a desirable thought, which could be reasonably maintained. But for God to become man and taste the futility and littleness of the human predicament was either a logical nonsense or a ridiculous scandal.

And yet the logic of the Gospel, says St. Athanasios, demands the reverse. What men thought impossible, this God put forward as possible, and thus the futility and littleness of the human nature is shown to be honorable and powerful and saving. The true God is not an indifferent impersonal or ideal God of some kind of metaphysical transcendence. He is the God who puts on human nature, is nailed on the Cross for the sake of righteousness, and truly defies human nature through means seemingly futile and powerless, yet true, natural and human. The aim of the Incarnation was not just the revelation of God, but also the salvation and deification of fallen man, God’s creature. The Cross of the Incarnate God, then, became the trophy against idolatry and superstition, because by such means God unmasked the futility of man‑made reli­gion and ill‑conceived theology and also justified and renewed human nature as His own creation.

For St. Athanasios, then, the Incarnation laid down the right terms of true theology: the deification of man as God wills it (as His free gift) and not as man aspires to it (as an arbitrary usurpation of the rights of God). True theology is not made by man, but is given by God when He becomes man. This is owed to the fact that the right knowledge of God is tied up with the right knowledge of man. Hence, God’s decision first to reveal the true man in His Incarnation and then to reveal the truth of Himself. To put it in another way, man becomes a theologian when he becomes true man; and he becomes true man when he becomes a man in Christ. Far from opposing humanism, Christian theology (and particularly the doctrine of the Incarnation) is the key to it, except that it is divine humanism, God’s life as man.

How does this actually take place? And what is the reason or reasons which prompted God to follow such a path? What is the deeper meaning of the Incarnation? These are the questions that St. Athanasios will try to answer in his treatise. And I say that he will try, because first of all he will examine certain “presuppositions” to the Incarnation. He will tell us that we must first understand why and how man was initially made man and why and how he fell from the position that God gave him, in order to understand why and how God became man for our salvation. In other words, man’s creation and fall constitute basic presuppositions to the understanding of the event of the Incarnation.

MAN’S CREATION AND FALL

Man was not created by the world, but by God. God created both man and the world. The Epicureans, like many modern thinkers, propounded the view that the world (and therefore man) came to be through an automatic process out of itself. The Platonists believed that there was a certain creator (demiourgos) who made man and the entire universe, but they held that the material from which all things were made actually pre‑existed the act of creation and was itself eternal. The Gnostic heretics, who followed ancient oriental religious traditions, spoke about two cosmic spheres and substances, which belonged to two rival gods (the good god of spiritual substance and the evil god of matter) and saw man as being caught up between these two opposing realms.

Against these theories St. Athanasios expounded the teaching of the Church, which is based on the Bible and on Divine revelation. God created all things out of nothing with His Divine Logos. Therefore every form of cosmological monism or dualism must be rejected as false. The cause of creation was God’s immeasurable goodness, and as a result the world and man are substantially good. God showed His goodness in a special way in creating man. Because He knew that, being a creature that came out of nothing, man could not remain in existence for ever—for every creature that has a beginning also has an end. He made man in such a way that he may exist in the Image and the Likeness of God Himself. In other words, God made man able to communicate with God and to imitate Him. In this way the iconic relation of human existence with the ever‑existing and eternal God would render the former capable of remaining in existence forever.

The commandment, which, according to the Bible, God gave to the protoplasts [first-created] in paradise concerning the knowledge of good and evil, had no other purpose than to safeguard the grace of being in the Image and Likeness of God, that is man’s free communion with and imitation of his Creator. By such means the power of immortality and eternal existence that belongs to God alone would be also secured for man. In the last analysis the most characteristic element of St. Athanasios’ teaching on man’s creation is not so much man’s created existence as it is the free coordination of this existence with the self‑existing Creator, the Divine Logos, through the grace of being in the Image and Likeness.

Man is not a closed circle of existence simply regulated from a center existing in him. He is rather an open or free existence capable of communicating with the transcendent and self‑existing God. Thus St. Athanasios teaches us that the key to our humanity is the Divine Logos and our communion with Him. This is precisely the point where our fall takes place, which incurs the corruption and death of our existence and causes the drama of human history, which in turn calls out the saving intervention of the Logos: the Incarnation.

The fall of man, which is so clearly revealed in his natural corruption and death, is in the last analysis first man’s denial to appropriate the grace of his Creator Logos, and secondly man’s turning to the created and limited world as the ultimate purpose of his life. This means, says St. Athanasios, that in our life we no longer imitate or communicate with the self‑existing (the One Who Is), but with things that are not. We are mastered by a demonic envy (the devil’s deceit) that makes us transgress God’s commandment and leave death and corruption to reign supreme over our life. The result is that our humanity remains unfulfilled—we never reach the purpose of our life, which is immortality and deification.

THE DILEMMA OF THE CREATOR

This miserable condition of man, says St. Athanasios, puts God, as it were, in a certain dilemma! If he allows the transgressor to live, then he runs the risk of being proved a deceiver, because His original warning about man’s death in the case of his rejection of the Logos would appear to be false. On the other hand leaving man to be lost in corruption and death does not measure up with God’s character, especially in view of the fact that man became communicant of the grace of His Image. His truth asks that man should be left to his loss because this will not interfere with God’s consistency to His Logos and will not violate man’s freedom. But God’s goodness wants of Him to save His creature, whilst His power is capable to do so. What then should God do with man who is an arbitrary transgressor?

Perhaps one might consider, St. Athanasios says, that in this case the easiest operation would be for God to demand man’s repentance. But the fact remains that repentance does not satisfy the law of existence, which demands death, neither does it restore the fatal consequences resulting upon the human nature from the transgression. Repentance simply puts an end to sinning, but does not undo the incurred consequences of sin. Had sin not had such repercussions, repentance might have sufficed for man’s salvation. But now, such as sin is, even the grace of the Image and Likeness cannot operate. Repentance just does not lead out of the cul-de-sac.

After all this the only solution to the problem of man’s salvation can be the intervention of the Creator Logos, who is capable of re‑creating the lost man. Only the Divine Logos, St. Athanasios says, can keep God’s consistency with His Creation, represent all men, suffer on behalf of all, and re‑create all men and all things: because He is the key to the Creation of the world and especially of man.

THE FIRST CAUSE OF THE INCARNATION: THE DESTRUCTION OF DEATH

It is with His Logos that God acts again in order to save His creation. He sends His Word (Logos) to the earth out of infinite love for man, Him who was never far away. And the Logos, who sees our plight and the loss of our generation, enters Himself into our race and is identified with us. He does this by taking a body like our own from a pure and impeccable Virgin and makes it personally His own, Himself becoming a man. With His own human existence the Logos offers as a man a life of perfect obedience to God, which concludes with His self‑sacrifice for the sake of all men. The true self‑sacrifice of Christ is sealed with His death on the Cross and is vindicated with His resurrection whereby death is destroyed forever.

The death of Christ, says St. Athanasios, does not occur for the same reason as our own. We die justly because death has a right over us on account of our sin. But Christ is just and sinless and thus He does not die for Himself but for us. He does not, of course, die as God—for this is quite impossible—but as man, inasmuch as He has a human existence identical with our own. He allows Himself to receive death at the hands of others, because He wants to enter the ultimate darkness of our fall and illuminate it with His presence. He dies as man in order to annul the ultimate strength of death. The death of Christ, of the one who is just and lays down His life for the unjust, has a universal meaning, value and effectiveness. It was the death of all men that Christ accomplished through His death, in the sense that natural death is no longer the ultimate destiny of any man.

Our ultimate destiny is now the resurrection of our creaturely mortal existence to a new condition of immortality caused by the Resurrection of Christ. Christ is the first‑fruit and we shall follow. We no longer die as condemned, but we die in order to rise again and live eternally with God. This universal significance, value and effectiveness of Christ’s death is not based simply on the fact that He was the just and true man who was vindicated by God when He died in the hands of sinners, but above all on the fact that He is in the last analysis the Creator Logos who holds the key to the existence of all men (He is the God-Man). The Lord’s humanity (His body) is identical with our own, but it has acquired universal rights for all of us because it is the humanity of the universal Lord of all (it is the Divine-Body).

Christ is ultimately “the true God who is above all and for all”, who in becoming man has regained our lost rights especially through His Death and Resurrection. The abolition of death and corruption as the ultimate conclusion to our destiny and the establishment of the rights to immortality and incorruptibility for our creaturely human existence is regarded by St. Athanasios as the first cause of the Incarnation. The wonder of the whole gift of Christ to us is not just the return of our humanity from death to life, but the transformation of that humanity into an external incorruptible and immortal existence which is new and demands the renewal of the whole world.

THE SECOND CAUSE OF THE INCARNATION: MAN’S REGAINING THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Apart from the death of our creaturely existence, our fall has also been the cause of our ignorance of God. As we saw above, man’s rational existence implies that he does not simply enjoy life but also knowledge, and indeed the knowledge of God. According to St. Athanasios and the other Fathers and Theologians of our Church, the knowledge of man is not restricted to the knowledge of the cosmos or of his own self, but is ultimately connected with the knowledge and consciousness of God. Without the last one all other kinds of knowledge can lose their true meaning and become paradoxically bearers of ignorance.

The knowledge and consciousness of God is ultimately connected with the grace of the Image and the Likeness of the Divine Logos given to man at his creation. In the last analysis man’s knowledge of God is based on his knowledge of the Logos, who is God’s true Image. By perceiving the Logos men perceive God and thus receive eternal life, which rests on His grace. Yet on account of their fall men have neglected this grace, and as a result they have lost the ability of perceiving the divine Word (Logos) and through Him perceiving God. This loss has also meant that they cannot any more understand the truth of the world or the truth of themselves, or even the truth which God has sent to them through the Prophets and the holy men. It was self‑evident then that the Logos and true Image of the Father had to be revealed to men once again and revive in them the grace of the Image that had been darkened.

This is exactly what the Logos did with His Incarnation. Not only did He revive the mortal body and make it incorruptible, but He also renewed the grace of the Image of God in man’s soul and existence. Neither angels nor men, says St. Athanasios, could have achieved this, but only the very Logos of God who is God’s true Image. Just as an image which has been printed on a piece of wood requires the prototype in order to be restored when destroyed, so the grace of the Image of the Logos which had been engrafted upon the soul of man was required in order to be revived after man’s fall. This is exactly what the Incarnation of the Logos of God actually brought about: the revival of man’s rationality, which involves the restoration of the knowledge and consciousness of God in man and constitutes the second and ultimate cause of the Incarnation.

For St. Athanasios then there are two basic consequences of the Incarnation which refer to our salvation and bring out its inner meaning. First of all the Incarnation has opened the way for the return of our mortal and corruptible existence from death to life. Secondly it gives us the possibility for renewal in our inner man through restoring to us the knowledge and consciousness of God, which constitutes the foundation for our true knowledge of the world and of ourselves. Christ saves us completely, because He gives us the immortality of our creaturely nature and makes us communicants of eternal life in the light and glory of His Kingdom. The Church knows these two fundamental gifts of Christ to humanity empirically, and therefore her faith in the God who became man is not the result of a blind obedience to some dogma superimposed from above. The Church does not accept the principle, “believe and do not search,” but the principle, “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

In the last analysis, and as St. Athanasios teaches in other writings, the proof of the faith of the Church in the Incarnate God, Jesus Christ the Savior of the World, is based on the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit. Both the resurrection of the human nature and the restoration of the grace of the Image of God in man are the work of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. The whole salvation of man, which is achieved and revealed in the Incarnation of the Son and Logos of God is the work of the one undivided and consubstantial Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, to whom belongs all the glory, the honor and the worship now and for ever and in the ages of the ages. Amen.

Source:

St. Nektarios, Bishop of Pentapolis

In a small village in Romania there were no priests, and the residents often went to the Patriarch and asked him to fill the vacancy. However, the Patriarch had no way to satisfy their request for a priest. The villagers went again and again, but the Patriarch’s reply remained the same. He said that he had no extra priests, otherwise he would send one to the village.

Meanwhile, people died without church services, others had relationships and children without being married, and both the children and adults were unbaptized.

Then one day, a car pulled up outside of the church and stopped, and out stepped a priest shouting. The village was astonished. The villagers went to the church to welcome him and asked, “How is it that you have come to the village after the Patriarch had said that he had no priest to send us?”

The priest replied, “Isn’t that what you wished? You wanted a priest, now one has come.”

All the villagers were happy in the presence of the new priest.

The priest went to work at once. He went to all the graves and read the (exodio) prayers. He baptized and married everyone in the village and administered Holy Communion.

One day he invited all the villagers to church and told them, “I must leave now, my mission work is done.”

The villagers were saddened and confused by his announcement and asked, “Now that you have come, you are leaving?”

However, the priest didn’t change his mind and proceeded with his decision.

When the villagers realized that their wasn’t anything they could do, they thanked him.

After a few days, the villagers went to Patriarch and they thanked him for sending them a priest and to let him know that they would appreciate it if he could send them another priest soon, but the Patriarch didn’t know anything about it.

He said to them, “I didn’t send a priest because I don’t have one, however let me check with the Protosyngellos (Chancellor) to see if he had sent a priest to you to serve your needs.

He phoned the Protosyngellos but he hadn’t sent anyone either.

The Patriarch inquired, “What did this priest do for you?”

The villagers answered, “He married us, baptized us, performed funerals for our parents, and did what any other priest would have done for us.”

Then the Patriarch asked if he gave them any certificates or recorded the Holy Mysteries (in the metrical book).

“Of course,” said the villagers, “he gave us certificatess and he wrote them in the church’s books.”

“Then did anyone see what he wrote, or with what name he signed?”

“All the documents were written in Romanian, but we are not well-educated, and he signed in a language we have not seen before.”

The Patriarch asked them to bring the books so he could see who this clergyman was. When they returned with the book, the Patriarch was speechless, and couldn’t believe his eyes. All the documents were indeed written in Romanian, while his name was written in Greek: Nektarios, Metropolitan of Pentapolis!

Glory to God! May St. Nektarios intercede for us!

Side note: It must be mentioned that this miracle occurred under Communism.

Courtesy:

When Simon Thomas was an altar boy in Modesto two decades ago, he dreamed of becoming a doctor.

His triumphs on the dance floor and on Beyer High’s soccer field and his student honors status helped prepare him for pre-med classes at the University of California at Davis. But when he arrived, he felt a tug back toward the church. And he couldn’t shrug it off.

“I felt like Jeremiah or Jonah in the Old Testament and said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ but God said otherwise,” Thomas said of his path to the priesthood. “It took some convincing on his part.”

A course correction led to the seminary in Boston, a Central California coast parish, connections to rock ‘n’ roll elite and later this month, he hopes, to a tiny village in east Africa.

Thomas, 34, is one of two ordained priests produced in recent years by Modesto’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church. For 3½ years, he’s been head priest at Saint Barbara Greek Orthodox Church, leading 175 families, about half the size of Modesto’s congregation.

For the record, an unordained graduate from Modesto now directs a Kings Canyon retreat for the church’s national office, and two other locals are current seminarians. Yet another potential priest married a young woman from Modesto, so “we claim him,” said Modesto’s Father Jon Magoulias.

Magoulias is Thomas’ “spiritual father,” counseling him from his youth. He describes Thomas as “a very bright person; soft-spoken, compassionate, understanding.”

The last three have not commonly been used to describe his father, Dave Thomas, who afflicted power brokers as a conservative radio talk show host in 2000 and 2001 and who continues the fight as an outspoken member of the Stanislaus Taxpayers Association. He’s very proud to be a father’s father.

In more ways than one.

Greek Orthodox priests often marry, and Simon Thomas exchanged vows in 2002 with the former Stephanie Ronson, a Modesto High School graduate. Their 6-month-old son, Demetri, and 3-year-old daughter, Elpinike, were named for Dave Thomas, who was baptized Demetrious, and his mother.

Father Simon’s mother, Elaine, now lives in Elk Grove.

“I would say he is successful in serving to bring God’s love to the people,” Magou-lias said of his protégé, “and I would say he is successful in being a husband and father.”

Dave Thomas doesn’t need much persuading to visit Santa Barbara, where parishioners include world-class vintners, artists and musicians. Chris Hillman, a member of the original Byrds, sings in Father Simon’s choir.

Ready for a mission

In February, a local opera star’s performance pulled in $75,000 for the Tanzanian mission, enough to build the church that will be nearly finished when Father Simon visits in late January. It’s in Kazinga, a rural village where the next goal is to dig a well with clean drinking water.

Tanzania’s violent neighbors, Uganda and Rwanda, were depicted in the movies “The Last King of Scotland” and “Hotel Rwanda.” Another nearby country, Kenya, came to the brink of civil war two years ago. Tanzania, home to the famed Mount Kilimanjaro, is far more stable, though life expectancy hovers around 50 years and the average yearly income is about $1,100.

“To build a building is beyond their financial means,” Simon Thomas said. “To support a building is within their means. We’re building infrastructure they can use to build themselves up, instead of throwing money at them.”

Thomas’ group will bring medical supplies and doctors, a reminder of a dream long past.

“Father Simon realized God was calling him not to become a physician of the body,” Magoulias said, “but a physician of the soul.”

By:
Garth Stapley
Email:gstapley@modbee.com

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Dr. Bradley Nassif

The May 2008 issue of Christianity Today features their Christian Vision Project, with prominent writers and thinkers responding to the question, “Is our Gospel too small?” Antiochian Archdiocese author Brad Nassif contributed this response.

By Bradley Nassif, Ph.D.

The last few decades, more and more evangelicals have been mining the treasures of Eastern Orthodoxy. One reason for their openness is the work of people like Bradley Nassif, professor of biblical and theological studies at North Park University in Chicago. For years he has been, as one editor put it, “a courageous and enthusiastic pioneer of Orthodox-evangelical dialogue around the world.” While Nassif was exposed to evangelical faith in his youth, which he says gave his faith vitality, he has remained a faithful member of the Orthodox Church. But while championing the Orthodox cause, he’s never been blind to its spiritual needs. As he put it in one article, “The most urgent need in the Orthodox world today is an aggressive ‘internal mission’ of (re)converting our people to Jesus Christ.” In this Christian Vision Project article, Nassif suggests how one element of the Orthodox heritage might help reconvert all of us to the person and mission of Jesus Christ.

“IS OUR GOSPEL TOO SMALL?” Shouldn’t the answer be obvious? As an Eastern Orthodox theologian, my first impulse was to point out that a small gospel has never been our problem. The name of the great 7th-century saint Maximus the Confessor symbolizes the maximal gospel proclaimed by him and all the Orthodox—one with cosmic implications that embraces the whole of creation. Proclaiming that kind of gospel has always been the Orthodox way. But then I came down to earth. Though Orthodoxy has a grand vision in principle, it often doesn’t make a lot of difference in practice.

I believe our theological compass is pointed in the right direction, but when it comes to following through on our not-so-small gospel, we are no better than anyone else. So what’s lacking in all our churches, regardless of tradition, that makes this question so necessary? My thoughts turn to the early 300s, to the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, along the banks of the River Nile, in remote caves, abandoned forts and tombs, on mountaintops and pillars. There, men and women took up their crosses to fashion the old creation into the new—to seek the redemption and renewal of our fallen human nature by the power of the risen Lord. These desert dwellers provide us with the wisdom we seek. The desert fathers and mothers heard Christ’s call to deny themselves, take up the cross daily, and follow him (Luke 9:23) in a time similar to our own. Under Emperor Constantine, large numbers joined the church for the social privileges it bestowed. Many sought status and prosperity more than the cross. This influx of nominal Christians made the church a spiritually sick institution, and a radical
illness called for a radical remedy. Ordinary men and women, most of them illiterate, heard the death-call of the gospel and responded by fleeing to the desert to live out their calling—either alone or in community. Peasants, shepherds, camel traders, former slaves, and prostitutes were the first to go.

The desert was not a place of escape as much as a place of countercultural engagement. The desert was the front line of spiritual warfare—as in the Bible, a place of testing and death. It was where the heart was purified, the passions conquered, sin destroyed, and humanity renewed. Like the prophets of old, the desert dwellers reminded the church that the kingdom of God is not of this world. They insisted that if we confuse the gospel’s values with our culture’s values, it will have lethal results. They exposed the underside of a form of religion that fuels our hunger for self-centered living. Still today, their lives stand against the easy assurance of a too-inculturated gospel. They offer an alternative spiritual order, one based on Trinitarian divine love and human freedom. They offer an alternative portrait of what being human really means. And perhaps most radically, they call us to engage our external challenges by first conquering our own inner passions through the lordship of Christ.

Athletes of God

The monastic movement was a response to the church’s spiritual poverty—the poverty of love. The monks protested that knowledge wasn’t the problem; the problem was love. Their perspective is all the more surprising when we compare the low literacy rate then (perhaps 4 percent) with the high literacy rate now (75 percent). There is more Bible knowledge available now than at any other time in human history. Yet we are still asking, “Is our gospel too small?”

If these desert dwellers were alive today, I believe they would tell us that our gospel is too small because our wills are too big. The core battleground, they argued, is the human heart. They would counsel us to declare war on the inner adversaries that hide secretly in our hearts, and to be watchful of their stealth attacks. We’re wisest, they taught, when we concentrate our energies on the source of all our problems, the inner person—its selfish orientation, dark impulses, sexual preoccupations, greed, lust, anger, unforgiveness, hatred, and other “works of the flesh” (Gal. 5:19–21). Every believer still has a powerful attraction to sin. So the monks took decisive action in their reliance on God, engaging in the hard work of holiness, something they called ascesis, or spiritual training. Some monks were such great trainers, they acquired the name “athletes of God” or “soldiers of Christ.”

At the heart of their training was repentance. They were convinced that their inner natures were so out of sync with the will of God that nothing but a strong dose of God’s grace could fix them. Only repentance could clear away the stony rubble in the soil of their hearts so God’s grace could take root and grow. The gospel was so alive in the monks because repentance was a lifestyle for them, not a single event. Even after spending a lifetime in repentance, we hear them on their deathbeds encouraging the younger ones not to give up: “I’m only a beginner,” they would say. “I’ve just begun to repent!”

All this talk of repentance may sound neurotic, but the fathers and mothers specifically avoided the “deadly thoughts” of depression and gloom. Nor was it their habit to keep dwelling on past sins, as later medieval piety would encourage. They simply knew the depths of their own disobedience, and they took steps to deal with their hearts. The lives of the great desert fathers and mothers of the 3rd through 6th centuries show us how big our gospel can become in each of us when we obey Scripture. The more we keep company with these delightful people, the more they lead us away from relying on external remedies. They tell us that our gospel is too small not because we need to hear more sermons, or do more Bible study, or attend more church services, or create new programs. Nor is it too small because we have not followed modern theological scholars into a nearly idolatrous reliance on the intellect. The monks interpreted the Scriptures not just through study, but also by putting them into practice.

Serapion lamented, “The prophets wrote books. Then came our ancestors who lived by them. Those who came later understood them from the heart. Then came the present generation who copied them but put them on their shelves unused.” I imagine that those reading this article have more Bible knowledge than they will ever put into practice in their lifetime. Yet it’s not more knowledge we need; it’s more love and obedience.

Trinitarian Love

Some readers may be wondering whether all this talk of hard work will lead to “works righteousness,” a focus on the self and a dependence on the self’s efforts for salvation and sanctification. But the great monastic leaders disavowed such confusion. First, they understood that spiritual disciplines in themselves don’t lead to loving obedience. Anthony the Great (4th century) was once asked by a fellow monk who exceeded Anthony in ascetic rigor (which was no small feat, by the way), “Anthony, I fast and pray more than you do, but you are more well known than I. Why is that so?” Anthony replied, “Because I love God more than you do.” Anthony wasn’t bragging. He was just telling it like it was. When practiced in humility, ascetic rigor results in greater love.

The monks fasted because they were hungry to love God more; they prayed because they wanted closer communion with God and neighbor; they contemplated so they could better fix their gaze on their divine spouse; they practiced silence because they wanted to hear God so they could speak and act more wisely to the people around them. The end goal of every spiritual practice employed by the monks was love.

Second, in a treatise titled “On Those Who Think They Are Made Righteous by Works,” Mark the Ascetic says grace is opposed to merit, but it is not opposed to effort: “The kingdom of heaven is not a reward for works, but a gift of grace prepared by the Master for his faithful servants.” Why, then, did the monks sweat so profusely in the effort to refashion fallen humanity into the new creation? Different fathers answered in different ways, but with the same basic vision. Irenaeus put it this way: “The glory of God is a human fully alive.” Athanasius wrote, “God became human so that humans might become divine.” Together they tell us that we can’t be truly godly unless we’re first truly human. And we can’t be truly human unless we’re in communion with Christ in his Trinitarian relations. Modern evangelical writer Darrell Johnson has said it well in his book Experiencing the Trinity: “At the center of the universe there is a relationship. . . . It is out of that relationship that we were created and redeemed, and it is for that relationship we were created and redeemed.” Our desert disciples would have cheered in agreement. But we need to aim not at love in the abstract but at love in the particular. Each individual needs to ask herself, “What is it that keeps me from love?” Whether it’s anger, indifference, laziness, despondency, impulsiveness, or an evil imagination, St. Anthony advises us that each responding virtue requires its own special tool: “Whoever hammers a lump of iron first decides what he is going to make of it—a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge, or else we labor in vain.”

Our resolve to fashion the old creation into the new is weak today because most of us trick ourselves into thinking that our wayward humanity is par for the course. We take “the flesh” in stride and learn to live in peaceful coexistence with its darkening presence. But the words of Jesus would not permit these desert folk to indulge in that delusion. Furthermore, Jesus’ words became a call to arms not just to rein in the flesh, but to transform the heart as well: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matt. 15:19).

St. Anthony’s Spiritual Advice

The greatest of these monks wielded enormous power in the ancient world. Because of their reputation for humility and holiness, crowds would flock to see them. Emperors, generals, politicians, as well as the poor, would travel long distances by foot or donkey just to sit at their feet. In Syria, St. Simeon preached atop a 40-foot column, in the process converting Bedouin Arab tribes to Christ. In Egypt, John the Dwarf had an entire town “hanging from his little finger because of his humility.” Some monks’ characters were so transfigured by the Holy Spirit that their sheer presence was enough to effect a transformation in others.

Yet whether a beginner or a seasoned monk, everyone needed advice from a spiritual elder from time to time. The custom in the desert was to ask an elder, “Abba, give me a word that I may live!” This request was for a personal word of wisdom that would open their heart like a key to a locked door. What if I asked Anthony the Great the same question the Christian Vision Project has asked me? If I could get on a onkey and travel to the remote deserts of Egypt to ask,
“Abba, give me a word that I may live. Why is our gospel so small today?” I imagine he might answer, with characteristic simplicity: “The poverty of your love.”

Dr. Bradley Nassif is professor of biblical and theological studies at North Park University and host of the Internet podcast Simply Orthodox on Ancient Faith Radio (www.ancientfaith.com).

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