Who are the Saints?

"In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

The Mother of God and the Saints whose memory we keep today, those who are known to us because God has revealed them, and because they have been understood and recognised, either by their contemporaries, or years, at times - centuries later, all the Saints are the response of the earth to the love of God. And this response is given by them not only in their own name but in the name of all creation and in our names also; because each of us has the privilege to be called by one name, our Christian name, the name of one of those Saints. And the Saints whose names are ours stand before God and pray that their name should not be made unworthy in the eyes of the Lord.

The Saints of God embrace the whole of Creation in their love, in their intercession, in their prayer, in their real, continuous presence. How wonderful it is that we belong to this vast family of men, of women, of children who have understood what the Lord meant when He came, and lived, taught and died for us! They responded with their own heart, they understood with all their mind, and they accepted His message with all their determination, to overcome in themselves all that have been the cause of the crucifixion; because if only one person on earth had strayed, fallen away from God, Christ would have come to save at the cost of His life.

This is His own testimony to a Saint of the early centuries who had been praying that the sinners should be confounded; and He appeared to him, and said, Never pray that way! If one sinner have existed, I would have died for him...

The Saints are people who responded to love by love, people who realised that if someone can die for them, their only response of gratitude is to become such that he should not have died in vain. To take up our cross means exactly this: to turn away from all those things which are Christ's death and crucifixion, from all those things which surrounded Christ with hatred and lack of understanding. We are all free to do this, more than those who lived in His time because they could be mistaken in Him in those days; but in our days, after two thousand years, when we can read the Gospels, and see emerging from the story the stature, the Person of Christ, when we have got millions of witnesses that tell us that He truly gave His life for us, and that the only response we can give is to give our lives for one another in His name - how can't we respond?

Let us therefore, on this day make a new resolve: to listen in the way in which they listened, with all their heart, all their mind, all their will, all their self to see what happened, to hear what He said, to respond by gratitude and by determination. And then, if we offer this little to God - our gratitude and our good will - the strength, the power for us also to grow into the stature which God has willed, dreamt for us, - the power will be of God; as He had said, My strength deploys itself in weakness, My grace sufficeth... And Paul, who knew that, added, in another passage, All things are possible unto us in the power of Christ Who sustains us... There is no doubt: we can, if we only will allow God to save, to carry us from earth to heaven.

Let us make a new start, so that the Saints whose names we wear should rejoice in us, so that the Mother of God Who gave Her Son unto death that we may respond, that we may understand, that we may be saved should rejoice, and that Christ should see that it is not in vain that He lived, taught, and died. Let us be His glory, a light; it may be a small light, just like a small candle, it may be a bright light as one of the great Saints - but let us be a light that lights the world and makes it less dark! Let us be joy so that others may learn to rejoice in the Lord.  Amen!"

+ Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

A Witness to Radical Forgiveness

St. Barbara and the Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: A Witness to Radical Forgiveness
by Barbara K. Harris

Throughout the ages there have been incredible acts of love and kindness demonstrated across religious groups, cultures, and ethnic populations. These actions reveal a selfless and sacrificial love for the other. Mother Maria Skobtsova, who is the focus of another chapter in this book*, was one individual who demonstrated such love. As a Russian emigre in Paris during the German occupation, she tirelessly worked to provide baptismal certificates for Jews. This led to her arrest and deportation to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. While there, it is believed that she selflessly and sacrificially took the place of another who was in line for the gas chamber.

Tragically, despite such loving acts, individuals and communities have also shown an astonishing ability to inflict evil upon each other in all its various manifestations, including humiliation through murder, slander, slavery, torture, and discrimination, to name just a few. Virtually all ethnic, cultural, and religious groups have been at times both perpetrators and/or victims of such acts of degradation and inhumanity; African Americans, Native Americans, Tutsis, Hutus, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Shintos, Sunnis, Shi’as, Baha’is, black South Africans, and the list goes on. This article examines forgiveness as an expression of divine love and the Christian response to evil and intolerance as experienced by St. Barbara, an early Christian martyr, and by the 1.3 million Armenian martyrs of the early twentieth century. Their examples as intentional and unintentional martyrs have transformed me and my response when encountering abuse.

Mission and Worship

Does adopting ideas from Evangelical mega-church ethos and presuppositions have any bearing on Orthodox parishes? Can Protestant "Worship" music introduce a possible misdirection in Orthodox Lex Orandi or Lex Credendi? Is Worship the same as Worshiping in Spirit and in Truth? Does it really matter?

As the Church celebrates the Holy Feast of Pentecost we might consider the powerful account of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles and consider our mission to the Americas as requiring enculturation of the 'religion' of America and perhaps also adopting her musical traditions in order to speak in the apparent modern American cultural milleu. It is a provocative and tempting argument, for the Apostles were seen speaking in the tongues of all those around them and St Paul speaks of being all things to all people.

However, in his article "Mission and Worship - America and the Orthodox," Father Stephen Freeman gives a compelling critique of the reductionist and consumerist ethos of Evangelical mega-church "Worship" and "Christian Contemporary Music" or "CCM" that is presented as the defacto expression of the American Christian 'Culture'. This article has been referenced briefly here and relates thematically to another article on missiology and American culture that Fr Stephen has written entitled "America and the perversion of Christianity."

It's a fascinating article on enculturation and suggests that Orthodox Churches need to at least be conscious of the presuppositions of what is presented as American culture and evaluate our liturgical embrace and recapitulation of such culture in accordance with the ethos of Christ, the ethos of His Body the Church and her Orthodox Tradition in the ethos and witness of the Fathers, both modern and ancient. 

The article, I would argue, also hints that Orthodox Churches have much to learn from other Orthodox Churches. That if beauty, depth and theology has somehow become absent in one rite, it would be wiser to humbly seek the assistance and encouragement from another Orthodox rite or jurisdiction rather than appeal to reductionist and pop-Christian methods, presuppositions, books, teachings and ethos. This is not to decry the possibility of truth or value in these pop-Christian methods, but rather to suggest that as Orthodox we have a treasure, a pearl of great price and an encounter of beauty from within the Orthodox Life that is much deeper and comprehensive which we as sinners can offer to the fallen world. As liturgical beings offering Truth, Love and indeed even the world itself to God, for the life of the World and encounter of the Kingdom, to the Glory of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Here is the article reblogged below in its entirety. Please pray for the Church and all the world.

Mission and Worship - America and the Orthodox
By Fr Stephen Freeman

http://glory2godforallthings.com/2007/11/26/mission-and-worship-america-and-the-orthodox/

What matters in a Church?

Below is a transcription of a sermon that was given at St Silouan Orthodox Mission Parish in Downtown Toronto on June 10, 2012. Though it was given for the Feast of All Saints (in the Byzantine Orthodox Liturgical Cycle), it is also very applicable to the Holy Feast of Pentecost.

Transcription of June 10, 2012 All Saints Feast Sermon
Fr Roberto Ubertino

---

Fr Stephen on Presuppositions of the Parachurch

"...the legacy of these Americanized Christian ideas remains very powerful. The drive for evangelism in its modern form was always somewhat heretical. The gospel was mutated into a Churchless Christianity, devoid of sacrament and structure. This minimized gospel was easily and quickly adaptable to various cultural needs, but for the same reason, completely vunerable to cultural forces. Evangelism is a gospel imperative, but the “making of disciples” entails their full enculturation into the Christian faith and not a single experience. Walking the aisle does not make you a Christian – it requires walking the way of the Cross. Mission is equally a gospel imperative, one that the Church has slowly and steadily fulfilled. Some areas where the Church was once planted now require the Church to be replanted. Some places, such as America, where a gospel has been preached, is almost entirely ignorant of the gospel – this will be proclaimed in time by the Church....

The Constant Pentecost

The Constant Pentecost
by Fr Georges Massouh
Source: http://araborthodoxy.blogspot.com/2013/06/fr-georges-massouh-constant-pentecost.html

This coming Sunday, the Orthodox Church celebrates the Feast of Pentecost, the commemoration of the resting of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples fifty days after Christ’s resurrection from the dead, when “there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:3-4). The Holy Church regarded the day of Pentecost as the commencement of her mission to evangelize the entire inhabited world.

When the Church celebrates feasts, she is not celebrating events that occurred in the distant past and have ended. Rather, she makes the events present to our present time and lives them as though they are occurring here and now. In this context, we can say that the effects of these events are not limited to those who were granted to participate in them, but rather they extend to all believers in every place and time.

Thus, Pentecost is not just an event that happened about two thousand years ago. It continues every time the Church gathers in a circle around her Lord and head Jesus Christ. The prayer of calling down the Holy Spirit is not absent from the sanctifying prayers that the Church performs when she gathers, especially in the services of baptism and the Divine Liturgy. The Holy Spirit is the one who accompanies the Church along her earthly walk toward perfection in eternal life. Pentecost, then, is not an isolated event in history whose remembrance Christians celebrate. It is the constant life of the Church. It is a foretaste of the kingdom to come.

The Rubrics of the Service of Prostrations (el-Sagda) for Pentecost (Coptic Orthodox Rite)

"It is the custom to pray the Prostration (Sagda) prayers on the ninth hour (3pm) of Pentecost Sunday although the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles on the third hour (Acts 2:15).

In the Old Testament, God had commanded His people to celebrate the Passover annually at sunset, the same time they had left Egypt (Deut 16:6). Also fifty days after the Passover, on the feast of Pentecost, God gave Moses the Law. Therefore, the Church has arranged to pray the Prostration prayers at the ninth hour to point to the Lord Jesus Christ our Passover who was slain at this same time (Mt 27:50). 

The Church fathers arranged these prayers into three parts based on the name of the Holy Trinity. The first and second prostration prayers take place in the second section of the church. The third prostration prayer is prayed in the first section close to the altar for when the believers use the trisagion they resemble the heavenly saying "Holy, Holy, Holy..."  (Isa 6:3; Rev 4:8).

This manner of prayers is biblically based. For just like when Jacob sought his brother Esau's mercy as he was coming back from his uncle Laban; he prepared great gifts of goats, rams, camels and donkeys; and arranged his people into three groups to get the acceptance of Esau. "And he commanded the first one, saying, 'When Esau my brother meets you and asks you, saying, 'To whom do you belong, and where are you going? Whose are these in front of you?' "then you shall say, 'They are your servant Jacob's. It is a present sent to my lord Esau; and behold, he also is behind us.'' So he commanded the second, the third, and all who followed the droves, saying, "In this manner you shall speak to Esau when you find him; "and also say, 'Behold, your servant Jacob is behind us.' For he said, 'I will appease him with the present that goes before me, and afterward I will see his face; perhaps he will accept me.' So the present went on over before him, but he himself lodged that night in the camp" (Gen 32:17-21).

Thus the church has followed the path of those men of God in doing repeated offerings of many prayers, litanies and incense on behalf of her children; asking for His goodness and mercy in order to find favor before God."

+ HG Bishop Youssef, SUS Diocese, http://www.suscopts.org/q&a/index.php?qid=894&catid=309

He has wrought all His desires in them

Pope Kyrillos VI and Archdeacon Habib Girgis were just canonized by the synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church:

Bishop Anba Suriel (@BishopSuriel) tweeted at 6:02 PM on Thu, Jun 20, 2013: "A historic Holy Synod in which Pope Kyrellos VI and Archdeacon Habib Girgis have been canonized as saints! A great joy for the Church. Axios"

Axios Axios Axios, for this blessed day that the Church celebrates two of her Saints: one who among many things reminds of the liturgy of all things, and the other who reminds us of education!

Let us proclaim Axios again for "He has manifested His wonders to His saints who are in His earth, and He has wrought all His desires in them." (Psalm 15 LXX)

For the liturgy is our education and education/catechesis is also part of the divine liturgy and our liturgical life.

Keeping with this theme of Lex Orandi Lex Credendi, is the article by Seraphima Butler on the relationship between liturgy and education and life that often is borne and revealed by the witness of those who are the weakest, the poor, and our children.

"Children Are Spiritual People, Too" by Seraphima Butler http://orthodoxyisorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2013/06/children-are-spiritual-people-too.html

May the prayers, example and love of Pope Kyrillos VI and Archdeacon Habib Girgis be with us and all our children. May saints be manifested from generation to generation, and may He manifest all His desires us. Glory to the Holy Trinity.

Children Are Spiritual People, Too

Children Are Spiritual People, Too
Written by Seraphima Butler

https://www.facebook.com/seraphimabutler
http://www.soundingblog.com/index.php/art-literature/orthodox-writers-readers-artists/children-spiritual-people.html


We church them. We baptize and chrismate them. We commune them. Children are obviously spiritual people, right?

What Matters

"“Truth,” we are told, “is a two-edged sword.” It is far better that someone come to their own difficult conclusions than to have them intelligently hammered into their heads (I am here being arrogant and assuming my hammering is always intelligent). Thus, I ask forgiveness of those who have to struggle past the hammer to get to whatever knowledge they may seek." 

+ Fr Stephen Freeman, What Matters Now, http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/06/13/what-matters-now/ 

"God matters and what matters to God matters. I know that sounds very redundant, but I’m not sure how else I want to say it. There are many things that do not matter – because they do not matter to God. Knowing the difference between the two – what matters to God and what does not requires that we know God.

And this is theology – to know God. If I have a commitment in theology, it is to insist that we never forget that it is to know God. Many of the arguments (unending) and debates (interminable) are not about what we know, but about what we think.

Thinking is not bad, nor is it wrong, but thinking is not the same thing as theology. It is, of course, possible to think about theology, but this is not to be confused with theology itself.

Knowing God is not in itself an intellectual activity for God is not an idea, nor a thought. God may be known because He is person. Indeed, He is only made known to us as person (we do not know His essence). We cannot know God objectively – that is He is not the object of our knowledge. He is known as we know a person. This is always a free gift, given to us in love. Thus knowledge of God is always a revelation, always a matter of grace, never a matter of achievement or attainment.

It matters that we know God because knowledge of God is life itself. “This is eternal life,” Jesus said, “to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”

The Orthodox way of life is only about knowing God. Everything we do, whether it is prayer, communion, confession, forgiveness, fasting – all of it is about knowing God. If it is about something else, then it is delusion and a distraction from our life’s only purpose.

Knowing God is not a distraction from knowing other persons, nor is knowing other persons a distraction from knowing God. But, like God, knowing other persons is not the same thing as thinking about them, much less is it objectifying them.

Knowing others is so far from being a distraction from knowing God, that it is actually essential to knowing God. We cannot say we love God, whom we have not seen, and hate our brother whom we do see, St. John tells us. We only know God to the extent that we love our enemies (1 John 4:7-8).

And this matters.

This blog does not matter – except that I may share something that makes it possible for someone to know God or someone may share something that allows themselves to be known. This matters."

+ Fr Stephen Freeman, What Matters Now, http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/06/13/what-matters-now/ 

On Stability

Modern Loneliness and Staying Put
By Fr Stephen Freeman
http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/06/17/modern-loneliness-and-staying-put/

This article is among the first written for the blog. There is something to be said for the blog itself  having “stayed put.” The internet is an ephemeral creation. I hope to be providing a stable platform for learning, for questioning, for conversation. With a few emendations, I offer this reprint. That the article is still useful after an entire 6 years is astonishing!

In monastic tradition, a monk makes four vows: poverty, chastity, obedience and stability. Most people are familiar with the first three but not with the fourth. In classical monastic practice it meant that a monk stayed put: he did not move from monastery to monastery. It was not a new idea. Before this vow was formalized in various Rules, there was already the saying from the Desert: “Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.”

Staying put or stability doesn’t sound all that difficult – certainly easier than poverty, chastity and obedience. But it may indeed be the hardest thing of all. The “noonday devil” which tended to afflict monks from the beginning, was especially known as the temptation at some point to leave your cell and just go visiting, where gossip and many far worse temptations could make themselves manifest. Staying put was the hardest battle of all. In its most extreme form in the the East we see the Stylites, the monks who lived on the tops of pillars (St. Simeon’s was over 300 feet tall!)

In our modern world stability is an extremely rare commodity. The average American moves once every five years. When I first came to Oak Ridge (Tennessee), I was constantly told by the old-timers, “People in Oak Ridge are from everywhere!” In 1943 when this city was founded as part of the Manhattan Project, that statement was truly unusual. Americans rarely relocated. But I had to break the sad news to my new co-citizens, “Everywhere you go, people are from everywhere!”

There was a time in my hometown in South Carolina that a trip to the store or Mall would bring a dozen casual meetings with friends and acquaintances. Now they are all strangers when I visit – or rather I am the stranger. I do not live there anymore.

All of this would just be sociologically interesting if it had no effect on our lives. But it has a profound effect.

In 1950 (to pick a date), the most common pattern in our country was for a local boy to meet and marry a local girl and to settle down and raise their children in the community in which they themselves were born, with relatives and friends forming a network of relationships that surrounded and nurtured (or harrassed) them. Divorce rates and crime rates were relatively low in most places. Stable communities tend to have stable families. The network of relationships promotes this. We have lived in these relatively stable forms for most of human history. Even the great nomadic tribes traveled as tribes.

In 2013 (to pick another date), the more common pattern is for a boy to meet a girl in college or later – he is from Virginia (say) and she is from Ohio (say). They marry, move to Oregon and begin their careers, or they met there and married. Family is the stuff you negotiate as in “whose parents do we visit at Thanksgiving this year, etc.?” The network of friends is often his friends from work and her friends from work, and frequently not much more.

In 1980, living in Columbia, S.C., I attended a conference in which the lecturer asked an auditorium of about 400 to raise their hands if they new 5 people on their city block. A few hands went up. I wound up in the last group. I knew no one in the Apartment Complex where we lived. Most of us did not know a single neighbor. And that is not an unusal modern pattern.

This brings us to the loneliness of modern man. The internet has probably made us more connected, in a virtual sense, than we have been in a generation. But, of course, their is an extreme level of volunteerism in this virtual community. If I don’t want to post today there is nothing you can do about it. We are not a natural community.

I cannot touch you or hear you laugh. I share a photo so you know something of what I look like. But how do I sound? How much of my native Appalachian dialect still clings to my tongue (not much, but some).

And we only know what we choose to share. It makes for a very thin village indeed.

As modern man has lost his stability (I blame our economic structures largely for this phenomenon – moving expenses are tax-deductible, for example) so we have lost the fruit of stability. Crime, divorce, the simple consensus that makes a culture a culture disappears. The 1950′s three channel television and white-bread families were probably the last cultural manifestation of an earlier consensus that will not return. It cannot return without stability.

I have lived in this small city since 1989, the longest I have ever lived anywhere. I have come to know many people in this town of 25,000 and I know my parish of 100+ souls quite well. Stability for me means I have a child buried here, and I will be buried here as well. It is a goal I have – a very long term one.

For all of us, some form of stability is necessary, even if it is one we must largely create ourselves.

I would point to the Orthodox Church as an example of stability. I can read from centuries of writings and recognize and understand what is said. St. Athanasius is as interesting to me on a daily basis as, say, Fr. John Behr. The “latest thing” in Orthodoxy just isn’t very late. There is a stability that comes within that part of life – a stability I cannot create but to which I can submit. I am Orthodox and I can daily seek to imbibe more fully what that means. It can create me (which is probably much to be preferred).

I cannot leave the modern world (or post-modern if you prefer). I was born in 1953 and there’s is nothing to be done about it. But there are commitments that I can make – that any of us can make. I am married. I do not take a vow of poverty, but everything I own is owned by my wife as well (no private property). If you have children, you will learn a certain form of poverty no matter what. For the married, faithfulness is the form of chastity. I do not take a vow of obedience (nor did my wife for that matter), but we have a life of mutual submission – my will is not my own. We are not here because I alone wanted to be here. We are here because we wanted to be here (ultimately, I suppose there is obedience – to my Bishop, and to my God – but on a daily basis His Eminence does not interfere. God can also be strangely silent).

But stability is more fleeting. I think that only by becoming part of a larger community, even larger than the present and reaching into the past, do we begin to find stability. Many Christians today live, at best, as part of a movement. It is an interesting word – incompatible with stability. Nothing in my life compares with the stability of 2,000 years of living Tradition. Stability means to live my life in the neighborhood of the Kingdom of God where the saints know my name and encourage or harrass me if necessary.

God give us the grace to come to the place of stability in you. Put me some place where I can stay put.

St Isaac the Syrian: A Theologian of Love and Mercy

St. Isaac was born in Beth Qatraye, an ancient province on the northeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula that now includes Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The only date we have to fix him in history is A.D. 676, when George, the Catholicos (or Patriarch) of the Persian Church, took St. Isaac from his monastic tranquillity and made him Bishop of Nineveh in Mesopotamia. After only five months as Bishop, he fled back to the wilderness and lived the rest of his life as a hermit in the mountains of Beth Huzaye – the modern Khuzistan in southwestern Iran. (http://htmp.org/St-Isaac-Ascetical-Homilies/about-st-isaac-and-his-writing.html)

St Isaac the Syrian: A Theologian of Love and Mercy
By Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev

4 aprile 2008 at Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano
Source: http://www.worldapostoliccongressonmercy.org/IMG/pdf/Bishop_Hilarion_Alfeyev.pdf

In this paper I would like to present the teaching of St Isaac the Syrian, one of the greatest theologians of the Orthodox tradition, on love and mercy.

Justification

Fr Aidan Kimel has posted another very thoughtful and enriching series that would be of benefit for all Orthodox Christians to read and consider. http://afkimel.wordpress.com/category/justification/ Here is the series in one big re-post:

Praying with the Body

Metropolitan Kallistos addresses the question of whether there are parallels between the hesychastic method of prayer and other apparently similar techniques of prayer in Hinduism and Islam. Looking at the origins of hesychasm and the teachings of figures such as St Gregory Palamas, St Gregory of Sinai and Nikiphoros the Hesychast, Metropolitan Kallistos addresses the question: is the Jesus Prayer an essential and authentically Christian practice, or is it unnecessary and perhaps even harmful?

From: http://www.bogoslov.ru/en/text/2671134.html


Praying with the body: The hesychast method and non-Christian parallels
By Metropolitan Kallistos Ware

Remember God more often than you breathe.

St Gregory of Nazianzos

Thinking about the One God

Another wonderful post by Fr. Stephen Freeman:
Thinking about the One God
http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/06/09/thinking-about-the-one-god

There are many things Christians can learn from science – among them is how to think. In thought about the deeper matters of science (particle physics, mathematical theory, etc.), there are a number of accepted rules that are useful in theology as well. One of those is the requirement of “elegance” when constructing a plausible theory. It is understood within scientific and mathematical thought that what is true and accurate as explanation and theory should somehow be “elegant.” For example, there is a simple elegance in Einstein’s E=mc2. That something as universal as the relationship between matter and energy could be expressed in such a simple manner is indeed elegant. Doubtless there might be another manner to express this relationship, a more convoluted and complicated manner, but science would rule it out in favor of Einstein – elegance and simplicity are somehow more accurate as a description of reality. The continued search for a “unified field theory,” a theory that “explains everything,” is not a pipe-dream or figment of the scientific imagination. It is an instinct and understanding that reality is one, that it ultimately “makes sense,” and does so in a manner that can finally be understood and stated in an elegant manner.

The Blind Man Who Beheld Love

"In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

We heard today the story of the man born blind. We do not know from experience what physical blindness is, but we can imagine how this man was walled in himself, how all the world around him existed only as a distant sound, something he could not picture, imagine. He was a prisoner within his own body. He could live by imaginations, he could invent a world around himself, he could by touch and by hearing approximate what really was around him; but the total, full reality could only escape him.

We are not physically blind, but how many of us are locked in themselves! Who of us can say that he is so open that he can perceive all the world in its width, but also in its depth? We meet people, and we see them with our eyes; but seldom it happens that beyond the outer shape, features, clothes, - how often does it happen that we see something of the depth of the person? How seldom it is that we look into a person's eyes and go deep in understanding! We are surrounded by people and every person is unique to God, but are people unique to us? Are not people that surround us just ‘people’, who have names, surnames, nicknames, whom we can recognise by their outer looks but whom we do not know at any depth?

This is our condition: we are blind, we are deaf, we are insensitive to the outer world, and yet, we are called to read meanings. When we meet a person, we should approach this person as a mystery, that is as something which we can discover only by a deep communion, by entering into a relationship, perhaps silent, perhaps in words, but so deep that we can know one another not quite as God knows us, but in the light of God that enlightens all and each of us.

And more than this: we can do, each within his own power, within his own gifts, what Christ did: He opened the eyes of this man. What did this man see? The first thing he saw was the face of the Incarnate Son of God, in other words, he saw love incarnate.

When his eyes met the eyes of Christ, he met God’s compassion, God’s tenderness, God’s earnest concern and understanding. In the same way could so many people begin to see, if by meeting us they meet people in whose eyes, on whose face they could see the shining of earnest, sober love, of a love that is not sentimental but is seeing, a love that can see and understand. And then, how much could we be to people around us a revelation of all the meanings that this world holds and contains through art, through beauty, through science, through all the means by which beauty is perceived and proclaimed among human beings.

But are we doing this? Is our concern to convey the width, and the depth, the beauty and the meaning of things to every person whom we meet? Are we not rather concerned with receiving than with giving?

And yet, Saint Paul who knew what it meant to receive and to give, said, ‘It is a more blessed thing to give than to receive’. And yet how much had he received! He had received the knowledge of God in his own experience; he had received teaching, and knowledge, and experience within the Old Testament, and then Christ revealed Himself to him: what did he not receive!

And yet, he exulted more in giving than in receiving, because he did not want to be the owner of all the richness that had come his way; he wanted to share it, to give it, to set aglow and afire other lives than his own.

Let us reflect on how rich, how richly endowed we are, how much it was given us to see, and to hear. And let us realise at the same time how tragically walled we are within ourselves unless we break this wall in order to give, as generously, as richly, as abundantly as we were given.

And then indeed, our joy will be fulfilled according to Christ’s promise. And no one, nothing will ever be able to take it away from us. Amen!"

+ Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

Pietism

"Without getting too deep into the history of the movement, let us define it simply as the feeling—not so much the teaching, mind you, but the feeling—that the details of doctrine and worship do not really matter. What matters is mostly that you have strong conviction and/or that you are a good moral person."

Read the whole sermon at http://saintpaulemmaus.org/featured/worship-in-spirit-and-truth/

These Two Poles

"Having studied recent Protestant American history and the harm that the conservative/liberal split began to cause to their churches in the early twentieth century, and the harm that it continues to cause, I desired to see if this split was evident within American Orthodoxy. The rhetoric of the conservative/ liberal debate was prevalent in a few statements about the war.

For example, some Orthodox Americans accused the OPF of using theological arguments derived from liberal ideologies, and antiwar Orthodox Americans accused those who supported the war of laying down their faith in the face of conservative political ideologies.

Nevertheless, I was grateful to discover that there is yet to be a conservative/liberal split among Orthodox Americans to the degree that is found among Protestant Americans (in many responses, people wondered why I even asked such a question). 

However, I continue to believe that this danger lies ahead as Orthodoxy becomes increasingly linked to the socio-political facet of American life. Fr. Johns concluding remarks about this potential political split highlights the focus that Orthodox Americans must keep in the years to come: These two political poles bracket the range of choices available to Orthodox Christians in democracies. To me, the most important thing is for all Orthodox to keep their focus on following Jesus Christ within His Church. We must not let our political ideologies become idols, which replace our highest allegiance. We must let the Gospel continuously critique us and whatever political philosophies we hold.

We must listen to our hierarchs when they speak on the ethics of any war. When voting or publicly advocating for or against a war, we must strive to fulfill all three injunctions of the Prophet Micah, “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”

+ Michael G. Azar, "Orthodox Americans, the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, and Iraq." St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, Orthodoxy in America, December 2003

The Crusader and the Saint

"The saint prays and receives the creation of God with hospitality. The [crusading] missionary preaches and offers, often aggressively, in order to give...The world, however, is healed and transfigured more by the praying saint than by the thundering preachers. It is the saint, who manifesting God's tender love and receiving all creatures in divine hospitality, is genuinely sensitive to the riches of other religions, to different cultures, to 'all sentient beings'. The crusading missionary is afire with the message he proclaims, but can be totally lacking in receptivity and sensitivity... Today we need to combine in our experience of our church the true saint and the genuine missionary whose sole concern is manifesting the kingdom and not annexing new territories."

+ Fr. K.M. George, Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church in India

Orthodox Christian Identity in America

Fr. John H. Erickson on "Orthodox Christian Identity in America: Historical Perspectives, Present Challenges" Recorded on November 15, 2012  at St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Sobor in Edmonton, AB, Canada. www.sthermans.ca

Fr. John is the Dean Emeritus of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary in New York, USA. Recorded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8R8oCo4WL8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5LoJ8RblxY

Transcript:

Who is an Orthodox?

Who is an Orthodox?

27 April 1983

Metropolitan Anthony does not need any introduction from me because you all know him and you know about him. So I won’t take any more time and I will give him the microphone.

MA: First of all may I say that I am very grateful for those who have dared invite me without knowing what I can say. For another thing I always feel impressed by the way in which English audiences applaud the speaker before he has spoken so that they run no risk of not applauding at the end.