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/