My Greek Odyssey

The Deeper Meaning of Life

From Spiritual Awakening, V0lume II of the Counsels of Elder Paisios

People haven't grasped the deeper meaning of life. They don't believe in the other life. This is where the whole torment of life begins.  "I've been wronged," someone says "others are happy, but I am not happy."  They have aren't satisfied with what they have. Egoism enters into their life, and they are tormented. God loves everyone in the world. To each person He gave whatever is of benefit to him: stature, courage, beauty, intelligence and so on, whatever will be helpful, if utilized fully, for his salvation. And yet people are tormented. "Why am I like this, while he is like that?" But you have those qualities and he has other qualities. A Romanian fool for Christ who lived ascetically on the Holy Mountain said to someone who had such thoughts, " A bullfrog saw a buffalo and said, 'I too want to be a buffalo.' The frog huffed and puffed himself up so much that he finally burst. God made the one a frog nad the other a buffalo. The frog tried to be a buffalo and burst!"  We must rejoice in the way has made each one of us. 

When a person is helped to believe in God and in the future, eternal life--that is when he grasps the deeper meaning of life--and repents and changes his way of life, divine consolation comes immediately with the Grace of God, which transforms the person and transforms all his inherited shortcomings.  Many people who repented and struggled with philotimo and humility, recieved Grace and became Saints, whom we now revere with devotion and ask for their intercessions, wheras before they had many passions and inherited weaknesses. Hosios Moses the Ethopian, for example, was a most bloodthirsty robber, with an inherited evil tendency.  As soon as he believed in God and repented, he disciplined himself in the Christian way of life and all his passions disappeared, allowing the grace of God to come to him and to make him worthy even of the gift of prophecy. He even exceeded in Christian sensitivity, Saint Arsenios the Great, who was from the noblest family in Rome, with inherited virtues and a great scientific educaction.

The meaning of life is to be prepared for the homeland, for Heaven, for Paradise. The most important thing is for man to grasp this most profound meaning of life, which is the salvation of the soul.  When man believes in God and in the future life, then he understands the vanity of this present life and prepares his passport for the other life.  We forget that all of us will leave this life.  None of us are going to put roots down here.  This present life is not for us to have a good time.  On the contrary, it is meant for us to be tested and to pass into the future, eternal life. Our goal must be to prepare ourselves so we can depart with our consciences at ease when God calls us close to Him.

When Christ blessed the five loaves and satisfied the hunger of thousands of people, they immediately decided that He was the ideal person to become their king! They ate the five loaves and the two fish and were enthusiastic.  But Christ told them not be concerned about this earthly bread, for they are not destined to remain here on earth.  In this life, everyone is tested to see if he measures up to what God asks of him.  We must keep our mind focused on God; think why we are here in this life. We didn't come her to do everything and be comfortable..  We came to prepare ourselves for the other life. So our mind must constantly be there and on anything that will help us get there.  By facing this responsibility with philotimo and by undertaking a humble and philotimo-filled struggle we can understand the meaning of the spiritual life.  The spiritual life is a brave undertaking, a spiritual feast.  Do you have any idea what it means to have a feast, a glendi? It means grasping the deeper meaning of Monasticism, of spiritual nobility, of patristic sensitivity.  Everyone has the resposnibility of understanding the deeper meaning of life, not of Monasticism, but of life.  If they did this, people wouldn't be mean and petty, nor would they grumble about one another. Since there is divine retribution, let's be looking to earn some spiritual cash for there, and not to maintain our dignity and enjoy human honor and esteem.

When man places himself in the realm of real life, he enjoys everything.  He rejoices in living and he rejoices in dying.  Not because he is tired of living, but because he will die and go to Christ. +

Spiritual Awakening is the second volume of a five volume set of the Spiritual Counsels of Elder Paisios and printed in various languages by the Monastery of St. John the Theologian in Thessaloniki, Greece  and is available from St. Herman Press here.

Obituary for Patriarch Pavle by Srdja Trifkovic

Let us guard against inhumans, but let us guard even more against becoming inhuman ourselves. – Patriarch Pavle

  As the Bishop of Kosovo, Pavle faced tribulations that were of different nature but similar magnitude. In seeking to win over the Albanians of Kosovo during his wartime struggle to seize power, Tito promised them autonomy and duly proceeded to change the character of the province in their favor after the war. Over 100,000 Serbs were forced out of Kosovo by Albanian Quislings during World War II; incredibly, they were not permitted to return after 1945. An additional 200,000 Serbs left the province, often under duress, between the late 1950s and early 1980s. On the other hand, 200,000 Albanians from Albania settled on deserted Serbian farms after 1945. Their “cadres” took control of the local Communist apparatus. In 1948 the Albanians made a half of the population of Kosovo; by 1981 78 percent; and over 90 percent today.

By the 1970s Orthodox priests in Kosovo were routinely harrassed. Bishop Pavle himself was assailed by an Albanian while walking to the post office in Prizren, and slapped in the face by another at the city’s main bus station. The authorities were invariably “unable” to identify the culprits, however, let alone to bring them to justice. Monastic properties were damaged or confiscated, well before the wave of KLA destruction unleashed by NATO in 1999. The biggest church in Metohia, in Djakovica, was demolished by the authorities to make room for a massive “Partisan” monument. The secessionist movement of the Albanians in Kosovo, derived from the logic of the Titoist order, eventually produced Slobodan Milosevic – the neo-communist quasi-nationalist. The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991-1999 was the belated revenge of Tito and his ideological heirs.

Bishop Pavle was elected to the Throne of St. Sava in December 1990, on the eve of that disintegration. He did not seek the post but was chosen as a compromise candidate because neither of the two front-runners could secure the necessary majority in the Assembly. In the dark years that followed he would repeat many times that “there can be no interest, individual or national, which could be used as an excuse for becoming inhuman.” As the former Yugoslavia descended into violence, he appealed on the faithful to pray not only for those of good will but for those of ill will, too, as “they are in an even greater need of salvation.” When meeting the late U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmermann in 1991, he was asked what could America do to help him and the bChurch. He replied, without batting an eyelid, “Your Excellency, the most you can do to help us is not to do anything to harm us!”

This was not to be. Yugoslavia was a deeply flawed polity, and there could have been no serious objection to the striving of Croats and Bosnian Muslims to create their own nation-states. But equally there could have been no justification for forcing over two million Serbs west of the Drina River to be incorporated into those states against their will, and without any guarantees of their rights. Yugoslavia came together in 1918 as a union of South Slav peoples, and not of states. Its divorce should have been effected on the same basis. This is, and has been, the real foundation of the Yugoslav conflict ever since the first shots were fired in the summer of 1991. This political essence of the war has been systematically hidden, all over the Western world but especially in the United States, behind the portrayal of the Serbs as primitive ultranationalists who sought to conquer other peoples’ lands. The most vehement such accusations, coming from Muslim and Croat sources, went wholesale into the media machine, Congressional resolutions, the pseudolegal fatuities of The Hague “tribunal,” and finally into NATO’s marching orders.

Sadly, there are many Serbs who have not followed Patriarch Pavle’s instruction: “If we live as people of God, there will be room for all nations in the Balkans and in the world. If we liken ourselves to Cain, then the entire earth will be too small even for two people.” But the systematic portrayal of the Serbs as demons, and the Muslims of Bosnia or Kosovo as innocent martyrs in the cause of multi-ethnic-cultural tolerance, was a crude exercise in the construction of postmodern quasi-reality. Patriarch Pavle was painfully aware of this fact, but decided to refrain from statements that could be construed as political. He remained silent even when the Croatian authorities demolished the Orthodox church in his native village, in which he was baptized in 1914. He was often criticized in the Western press for making appearances at official functions attended by Milosevic, even though the protocol and tradition demanded his presence, but in 1997 he also appeared, silently, at a rally demanding Milosevic’s resignation.

Patriarch Pavle was deply pained by the Mammonic spirit that became dominant in Serbia in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: “I wish I could stand and beg outside the banqueting halls and other gathering venues of the rich, beg for our poor brothers and sisters and their children. We should actively shame those who sink into arrogant greed so openly, instead of expressing our anguish behind closed doors.” His proverbial modesty was reflected in his use of public transport and dislike of chauffeur-driven cars. During the Assembly of Bishops in 2006 he walked our of the Patriarchate and saw a long line of shiny black Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW cars parked outside the building. “Who do these belong to?” Pavle asked his secretary. “Em, to the Bishops who came to the Assembly, Your Grace.” “I only wonder,” the Patriarch commented, “what would they have driven if they had not taken the vow of poverty…”

Serbia was blessed with several politically astute Patriarchs in some critical moments of its history, notably Arsenije III (Charnojevich) at the time of the Turkish wars and Great Migration of 1690, and Gavrilo (Dozhich) during World War II.

Patriarch Pavle belonged to a different tradition. He was a mystically prayerful monk, rather than a sanguine Prince of the Church. He was a Patriarch who blended, harmoniously, three key functions of his throne: that of the father, of the priest, and of the prophet. He understood, and lived, the legacy of Prince Lazar, martyred at Kosovo in 1389: “The Kingdom on Earth is but paltry and small; yet the Kingdom of Heaven is forever and knows no bounds.

Read the whole thing here.

The Simpleton: A Short Story

He was born with what seemed a perpetual smile on his face.  His mother, in the throes of a deep depression and premature labor pains brought on by the execution of her husband by the Germans, had cursed God.  And God in his wisdom had given her a son who the midwife had immediately understood would be a simpleton, a child that would never be like other children. Some of the villagers whispered it was the sins of the parents being visited on their offspring or was it simply God's way of laying his hand on all those who the life of the infant would touch. Nothing happens without a reason.

In her madness and despair she named him Gelasios. Already weakened by hunger and the loss of blood in childbirth, she died two days later.  He was given into the hands of a childless widow who loved him and raised him as her own.  She had a solitary goat and it was that goat that helped them survive the stone years during and after the Occupation of Greece. Gelasios was the object of many village jokes and in spite of his innocent cheerfulness and genuine attempts to play with the other children, he was never fully accepted.  It was just too easy to take advantage of him, naive to a fault, generous without exception. The village schoolteacher tried without success to teach him but gave up after two days, banishing him from school forever. The other children envied him. "He is hopeless!"  said the bespectacled scholar with soft hands eyeing the widow up and down as he sipped his demitasse of thick coffee. "I'm not even sure he can manage the job of sheepherder."  The widow dressed in black, who up until then had been looking down, raised her head and stared defiantly at him, turned and walked away without saying a word.

She had a gift for embroidery, handed down from her grandmother, and it was this gift that she was able to put to use in the years after the troubles when people had some money to spend. The widow realized that after she was gone, Gelasios would have no one to take care of him and he would be cast adrift without any means of support. And so after repeated pleas to her husband's old friend and a exquisitely embriodered tablecloth for his daughter's dowry,  he had reluctantly agreed to allow Gelasios to accompany one of his sheepherders into the surrounding mountains in search of better pastures for his growing flocks. 

Gelasios was apprenticed to the sheepherder Manolis who introduced him to the serenity and beauty of the mountains. A man not known for suffering fools, he nevertheless, tried hard to teach Gelasios enough to survive. "You are like a lost lamb, my boy,"  he mused, scratching his white beard and throwing some more dry wood onto the small fire he had built to ward off the night chill.   "I seem to remember that our Lord had a soft spot for lost lambs and he must be looking out for you as well," he crossed himself, laid down in a bed of dried leaves, wrapping his heavy wool cape around him as the night embraced him. Gelasios stared at the stars above for a long time. 

The next morning, they took the flock up toward the monastery of Petra.  It was there that Manolis introduced Gelasios to one of the monks, Father Athanasios. A tall imposing figure with deep cut lines in his face.  He was soft spoken and exuded kindliness and Christian love like a myrrh scented incense. He invited them in and took them to the trapeza where he gave them both cool water and spoonfuls of jam made from orange rinds.  It was almost time for vespers and Manolis decided to attend the service. Gelasios had entered a dream world, bombarded by the sights and smells of a busy monastery. In Church he could not take his eyes off the huge icon of the Pantocrater on the dome looking down on him. Gelasios smiled and Christ smiled back at him. As the monks began coming into church and the chanting started, Gelasios was once again reminded of his inability to pray.  No matter how hard he tried he could never memorize the words to a prayer, any prayer.  And oh how the village children made fun of him.  "Hey Gelasios, I bet my donkey will learn how to pray before you do, " said one and the rest doubled over with laughter. Even that was not enough to wipe the smile from his face.

The two people who Gelasios loved most in this world, died within 10 months of each other. The widow stepped on a land mine, a remnant of the war, while collecting firewood in the hills. It took off her right leg at the knee and she bled to death before anyone found her. Manoli's heart gave out after an arduous journey through the mountains and he died in the arm's of Gelasios. Deprived of his two anchors, Gelasios traveled back to Petra to see Father Athanasios. "Father I have nowhere to go and no one to take me in, may I stay here with you and the other monks?" he said pleadingly. "I will eat very little, even the crumbs from your table and I can sleep anywhere and I can help the monks with their work."  Father Athanasios looked at him for a moment. He could see the fear in his eyes and the rising desperation in his heart, deciding right there to ask the Abbott of the monastery if he could stay.  

Geronta greeted Gelasios, who kissed his hand.  "Father Athanasios tells me you would like to stay here with us. That is impossible. The most important thing we do here is pray and Father tells me that you cannot pray."  Gelasios blurted out, "But Geronta I will learn if Father teaches me, please don't send me away. I want to stay here with Christ and the Panagia!"  Geronta and Father looked at each other.  "Alright," said Geronta, "You have my blessing, Father Athanasios will teach you. In one month you must learn a small prayer or you must leave." Gelasios dropped to his knees, repeating over and over, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."  Geronta made the sign of the cross over Gelasios head and said, "Thank Christ, not me."

Day in and day out, Father Athanasios would repeat one prayer after another. The Lord's prayer, then the Jesus prayer.  Father would say each prayer, a few words at a time, and Gelasios would repeat them in turn.  "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, a sinner."  No matter how often he repeated them, his mind would go suddenly blank when he had to recite the entire prayer. They tried another prayer, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb Jesus." Again, Gelasios would stumble or simply forget the words. The days became weeks and the weeks, almost a month. Finally, Father Athanasios suggested Gelasios learn only the first two words of the prayer, Hail Mary.  "Try very hard my son to remember just those two words" he admonished, then kept repeatng them again and again and again with Gelasios.

A few days later, Gelasios was brought before the Abbott, who looked at him sternly. "Well?" Gelasios smiling with tears streaming down both cheeks blurted "Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary."  There was a long silence.  Geronta smiled and said: "You have my blessing to stay here as long as you would like."  And so it came to pass that Gelasios the simpleton whose intellect was weak but whose faith was exceedingly strong, was eventually tonsured a monk years later, and reborn, living out the rest of his days as a member of that monastic community.  During his years as a monk he was never able to learn more than those two words, though he repeated them many times every day with his ever present smile. He was a tireless worker and a gentle soul who was respected for his piety and goodness.  Even as he laid on his deathbed he kept repeating the only prayer he ever knew: "Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary" until his soul departed its mortal coil.  All the monks agreed it was a good death.  At his funeral, as he laid in his coffin, everyone marveled at the smile on his face. It was the same smile that he was wearing when he came into the world. The smile of a man who was not ashamed to stand in the presence of his Maker.

The next spring, one of the monks noticed flowers blooming from his grave. He inquired around the monastery, curious about who had planted the flowers. Everyone he questioned denied planting the flowers. "I've never seen anything like it, all those beautiful lilies suddenly sprouting there and nowhere else. A real mystery."  They continued blooming over his grave each spring until it was time to exhume his body, wash the bones with wine and place them in the reliquery where the remains of generations of the monastery's monks found their last resting place. As the monks began to push back the earth that covered Gelasios they found that the roots of the flowers emanated from the spot where his heart had once been and that there were two words inscribed on the petals of each flower, "Hail Mary."

Such is the power of prayer that comes from the heart.

Author's Note: The photo above is of Elder Joseph of Vatopedi, a monk of Mt Athos, and was taken at his funeral.

The Enemy Within: An Interview with Elder Dionysios

Source: What is Enlightenment Magazine

Photo by Douglas Demetrios Lyttle

WIE: What is the ego?

ARCHIMANDRITE DIONYSIOS: When Satan, who was the first and highest angel, looked away from God and turned his attention to himself, there we had the first seed of ego. He took his spiritual eyes from the view of the Holy Trinity, the view of the Lord, and he looked at himself and started to think about himself. And he said, "I want to put my throne in the highest place, and to be like Him." That moment started the history, the reality and the existence of ego—which is not in fact a reality, but the refusal of reality. Ego is the flower that comes out from the death of love. When we kill love, the result is the ego.

WIE: What is the character of the ego? How does it manifest within a human being?

AD: When we don't trust. Ego is born when we don't trust others. When we're afraid of others, when we need guns against others, then we need to have an ego because we are in the wrong way of life. We think only of ourselves, and we see only our ego. But when we see each other, when we trust each other, there is no need for ego, no reason for ego, no possibility for ego.

WIE: So in the way you're speaking about it then, ego is the insistence on our separation, our independence?

AD: Yes, on our solitude. Our need to be alone, to have our own way of thinking that satisfies us and preserves our personality in the wrong way.

WIE: Putting ourselves first and foremost?

AD: Yes. And Christ said, "The last is the first." Because when you want to be the last and you choose the last seat, only then may you call the others friends of yours.

WIE: The ego, this sense of self-importance you've been speaking about, is often described in The Philokalia and other writings of the Christian mystics as the primary enemy with which the spiritual aspirant must wrestle in their quest for union with God. Why is the ego considered to be such a formidable adversary on the path?

AD: It is such a powerful enemy because it is the enemy within us. We are enemies to ourselves, like Adam and Eve in paradise. Of course, the snake talked to Eve. But she could have avoided him. The snake said to her, "The Lord lied to you," but if she would have trusted the Lord, she would not have started to talk to the snake. And Adam, too, lost his communication with the Lord and stayed with his ego. And the two egos worked together, Adam and Eve.

The real enemy is the ego. It is the enemy because it is against love. When I look at myself, I don't love others. When I want to occupy for myself what is yours, I become the killer of my brother, like Cain killed Abel. When I want to satisfy myself, this satisfaction is gained through sacrificing the freedom of the other. Then my ego becomes my lord, my god, and there is no stronger temptation than this. Because to us, this ego may seem like a diamond. It has a shine like gold. But whatever is shining is not gold. The ego is just like a fire without light, a fire without warmth, a fire without life. It seems that it has many sides and many possibilities—but what is this possibility? What is ego? Only the means by which I protect myself as if I were in a battle, as if every other person is my enemy, and the only thing I care about is winning the victory.

WIE: It has been said by some of the greatest spiritual luminaries that when one takes up the spiritual path in earnest, one often comes face-to-face with the ego in a way that one never could have imagined previously. In describing their encounters with the ego, many saints have characterized it as an almost diabolical force within that does not want the spiritual life, that does not want God, but that wants to do everything it can to obstruct our illumination, to undermine our firm resolve to stay on the path.

AD: Saint Paul writes beautifully about this event, this struggle inside the human heart. He says, "There is another law inside me telling me to refuse the will of God, to do things against Him, to refuse the grace. It tries to keep me in my past, in my old life, to take me far away from the Lord, to prevent me from following the Lord." This is why I said that the biggest problem in mankind is in each person, not outside of him. For this we need spiritual fathers. For this we need spiritual doctors. We need surgery; we need an operation; we need something to be cut in our heart.

We don't understand that this enemy that we have inside us is not our self; it's not our personality. It's only a temptation. This is the seed of the problem of the ego. We unite our personality, which is a priceless event, with our faults. We confuse our personality with our sin; we marry these two things, and we have a wrong impression of what we are. We don't know what we are, and we need someone to show us who we are; we need someone to open our eyes so that we can at least see our darkness.

There's a mystic, the greatest of the mystics, Saint Gregory Palamas. For thirty years, he was praying only this prayer: "Enlighten my darkness. Enlighten my darkness." He did not name the Lord because he did not feel worthy to name him. He did not address it to anyone, but he said this prayer day and night, more than he was breathing. Because all he knew in himself was his darkness. And he was talking to someone—to whom else?—to Christ, who said, "I am the Light." But he said only, "Enlighten my darkness."

WIE: Show me my faults?

AD: Or come to my darkness and burn it. Make fire in it and make light in it. The greatest thing we can do in our lives is to discover that by ourselves we are nothing. We are darkness. We are dust.

Maine State Legislature Adopts Resolution Supporting the Ecumenical Patriarchate

 

The Maine Sate Legislature has passed the following resolution aimed at the Government of the Turkish Republic. It joins 26 other states which have passed similar resolutions urging Turkey to stop its ongoing attempts to control and eliminate the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The effort was spearheaded by former State Senator Peter Danton of Saco and it was sponsored by State Representative Linda Valentino, both Democrats.

The following Joint Resolution:
            H.P. 924

JOINT RESOLUTION MEMORIALIZING THE GOVERNMENT OF TURKEY TO UPHOLD AND SAFEGUARD RELIGIOUS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

    WE, your Memorialists, the Members of the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Legislature of the State of Maine now assembled in the First Regular Session, most respectfully present and petition the Government of Turkey, as follows:

    WHEREAS, the Orthodox Christian Church, in existence for nearly 2,000 years, numbers approximately 300 million members worldwide with more than 2 million members in the United States; and

    WHEREAS, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, located in Istanbul, Turkey, is the Sacred See that presides in a spirit of brotherhood over a communion of self-governing churches of the Orthodox Christian world and the See is led by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who is the 269th in direct succession to the Apostle Andrew and holds titular primacy as primus inter pares, meaning "first among equals," in the community of Orthodox churches worldwide; and

    WHEREAS, in 1994, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, along with leaders of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, cosponsored the Conference on Peace and Tolerance, which brought together Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders for an interfaith dialogue to help end the Balkan conflict and the ethnic conflict in the Caucasus region; and

    WHEREAS, in 1997, the Congress of the United States awarded Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew the Congressional Gold Medal and, following the terrorist attacks on our nation on September 11, 2001, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew gathered a group of international religious leaders to produce the first joint statement with Muslim leaders that condemned the 9/11 attacks as "antireligious"; and

    WHEREAS, in October 2005, the Ecumenical Patriarch, along with Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders, cosponsored the Conference on Peace and Tolerance II to further promote peace and stability in southeastern Europe, the Caucasus region and Central Asia via religious leaders' interfaith dialogue, understanding and action; and

    WHEREAS, since 1453, the continuing presence of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Turkey has been a living testament to the religious coexistence of Christians and Muslims and this religious coexistence is in jeopardy because the Ecumenical Patriarchate is considered a minority religion by the Turkish government; and

    WHEREAS, the Government of Turkey has limited the candidates available to hold the office of Ecumenical Patriarch to only Turkish nationals, and from the millions of Orthodox Christians living in Turkey at the turn of the 20th century due to the continued policies during this period by the Turkish government, there remain fewer than 3,000 of the Ecumenical Patriarch's flock left in Turkey today; and

    WHEREAS, the Government of Turkey closed the Theological School on the island of Halki in 1971 and has refused to allow it to reopen, thus impeding training for Orthodox Christian clergy and the Government of Turkey has confiscated nearly 94 percent of the Ecumenical Patriarchate's properties and has placed a 42% tax, retroactive to 1999, on the Baloukli Hospital and Home for the Aged, a charity hospital run by the Ecumenical Patriarchate; and

    WHEREAS, the European Union, a group of nations with a common goal of promoting peace and the well-being of its peoples, began accession negotiations with Turkey on October 3, 2005 and the European Union defined membership criteria for accession obligating candidate countries to achieve certain levels of reform, including stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, adherence to the rule of law and respect for and protection of minorities and human rights; and

    WHEREAS, the Government of Turkey's current treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is inconsistent with the membership conditions and goals of the European Union, and Orthodox Christians in this State and throughout the United States stand to lose their spiritual leader because of the continued actions of the Government of Turkey; and

    WHEREAS, the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle, a group of laymen who each have been honored with a patriarchal title, or "offikion," by the Ecumenical Patriarch for outstanding service to the Orthodox Church, will send an American delegation to Turkey to meet with officials of the Government of Turkey, as well as the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Turkey, regarding the government's treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate; now, therefore, be it

    RESOLVED: That We, your Memorialists, respectfully urge and request the Government of Turkey to uphold and safeguard religious and human rights without compromise, cease its discrimination against the Ecumenical Patriarchate, grant the Ecumenical Patriarch appropriate international recognition, ecclesiastic succession and the right to train clergy of all nationalities and respect the property rights and human rights of the Ecumenical Patriarchate; and be it further

    RESOLVED: That suitable copies of this resolution, duly authenticated by the Secretary of State, be transmitted to the President of the United States, the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Turkey, the Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to the United States and to each Member of the Maine Congressional Delegation.

Adopted by unanimous vote.

The Nation of the Greeks

 

The following is an address given recently by Athanasios, the Metropolitan of Limassol, Cyprus

"It is a fact that we are proud about our Greek origin and our relationship with Christ and with the Gospel, not wrongly of course, although sometimes we tend to exaggerate, but history justifies the Greek nation.
Many nations have heard the word of the Gospel, many nations were visited by the Apostles and for a time they became Christians, but over the centuries they were lost either because they were subjugated by other nations, or because they changed their religion entirely, or because they joined other sects whose beliefs  distorted the truth of the Gospel. The Greek nation, the Greek race, the Greeks, despite the many difficulties they had faced, kept the Bible, kept their faith in the Church, in Orthodoxy. They not only kept it intact but during the time of the Byzantine Empire they also gave the Gospel to other nations (e.g, Russians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Serbs, Georgians), throughout Eastern Europe.

Our Byzantine Greek ancestors insisted, although the West reacted against this, that nations new to the Orthodox faith should worship God in their own language. That is the reason why the Saints Cyril and Methodius who took the Gospel to the Slavs, created an alphabet for them, in order to make it possible for the Slavic people to have their own written language, to be able to become educated, to grow culturally as a people with their own identity, and worship God in their own language. The Gospel was never used by the Greeks as a means of conquest of other peoples. Instead, it was an offer of truth and light, offered as a choice, and never by force. In the Orthodox Church we do not have the phenomenon of imposing Orthodoxy by force on other nations. The question is, we Orthodox Christians, how can we identify the love for our country in conjunction with our Orthodox faith?

As Greeks and as Orthodox Christians, we are proud that until the present times we hold the Orthodox faith unchanged and unreformed, and with it, we have the blessing to carry the Cross, the Holy Cross of the Greek race in the world, which carries our glorious history. The Greek race, having very ancient roots in history, reached such high levels of philosophical depth and revelations that it has become to be considered as the precursor of Christianity.

I think that being Greek is not pride but a Cross , and only as a Cross and as a service to mankind we can keep ourselves today. We are Greeks and we have a history, like every nation and all peoples in the world, and we recognize the right for every person on earth to feel proud of his history, and his ancestors. We are proud as Greeks not because we worshiped the false gods of Olympus, but we are proud because we are a people with philosophical quests, we are proud because we are a nation that gave birth to democracy, to philosophy.National celebrations are of course celebrations of initiation in meaning, but they are also a way to judge our own life. And we must be able to accept this judgment because otherwise history will judge us as a people who have never learned from this same history and our course in it.

History must teach us, and we, if we are worthy of our ancestors, if we are their true children, then we must be willing to learn, because we have the heavy heritage of being Greek. This means that we have a glorious history in war and in struggles. The Greeks held their flag to show that they were fighting as they were saying "for the faith and the homeland", to show that they were fighting for certain ideals, they were idealists, they were not warriors in the real sense of the word, but became warriors when necessity called upon them, and when it was actually a vital need, in order to keep their faith and their homeland.  Today my brothers and sisters we have to keep this country within the margins that our heroes had delivered it to us , and within the same direction, with much care, with much wisdom, and with much patience."

Read the whole thing at NOCTOC

CHRIST IS RISEN!

This Pascha marks the one year anniversary of my mother's death. As much as we all miss her, I can't think of a more fitting day to remember her. I am comforted, in particular, by something written by St. John in the Book of Revelations:

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."

May her memory be eternal.

My very best wishes to all my MGO friends and their families on this blessed Pascha.

"Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen."   LUKE 24: 5-8

"Take part in this fair and radiant festival. Let no one be fearful of death, for the death of the Savior has set us free . . . O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is Thy victory? Christ is Risen and Thou art overthrown. To Him be glory and power from all ages to all ages."

      From the Paschal Sermon of Saint John Chrysostom

                                          ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ   -   ΑΛΙΘΟΣ Ο ΚΥΡΙΟΣ

The Hymns of Holy Week

Behold
The Bridegroom cometh at midnight
And blessed is that servant whom He shall find watching
But unworthy is he whom He shall find heedless
Beware, therefore, O my soul
Lest thou be weighed down with sleep
Lest thou be given up to death
And be shut out from the Kingdom
But rouse thyself and cry:
Holy, Holy, Holy art Thou, O God

At that time, two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." And they cast lots to divide his garments. And the people stood by, watching; but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him vinegar, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews." One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us! " But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong." And he said to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And he said to him, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!" And having said this he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, and said, "Certainly this man was innocent!" And all the multitudes who assembled to see the sight, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts.

Hot Soup

Based on a True Story

When he walked down the street, he turned heads. He wore the black floor length cossack, a plain silver cross around his neck and a black monk's hat.  It was his long white beard and his piercing blue eyes however that really caught your attention. He went everywhere thus attired because it was the mark of who and what he was. An Orthodox priest and monk. He lived in the world, in the very heart of it, on the island of Manhattan but he was not of the world.

Once while riding the escalator down into the subway. He glanced to his left to see a little boy holding his mother's hand and looking at him in wonder as the opposing escalators brought them closer. The little boy smiled and waved his free hand, "Hi God."  The towering figure looked at him smiled back and said gently, "Are you being a good boy?" as they passed each other. The mother, rather irritated, pulled his hand closer, looking at him disapprovingly, "That... is not God."

He was known for his work, ministering to the city's homeless and dispossessed souls while wandering through the crevices and holes of the inhospitable city where they hid. All he could offer them was a cup of hot soup or a sandwich, occasionally he might coax one into the shelter he ran, where they might shower, wash their clothes and sleep in a clean bed.  This particular winter night was frigid and he was grateful for the warmth of his black cossack which was insufferably hot in the sweltering heat of the city during the summer.  The subway ticket agent ensconced in her ticket booth saw him coming, the man lugging his overloaded bags. "You can't come in here with that food, my boss says that's not allowed. It's Transit Authority regulations." 

The man looked at her through the thick glass, "My boss, who by the way, happens to be your boss too, said that we have a duty to help the poor and I'm am not letting your regulations get in my way." He put his token in the slot and walked into the train station moving methodically to the the end of the platform and into the tunnel beyond. Experience had taught him that this particular tunnel was often used by the homeless to hide unobtrusively from the Transit cops and enjoy its warmth despite the dangers involved. It was a place where speeding trains and the 600-volt third rails could make any misstep fatal.The tunnel reeked of human waste, urine and despair. Rats scurried for cover when the heard the man approach. The underworld of the city was filled alternately with the deafening screech of passing subway trains and the distant rumble of traffic from the streets above, punctuated by eerie moments of silence.

They huddled in the stairways and catwalks, in supply rooms and any other available spot where they could establish a makeshift shelter. It was a hellish place where hope had been abandoned long ago.  The man moved among them handing out containers and sandwiches.  "Yo hot soup, how ya doing man?" said a young man with long dreadlocks hiding under a knit cap with a toothless grin. The man smiled, "I'm OK, how are you?" he said as he began his silent prayer as a train roared by. As it faded into the distance, the young man slurped his soup as he looked up, "I've been better but I ain't as bad as that dude in the box down there," pointing down the tunnel.  The man moved on.  After walking into the darkness for awhile he stumbled on a large box-like structure made from pieces of discarded cardboard covered in ragged sheets of plastic.  A dark figure huddled inside. Hearing the man's approach the figure inside stuck his head out, struggling to focus, "What do you want?"   Then he noticed the man's form and laughed, "What are you doing in hell, priest?"  The man crouched down and looked him in the eyes, noticing the beads of sweat on his unshaven grimy face.  What is your name?  He hesitated, "Vladimir, I was baptized in the Orthodox  Church which has never done a damn thing for me. Go away, priest"   "I am the Church and I'm here, am I not?"  "Your God doesn't live here and he couldn't care less about any of us." cried Vladimir.   "You're wrong my friend, He cared enough to send me here to help you."  There was a long silence between them.  "Father, will you hear my confession"   The man leaned over and listened.  When Vladimir was done, the man made the sign of the Cross with his three fingers joined over his head and kissed it gently. He begged him to come to the shelter. Vladimir refused to leave despite repeated attempts to coax him out. "Leave me alone now, Father, so I can rest."  "I'll be back tomorrow,"  said the man handing Vladimir a small printed Icon of Jesus, a container of soup and a sandwich. 

He walked back toward the light where he eventually boarded an empty subway car headed back downtown to his Monastery.  He glanced at his watch. It was one-thirty in the morning and he felt more tired than he had ever felt before. He fingered his prayer rope and repeated the Jesus prayer. Again and again. At the next station a lone passenger got on. He was young, wore a leather jacket, pants and boots with a tattoo of a green dragon rising from his collar, up his neck to the back of his shaved head.  He stared at the man for awhile, then made his way toward him. The man continued to pray, thinking perhaps his time had come to meet his Maker. The man with the leather jacket moved toward him and stopped in front of him grinning, "What are you supposed to be old man?"

"I'm an Orthodox priest."

"Is that so. Is it like being a Catholic?"

"Sort of, but not quite,"  said the man looking at the dragon.

"Do you guys believe that a wafer and wine can become the body and blood of Christ?"

"Yes"

"Well, if that was true then why would anyone ever leave church?

The train slowed to a stop and the doors of the train opened. The young man turned and walked out onto the platform. The man crossed himself and resumed his prayer. The next day he returned to the tunnel and found Vladimir lying cold, stiff and motionless. His countenance was serene. He had died during the night clutching the icon of Jesus in his hand.

Koinonia

 

What are the lessons? That's the question DD over at LandofMiracles asks himself (here and here), in trying to make sense of the senseless murder of classmates and teachers by a German teenager.  What made Tim Kretschmer commit this heinous act?  There are no simple answers. When we explain such acts by laying the blame on bullying, mental illness, the availability of guns or even dysfunctional parenting, I think we miss a very important over-arching element in the equation.  Researchers J. Reid Meloy, Anthony Hempel, and their colleagues analyzed a sample of thirty-four adolescent mass murderers whose median age was seventeen and who had killed alone or in pairs between 1958 and 1999. They divided the sample into five types, as follows: the classroom avenger, the family annihilator, the bifurcated killer (family and classroom), miscellaneous, and the criminal opportunist. Meloy and Hempel found that over 70 percent of their sample were termed "loners."

Studies show that Americans (and I suspect Europeans as well) are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide. America, like many other Western countries is becoming increasingly more fragmented and intimate social ties, once seen as an integral part of daily life and associated with a host of psychological and civic benefits, are either shrinking or nonexistent. In bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone, without a safety net of close friends and confidants.

Scientists tell us that "social isolation from others is anxiety arousing or stressful in and of itself, producing physiological arousal and changes, which if prolonged, can produce serious health deterioration and even death. Conversely affiliation or contact with others reduces or modulates physiological arousal, both, in general and in the presence of stress and other threats to health." A growing body of evidence from experimental studies of animals and humans is consistent with this hypothesis. Putting aside the the physiological consequences of social isolation, Father Chris Metropoulos talks about the resulting spiritual poverty that comes with it and which I believe contributes to the present societal breakdown  in the West:

First, A Poverty of Perspective. Living an isolated life cuts you off from the balancing effects of hearing viewpoints other than your own. One of the great values of our Orthodox faith is that is provides a very real and tangible connection to the faithful Christians who have gone before us. We have access to the wisdom of that “great cloud of witnesses” that helps us keep a healthy perspective about our struggles, and provides us wonderful role models of faithfulness that we can draw strength from when life just gets a bit overwhelming. There is nothing like the voices of friends to encourage us when we face life’s hard times.

Second, A Poverty of Purpose. This sickness of isolation weakens our resolve to live honorable lives. Evidence of this can be seen in the steadily growing acceptance of pornographic web sites and materials in America. Internet pornography is already a $4 billion a year business. Easy access to porn, coupled with a sense of isolation from friends and family, is a recipe for spiritual catastrophe. When you feel cut off from close friends, you feel less of an obligation and purpose to guard the community from the baser desires of fallen mankind. Alone, you do what you desire; in community you cannot forget how your personal behavior affects those around you. When you are alone, you can be more willing to accept the degrading illusion of intimacy without responsibility.

Finally, A Poverty of Person. Eventually, this disconnectedness begins to erode the lonely person’s own identity. Our Orthodox faith teaches us that we can truly only know our real selves “in the face of another.” St. James says it best when he describes a man looking in a mirror, who “observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.” (James 1:24) Alone, we either fall into the trap of being too harsh with ourselves, or letting ourselves off the hook too easy. In Community we keep a vision of our true selves in the clarity of all the other faces that surround us. We were created in the image of the eternally communing Holy Trinity. When we are isolated, we risk spiritual poverty by denying who we were made to be.

In the absence of community, people begin looking to counterfeit communities. Our society is full of counterfeits offering something close to the real thing but missing the one essential, God. Some of the fastest growing community groups are in inner city America. They are known as gangs. Their rapid growth is due in large part to the providing what young people are looking for and cannot find elsewhere:

• Acceptance and belonging
• Sense of family
• Sense of belonging to something with a greater cause
• United for one purpose
• Encouragement to contribute in order to benefit the group
• Devoted to a cause
• Personal identity is that of the group
• Loyalty even to death

The early Christian communities devoted themselves to Jesus' teaching and living a Christian life, often at the risk of their own lives.  In a society where the prevailing attitude was one of selfishness, materialism and exclusiveness, Christians epitomized the attributes of unselfishness, love and inclusion.  The social isolation experienced by people of this time was rooted in poverty, class and the overcrowded urban centers that grew up throughout the Empire. Christian communities offered a God centered alternative and their numbers grew exponentially as a result. There is a Greek word that contains the essence of this Christian concept. That word is koinonia. It is in community that we find the truth of who we are and how we should live. It is in God’s community, in koinonia, that we find our life as persons.  Christianity offers us an alternative to the social isolation within a modern society that idolizes individualism to the detriment of a true personhood.  Bishop Kallistos Ware gives us this insight: “The human person is created for relationship.” True personhood is not found in individuals – it is found in community."

The key lesson of these tragedies is always the same. It is the story of individuals who are cast adrift in an increasingly inhospitable society of strangers; a society that is steadily destroying the very communities that offer our best hope for combating the alienation that produces children who kill.

A Work in Progress

I have updated this video post of the iconography project of our parish church, Saint Dimitrios in Saco Maine. This marks the completion of Phase II.  The final phase is scheduled for completion in the Fall of this year.

For those interested in learning more about the role of architecture and iconography in Orthodox Christianity I would recommend reading: On Earth as it is in Heaven: Form and Meaning in Orthodox Architecture by Andrew Gould  located here  and The Iconic and Symbolic in Orthodox Iconography by Bishop Auxentios located here.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

The Island (Ostrov)

This post first appeared in 2007. I am reposting it with some changes because the entire full length movie is now available on YouTube in 12 parts with English subtitles. The first two parts are available at the bottom of the post to get you started. It is well worth your time.

I've been a movie fan since I was a little snot nosed kid. There was always something about the silver screen that was bigger than life. Back then, movies were not inundated with cheap violence and sex. They made us laugh, they made us cheer, sometimes we cried. They gave us a peek at ourselves or a vision of who we wanted to be.  I remember seeing my first movie in a real theater. It was an afternoon matinee of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein in black and white, preceded by a Tom & Jerry cartoon.  My cousin Harilaos and it seemed like every other kid from Greektown were at the Mutual movie theater on Main Street in Saco, Maine that afternoon long ago.  We ate popcorn and consumed candy bars like there was no tomorrow and we laughed so hard we almost peed in our pants.

I don't make it over to the movie theater much these days. Usually we will watch a movie by ourselves or sometimes with friends.  All of us have seen a movie or two whose impact is powerful, one that lasts for days or even years.  "Ostrov" is just such an experience.  Those who watch it will be blessed with a rare opportunity to watch a spiritually uplifting and  spiritually challenging film that is both starkly beautiful and contains a powerful message. This film was not produced in or by Hollywood simply because I don't really think there is anyone in Hollywood capable of  understanding the Orthodox mindset or world view nor of really tackling the underlying problems that we face as a society.

"Ostrov" or "The Island" written by Dmitri Sobolev, begins on a dark night in 1942, when a Russian barge hauling much needed coal, piloted by young captain Tikhon (Aleksei Zelenski) is captured by a German patrol boat. Tikhon and his one man crew Anatoly (Timofei Tribuntzev) attempt to hide in the mounds of coal. Anatoly is discovered and after a beating he betrays  Tikhon's location.  Anatoly begs for his life while his comrade calmly waits to be executed while smoking a cigarette. The Nazi commander suddenly passes a gun to his quailing mate, Anatoly and orders him to do the deed, in exchange for his life. Hysterical with fear, Anatoly pulls the trigger and Tikhon tumbles into the frigid water. The Germans leave after they place an explosive charge on the boat and unknowingly Anatoly cheers ecstatically. Suddenly there is a loud explosion and as the sun rises the next day Anatoly is washed up on the beach and rescued by monks from a nearby monastery situated on an isolated island.

The action then flashes forward to 1976. In a small seaside monastery, Anatoly (Mamonov) is now a balding old man. He wears tattered clothing and his face is blackened, covered with soot.  He works tirelessly stoking the monastery's boiler with the coal from the wreck of  his sunken barge while he lives like a hermit in an outlying cabin. He has spent his life trying to expiate his guilt and atone for the crime of killing his captain, but his soul can find no peace. Though his fellow monks avoid the eccentric fellow, he has earned a reputation among the local population as a Holy Man capable of  healing and predicting the future. Anatoly's help, however, carries a heavy price. He demands that the beneficiary -- in one case, a unwed pregnant girl; in another, a mother whose son can't walk -- sacrifice all their worldly goals to God's will.

Anatoly is an example of a peculiar form of Orthodox asceticism.   The Russian version called, the yurodivy is a Holy Fool or Fool for Christ, one who acts intentionally foolish in the eyes of men for the sake of Christ.  Part of the biblical basis is  1 Corinthians 3:18-19  "Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness."   The following excerpt explains the whole concept much better than I ever could:  "The fool-for-Christ sets for himself the task of battling within himself the root of all sin, pride. In order to accomplish this he took on an unusual style of life, appearing as someone bereft of his mental faculties, thus bringing upon himself the ridicule of others. In addition he exposed the evil in the world through metaphorical and symbolic words and actions. He took this ascetic endeavor upon himself in order to humble himself and to also more effectively influence others, since most people respond to the usual ordinary sermon with indifference. The spiritual feat of foolishness for Christ was especially widespread in Russia. (Excerpted from The Law of God, Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY: 1993)  The Russian Orthodox Church numbers 36 yurodivye among its saints, most prominently Basil, Fool for Christ, who gives his name to Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.The most well-known modern example in the Russian Church is perhaps St. Xenia of St. Petersburg.

"The Island" comes at a critical juncture in Russian history when Russians are trying to forge a distinctly Russian solution to the failures of both Communism, Perestroika and now the Post-Communist era.  Ultimately the film asks the favorite Russian question: Who is guilty? And to that, it adds another: How can we be redeemed?  The Island has struck a chord among Russians.  It has been a box office smash in Russia and garnered numerous awards both in and outside Russia.  Even the Russian Orthodox Church has given its blessing.  Director Pavel Lungin was surprised that the church accepted his film.  "I thought they would have problems with something, at least in the details." Instead, some bishops organized events around the film and advertised it in their churches.  Lungin said he believes in God but does not follow any structured religion.  "The material world hasn't given us any answers to our questions," he said. "People feel lost in a spiritual way. . . . There are these feelings of guilt and sin and at the same time an idea that people can be redeemed."

"The Island" is an extraordinary film.  It is about human weakness, hypocrisy, repentance, and the possibility of redemption inherent in every one of us.  Above all, it is about the importance of putting faith and our personal relationship with God at the center of our lives.

George over at Ellopos Blog has also written a post about the movie here.

Christ is Born, Glorify Him

The reading is from Luke 2:1-20

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the
world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius
was governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own
city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth,
to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because
he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary,
his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the
time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first
born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a
manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping
watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to
them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled
with fear. And the angel said to them, "Be not afraid; for behold, I
bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people;
for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is
Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger." And suddenly there
was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and
saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with
whom he is pleased!"

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to
one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has
happened, which the Lord has made known to us." And they went with haste,
and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when
they saw it they made known the saying which had been told them
concerning this child; and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds
told them. But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her
heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all
they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

For an explanation of this icon go here.

A Prayer for Greece

From an anonymous reader (with apologies for my inadequate translation):

"During these difficult moments that Greek society is undergoing, let us remember the words of our late Elder Paisios, who said that the disturbances and irregularities in our nation are because God's grace has been hidden from us.....and it is hidden because as a nation, as a people and as individuals, we have completely lost our way to God.  We care only about worldly matters and comforts, for the transient vanities of this world, and not for the  majesty of heaven which is eternal, because we have lost our compassion for our fellow man who is in need, because we  abandoned the values of eternity and chase instead the ephemeral values of this life which is here today and gone tomorrow ... this is a great degradation in the eyes of the Lord .. as a nation we are collectively responsible, regardless of party affiliations or personal situations. 

 

I feel the need to tell you that if we all have something to do, it is to humbly ask from God to give us repentance, and shed fiery tears for our many sins .. and to ask the Virgin Mary to help our prayers to the Lord, because after all, our people, despite their  misconduct, have always respected and magnified the Theotokos.... and we are Her people ... even if not all Greeks are aware of this at this particular time.
 
Let us all pray that Our Lord feels sorry for us and extends his mercy to those souls in the eye of the cyclone of events, whose souls are in agony:  the family of the child whose life has been cut short prematurely and unfairly, but also the little soul that suddenly found itself in front of He who judges us all ... pray for those who are obliged by their oath to the Fatherland to do their duty, those who lost, during the holiday season, their entire livlihoods ... those who find themselves tempted by events...
 
If we all pray with contrition and with a sense of how much we have sinned, in contrast to the Lord's mercy and cry not only for our own personal sins that are like a deep ocean, but also for our sins as a people, a country and a society, then (again as Elder Paisios says) this will soften and touch the paternal heart of Christ and He will again bestow His grace upon us wretched people.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us."

Αυτές τις δύσκολες στιγμές που περνά η Ελληνική κοινωνία, ας θυμηθούμε τα λoγια του Μακαριστού Πατρος μας Παισίου, ο οποίος έλεγε ότι οι ταραχeς και οι ανωμαλίες στο κράτος μας συμβαίνουνε επειδή η Χaρις του Θεού έχει κρυφτεί από εμάς..και έχει κρυφτεί γιατί σαν έθνος και σα λαός και σαν aτομα, ξεφύγαμε τελειως από το δρόμο του Θεού, νοιαζόμαστε αποκλειστικά και μόνο για τα κοσμικά και για τη καλοπέρασή μας, για τα παροδικά και για τα μάταια αυτού του κόσμου, και όχι για τη Βασιλεία των Ουρανών που είναι αιώνια, γιατί χάσαμε το πόνο για το συνάνθρωπο που βρίσκεται σε ανάγκη, γιατί αφήσαμε τις αξίες της αιωνιότητας και κυνηγάμε τις εφήμερες αξίες αυτής της ζωής που σήμερα είναι και αuριο δεν είναι...αυτό είναι μεγάλος ξεπεσμός στα μάτια του Κυρίου..σαν Εθνος είμαστε συνολικά υπόλογοι..ασχoτως κόμματος, ασχέτως καταστaσεως...
 
Aισθάνομαι την ανάγκη να σας πω ότι αν έχουμε όλοι μας κάτι να κάνουμε είναι να ζητήσουμε ταπεινά από το Θεό να μας δώσει μετάνοια, και δάκρυα καυτά γιά τις πολλές αμαρτίες μας..και να ζητήσουμε και από τη Παναγιά μας να βοηθήσει τις προσευχές μας προς το Κύριο, γιατί στο κάτω-κάτω, τούτος ο λαός, παρόλα τα παραπτώματά του, πάντοτε σεβάστηκε και εμεγάλυνε τη Θεοτόκο...και είναι λαός δικός Της...έστω και αν δεν έχουν όλοι οι Ελληνες συνείδηση αυτού του πράγματος ανα πάσα στιγμή...
 
Ας κάνουμε όλοι προσευχή να μας λυπηθεί ο Μακρόθυμος Κύριος και να ελεήσει αυτές τις ψυχές που βρίσκονται στο "μάτι του κυκλώνα" των επεισοδίων, που βρίσκονται εν βρασμώ ψυχής, την οικογένεια του νέου παιδιού που έφυγε πρόωρα και aδικα, αλλά και τη ψυχούλα αυτή που ξαφνικά βρέθηκε μπροστά στο Βήμα του των όλων Κριτού...όλους όσοι είναι υποχρεωμένοι από τον όρκο στη Πατρίδα να κάνουν το καθήκον τους, αυτοuς που χάσανε πάνω στις γιορτές τις περιουσίες τους..αυτούς που βρίσκονται σε πειρασμό λόγω των γεγονότων...
 
Αν όλοι προσευχηθούμε με συντριβή και με συναίσθηση του πόσο αμαρτωλοί είμαστε, αλλά και πόσο -αντιθέτως- ελεήμων είναι ο Κύριος και κλάψουμε για τις προσωπικές μας αμαρτίες που είναι βαθύς ωκεανός, αλλά και για τις αμαρτίες μας ως λαός και χώρα και κοινωνία, τότε (πάλι όπως λέει ο Πατήρ Παίσιος) θα μαλακώσει και θα συγκινηθεί η Πατρική καρδιά του Χριστού μας και θα φανερώσει και πάλι τη Χάρη του πάνω σε μας τους ταλαίπορους....

Κύριε Ιησού Χριστέ, ελέησόν μας

Elder Paisios of Mount Athos

In Orthodox tradition, an elder is not simply a person of advanced age. An elder is one who has attained the highest rank of spiritual struggle. When a person ascends to that height, the fruits of his many years of fasting and prayer vigils become readily apparent.

From the new book, Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit: The Lives and Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece, by H. Middleton.

On July 25, 1924, the future Elder Paisios (Eznepidis) was born to pious parents in the town of Farasa, Cappadocia of Asia Minor. The family’s spiritual father, the priest-monk Arsenios (the now canonized St. Arsenios of Cappadocia), baptized the babe with his own name, prophesying his future profession as a monk. A week after the baptism (and barely a month after his birth) Arsenios was driven, along with his family, out of Asia Minor by the Turks. St. Arsenios guided his flock along their four-hundred-mile trek to Greece. After a number of stops along the way, Arsenios’ family finally ended up in the town of Konitsa in Epiros (northwestern Greece). St. Arsenios had reposed, as he had prophesied, forty days after their establishment in Greece, and he left as his spiritual heir the infant Arsenios.

The young Arsenios was wholly given over to God and spent his free time in the silence of nature, where he would pray for hours on end. Having completed his elementary education, he learned the trade of carpentry. He worked as a carpenter until his mandatory military service. He served in the army during the dangerous days of the end of World War II. Arsenios was brave and self-sacrificing, always desiring to put his own life at risk so as to spare his brother. He was particularly concerned about his fellow soldiers who had left wives and children to serve.

Having completed his obligation to his country, Arsenios received his discharge in 1949 and greatly desired to begin his monastic life on the Holy Mountain. Before being able to settle there, however, he had to fulfill his responsibility to his family, to look after his sisters, who were as yet unmarried. Having provided for his sisters’ future, he was free to begin his monastic vocation with a clean conscience. In 1950 he arrived on Mount Athos, where he learned his first lessons in the monastic way from the virtuous ascetic Fr. Kyril (the future abbot of Koutloumousiou Monastery); but he was unable to stay at his side as he had hoped, and so was sent to the Monastery of Esphigmenou. He was a novice there for four years, after which he was tonsured a monk in 1954 with the name Averkios. He was a conscientious monk, finding ways to both complete his obedience's (which required contact with others) and to preserve his silence, so as to progress in the art of prayer. He was always selfless in helping his brethren, unwilling to rest while others worked (though he may have already completed his own obedience's), as he loved his brothers greatly and without distinction. In addition to his ascetic struggles and the common life in the monastery, he was spiritually enriched through the reading of soul-profiting books. In particular, he read the Lives of the Saints, the Gerontikon, and especially the Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian.

Soon after his tonsure, Monk Averkios left Esphigmenou and joined the (then) idiorhythmic brotherhood of Philotheou Monastery, where his uncle was a monk. He put himself under obedience to the virtuous Elder Symeon, who gave him the Small Schema in 1956, with the new name Paisios. Fr. Paisios dwelt deeply on the thought that his own spiritual failures and lack of love were the cause of his neighbor’s shortcomings, as well as of the world s ills. He harshly accused himself, pushing himself to greater self-denial and more fervent prayer for his soul and for the whole world. Furthermore, he cultivated the habit of always seeking the "good reason" for a potentially scandalous event and for people’s actions, and in this way he preserved himself from judging others. For example, pilgrims to Mount Athos had been scandalized by the strange behavior and stories told by a certain monk, and, when they met Elder Paisios, they asked him what was wrong with the monk. He warned them not to judge others, and that this monk was actually virtuous and was simply pretending to be a fool when visitors would come, so as to preserve his silence.

In 1958 Elder Paisios was asked to spend some time in and around his home village of Konitsa so as to support the faithful against the proselytism of Protestant groups. He greatly encouraged the faithful there, helping many people. Afterwards, in 1962, he left to visit Sinai where he stayed for two years. During this time he became beloved of the Bedouins, who benefited both spiritually as well as materially from his presence. The Elder used the money he received from the sale of his carved wooden handicrafts to buy them food.

On his return to Mount Athos in 1964, Elder Paisios took up residence at the Skete of Iviron before moving to Katounakia at the southernmost tip of Mount Athos for a short stay in the desert there. The Elder’s failing health may have been part of the reason for his departure from the desert. In 1966, he was operated on and had part of his lungs removed. It was during this time of hospitalization that his long friendship with the then young sisterhood of St. John the Theologian in Souroti, just outside of Thessalonica, began. During his operation he greatly needed blood and it was then that a group of novices from the monastery donated blood to save him. Elder Paisios was most grateful, and after his recovery did whatever he could, materially and spiritually, to help them build their monastery.

In 1968 he spent time at the Monastery of Stavronikita helping with its spiritual as well as material renovation. While there he had the blessing of being in contact with the ascetic Elder Tychon who lived in the hermitage of the Holy Cross, near Stavronikita. Elder Paisios stayed by his side until his repose, serving him selflessly as his disciple. It was during this time that Elder Tychon clothed Fr. Paisios in the Great Schema. According to the wishes of the Elder, Fr. Paisios remained in his hermitage after his repose. He stayed there until 1979, when he moved on to his final home on the Holy Mountain, the hermitage Panagouda, which belongs to the Monastery of Koutloumousiou.

It was here at Panagouda that Elder Paisios’ fame as a God-bearing elder grew, drawing to him the sick and suffering people of God. He received them all day long, dedicating the night to God in prayer, vigil and spiritual struggle. His regime of prayer and asceticism left him with only two or three hours each night for rest. The self-abandon with which he served God and his fellow man, his strictness with himself, the austerity of his regime, and his sensitive nature made him increasingly prone to sickness. In addition to respiratory problems, in his later days he suffered from a serious hernia that made life very painful. When he was forced to leave the Holy Mountain for various reasons (often due to his illnesses), he would receive pilgrims for hours on end at the women’s monastery at Souroti, and the physical effort which this entailed in his weakened state caused him such pain that he would turn pale. He bore his suffering with much grace, however, confident that, as God knows what is best for us, it could not be otherwise. He would say that God is greatly touched when someone who is in great suffering does not complain, but rather uses his energy to pray for others.

In addition to his other illnesses he suffered from hemorrhaging which left him very weak. In his final weeks before leaving the Holy Mountain, he would often fall unconscious. On October 5, 1993 the Elder left his beloved Holy Mountain for the last time. Though he had planned on being off the mountain for just a few days, while in Thessalonica he was diagnosed with cancer that needed immediate treatment. After the operation he spent some time recovering in the hospital and was then transferred to the monastery at Souroti. Despite his critical state he received people, listening to their sorrow and counseling them.

After his operation, Elder Paisios had his heart set on returning to Mount Athos. His attempts to do so, however, were hindered by his failing health. His last days were full of suffering, but also of the joy of the martyrs. On July 11, 1994, he received Holy Communion for the last time. The next day, Elder Paisios gave his soul into God’s keeping. He was buried, according to his wishes, at the Monastery of St. John the Theologian in Souroti. Elder Paisios, perhaps more than any other contemporary elder, has captured the minds and hearts of the Greek people. Many books of his counsels have been published, and the monastery at Souroti has undertaken a great work, organizing the Elder’s writings and counsels into impressive volumes befitting his memory. (Volume One: With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, is here.) Thousands of pilgrims visit his grave each year, so as to receive his blessing.

* * *

“Kindness softens and opens up the heart, as oil opens a rusty lock."

“Those who come close to people in pain naturally draw near to God, because God is always by the side of His children who are in pain.

 “When someone gives his heart to God, then the mind of this man is also seized by the love of God. He is indifferent towards worldly things and continually thinks about the Heavenly Father, and being divinely in love, he glorifies his Creator day and night like an angel.”

“Ask for repentance in your prayer and nothing else, neither for divine lights, nor miracles, nor prophecies, nor spiritual gifts—nothing but repentance. Repentance will bring you humility, humility will bring you the Grace of God, and God will have in His Grace everything you need for your salvation, or anything you might need to help another soul.

 “Things are very simple, and there is no reason why we should complicate them. If we regard matters in this way, we will feel the Jesus Prayer as a necessity and will not grow weary. We will be able to repeat it many times and our heart will feel a sweet pain, and then Christ Himself will shed His sweet consolation inside our heart."

“Thus prayer does not tire but invigorates. It is tiresome only when we do not enter into its meaning and do not understand the sense given it by our Holy Fathers. Once we comprehend the need of God’s mercy, the desire of this hunger will compel us, without pressuring ourselves in prayer, to open our mouth like a nursing infant, and we will feel, simultaneously, all the security and joy of a baby in its mother’s embrace.”

“Now that conveniences have exceeded all bounds, they have become inconveniences. Machines have multiplied; distractions have also multiplied and man has been made into a machine. Machines and iron order men around, which is why their hearts have become as hard as steel.”

"Humility is acquired after struggles. When you know yourself you acquire humility, which become a (permanent) condition. Otherwise one can become humble for a moment, but your thought will say to you that you are something although in reality you're nothing. and you'll be deluded like that to the moment of death. If death finds you with the thought that you are nothing, then God will speak. If however your thought says at the hour of death that you are something and you don't understand it, all your effort goes to waste."

"Conscience is the first law of God, which He deeply carved in the hearts of the First Created, and consequently, each one of us takes it as a "photocopy" from his parents when he is born. Those who have managed to sensitize their consciences through the daily study of themselves feel themselves estranged from this world; and, as a result, worldly people are dumbfounded by their discerning behavior. Those, however, who do not examine their consciences are neither benefited by spiritual study nor by the advice of the Elders, nor are they even able to keep God’s commandments, since they quickly become insensitive."

"Those who are sensitive and have philotimo, and who observe everything with precision, are usually wronged by the insensitive ones due to the constant concessions they make for them out of love. However, God’s love is always on their side. Oftentimes, they wrong themselves due to their hypersensitivity, overemphasizing their minor sins or bearing the burden of others’ faults; but once again, God comforts them with His heavenly kindness and, at the same time, strengthens them spiritually."

“The devil does not hunt after those who are lost; he hunts after those who are aware, those who are close to God. He takes from them trust in God and begins to afflict them with self-assurance, logic, thinking, criticism. Therefore we should not trust our logical minds. Never believe your thoughts."   

“Live simply and without thinking too much, like a child with his father. Faith without too much thinking works wonders. The logical mind hinders the Grace of God and miracles. Practice patience without judging with the logical mind.”

 “To some people your love will be expressed with joy and to others it will be expressed with your pain. You will consider everyone your brother or your sister, for we are all children of Eve (of the large family of Adam, of God). Then, in your prayer you will say: ‘My God, help those first who are in greater need, whether they are alive or reposed brothers in the Lord.’ At that point, you will share your heart with the whole world and you will have nothing but immense love, which is Christ.”

"The person who asks for miracles, in order to believe in God, lacks dignity. God, if He wishes to, can make with one of His miracles everybody instantly believe. However, He does not do so, because He does not wish to exercise force on man’s free will; man will then end up believing in God, not out of gratefulness or due to God’s excessive kindness, but due to His supernatural power."

"Oh, if we could only understand the great forebearance of God! It took one hundred years to make Noah's ark. Do you think that God could not have made an ark any faster? He let Noah suffer for one hundred years so that others may understand and repent. Noah would tell them, "Repent, a deluge is coming!" But they would only mock him. "he is making cages, " they were saying and went about their business. And now God could shake the world in two minutes, and change people into believers, super believers. How? All he has to do is turn the earthquake button from five, six  or seven on the Richter scale. At eight on the Richter scale, high rise apartment buildings will be falling upon each other like drunkards in the street. At ten everyone will be screaming "We have sinned, please save us."  They may even say, "We will become monks!"  But as soon as the earthquake is over, while still shaking but standing, they will again run to the bouzouki clubs. Their return to God will not be from true repentence but they would just say it temporarily to be saved from disaster."

"When in the course of our spiritual struggle, we feel anxiety we must know that we are not moving in the realm of God. God is not a stifling tyrant.  Each one of us should struggle according to his strengths and cultivate his philotimo so that he grows in his love of God. Pressed by philotimo, his struggle , all those prostations, fasting and so on will be nothing else than the pure outbursts of his love and his path would be a path of spiritual valor."

Geronda (Old man) say something....

"What should I say?"

Whatever your heart is telling you.

"My heart is telling me to take a knife, cut it into little pieces, give them to people and then die."

Apostolic Fathers: Living in this our Exile

by Thomas Fleming

Between the conversion of Constantine and the French Revolution, most Christians in Europe and North America assumed that they lived either in a Christian society or at least in a society that was not alien or hostile to their faith.  By now, we know better or at least we have no excuse for not knowing that most modern governments and the culture and morality they promote are deeply inimical to what Christians are supposed to hold dear.  Then how are Christians supposed to live in an anti-Christian world?  There is, of course, the Pat Robertson/Norman Vincent Peale solution, which is some combination of lies and self-deception.  Then there is the open rebellion preached by  civil disobedient zealots.  To find out how early Christians responded to their own  world and the  serious threat it presented,  let us turn to two early works: First, “the Epistle to Diognetus”  and, second, the apology of Aristides of Athens.  I’ll take up the contents of these two works in as much detail as is desired.  For the moment, let me just post a few observations I have made before both in lectures and in an earlier discussion.

Early Christians were caught between two hostile religious cultures,  Juadaism and the various pagan cults and philosophies that were either promoted or tolerated by the Empire.   As we have already seen, Ignatius had warned against one of the perennial temptations for Christians—to impose Jewish customs on the Church:  “It is absurd to profess Christ Jesus, and to Judaize. For Christianity did not embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity, that so every tongue which believeth might be gathered together to God.”

One of these early attempts to defend the faith in public is the letter of the “Mathetes” (Greek for Disciple) addressed to Diognetus, a pagan intellectual.  The Disciple clearly distinguishes Christians both from idolatrous Greeks and from Jews, whose kosher laws he describes as superstitious and even blasphemous.  “For, to accept some of those things which have been formed by God for the use of men as properly formed, and to reject others as useless and redundant—how can this be lawful? And to speak falsely of God, as if He forbade us to do what is good on the Sabbath-days—how is not this impious? And to glory in the circumcision of the flesh as a proof of election, and as if, on account of it, they were specially beloved by God—how is it not a subject of ridicule.”

Conflicts between Jewish and gentile Christians had obviously not disappeared after the Council of Jerusalem, especially in Asia Minor and Syria.  Ignatius and the Disciple were concerned to make it clear that Christianity had gone beyond Judaism.  One of their reasons was the fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy that the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed.  Jews had become increasingly militant against the Roman Empire, and when they rose up in rebellion in the late 60’s, Vespasian was sent by Nero to put it down.  When the war was finished by Vespasian’s son Titus, Vespasian (now the emperor) had the temple destroyed.  Problems continued until another major rebellion, led by a false messiah, broke out in the reign of Hadrian.  Hadrian’s generals not only crushed the rebellion but expelled the Jews from Jerusalem and much of Judaea.  Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina, and it would be several centuries before the Church in Jerusalem, no longer made up of Jewish Christians, would play a major role.  During this difficult period, then, Christians wanted to show that they were not Jews, but good citizens of the Empire.

This concern may explain why the Disciple is so eager to portray the Christians as good citizens who do not make trouble:

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe.  For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity…inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners.  As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners.  Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. .. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives.  They love all men, and are persecuted.”

Read the whole thing at Chronicles Magazine, here.

Unwavering Fidelity to Holy Tradition:Photios Kontoglou

Photios Kontoglou (1895-1965), was the foremost iconographer in Greece in the 20th century. The revival of Byzantine iconography began in 1930 mostly due to this man. Byzantine iconography has spread to Europe, America and elsewhere. This revival has also taken place in Romania and among the Russians of the diaspora.

His biography can be found here.        

In 1943 he began to write about this sacred art in an  extensive and authoritative way, wishing to explain its features and to show its enormous value. In 1960 he wrote Ekphrasis - the explanation of Orthodox Iconography. This book is a valuable guide for the iconographer to learn the technique of painting the icon according to Byzantine tradition. Byzantine art," Kontoglou says, "is for me the art of arts. I believe in it as I believe in (Orthodox) religion. Only this art nourishes my soul, through its deep and mysterious powers; it alone quenches the thirst that I feel in the midst of the arid desert that surrounds us. In comparison with Byzantine art, all the others appear to me trivial, 'troubling themselves  about many things, when but one thing is needed'."  Byzantine iconographers bring the spiritual world into time and space for which reasons the icon is not "naturalistic" and "realistic". It's purpose has a religious function. It wants to express  sanctified things to help man see with spiritual eyes the  Holy Mysteries of the Christian revelation.       

Iconography offers a vision of time and eternity. Using sacred and symbolic forms and colors, Kontoglou represents that vision in a dramatic fashion. To demonstrate his purpose he employed sober colors, simple shapes and bold lines. Photios Kontoglou never held the elitist position that  painting icons was restricted to intellectuals, or   professional artists. Even the illiterate have painted them. Like the Holy Scriptures, the icon is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Kontoglou is also a much admired writer of the Greek language. Even Kazantzakis was impressed by his powerful style of writing.  Unfortuantely Kontoglou has not been extensively translated into the Greek language. A small sample of his work can be found here in Greek. I have attempted a translation of this piece below, For those more adept at translation from Greek to English, feel free to suggest improvements. For those interested in reading about Kontoglou I would also recommend this interview with Constantine Cavarnos here. Cavarnos has written extensively about Kontoglou, his books are available here.

The Small Churches of Maroussi by Photios Kontoglou,

translated by Stavros

When a man is spoiled, he begins to despise the simple and the poor things. Often however, he returns to his old self, like a drunk who sobers up, and then again feels a great appetite for simplicity, rejoicing in peacefulness, and wanting to live humbly and quietly. Then he enjoys the humble and guiless things and he feels in himself the sweetness of Christ and the peace which one finds in the Gospel.  Without a simple heart, no one becomes a true Christian. This you will understand from some words from the Saints who say: "Whosoever does not know peace, does not know joy. If you love gentleness, live in peace, and if you are worthy of peace, you will be happy at all times. A man with many worries, cannot be peaceful and gentle. Modesty strengthens the heart, and when one is modest, immediately he is covered in mercy. Prayer is happiness. The Kingdom of Heaven is found within us. The happiness that man feels in his heart for God is greater than this life. Whosoever is poor in the riches of this world, is enriched by the wealth of God. Whoever loves gaudy things cannot have humble feelings because the heart is adorned with the same things that adorn the outside.."    You who read what I am writing, don't  tire and say I am repeating myself, about Christ, about simplicity, about humility. If your heart can understand their meaning you will see that I am right. I am telling you again and again, becauses I desire to give you the one true happiness, which I too discover belatedly, but which I discovered with God's help. The love I have for you impels me to reveal this solitary step into beautiful surroundings that even I did not suspect.

This silent and secret joy of Christ (I say the joy of Christ because He gave it to us, and no one else can give it), exists in the small remote churches, especially those built in the three hundred years prior to the Revolution of 1821.  During that time Greeks lived in the mountains, they were illiterate, but they had the wisdom of faith within them.  These Greeks were tortured, poor, humble, shy, above all, they persevered and bravely fought in the mountains.  From the fall of Constantinople our nation was bitter and this bitterness made our hearts deepen. Sorrow brings patience and patience brings humility. If you hear the words of Emperor Constantine Paleologos to his troops the day before his death you will cry. It sounds like a hymn, like those sung during Holy Week.  What I'm saying is that the Greeks during the years of enslavement were humble,  As examples one only has to see the humility of heroes such as Botsaris, Diakos, Katsantonis, Androutsos, Vlahavas, Kanaris, Tombazis, Kountouriotis, Tsamados, Bishop Germanos, Rogon Joseph, Isaias Salonon and other captains, laymen and clergy. Seek and you shall find that which I speak of in the writings of Makrigiannis, Kasomoulis, Fotakou, Skouze and in the songs sung by the sheperds.  These people were  tormented, patient, Christian. From this fragrance, like that of the mountain wildflowers, emerge our small churches, built in every place, on mountains, isolated rocky outcroppings, mountain passes, islands, along the seacoast. The holy homes of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the Saints. Wherever one may go they welcome you and invite you in, through their low doorways, bringing peace and comfort. The mountains around Athens are decorated these humble places of pilgrimage.

Around Maroussi (now a Athens suburb) there are many such lovely churches.  One is Saints Asomatoi, and is found upon entering the village by way of Kifissia. The building is simple, barrel-like, a solitary basilica, with an arch of the roof, similar to all these churches. From the outside they appear like ancient stone buildings but on the inside the are painted with fading iconography, some of it damaged by moisture.  Only a few remain intact, the Metamorphosis, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and some of the Saints. In one spot is the likeness of the philosopher Plato  because in those days it was the custom to include other "wise" Greeks. Another small church is Saint Sotira, and inside there are wall icons of Christ, St. John the Forerunner, St. John Chrysostom and other Saints. On the other side of Maroussi, as the sun sets, is a larger church, the Panagia Nerantziotissa. It is covered with an arch and surrounded by old marble steps. Inside one finds iconography that has been painted and then repainted by modern day unskilled hands. Across from this Church is a small naked hill which locals say,  thousands of years ago. was the site of a temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis. Below this hill is a small church, St. Nicholas, which is partially destroyed. Half the building is still standing including the altar, although it has decayed by the rains. Many times I have sat and prayed there. Its appearance makes it a modest and respectful place. Its stones have separated and are now filled with weeds and grass growing between them. The walls are yellowed with mold, and the wildflowers jut out from the cracks in the wall as if praying to the Virgin who sits there. Her holy face is covered by grass and her hands blackened and yellowed, the Christ child she carries is slowly fading and the throne she sits on is being eaten away by the moisture. On her clothing walk insects and the yellow jackets and bees sing to her "Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus."  As for humans, only a few old village women remember her humbly lighting a small lamp that dangles from a solitary nail.   Occasionally there is a censor burning incense on the holy altar. Oh what sweet honey drips from the soul of a Christian in this simple and mountainous wonder, built on rocky soil and blessed thorns. Where else can one find such a hidden and humble prayer, in ruins, amid on rocks and deserted places. Where else does one dare hear with his ears the voice of Christ, the Saints and David saying:  "How lovely are your creations, Lord of the Powers, my soul yearns to be at your side. In the night my soul longs for you and I await the dawn to enter your church, because your commandments are a light unto the world." Holy Greece. Tortured bodies and bitter souls. Tortures that cannot be written on paper, that make souls cry in secret.  Thus they become worthy to approach the tortured Christ, his Mother and the martyrs that died for our faith. From this blow and from this muted sadness comes to the heart the true hope and the solace of Christ. This is the mystery of Orthodoxy. From the seed of bitterness springs forth the flower of true happiness, the love of God. This is what Patriarch Loukaris wrote about: " If we do not have an outward wisdom, we have God's wisdom, in our souls, which  adorns our Orthodox faith, and because of this we are better than others at struggle and lifting up the Cross. Shedding our blood for our beliefs and for the loved of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Greece now for three hundred years  people have been enslaved and have struggled to maintain their faith, and that faith in Christ shines along with its mysteries, and then you tell me that we lack wisdom!

On top of a small hillock, there at its peak, is a small church, St. John the Baptist. Of all those small Churches, St. John is my favorite. Its low doorway is the entrance where one meets the icon of St. John the Forerunner. You gaze on him and your concerns are silenced, your worries leave you and your heart is cleansed and lightened, carefree like a child. True happiness comes from simple and pure things. The colors are dirty and faded from the passing of time, the mud stuck on the walls splattered by the rain and dried by the sun. Ants wander to and fro, the bees buzz quietly as if the entrance opens up into one large hive. The head of the Saint is covered in matted hair and his arms and face sunburnt, the color of clay roofing tiles, his clothing a faded green that over time has taken on a sweetness that I cannot describe. You sit on the small whitewashed steps and listen to the wind blowing softly through the entrance to where the Saint sits. Peace overwhelms you where you are sitting, forgotten by the world beyond. You ask yourself: Why shouldn't everyone drink of the clean water of a pure life?  Inside the walls are painted from top to bottom. The iconography is untouched except for being blackened by the smoke of burning incense or wax candles. Along one side are some old arm rests and seats. The iconostasis is wooden without embroidery. The oil lamps are lit and the incense is fragrant. As you walk in it is as if you are entering the tent of Abraham. The entire painted room covers you in peacefulness and piety, the steps to the altar full of faith and martyrdom.  Everything suggests humility and solace. The iconography was painted by a illiterate iconographer who worked with a guileless heart. His work is not masterful, or even clever, not even extraordinary. Nevertheless this innocent and humble work exudes a sweetness of faith and a humility that makes one feel just as innocent as the person who painted these walls. In the fading light behind the altar is the icon of the Theotokos , arms outstretched, the Christ child on her lap and beneath her the Fathers of the Church: Saints Basil, John Chrysostom, Gregory and Athanasios, all of them with darkened and ascetic faces, painted poorly without technique. Despite this they have a deep mystery about them, which is beyond even the skilled hand to portray. The Apostles are there as well, below them the assembled full figured Saints, Hierarchs, Martyrs painted in yellow ochres, bright reds, black, green and white, blended together by a powerful faith. How pious the work is. When you get close to examine the work you appreciate its innocense and that of the God fearing hands that held the brush.  Your soul finds rest in the images of Saints George, Demetrios, Abba Sisoi, the forty Martyrs at Sebaste.  Lucky is he who arrives at the appreciation of such unskilled, ignored and poor work.

All the small churches around Maroussi are painted by the same hand. It seems that this iconographer was a local indigenous artist  from the village who worked in the surrounding area, and that he was a priest named Demetrios. In Maroussi, an old church, Saint Demetrios is being renovated. In the sanctuary there are a few painted Saints, near the icon of St. Dionysios the Aeropagite, the following inscription: "1622 by the hand of Demetrios priest." This sainted hand has painted all the iconography founded in the little churches around Maroussi. Truly as the Prophet Isaiah said: "and the stammering tongues shall learn to speak peace."

The Village Priest

You get the priest you deserve according to an old Russian saying. Here in our little village on the edge of the Maine woods we are indeed blessed because God has given us the kind of priest every community needs. He is my priest, my neighbor, my friend and through him I have been able to observe the trials and tribulations of a simple village priest. He wears his beard long and it is streaked with the white hairs that come only with the passage of time. His long black cossack seems out of place and as he walks down the street people glance sideways and stare. I think that there are times he would prefer the quiet life of a monastic, tucked away in the serene setting of an isolated monastery where he could do what he enjoys so much, cutting firewood, prayer and contemplation. God had other plans for him. He lead him away from a career as a newly minted civil engineer into a life infinitely more difficult than that of a monk. He married, became a priest and  the father of seven children and the sheperd of a wayward flock of assorted struggling believers and unbelievers. The village priest sees us through the important milestones in our lives. He baptizes us, unites us in holy matrimony, hears our confessions, and prays for the salvation of our souls when we die.  An Orthodox priest  offers God’s gifts to His people as well as being set aside as being the people’s gift to God. God comes to us in a very special way through the sacraments and only a priest who has been given the authority by the Church through Christ can administer those sacraments. We expect a great deal of our priests and they in turn labor diligently on our behalf, though at times they too stumble and fail as we do.

Orthodox Christians believe that their priests are Icons of Christ. To understand this we must think about what an Icon is. An Icon is a religious symbol, but yet much more than a symbol. It is a picture and a vision for the eyes which conveys a spiritual reality to the worshiper. We can say that an Icon is an image of the Divine, but we must admit at the same time that an Icon has no divine power of its own. That would make an Icon an idol and idols belong to pagan worship. An Icon has the spiritual function to help us receive into our souls the spiritual awareness of what it depicts. As a young altar boy I remember serving during a visit of the late Archbishop Iakovos, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in North America,  to our parish to celebrate its feast day. His Eminence was an imposing figure who exuded a serene authority coupled with a gentle kindness. Observing his every move and listening to his words that day I stood transfixed as if in fact I was staring at a living Icon. Years later when I was a teenager I recall seeing his image on the cover of Life Magazine when he walked next to Martin Luther King during the historic and dangerous march to Selma. His Catholic and Protestant counterparts, were conspicuous by their absence on that fateful day. As impressive a leader as Archbishop Iakovos was, he was only one of many Orthodox priests that positively impacted my life and that of my family.

Ten years ago, in a different place,  another "village priest," touched our lives and left an indelible mark.   My  son Chris was five years old, at that time, when he was admitted to the hospital for what the doctors suspected to be Leukemia. Our entire family was stunned and we were thrust quite unexpectedly into a swirling maelstrom. We felt  very alone and very helpless as we wrestled with the possibility that we could lose our beautiful child. When the whole world was closing in around our heads, it was our parish priest , Father George Paulson,  who rushed to our side to comfort and pray at my son's bedside. This simple act in our hour of despair and intense anguish  gave us hope  in God's mercy and love.   The next day brought us the good news that his depleted while cell count was in fact beginning to return to a normal range. Chris went on to recover completely. Who's to say if it was a miracle, an answer to our fervent prayers?  Nevertheless, in the midst of hopelessness, our priest brought us much needed hope and the healing power of prayer.

May we always have compassionate village priests at our side and the  inspired leadership of noble hierarchs to show us the way.

 

PASCHA IN DACHAU 1945

The Souls of All Are Aflame 

     

By Douglas Cramer

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In 1945, a Paschal Liturgy like no other was performed. Just days after their liberation by the US military on April 29, 1945, hundreds of Orthodox Christian prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp gathered to celebrate the Resurrection service and to give thanks.

The Dachau concentration camp was opened in 1933 in a former gunpowder factory. The first prisoners interred there were political opponents of Adolf Hitler, who had become German chancellor that same year. During the twelve years of the camp's existence, over 200,000 prisoners were brought there. The majority of prisoners at Dachau were Christians, including Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox clergy and lay people.

Countless prisoners died at Dachau, and hundreds were forced to participate in the cruel medical experiments conducted by Dr. Sigmund Rascher. When prisoners arrived at the camp they were beaten, insulted, shorn of their hair, and had all their belongings taken from them. The SS guards could kill whenever they thought it was appropriate. Punishments included being hung on hooks for hours, high enough that heels did not touch the ground; being stretched on trestles; being whipped with soaked leather whips; and being placed in solitary confinement for days on end in rooms too small to lie down in.

The abuse of the prisoners reached its end in the spring of 1945. The events of that Holy Week were later recorded by one of the prisoners, Gleb Rahr. Rahr grew up in Latvia and fled with his family to Nazi Germany when the Russians invaded. He was arrested by the Gestapo because of his membership in an organization that opposed both fascism and communism. Originally imprisoned in Buchenwald, he was transported to Dachau near the end of the war.

In fact, Rahr was one of the survivors of the infamous “death trains,” as they were called by the American G.I.’s who discovered them. Thousands of prisoners from different camps had been sent to Dachau in open rail cars. The vast majority of them died horrific deaths from starvation, dehydration, exposure, sickness, and execution.

In a letter to his parents the day after the liberation, G.I. William Cowling wrote, “As we crossed the track and looked back into the cars the most horrible sight I have ever seen met my eyes. The cars were loaded with dead bodies. Most of them were naked and all of them skin and bones. Honest their legs and arms were only a couple of inches around and they had no buttocks at all. Many of the bodies had bullet holes in the back of their heads.”

Marcus Smith, one of the US Army personnel assigned to Dachau, also described the scene in his 1972 book, The Harrowing of Hell.

Refuse and excrement are spread over the cars and grounds. More of the dead lie near piles of clothing, shoes, and trash. Apparently some had crawled or fallen out of the cars when the doors were opened, and died on the grounds. One of our men counts the boxcars and says that there are thirty-nine. Later I hear that there were fifty, that the train had arrived at the camp during the evening of April 27, by which time all of the passengers were supposed to be dead so that the bodies could be disposed of in the camp crematorium. But this could not be done because there was no more coal to stoke the furnaces. Mutilated bodies of German soldiers are also on the ground, and occasionally we see an inmate scream at the body of his former tormentor and kick it. Retribution!

Rahr was one of the over 4,000 Russian prisoners at Dachau at the time of the liberation. The liberated prisoners also included over 1,200 Christian clergymen. After the war, Rahr immigrated to the United States, where he taught Russian History at the University of Maryland. He later worked for Radio Free Europe. His account of the events at Dachau in 1945 begins with his arrival at the camp:

April 27^th: The last transport of prisoners arrives from Buchenwald. Of the 5,000 originally destined for Dachau, I was among the 1,300 who had survived the trip. Many were shot, some starved to death, while others died of typhus. . . .

April 28th: I and my fellow prisoners can hear the bombardment of Munich taking place some 30 km from our concentration camp. As the sound of artillery approaches ever nearer from the west and the north, orders are given proscribing prisoners from leaving their barracks under any circumstances. SS-soldiers patrol the camp on motorcycles as machine guns are directed at us from the watch-towers, which surround the camp.

April 29th: The booming sound of artillery has been joined by the staccato bursts of machine gun fire. Shells whistle over the camp from all directions. Suddenly white flags appear on the towers—a sign of hope that the SS would surrender rather than shoot all prisoners and fight to the last man. Then, at about 6:00 p.m., a strange sound can be detected emanating from somewhere near the camp gate which swiftly increases in volume. . . .

The sound came from the dawning recognition of freedom. Lt. Col. Walter Fellenz of the US Seventh Army described the greeting from his point of view:

Several hundred yards inside the main gate, we encountered the concentration enclosure, itself. There before us, behind an electrically charged, barbed wire fence, stood a mass of cheering, half-mad men, women and children, waving and shouting with happiness—their liberators had come! The noise was beyond comprehension! Every individual (over 32,000) who could utter a sound, was cheering. Our hearts wept as we saw the tears of happiness fall from their cheeks.

Rahr’s account continues:

Finally all 32,600 prisoners join in the cry as the first American soldiers appear just behind the wire fence of the camp. After a short while electric power is turned off, the gates open and the American G.I.’s make their entrance. As they stare wide-eyed at our lot, half-starved as we are and suffering from typhus and dysentery, they appear more like fifteen-year-old boys than battle-weary soldiers. . . .

An international committee of prisoners is formed to take over the administration of the camp. Food from SS stores is put at the disposal of the camp kitchen. A US military unit also contributes some provision, thereby providing me with my first opportunity to taste American corn. By order of an American officer radio-receivers are confiscated from prominent Nazis in the town of Dachau and distributed to the various national groups of prisoners. The news comes in: Hitler has committed suicide, the Russians have taken Berlin, and German troops have surrendered in the South and in the North. But the fighting still rages in Austria and Czechoslovakia. . . .

Naturally, I was ever cognizant of the fact that these momentous events were unfolding during Holy Week. But how could we mark it, other than through our silent, individual prayers? A fellow-prisoner and chief interpreter of the International Prisoner's Committee, Boris F., paid a visit to my typhus-infested barrack—“Block 27”—to inform me that efforts were underway in conjunction with the Yugoslav and Greek National Prisoner's Committees to arrange an Orthodox service for Easter day, May 6th.

There were Orthodox priests, deacons, and a group of monks from Mount Athos among the prisoners. But there were no vestments, no books whatsoever, no icons, no candles, no prosphoras, no wine. . . . Efforts to acquire all these items from the Russian church in Munich failed, as the Americans just could not locate anyone from that parish in the devastated city. Nevertheless, some of the problems could be solved. The approximately four hundred Catholic priests detained in Dachau had been allowed to remain together in one barrack and recite mass every morning before going to work. They offered us Orthodox the use of their prayer room in “Block 26,” which was just across the road from my own “block.”

The chapel was bare, save for a wooden table and a Czenstochowa icon of the Theotokos hanging on the wall above the table—an icon which had originated in Constantinople and was later brought to Belz in Galicia, where it was subsequently taken from the Orthodox by a Polish king. When the Russian Army drove Napoleon's troops from Czenstochowa, however, the abbot of the Czenstochowa Monastery gave a copy of the icon to czar Alexander I, who placed it in the Kazan Cathedral in Saint-Petersburg where it was venerated until the Bolshevik seizure of power. A creative solution to the problem of the vestments was also found. New linen towels were taken from the hospital of our former SS-guards. When sewn together lengthwise, two towels formed an epitrachilion and when sewn together at the ends they became an orarion. Red crosses, originally intended to be worn by the medical personnel of the SS guards, were put on the towel-vestments.

On Easter Sunday, May 6th (April 23rd according to the Church calendar)—which ominously fell that year on Saint George the Victory-Bearer's Day—Serbs, Greeks and Russians gathered at the Catholic priests’ barracks. Although Russians comprised about 40 percent of the Dachau inmates, only a few managed to attend the service. By that time “repatriation officers” of the special Smersh units had arrived in Dachau by American military planes, and begun the process of erecting new lines of barbed wire for the purpose of isolating Soviet citizens from the rest of the prisoners, which was the first step in preparing them for their eventual forced repatriation.

In the entire history of the Orthodox Church there has probably never been an Easter service like the one at Dachau in 1945. Greek and Serbian priests together with a Serbian deacon wore the make-shift “vestments” over their blue and gray-striped prisoner’s uniforms. Then they began to chant, changing from Greek to Slavonic, and then back again to Greek. The Easter Canon, the Easter Sticheras—everything was recited from memory. The Gospel—“In the beginning was the Word”—also from memory.

And finally, the Homily of Saint John Chrysostom—also from memory. A young Greek monk from the Holy Mountain stood up in front of us and recited it with such infectious enthusiasm that we shall never forget him as long as we live. Saint John Chrysostomos himself seemed to speak through him to us and to the rest of the world as well! Eighteen Orthodox priests and one deacon—most of whom were Serbs—participated in this unforgettable service. Like the sick man who had been lowered through the roof of a house and placed in front of the feet of Christ the Savior, the Greek Archimandrite Meletios was carried on a stretcher into the chapel, where he remained prostrate for the duration of the service.

Other prisoners at Dachau included the recently canonized Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich, who later became the first administrator of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the US and Canada; and the Very Reverend Archimandrite Dionysios, who after the war was made Metropolitan of Trikkis and Stagnon in Greece.

Fr. Dionysios had been arrested in 1942 for giving asylum to an English officer fleeing the Nazis. He was tortured for not revealing the names of others involved in aiding Allied soldiers and was then imprisoned for eighteen months in Thessalonica before being transferred to Dachau. During his two years at Dachau, he witnessed Nazi atrocities and suffered greatly himself. He recorded many harrowing experiences in his book Ieroi Palmoi. Among these were regular marches to the firing squad, where he would be spared at the last moment, ridiculed, and then returned to the destitution of the prisoners’ block.

After the liberation, Fr. Dionysios helped the Allies to relocate former Dachau inmates and to bring some normalcy to their disrupted lives. Before his death, Metropolitan Dionysios returned to Dachau from Greece and celebrated the first peacetime Orthodox Liturgy there. Writing in 1949, Fr. Dionysios remembered Pascha 1945 in these words:

In the open air, behind the shanty, the Orthodox gather together, Greeks and Serbs. In the center, both priests, the Serb and the Greek. They aren't wearing golden vestments. They don't even have cassocks. No tapers, no service books in their hands. But now they don't need external, material lights to hymn the joy. The souls of all are aflame, swimming in light.

Blessed is our God. My little paper-bound New Testament has come into its glory. We chant “Christ is Risen” many times, and its echo reverberates everywhere and sanctifies this place.

Hitler's Germany, the tragic symbol of the world without Christ, no longer exists. And the hymn of the life of faith was going up from all the souls; the life that proceeds buoyantly toward the Crucified One of the verdant hill of Stein.

On April 29, 1995—the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Dachau—the Russian Orthodox Memorial Chapel of Dachau was consecrated. Dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ, the chapel holds an icon depicting angels opening the gates of the concentration camp and Christ Himself leading the prisoners to freedom. The simple wooden block conical architecture of the chapel is representative of the traditional funeral chapels of the Russian North. The sections of the chapel were constructed by experienced craftsmen in the Vladimir region of Russia, and assembled in Dachau by veterans of the Western Group of Russian Forces just before their departure from Germany in 1994. The priests who participated in the 1945 Paschal Liturgy are commemorated at every service held in the chapel, along with all Orthodox Christians who lost their lives “at this place, or at another place of torture.”

Interview of Professor Kyriakos C. Markides

Kyriakos Markides is the author of Mountain of Silence and Gifts of the Desert. A sociology professor at the University of Maine who is originally from Cyprus, Markides has written an eminently readable exploration of monasticism and eldership in Eastern Orthodoxy.  Many in the West have been attracted to Eastern religions such as Tibetan Buddhism in order to find a spirituality they feel is missing in Christianity. The view of Christianity presented in this book is not a radically new interpretation of the Bible, but rather how scripture was understood in the first millenium before the gospel was distorted by translation and interpretation through the lens of emergent Western culture following the church schism of 1054.  It provides readers with look into Orthodox spirituality that is experiential and unfortunately not always practiced by the modern Church today.

Ancient Faith Radio has a two part interview of Professor Markides here and here.

Saturday of Souls

They stare at me from faded photographs,

and in their eyes I see a reflection of my own soul.

I follow in the shadow of their footsteps,

down rocky, winding paths.

The aroma of blooming lilies fills my nostrils,

the  sweet taste of koliva  in my mouth.

They wore adversity on their sleeve,

and Romiosini in their hearts.

A gentle breeze caresses my face,

as if whispering a secret welcome.

Our child, we miss you  and kiss your eyes.

The flame in the oil lamp flickers for a moment,

Remember and pray for us,

as we pray for you.

The bearded priest chants and his words,

like the incense, rise up slowly to the heavens:

"The choir of Saints has found the fountain of life and the door to Paradise."

Love transcends even death.

"May they abide in a place of light, in a place of repose, in a place of refreshment,

where there is no pain, sorrow, or suffering."

Unto life everlasting.

                              by Stavros

Why Do We Pray For The Dead?

From an unidentified Orthodox Christian:

Christianity is a religion of love. Praying for the dead is an expression of that love. We ask God to remember our departed because we love them. Love relationships survive death and even transcend it. There is an inner need for a relationship with a loved one to continue to be expressed even after a loved one has died. Often even more so after a loved one has died since physical communication is no longer possible. The Orthodox Church encourages us to express our love for our departed brethren through Memorial Services and prayers.

The anniversary of the death of a loved one is very painful. The Orthodox Church helps us to cope with this pain by encouraging us to have memorial prayers offered in Church for departed loved ones on the anniversaries of their death, i.e. forty days after the death, six months, a year, etc. This gives us the opportunity to do something for our loved one. It helps express and resolve our grief.

Death may take loved ones out of sight but it certainly does not take them out of mind, or out of heart. We continue to love them and think of them as we believe they continue to love us and think of us. How can a mother forget a child who has passed over to the life beyond? The same love which led her to pray for that child when they lived will guide her to pray for them now. For in Christ all are living. The same love makes her wish to communicate with her child. Yet, all communication must take place in Christ and through Christ. No other communication with the dead is possible or lawful for the Christian. God is a God of the living. Our dear ones live in Him. Only through Him is it possible for us to communicate with them. Every liturgy in the Orthodox Church contains prayers for the dead, such as the following: "Be mindful also of all those who slumber in the hope of resurrection to everlasting life. Give them rest, O God, where the light of Thy countenance shineth."

Just as we pray for the deceased, so we believe they continue to love us, remember us, and pray for us now that they are closer to God. We cannot forget the example of the rich man in Hades asking Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers lest they, too, go to that place of torment. Though he had left this life, he did not cease to be concerned for his brothers still on earth.

The Orthodox Church prays for the dead to express her faith that all who have fallen asleep in the Lord, live in the Lord; their lives are hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3.3). Whether on earth or in heaven, the Church is a single family, one Body in Christ. Death changes the location but it cannot sever the bond of love.

 

The Pursuit of Happiness and the Orthodox Counter-Culture

Recently, I enjoyed reading a thoughtful exchange on a new up and coming blog, appropriately named, Domina Graecia.  It's mostly about current events and issues in Greece. The discussion on Domina Graecia centered around the increasing use of psychotropic drugs in that country, its lifestyle and the elusive search for happiness.  Now the search for happiness is something we Americans know something about.  It is our national pastime and indelibly inscribed in our Declaration of Independence. We have become so good at the business of happiness that we now find it necessary to export our version of it to every corner of the world. Happiness, unfortunately, is a tricky thing. The ancient Greeks were a little more realistic about the nature of happiness. They believed that happiness was either a condition characterized by having a well-disposed god, whose  concrete expression is prosperity or affected by fortune and chance, thus changeable and transitory (the good disposition of divine power is not guaranteed, so to speak, forever.)  Furthermore it was a condition relying on having good sense, that is, on being self-restrained and reverent toward gods. It required one to be content with what one had and to not seek more by going beyond what is within our reach.  Looking at it thus, happiness seems to be something both independent and dependent on our individual efforts, even our individual view of the world.

Although everyone seems increasingly intent on achieving happiness, we are confused about what constitutes happiness. Is it fame, wealth, the acquirement of bigger and better things, good health, beauty, the perfect spouse?   We read the newspaper  and are confronted  with daily examples that illustrate quite starkly that none of these elements, alone or together, seem to be enough for an increasing number of people. How does the pursuit of happiness fit in to my Orthodox faith? Trying to answer this question I came across a book by William Bush.

Professor Bush was born a Southern Baptist in 1929 in Florida. He embraced Catholicism at age 20. In 1955 an unforeseen encounter with a holy Russian woman in Paris revealed to him that Orthodoxy too might be embraced by those who were not born Orthodox. Three years residence in Paris (1956-1959) to write his Sorbonne thesis followed this decisive encounter, allowing him to steep himself in the Orthodoxy of the sizable Russian colony in Paris. Out of obedience, however, he did not seek admission into the Church before a ten year wait expired in 1967 when, at age 38, he was received into the Greek Orthodox Church. In 1977, Bush was co-founder of the Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Parish in London, Ontario, where he serves as chanter. Professor Bush is the author of The Mystery of the Church,  a book published by Regina Orthodox Press and excerpted here:

"The clash between Orthodox Christianity and the culture of the world has always been dramatic. The reaction of the world may vary, of course, but the inevitable basic challenge of Orthodox Christianity always representing a counterculture is always there for the lover of Christ...

Is the “pursuit of happiness” not, according to the myth created by the founding fathers of the American Republic, an “inalienable right?” That concept has, in fact, entered so deeply into the thought and conscience of generations of North Americans that it is difficult to question it without being suspected of being, if not actually some kind of foreign agent, at least “un-American.” The concept of “the pursuit of happiness” itself is, however, diametrically opposed to Orthodox Christianity’s view of the Christian’s fundamentally sacrificial and intercessory role in the cosmos, to say nothing of Christianity’s most basic tenant: the sacrifice of Christ is absolutely essential within the divine economy of His Incarnation.

“The pursuit of happiness” actually opposes, moreover, man’s intimate relationship with God and that total submission to God the holy fathers of Orthodoxy teach us is basic to the spiritual life. The true lover of Christ, in fact, can never take the concept of the “pursuit of happiness” seriously as something that might ever be incorporated into his own life in Christ.

The “pursuit of happiness” inevitably fosters a totally self-centered view of life, ignoring completely all cosmic sense of man’s place in the universe. It further ignores the inevitable, perennial and very basic dimension of sacrifice demanded of man at every level of his human existence. Whether in pursuing the bonds of love with a future spouse, or in bringing forth and rearing children, or in caring for those one loves, or in maintaining the well-being of one’s own family, sacrifice and suffering are far more basic necessities to human well-being than is the “pursuit of happiness.”

Whence then came this superficiality and shallowness postulating what a government should stand for in regard to its citizens? To a great extent, this shallowness can most certainly be attributed to the 18th century so-called “Enlightenment” of which, intellectually, the Fathers of the American Republic were the too-confident sons.

A direct descendent of Renaissance humanism, the 18th century Enlightenment had strong convictions about what was important and what was not. Man alone, not God, was to be taken seriously and served. Though God was somewhere up above, He was no longer one to reveal Himself to anyone as He did in those far-removed, superstitious, and ancient times of the Bible.

This point of view today still remains basic to the assumptions of officially legislated American culture, the various Christian coalitions so often spoken of in the press notwithstanding. When a conflict arises, such as the question of prayer in schools in America, it is the man-centered preoccupation with North America’s Enlightenment heritage that lies behind not only the exclusion of prayers, but even of the mention of God in public schools, as shocking as this would undoubtedly have proven to the deist fathers of the American Republic.

Be that as it may, these founding fathers still, being what they were, kept God at a very respectable distance in the official documents when the American Republic was being set up. This distant God might be invoked, but only to the extent to which He could be used for the benefit of man. Never did He exist for His own sake alone. He could be freely associated with “life,” “liberty” and “the pursuit of happiness,” since these were, after all, the personal aspirations of all sons of the Enlightenment.

Even in choosing to believe in God, the Fathers of the Republic still considered themselves the masters of this world and the center of their own self-appointed goal, something that has remained a very “American” characteristic.

Certainly, deist man was very far from viewing himself as existing for God, and for God alone, and therefore utterly dependent upon God’s grace even to exist. According to the deists, God had made man that man might enjoy the “pursuit of happiness.” No lowly sheep of God’s pasture, he! Whereas the true lover of Christ, of necessity, views man as fashioned by God, and existing for God alone and not for himself, Enlightenment man refused, and still refuses, such a Christian idea.

Having thus divorced himself from God incarnate in Jesus Christ, deist man was most certainly not about to entertain the possibility that God actually continues, in our modern age, to reveal Himself through Jesus Christ to the saints within the mystery of the Orthodox Church! That the God of the Bible, through divine revelation, actually reveals Himself to man was also completely foreign even to the deist clergy of 18th century France and England, who themselves laid the foundation for completely divorcing educated Westerners from the God of the Bible. Moreover, grave suspicion about revelations even being possible still holds, for the most part, in Western Christianity and can be found at the root of the “modernizing” adherents of Roman Catholicism who insist on official intellectual and scientific analyses, even of the miracles of the saints sent by God Himself.

For such self-centered and proud children of Renaissance humanism, it has become a natural reaction to maintain utter distrust and suspicion, if not downright disbelief, in anything coming from outside oneself. It is not without relevance that leaders of the French Revolution, such as Danton and Robespierre, had all been educated by deist clergy. Those misbegotten cleric-professors, being themselves imbued with the “new ideas,” successfully in turn imbued their pupils with far greater admiration for the heroes of ancient Rome than for the Roman martyrs and saints of the Christian Church.

Both Robes-pierre and Danton merely applied the ideas taught them by their deist cleric-professors. Could there be anything farther removed from the flesh-and-blood Incarnation of Jesus Christ and His mercy to sinners, so sublimely demonstrated in the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery, than that frigid, intellectual “virtue” Robespierre so passionately sought to impose? He was, after all, willing to guillotine anyone he conceived of as getting in the way of realizing his impossible dream of establishing a truly virtuous French republic. During the last six weeks of the Great Terror, Robespierre’s crusade for “virtue” sent 1,306 persons to the guillotine in Paris alone, among whom are found few aristocrats or clergy.

Paradoxically, the fruit borne by those 18th century deist cleric-professors is, moreover, not only to be found in the French Revolution, but also in its nefarious dissemination throughout the world, particularly in the rise of Communism. Many of those upheavals, by the vastness of the catastrophes resulting from them, cause the French Revolution to seem but a sort of tranquil prelude to an overwhelming, subsequent tragedy. Paris’s brief, four-month Reign of Terror under Robespierre is hardly worth mentioning when compared with the Ukrainian famine created by the Soviet Union, for example, or, more recently, the genocide produced by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Having rejected Christ and His saints, any idea of seeking to live within the mystery of Christ’s Church would necessarily have been regarded as something completely useless and irrelevant, as it still is by non-believers to this day.

It is this rejection of Christ by the world that continues to make Orthodoxy radically countercultural, just as it always has, in fact, since the Prince of this world is not Christ. The challenge offered immigrant Orthodox Christians in regard to civil religion in America has always come, and still comes, from their desire not only to survive, but to “fit in” to North American cultural patterns and somehow not prove to be counter-cultural.

How many well-meaning immigrant Orthodox, wishing sincerely to pay grateful and quite genuine homage to the freedom they have received as American citizens, struggle gallantly to accommodate the American Republic’s officially enshrined ideal of the “pursuit of happiness” as a realistic goal for living out their life in the new country? Having experienced so many good things that were often denied them or completely impossible ever to achieve in an older and ethnically Orthodox country that, perhaps, had fallen under Communist control, they find themselves torn between the unswerving Orthodoxy of their grandmothers and the American idealism of the “pursuit of happiness” espoused by their energetic and successful Americanized offspring, of whom they are so justly proud.

The great national feast of Thanksgiving Day, always arriving with its “turkey and all the trimmings” in the midst of Christmas Lent, is perhaps the most notable conflict imposed on Orthodox Christians by America’s civil religion. I was told by a friend about a visit to some old Greek-American friends during Great Lent. He noticed that the parents were keeping the fast, but that their teenage children were eating meat. When asked why this was so, the parents answered him with confidence and great pride: “Americans do not fast, and our children are Americans!” For the convert-lover of Christ who opts for Orthodoxy, a fairly basic and all-inclusive question, therefore, must inevitably arise, sooner or later: “Is the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ worth sacrificing one’s whole life for?” Embodied in this question is the implacable challenge offered, at all times and in all places, to every believer by the ongoing mystery of the Church. This challenge takes us far beyond all the superficial details of Orthodox lifestyle and far beyond the American dream of the pursuit of happiness.

This question, in fact, uncompromisingly articulates the ongoing countercultural challenge required of anyone who, through Christ, seeks to understand the value not only of his own human life, but also the value of the life of all those around him. The historical fact that God was made man in Jesus Christ, therefore, becomes, in light of this question, “the still point of the turning world,” as T. S. Eliot put it. The Incarnation, that “still point of the turning world,” contains within itself the Logos and only-begotten Son and Word of God, the beginning and end of creation itself. The veritable challenge that must be faced squarely, day-by-day in Christian living is that of not allowing the demands of civil religion to alter our allegiance to Him Who is our Life and is the only means of saving each of us from the death that is our own nothingness.

In any case, living for Jesus Christ alone was, indeed, something fundamentally opposed to the thinking of the framers of the American Constitution, whatever their merits as lawgivers."

Praying for Children at Risk

These days my work with children as a nurse practitioner in a pediatrics group practice seems to be interspersed with alternate doses full of sorrow and  laughter. My patients make me smile, occasionally laugh at their childhood innocence and escapades. They say and do things that often stay with me long after the day is done. They can surprise you at times. Giving you a hug when you least expect it, or that look of wonder when they listen to their heart through your stethoscope, or that smile from ear to ear when you give them the smallest of gifts. Tending to the little people and their older brothers and sisters, who are  straining to act like the grownups they aren't,  is replete with small glimmers of hope and a rising uneasiness about the future.

Pediatrics is like veterinary medicine. The patients in both disciplines are not in the least bit interested in telling you what's wrong with them. It's up to you to find out. The older ones are not much more communicative than the younger variety. If you get a one word answer or grunt you are doing quite well. Of course, I was once their age a long time again and although it's been a while I haven't forgotten what it was like. Then there are the parents. Struggling as best they can to raise their children. They come in worried about them when their sick, or frustrated with their behavior. Sometimes they are just going through the motions, disinterested and in a hurry to leave.

The nurse practitioner (NP) role was developed in the United States back in the 1960s to address the physician shortage in the inner cities and remote rural areas. At the time,  it was considered revolutionary, not to mention unsettling, for nurses to adopt the medical model of health care. In that model, the diagnosis is paramount and from that diagnosis one derives a plan for treatment. NPs were trained to do physical exams, order and interpret tests, to diagnose and to prescribe appropriate medications. Fortunately for their patients, NPs also brought with them the nursing model which consisted of listening to your patient as well as  his family and approaching the illness as only one aspect of a complex person. I am not saying that doctors, who are valued colleagues, don't do this, just that a great deal of their training is much too invested in disease and not the humans who suffer from it.

With a ringside seat, I get a glimpse into the lives of the children who come to our clinic. I do so because I try hard to see those kids as more than someone with a sore throat  or earache. The glimpse I get is not always the TLC (tender, loving care) that we may expect our kids should be getting. I see kids who live sad, even hopeless lives. Kids who are can't wait to leave home and who are victims of neglect, physical or sexual abuse, violent crime, substance abuse and teenage pregnancy. The children I see run the full spectrum of childhood from neonates to young adults.  None of the children I see in my practice lacks for food or basic clothing or even a roof over their head. These are easy things to obtain in our affluent societies. What many endangered kids suffer from in varying degrees is a spiritual poverty that pervades their environment. It emanates from parents who are the products of such poverty, cut adrift without a family support network, totally on their own, ill equipped to deal with the world at large let alone raise resilient children to cope with that world.

Who is responsible for this spiritual poverty? Perhaps we are all to blame. We cultivate it, we look the other way, we enable it, we are part of societies that create ever growing numbers of children who we will be hearing from in the future and who we will have to lock up in order to protect ourselves from them.  Lately, I feel like I am swimming against this inexorable tide. Feeling helpless and unable to make a difference in the lives of  the increasing number of children at risk. Perhaps my older son Nick has noticed. He recently gave me something helpful to read. It consisted of advice given to a pediatrician by Elder Fr. Porphyrios, who served for many years as a hospital chaplain:

"Listen to what I have to say to you. Every time you examine a child you should offer a fervent prayer with love:  Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on your servant.

As he said this he took a deep breath while he opened his hands. It is in this way that you should pray for every child. God has sent a precious soul into your hands. As you place your hands on them pray fervently within yourself that the grace of God will be transfused into the soul of the child. 

Do all this things spiritually and in secret. The others who are present won't understand anything. You will prescribe to them medicines which science dictates but in the final analysis Christ will heal the child."

+May all efforts on behalf of children by parents, teachers, and all the adults in their lives be blessed.+

Growing Orthodox Christianity in Africa

A few weeks ago I paid a visit to the Fourth Night blog. This is the personal blog of a young journalist named Constantine Markides. Constantine is the son of  Kyriacos Markides, author of  "Mountain of Silence."  and a professor at the University of Maine. Constantine had recently accompanied the Orthodox Archbishop of Kenya to the second largest slum in Africa on the outskirts of Nairobi. Kibera is inhabited by over a million people. The houses have no plumbing and no electricity. There are distinct communities within, typically separated by tribe and/or language.While there he took a number of photographs of the appalling conditions. Seeing these photographs left an indelible impression on me. For many days afterward, I thought about what I had seen and what it meant about the wide gulf between my life and the life led by other human beings on the same planet. The memory of those pictures lingered for awhile and eventually was filed in the recesses of my mind until brought again to the fore last Sunday by the presence of a young Orthodox priest from Kenya. Father Athanasios Akunda. 

Father Akunda had come to visit our parish in Maine to share with us his work as a missionary in South Africa. Although there are a number of Greek immigrant communities in that country, the legacy of apartheid precluded any outreach on their part until the last few years. Father Akunda is the vanguard of an effort to establish an indigenous Orthodox Church in South Africa that includes all races. As he celebrated the divine liturgy with us I could only imagine the anxiety he was feeling for family in Kenya whom he had not been able to contact despite repeated attempts. The New Year began in his native Kenya with tragic consequences for many Kenyans as widespread violence erupted in the wake of the contested presidential elections between incumbent President, Mwai Kibaki, and challenger Raila Odinga held on on December 27th. Reports coming in from all over Kenya are painting a vivid picture of growing unrest and escalating conflict. According to Reuters, over 300 people have already died in the clashes between rival factions and the police. In Nakuru, the Orthodox church of St. George was destroyed and in other locations  the homes of Orthodox priests were burned.

The African Orthodox Church has an interesting and convoluted history.  It represents the efforts of Africans to establish an indigenous Church unencumbered by the baggage of the colonial past.  A detailed background can be found here.  The man most responsible for much of the  growth of Orthodoxy in Africa was Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus. He first arrived in Kenya in 1957, while in exile, where he spoke to the Kenyan people of freedom and justice during a time when they were still under colonial rule. A friend of Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenyan revolutionary leader, the Archbishop returned in 1971 to a hero's welcome.  During his visit he baptized 5000 new Orthodox Christians. On his way back to Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios made the following statement: “What especially moved me is the fact that in the eastern region of Africa there are thousands of Africans who follow the Orthodox faith. I sincerely believe that Greece can contribute to the Christianizing of hundreds of thousands of Africans and through Orthodoxy, the Greek spirit will shed light through the immense African continent.” He eventually became known for his efforts on behalf of the African people, which included the building of a seminary, as  the "Apostle to Africa."

The Kenyan capital city of Nairobi houses the Makarios III Patriarchal Seminary and St. George Orthodox Church lies nearby in the heart of the Kibera slums, which have been a flash point for much of the recent violence.   Father Athanasios graduated from the  Makarios Seminary six years ago and went on to receive his Masters of Divinity degree at Holy Cross Theological Seminary in Brookline, Massachusetts. More impressive than his academic credentials, however, was his deep love for Christ and his steadfast dedication to establishing the Church throughout the world. His story is inspirational on some many levels.  Fr. Akunda’s gift for the work of missions was the reason Archbishop Seraphim brought him to South Africa in the 1990s. His efforts, combined with the work that had been done by the St. Nicholas of Japan Mission Society and Dr. Steven Hayes, resulted in Orthodox mission parishes springing up in places like Shoshanguve,  Mamelodi, Eldorado Park and Yeoville, among people who were not traditionally Orthodox.  Relying solely on public transportation, Fr. Akunda visits these far flung communities regularly.  Efforts such as that of Father Akunda are bearing fruit throughout the vast continent of Africa and are supported by the Orthodox Mission Center  Support a Mission Priest (SAMP). 

Writing for the Cyprus Mail, Constantine Markides has been reporting on Limassol-born Archbishop of Kenya, Makarios Tyllirides, whose efforts over the past three decades have led to a flourishing of Orthodoxy in East Africa and the continuation of the Makarios legacy throughout Kenya. It is Orthodoxy's unique approach to missions is responsible in part to its increasing numbers in Africa:

"In one week this month, he consecrated three churches, one in the Nairobi periphery shantytown of Kangemi, another in the southern hillside community of Karinde, and another in the jungle village of Ivola near Lake Victoria in Western Kenya. But although the ceremonies did not diverge in substance from those performed in Cyprus and Greece, there was an additional dimension to them: the rituals of the tribal community were also included.

The Archbishop does not merely grudgingly allow these tribal traditions. In fact, he insists that they be incorporated into the Orthodox services.

“Actually, we as a church are the ones who are encouraging and keeping alive the culture of these people,” Archbishop Makarios said. “For some of these tribes, this is the first time that written texts [the translated texts of the Orthodox services] are circulating in their dialects. In fact, the services you heard today in Swahili were published in Cyprus.” Archbishop Makarios noted that technological advances and the Kenyan government’s adoption of English as its official pedagogical language had only served to sever the 42 tribes of Kenya from their native dialect.

“We also insist that every tribe demonstrates [in the church] its traditional dances and songs,” the Archbishop said. “That way we maintain the tradition.”

The 62-year-old Archbishop is so supportive of their traditions that he joins in on the dances with them, wearing his bishopric regalia, scepter in hand.

“Many cannot imagine a bishop dancing,” he said. “[They find] it unthinkable in our tradition. But here we do it. It does no harm to anybody.”

The Archbishop has also learned the chants in the language spoken in the particular region, so the liturgies are conducted in both Greek as well as the local dialect.

All of this, along with his commitment to building schools and clinics in remote regions, has helped to draw in crowds. The churches overflow during the consecrations, with attendees one moment bowing down and crossing themselves silently, and the next ululating and clapping their hands over their heads.
Last Wednesday during the funeral service of a 38-year-old Presbytera who died from post-natal anemia after giving birth to her 11th child, hundreds of Kenyans, possibly even a thousand, gathered from the neighbouring villages to hear him speak.

But despite the innumerable churches constructed under his guidance and the thousands of Kenyans who have joined the Orthodox Church in Kenya.  Archbishop Makarios insists that proselytising does not take place.

“We don’t go out knocking on doors to bring people in. We merely say come and see. If they like what we are doing, then they will join us."

MAY THEIR EFFORTS BE BLESSED AND MAY ALL CHRISTIANS FIND IT IN THEIR HEART TO SUPPORT AND PRAY FOR THEM AND THEIR FLOCK.

      

Radio Axion Esti

Thanks to John Akritas over at Hellenic Antidote for introducing me to BOX, a free service that allows you to store mp3 music file and upload them to a widget for your blog or website. I've named this new addition to MGO Radio Axion Esti or "worthy to be."  Periodically, I will add other files that I believe MGO listeners will enjoy as well.

Since most of us cannot visit Mount Athos, the monastic center of Orthodox Christianity, I have decided to bring Mount Athos to you. Take time out from your hectic schedules, turn the lights down and listen.

Here's another site worth visiting.

A Life of Contemplation

My friend Margaret writes:

"Nietzsche was extremely cynical of all philosophers (with the exception of himself) because he thought that each philosophy they constructed was no more than "a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir", that each philosopher creates the world in his own image, as he sees it. The point I'm trying (badly) to make is that he saw the world as he did because of how he saw the world ... because of how he was, and he couldn't see it differently without becoming a different person. But my world is different because I am different.

Your monk Seraphim Rose could, perhaps, have not been other than a man who lived in a hut with a matted beard. He clearly did what he did very well, but could he have lived your life with all the things you have done, achieved, the people you've kept happy, the responsibilities you have shouldered, the children you've looked after? I somehow doubt that. Why was his life of contemplation any better than yours? Was not his life of contemplation a predictable outcome of his earlier traumas? If I imagine alternatives outcomes for him with his history, I can imagine an early death more easily than I can imagine a happy family life with children. I've met my own Nietzsches, and the same goes for them. Whether they are destined to live such lives from birth, or whether their early life predisposes them to lives of extreme solitude is a moot point, but one that interests me greatly."

Dear Margaret,

You have a knack for asking hard questions. Questions that I'm not really qualified to answer though I love trying. Seraphim Rose is not yet considered a Saint by the Church although many feel he is worthy of Sainthood. Saints, however, are ordinary people, who indeed, have a personal history, yet go on to do extraordinary things. What is important is not the details of their lives but the spirit that breathes in them. These lives bear witness to the transformation that takes place when the Christian gives himself over to the will of God. Surely, William Wilberforce had such a transformation in his own life, as did Seraphim.

In understanding the life of Seraphim Rose we must understand it according to its own logic and that logic is not of this world. It is based on the wisdom of Christ's life and teaching. If we look at him merely as a recluse living in a hut and wearing a matted beard, we are applying the logic of the world that puts value on living in a comfortable home and personal appearance.  Certainly this does not mean that we all have to live the life of a simple monk. In many ways it is easier to live as a Christian in a cloistered community far removed from the temptations of the world than to live a Godly life in that world.  The Fathers of the Church testify that the place in which we live is less significant than how we live. The monk's goal is his release from every worldly obstacle, liberation from passions, belongings, and his own free will. The objective is to achieve kenosis or self-emptying and thereby to achieve humility, which will in turn allow him to overcome the obstacles that separate him from God and man. Without experiential knowledge of the spiritual path it is impossible to help others.

Whatever the reason, Father Seraphim chose a very different path than I did. His path is infinitely harder, his path is one of  earthly suffering, his path entails cutting oneself off from family and society in order to make the passage from egotism to love of God and to love all men not just the one's who think and talk like us.  His life was much more than a life of contemplation; it was a life of ministry, preaching the gospel, helping and advising others. This is from Hieromonk Ambrose, a spiritual child of Father Seraphim:

"A year or so before his repose, I drove Fr. Seraphim someplace where he was going to give a talk. We got out of the car and, as he was walking in front of me, he turned and said, "You know, this is really not for me." Now this is interesting because many think that he was really coming into his own, so to speak, in the last years of his life. And surely, in a sense, that's true. But there was also a part of him that never really loved it at all, because he wanted to just be in the monastery. He did the work of missionary outreach because he knew God was calling him to it. It was his duty."

Elder Joseph the Hesychast lived almost his entire adult life in a remote skete on Mount Athos. One of his spiritual children, Elder Ephraim, came to America, where he has established twenty Orthodox monasteries to date throughout the North American continent. Clearly, we cannot judge the impact of a man's life solely on its outward appearance. Twenty five years after his repose, Seraphim's influence on the Orthodox faithful through his spiritual children and his writings is immense  and will continue to shape lives in years to come. He is part of the tradition of spiritual eldership that is an important part of Orthodox Christianity. Despite the traumas of his earlier life, in the end Seraphim not only found Christ but he also helped many others to find him as well.

Ambrose says the following of him:  "Fr. Seraphim did his duty in every single moment, and he kept his eyes fixed on Christ and on others, not on himself. And I believe that now, as a result of a life lived so unselfishly in that way, he does indeed now rest serenely and eternally in the arms of Christ, ‘Whom he spiritually beheld day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, here on this mountain. Because of his example, we not only have a model, but we have an inspiration, and we have the encouragement to do just a little bit more than we're doing now.

Orthodoxy is so rich. It has such beautiful externals, which are not just entirely externals—they also partake of the essence of Orthodoxy, of course. But it's very easy, Fr. Seraphim used to tell me, to get distracted by these externals. It's very easy to think that, because we are following all the fasting rules and because we know the Typikon and so forth, we are actually living an Orthodox way of life, whereas we may not be at all. If Christ is not there behind all that, then it's a waste of time: it's a beautiful waste of time, but it's a waste of time nonetheless. For Fr. Seraphim, however, Christ was always there, behind everything. And when Fr. Seraphim breathed his last, Christ was there to receive his soul."

Margaret, I hope this helps somewhat. Thank you for asking the important questions.

Faith, Works & Missions

Last summer my son, Niko and a group of other Greek Orthodox young people, traveled to Tijuana, Mexico as part of a mission group. Project Mexico is an ongoing program which involves Orthodox youth and adults in the building of homes for Mexico's poor. It is sponsored by St. Innocent's Orphanage. The orphanage takes in homeless boys, clothes them, feeds them and teaches them a skill before they set off on their own at age eighteen. It is doing amazing work.

Niko has been talking about Project Mexico for years since many of the Camp counselors at the Metropolis Camp in Coontocook, New Hampshire are  alumni of the program. Each participant has to raise 2500 in contributions from his parish in order to fund his travel and the building supplies needed for the construction. The home once built is given to a needy family chosen by the local civil authorities and is not based on that family's religious preference. For most of the participant's it was a life changing experience. Nick had never seen real poverty up close until he arrived in Tijuana. Within the time it takes to fly and drive to Tijuana, he and his friends were transported from their carefree middle class American existence to a place where people are living in ramshackle huts made of cardboard and whatever other materials are available, no running water, no inside toilet, and very often, no hope.

The construction work was difficult back breaking work, nevertheless boy and girls worked together. At the end of the day they returned to the orpanage where they were able to eat an evening meal, spend time with the kids who lived there, pray and to rest.. Within a week they completed a two room that  might not be up to the standard that many of us are accustomed to but is a real improvement in the quality of life for in what is essentially a third world country.This is not an attempt to pat anyone on the back. The participants got that when they stood in front of the home they built with the family of four that would occupy it.

Last night I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by a young man who is an Orthodox missionary in Albania. Nathan Hoppe, an Orthodox convert along with other members of his team has been doing tremendous work under the auspices of the Archbishop of Albania. What was particularly interesting in the talk he gave was his recounting of the childhood he spent as the son of Christian Missionaries in Colombia. His parents with three small children traveled by foot for days to live with a remote Indian tribe high in the mountains.  Only after twenty years of ministering to their medical needs and living like them were they finally able to baptize a member of the tribe. Sitting there listening to him relate this remarkable story I was  nothing less than awed by their courage, faith and  love for other human beings. They truly epitomized the two key ingredients of a Christian life, faith and works.

In Western Europe during the 16th century, a German monk rebelled at the prevailing understanding in the West that salvation depended on human works of merit, and not upon the grace and mercy of God.
This Reformation debate in the West was a non-issue in the Orthodox East. As far as Orthodox Christians were concerned the issue had been settled since the apostolic era. For them, salvation was granted by the mercy of God to righteous men and women. Those baptized into Christ were called to believe in Him and do good works. It has never been "faith VS. works" or "faith OR works," but "faith AND works."

The Orthodox understanding of salvation differs from the  Protestant view in several ways. First, Orthodox Christians
see justification by faith as a covenant relationship  centered in union with Christ. Second, Orthodoxy emphasizes it is first God’s mercy – not our faith – which saves us.Third, for Orthodox Christians, faith is a living dynamic, continuous effort. Faith is not something a Christian exercises only at one critical moment, expecting it to cover all the rest of his life. Being a Christian is not just a decision, it’s a way of life.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Orthodox Church has a strong tradition of missionary evangelism. Unlike certain missionary endeavors by western-minded Christians, the Orthodox missionary tradition does not include attempting to impose or promote the specific culture of the missionaries because "God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him" (Acts 10:34-35). Orthodoxy affirms and utilizes the local language and even customs as long as they are not contrary to Christian beliefs, in worship and prayer. Orthodoxy enters into the culture, embracing all those aspects of a culture that are compatible with the Gospel, thereby "baptizing" the culture with its own citizens. In this way, Orthodoxy was first established in North America-- through the independent missionary activity of Russian and layman and monastics like St. Herman. This efforts led to the conversion of thousands of Aleuts, Eskimo, Tlingit, and other indigenous peoples of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and brought Orthodoxy to the Americans.

Today this missionary zeal continues. An overview of worldwide Orthodox missionary efforts is beyond the scope of this post. These efforts can be found and are bearing fruit in countries all over the world. For aditional information visit the Orthodox Christian Mission Center Website here.

THE LIFE OF BLESSED HIEROMONK SERAPHIM ROSE

Father Seraphim was born into a typical white middle class Protestant family in San Diego in 1934. While growing up, he was the proverbial dutiful child and academic achiever. After high school, however, he began to passionately seek the answer to the question "Why?"--and, not finding it in the society in which he had been raised, he began to rebel. He refused to accept the accepted answers. This was at the very beginning of the modern counterculture, the early 1950's. Father Seraphim became a student of one of the counterculture's first pioneers, Alan Watts (whom he realized later was totally pseudo) and became a Buddhist Bohemian in San Francisco. He learned ancient Chinese in order to study the Tao Teh Ching and other ancient Eastern texts in their original language, hoping thereby to tap into the heart of their wisdom. By this time he had wholly rejected the Protestant Christianity of his formative years, which he regarded as worldly, weak, and fake; he mocked its concept of God and that that it "put God in a box." He Read Nietzsche until the Prophets words began to resonate in his soul with an electric, infernal power.

All this time, he had been seeking the Truth with his mind, but the Truth had eluded him. He fell into a state of despair which he described years later as a living hell. He felt he did not fit in the modern world, even his family, who did not understand him. It was as if he had somehow been born out of place, out of time. He loved to roam under the stars, but he felt that there was nothing our there to take him in--no God, nothing. The Buddhist "nothingness" left him empty, just as it did the founder of the Beat movement, Jack Kerouac; and, like Kerouac, Father Seraphim turned to drink. He would drink wine voraciously and then would pound on the floor, screaming to God to leave him alone. Once while drunk, he raised his fist to heaven from a mountaintop and cursed God, daring Him to damn him to Hell. In his despair, it seemed worth being damned forever by God's wrath, if only he could empirically know that God exists--rather than remain in a stagnant state of indifference. If God did damn him to hell, at lest then he would, for that blissful instant, feel God's touch and know for sure He was reachable

"Atheism," Father Seraphim wrote in later years, "true 'existential' atheism, burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God Whose ways are so inexplicable even to the most believing of men, and it has more than once been known to end in a blinding vision of Him Whom the real atheist truly seeks. It is Christ Who works in these souls. The Antichrist is not to be found in the deniers, but in the small affirmers, whose Christ is only on the lips. Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ..."

In searching through various ancient religions and traditions, Father Seraphim once went to visit a Russian Orthodox Church. Later he wrote of his experience.

"For years in my studies I was satisfied with being 'above all traditions' but somehow faithful to them... When I visited an Orthodox Church, it was only in order to view another 'tradition'. However, when I entered an Orthodox Church for the first time (a Russian Church in San Francisco) something happened to me that I had not experienced in any Buddhist or other Eastern temple; something in my heart said this was 'home,' that all my search was over. I didn't really know what this meant, because the service was quite strange to me and in a foreign language. I began to attend Orthodox services more frequently, gradually learning its language and customs... With my exposure to orthodoxy and Orthodox people, a new idea began to enter my awareness: that Truth was not just an abstract idea, sought and known by the mind, but was something personal--even a Person--sought and loved by the heart. And that is how I met Christ."

On becoming Orthodox Father Seraphim continued to despise modern world and hoped for nothing from it; he wanted only to escape it. He felt no less, if not more, estranged from the Christianity he had been raised in, for while that Christianity was at home in the world, his was radically otherworldly. He had finally found the designation of man's existence, and it was this: man is meant for another world.

Father Seraphim's was an ascetic Faith. He wanted a Christianity that emphasized not earthly consolation and beliefs, but rather heavenly redemption through suffering on this earth. No other kind rang true to him who had suffered much. Only a God Who allowed His children to be perfected for heaven through suffering, and Who Himself set the example by coming to a life of suffering--only such a God was capable of drawing the afflicted world to Himself and was worthy to be worshiped by the highest spiritual faculties of man.

In his journal, Father Seraphim wrote: "Let us not, who would be Christians, expect anything else from it than to be crucified. For to be a Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example--and warning--to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection. If we would rise with Christ, we must first be humbled with Him--even to the ultimate humiliation, being devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world.

"And we must be crucified outwardly, in the eyes of the world; for Christ's Kingdom is not of this world, and the world cannot bear it, even in a single representation of it, even for a single moment. The world can only accept Antichrist, now or at anytime.

"No wonder, then, that it is so hard to be Christian--it is not hard it is impossible. No one can knowingly accept a way of life which, the more truly it is lived, leads more surely to one's own destruction. And that is way we constantly rebel, try to make life easier, try to be half-Christian, try to make the best of both worlds. We must ultimately choose--our felicity lies in one world or the other, not in both.  "God give is the strength to pursue the path of crucifixion; there is not other way to be Christian."

Before he had found the truth, Father Seraphim had suffered for the lack of it. Now, having found it, he suffered for the sake of it. He devoted the rest of his life to living that truth, and killing himself to give it to others. Together with a young Russian man, named Gleb Podmosphnesky, he formed a Brotherhood which practiced the "Do it yourself" philosophy. They opened a bookstore in San Francisco and began printing a small magazine called the Orthodox Word by hand on a small letterpress, translating Ancient Christian texts and bringing Orthodox Literature to America. Later, to avoid the emptiness of the city, they moved their printing operation to the wilderness of Northern California, where they began to live like the ancient desert dwellers, of ancient times. There was not running water on their forested mountain, no telephone, no electric lines. They built their buildings themselves out of old lumber taken from pioneer dwellings and hauled water on their backs up the mountain. They lived with deer, rabbits, bear, foxes, squirrels, bats, mountain lions, scorpions, and rattlesnakes.

In 1970 they became monks, thus dying forever to the world. In the wilderness Father Seraphim's spirit began to soar "The city," he once said, "is for those who are empty, and it pushes away those who are filled and allows them to thrive."

Working by candlelight in his tiny cabin, Father Seraphim created a great number of original writings and translations of ancient ascetic texts. In America his writings have so far reached only select circles but in countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain they have had and incalculable impact on human lives. During the communist era, Father Seraphim's writings were secretly translated into Russian and distributed in the underground press (samizdat) in the form of typewritten manuscripts. By the time the fall of Communist power in 1991, Father Seraphim was known all over Russia. Today his books are on sale everywhere in Russia, including book tables in the Metro (subway) and on the street. The reason that he has made a much greater mark on Russia that on his homeland is because in Russia people knew how to suffer. Father Seraphim's message of underground Christianity, of suffering and persecution in this world for the sake of truth, touches a responsive chord in people who have already been crucified. In America people would rather hear the "nice" messages of preachers like Rev. Robert Schuler (who, by the way, broadcasts his show in Russia, where people can hardly believe how stupid it is). I met Father Seraphim a year and a half before his death in 1982. Like him, I had been seeking reality through Eastern religions, etc., by seeking to escape pseudo-reality through a Zen-like breakdown of logical thought processes. Finally, reduced to despair, I listened to Sid Barrett's two schizophrenic-withdrawal, childhood-regression solo albums over and over, until I had memorized all his word salads. One day Father Seraphim came to the campus where I was going to school. He drove up in an old beat up pick-up truck and emerged in his worn out black robe, his long hair, and his exceedingly long grey beard which had become matted. I was the image of absolute poverty. Next thing I remember I was walking with Father Seraphim through the college. Dinner had just ended and students were milling and hanging around the outside cafeteria. Everyone was staring at Father Seraphim, but he walked through them as naturally as if he had been at home. I the middle of a progressive American college, he seemed like someone who had just stepped out of the 4th century Egyptian desert.

Father Seraphim went to a lecture room and delivered a talk called "Signs of the Coming of the End of the World." He had happened to be sick at the same time and sniffled throughout his lecture. Obviously exhausted, he yet remained clear-headed, cheerful, and ready to answer questions at length. I could see that he was at least as learned and far more wise than any of my professors, and yet he was clearly a man of the wilderness, more at home in the forest than in a classroom.

What struck me most about Father Seraphim was that here was a man who was totally sacrificing himself for God, for the truth. He was not a university Professor receiving a comfortable salary for being a disseminator of knowledge, nor was he a religious leader who hankered after power, influence, or even a bowl of fruit to be placed at his feet, as did the "spiritual masters" who had followings in that area. He was not "into religion" for what could he get out of it; he was not looking for a crutch to "enjoy spiritual life." He was just a simple monk who sought the Truth above all else. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would die for that Truth, for I could see he was dying for it already.

-Monk Damascene (Author of Father Seraphim Rose: His Life & Works)

Orthodoxy in America

A Homily by Father Seraphim Rose

To Be Different

A person who takes Orthodoxy seriously and begins to really work on understanding   it with his heart and changing himself -- has at least a little of a quality   we might call the fragrance of true Christianity; he is different from people   who live by nothing higher than the world. St. Macarius the Great, the 4th-century   Egyptian desert father, teaches in his Homilies that "Christians have their   own world, their own way of life, their own understanding and word and activity;   far different from theirs are the way of life and understanding and word and   activity of the people of this world. Christians are one thing, and lovers of   the world quite another. Inasmuch as the mind and understanding of Christians   is constantly occupied with reflection on the heavenly, they behold eternal   good things by communion and participation in the Holy Spirit... Christians   have a different world ... a different way of thinking from all other men"   (Homily V, 1:20). Later I'll try to say a word on how Orthodox Christians should   be absorbing this different world and way of thinking. Orthodoxy, the true Christianity,   is not just another set of beliefs; it is a whole way of life that makes us   different people, and it is directly bound up with how much heavenly and eternal   things are present in our life.

An Orthodox person who is not different can be worse off than the non-Orthodox.   There is nothing sadder than the spectacle of Orthodox Christians, who possess a treasure   that cannot be valued by any earthly measure, something which many are seeking   and do not find in today's world -- nothing is sadder than Orthodox Christians   who do not value and do not use this treasure.

An Example for the Orthodox

I'd like to tell you a little about a group of Protestants who live not too   far from our monastery in northern California. In some ways I think they are   actually an example for us, in other ways a warning, and perhaps most of all   an indication of the responsibility and opportunity we Orthodox Christians have   because we have been given the true Christianity.

These Protestants have a simple and warm Christian faith without much of the  sectarian narrowness that characterizes many Protestant groups. They don't believe, like   some Protestants, that they are "saved" and don't need to do any more;   they believe in the idea of spiritual struggle and training the soul. They force   themselves to forgive each other and not to hold grudges. They take in bums   and hippies off the streets and have a special farm for rehabilitating them   and teaching them a sense of responsibility. In other words, they take Christianity   seriously as the most important thing in life; it's not the fullness of Christianity   that we Orthodox have, but it's good as far as it goes, and these people are   warm, loving people who obviously love Christ. In this way they are an example   of what we should be, only more so.

Whether they attain salvation by their practice of Christianity is for God   to judge, for some of their views and actions are far from the true Christianity   of Orthodoxy handed down to us from Christ and His Apostles; but at least an   awareness of their existence should help us to be aware of what we already have.   Some of our Orthodox young people -- for whatever reason, they don't realize   what treasure their Orthodox faith contains -- are joining such Protestant groups;   and some of our uninformed young people go much farther from Orthodoxy -- one   of the 900 victims of Jonestown a year ago was a Greek Orthodox girl, the daughter   of an Orthodox priest.

A Matter of Life and Death

I'm telling you about these Protestants both as a warning of how Orthodox young   people can lose the treasure they already have if they haven't been made aware   enough of it, and more importantly, as a means of defining a little better the   true Christianity we have and these Protestants don't have. Some of our Orthodox   young people are converted to groups like this, but it works the other way around   also -- some of these Protestants are being converted to Orthodoxy. And why   not? If we have the true Christianity, there should be something in our midst   that someone who sincerely loves the truth will see and want.

We've baptized several people from this Protestant group in our monastery;   they are drawn to Orthodoxy by the grace and the sacraments whose presence they   feel in Orthodoxy, but which are absent in their group. And once they become   Orthodox, they find their Protestant experience, which seemed so real to them   at the time, to be quite shallow and superficial. Their leaders give very practical   teachings based on the Gospel, but after a while the teachings are exhausted   and they repeat themselves. Coming to Orthodoxy, these converts find a wealth   of teaching that is inexhaustible and leads them into a depth of Christian experience   that is totally beyond even the best of non-Orthodox Christians. We who are   already Orthodox have this treasure and this depth right in front of us, and   we must use it more fully than we usually do; it is a matter of spiritual life   and death both for ourselves and for those around us who can be awakened to   the truth of Orthodoxy.

Just this last week I crossed the whole of America by train -- a vast land,   with many different kinds of landscapes and settlements. And I thought of St.   Seraphim's vision of the vast Russian land, with the smoke of the prayers of   believers going up like incense to God. Perhaps someone will say to me: "Oh,   you talk like a convert! America is America. It's full of Protestants and unbelievers,   and the Orthodox will always be a little minority of people who stick to themselves   and have no influence on the rest of America." Well, I'm not saying that   we Orthodox will "convert America" -- that's a little too ambitious   for us. However, St. Herman himself did have such a dream. He wrote a letter   after participating in the first "missionary conference" on American   soil, when that small band of missionaries divided up the vast land of Alaska   and argued over who would get the most land to cover. St. Herman, hearing this,   says that he was so exalted in soul that he thought he was present when the   Apostles themselves were dividing up the world for the preaching of the Gospel.

We don't have to have such exalted ideas in order to see that the prayers of   believers could be going up to God in America. What if we who are Orthodox Christians   began to realize who we are? -- to take our Christianity seriously, to live   as though we actually were in contact with the true Christianity? We would begin   to be different, others around us would begin to be interested in why we are   different, and we would begin to realize that we have the answers to their spiritual   questions.

We Have to Sow More

On this same train trip across the country I had what could he called missionary   encounters. Of course, I wasn't passing out tracts in the aisles; but just sitting   there in my ~ryassa~ with a cross and my beard, I attracted attention. Some   of it wasn't fruitful, but was typical of how we Orthodox are often regarded   in America: one small boy thought I was "Santa Claus," and a woman   pointed me out as "Ayatollah!" I also had several encounters with   people who should have been Orthodox: one woman who was married to a Greek man;   a man who was married to a Greek woman, but neither of them Orthodox because   the woman's grandmother had become a Lutheran for social reasons -- here it   was obvious how worldliness had taken its toll of yet another Orthodox family   in America.

But there were some fruitful encounters, too. To several people I was able   to speak about Orthodoxy (which they had never heard of) and hand out some copies of "The   Orthodox Word". One of these people had a story that should move our Orthodox   hearts.

For most of the day that I was crossing vast Wyoming -- full of nothing but   frozen, barren land and a few antelope herds -- I was talking to an intense   young man who was searching for the truth after finding out that the "charismatic"   movement is not from God. After becoming disillusioned with American religion   -- the Methodists, Roman Catholics, Baptists, and various Protestant evangelists   -- as a last resort he is learning Russian in order to go to Russia and find   out what he'll be told by people who are suffering for their faith. "Maybe   that will be real," he said, as opposed to the religious hypocrisy he sees   everywhere. He asked me eagerly about many things, from doctrines to customs   to moral teachings, and then read the chapter on the charismatic movement in   our book, "Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future" -- which he said   put into words what he felt (based on his own experience) but didn't have the   teaching to express. Here is where Orthodoxy, the true Christianity, can literally   save someone who otherwise might fall into despair from the inadequacy of the   Christianity of the West. Here again a seed was sown; perhaps Wyoming won't   become Orthodox, but a few souls there might.

Read the whole thing here.

For more writings by Father Seraphim go here.

Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works by Heiromonk Damascene

Elder Amphilochios Makris

SOURCE: Evangelismos Monastery. Patmos

Translated by Marina Robb

Elder Amphilochios Makris was born in 1889 on the island of Patmos where St. John wrote the Book of the Revelation, the last canonical book of the New Testament. He was a great defender of Orthodoxy, having suffered much throughout the years of the Italian Fascist Occupation of the Greek Dodecanese islands. During those years he set up secret schools and made sure that the Greek language and Orthodox faith continued to be taught to the children of these islands, despite the best attempts of the Fascists and the Church of Rome to expunge them.  For many years he was Abbot of the Monastery of St.John the Theologian on Patmos. He also founded the women's monastery of The Annunciation [Evangelismos] of the Mother of the Beloved in 1937.  It still thrives today as a beacon for the faithful. He was noted for his many virtues, his love, humility and fatherly concern for his spiritual children. Fr. Amphilochios was a great believer in the strength of monasticism and in Christian missionary work. He himself traveled as a preacher throughout the war years and beyond. In addition, Fr. Amphilochius founded other monasteries throughout the Greek islands, and was responsible for orphanages and various charitable institutions. The Elder died in 1970.

Orthodox Leadership in a Brave New World

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

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

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

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

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

Read the entire article here.

Resurrection in Albania

In Albania every moment you touch the rough surface of life. Where there is wealth, it is gross and unembarrassed. Death is close and unhidden. Power and evil are undisguised, with no silk wrappings. Poverty rules to a degree seen nowhere else in Europe, and yet it is not hard to encounter kindness and welcome of a quality not easily found in richer countries.

The great majority of people are living in austere circumstances while in the countryside life has changed little since the medieval period. Many roads are unpaved, while those that are surfaced are so full of holes that even a short drive on what appears to be a straight road is a longer ride because of the curves the driver must make in choosing the path least likely to damage the car. Many still use horse and wagon or donkey. Electricity is unpredictable and the voltage flow so uneven that electrical circuits are easily damaged. Hospitals are few, with meager resources and in appalling condition — broken windows and doors, badly overcrowded, many elevators no longer working. Schools are often in a similar state. Many factories are closed because of age and decay.

Poverty often breeds crime, especially in a society in which religious life has been badly damaged, and this is the case in Albania. The “Albanian Mafia” is infamous throughout western Europe. A car stolen in Amsterdam may well end up in Tirana. There is also the drug trade and, still worse, a trade in young women forced into prostitution with the threat that any effort to escape will result in the murder of one or more members of the woman’s family.

Possibly as much as a third of the Albanian population of three million has left to work in other countries — there is an estimated half-million in Greece alone, many of them there illegally.

Far worse than poverty has been the creation of what Archbishop Anastasios, head of the Orthodox Church of Albania, often calls “a culture of fear” which he sees symbolized by the hundreds of thousands of mushroom-like bunkers scattered throughout the country. Especially during the communist era, neighbor did not dare to trust neighbor. “Unless you like to fight dragons, like Saint George,” one old man told me, “you had to carefully hide even the smallest sign of political dissent or religious belief.”

While repression was normal throughout the Communist world, in no other country was the determination to destroy every vestige of religious life so methodical and thorough as in Albania. At least 355 priests were either executed or perished from illness, starvation or injuries in prisons and labor camps. Religious repression began when the partisans took power after the German occupation. In 1967 Albania went a step further, declaring itself the world’s first atheist state. Every church and mosque was closed. Many religious buildings were demolished. Others were turned in warehouses, weapons depots, stables, stores, clubs and restaurants. (There is still resistance in the government to the return of former churches and monasteries. No matter what road the visitor follows, ruined churches are still easily found, yet also clear indications that for local people even the ruins of a church provide a place of prayer. Candles are lit, small paper icons are left.)

For all its poverty and the harsh history, only among Palestinians have I experienced such absolute hospitality. What little people have they share with an enthusiasm that reveals a different sort of poverty in the rich world.

Among the treasures of Albania today is its Orthodox Church, at the heart of which is Archbishop Anastasios. Now 71, he had hoped to spend this part of his life teaching and writing books but has instead accepted responsibility for leading the Church in Albania.

Read the whole thing here.

Saint Nektarios

During our recent trip to Greece, we made a pilgrimage to the island of Aegina and the Church of Saint Nektarios.  Coincidentally, I had just finished reading a book entitled "Saint Nektarios: The Saint of Our Century" by Sotos Chondropoulos.  Chondropoulos was a talented Greek novelist who died in 1989.  He met Jesus Christ on his personal road to Damascus and subsequently wrote the biography of Nektarios and twelve more biographies of famous Saints of Our Church, always using original sources. The life and words of Saint Nektarios were still fresh in my mind when my wife Anna, my younger son Chris and I made the journey from Pireaus to the bustling island of Aegina. The Church of Saint Nektarios and the adjoining women's monastery are one of the most visited religious sites in Greece.

Saint Nektarios has always held a special fascination for me because my yiayia Evdoxia revered him, spoke to me about him and often urged me to pray for his intercession.  In his book entitled "The Faith:Understanding Orthodox Christianity, Clark Carlton says the following: "Since the time of the Protestant Reformation much of Western Christendom has either ignored or rejected outright the intercession of the Mother of God and the Saints for those on earth. In so doing Protestants have forfeited one of the greatest privileges of being Christians. The Apostle James enjoins us to pray for one another, and in the same verse, explains why: the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much (James 5:16).  It is ironic that those who oppose the idea of seeking the intercession of the Saints in heaven have no objections to asking ordinary sinful Christians to pray for them.  But lets us consider whose prayers according to St. James are more effectual, those Christians still alive on earth struggling with their own sins or those who have gone on to be with God and are recognized by the Church for their holiness of life."   For a better understanding of the role of the Saints in the Orthodox Church I would recommend Dr. George Bebis' essay here.

In reading about the life of Saint Nektarios one is struck by the parallels between Greece in his era and modern Greece today. The Greek intellectuals and the bourgeoisie of  his era were also busy trying to emulate the West in a frantic effort to "modernize" Greece by eliminating its Byzantine past, most notably, its Orthodox religious faith. Saint Nektarios was followed and constantly tested by controversy,  rumors and false accusations throughout his life.  In every instance he responded with love, humility  and forgiveness.  He was surrounded by contemporaries within the Church who were scandalized by his penchant for giving away any money he had and for dressing more like a poor monk rather than a prelate of the Church. His shining example not only influenced an entire generation,  it continues to do so  through his writings and miracles today.

Please don't take my word for it, read what Saint Nektarios has to say for yourself. Click on the continuation of this post to access some of his selected writings.

Hard Questions

My friend Margaret, writes:

"What do I say to my dear Muslim friends? You need to be converted before you are saved? They already lead lives which are in every practical respect Christian. We never disagree over values, over the way to bring up our children, over how others should be treated, over the role of women. They are some of the people I most respect in the world and truly good people. Largely because of this impossible conundrum I drifted away from a church which demands that we make those who profess other faiths into outsiders."

Dear Margaret,

Many years ago, when I was a 19 year old brassy Marine, home on my first leave, I was emptying the contents of my seabag on the bed in my room looking for a pair of jeans to wear. As I was doing this my father walked in and noticed a book on the bed which he picked up out of curiosity. It was a copy of  The Book of Mormon which another Marine, who happened to be a Mormon, had shoved into my hand before I left. I wasn't even remotely interested in reading it, but so as not to embarrass this guy, I held onto it. My Dad leafed through it,  looked at me with disappointment written all over his face  and asked "Why are you reading this?"  I quickly assured him that I had no intention of converting to Mormonism. What he said surprised me.  "Only God knows what is in our hearts and only he can judge us, but be careful about what you read, hear and say." He put the book back on the bed and walked out. We never talked about it again.

Since then I have thought a lot about what he said that night. My Mormon buddy probably thought I was going straight to Hell, with no rest stops in between, he saw it as his duty to straighten me out, especially in light of my "strange" religious preference.  I could tell my Dad thought these guys were out in left field but he didn't come right out and say it.  I never figured out why my Dad, a devout Orthodox Christian, failed to come down hard on those of other faiths. Perhaps Dad knew a little more about the subject than I did.  When I read the passages below in an extraordinary book entitled "Gifts of the Desert: The Forgotten Path of Christian Spirituality" by Kyriacos Markides (pp. 154-156), the light bulb in my head suddenly went on, finally after so many years.  In the book, Markides asks some tough questions of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, a truly remarkable Orthodox prelate and theologian, who is, by the way a countryman of yours. He is really worth getting to know better:

"It is not for us to say who is saved or is not saved. God is the one who decides that. And we do not have the right to say to any particular person that he or she is not saved. We do not know. As to how people are saved, we know for certain that it is only through Christ, the unique only begotten Son of God. But Christ can act in different ways: sometimes explicit, sometimes hidden. My own belief is that, bowing before this mystery, nonetheless we may say: If a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist or a Jew has lived according to the highest and best in their tradition, then in some way they already believe in Christ because all truth  is in Christ.'

....You are saying then that such people are Christian, as it were, in their inner being, and not Christian in any culturally recognizable way. Rather they manifest Christ as the Logos which is God's love. So persons who express that love are Christian deep down. It is the degree to which humans can express love that determines to what degree they come close to Christ. 'This is what I believe.'

...'Many Christians who in this life thought they believed in Christ may find, when they meet Christ after death, that he says to them: 'I do not know you! You are not my servants. You used my name but you were not close to me.'   So, we cannot say that you will automatically be saved just because you happen to be a member of the Church, and we cannot say that you will automatically be condemned simply because in this life you did not belong to the Church.'

Quoting from St Augustine, Bishop Kallistos added: 'There are many wolves inside and many sheep outside."

Hope this helps you as much as it helped me.

                                                            Sincerely,  Stavros

P.S.  Regards to your friends.

P.S.S.  Hear him for yourself, here.

The Campaign Against Christians

Some Christians have to deal with bothersome, insulting blog comments and some Christians, like the ones in Baghdad, have to deal with more serious problems, like forced conversion or violent death at the hands of Islamic radicals. This article certainly puts my own problems into perspective. Hat tip to Ares.

The Myth of Personal Freedom

Freedom is the prevailing cry of the world today and overwhelming preoccupation of  the young.  In the opinion of many, Christianity is an obstacle to freedom.  Hermes puts it thus:

"To be a Christian you must accept the belief that Jesus is the Son of God as exemplified by the Nicene Creed. Although within this there is some freedom to think outside of this mental boundary, you cannot believe or think anything else outside of it otherwise you would cease to be a Christian. It is a closed system of thought. Some of the answers are already assumed before questions are asked."

Perhaps part of the problem is the tendency towards legalism. Becoming overly obsessed with rules rather than our relationship with God, as if he was a celestial policeman waiting to catch us out of line. To be sure, Christ does make demands on us that sometimes limit our autonomy.  It's very much like marriage, another institution that many people have a problem with these days.  In a healthy marriage both partners often sacrifice their own desires in order to serve the other.

Even if there were no rules to speak of, many would still resist the imposition of standards. To them freedom or living in an "open system" means pure autonomy where they can exercise their God given right to do and think whatever they want, with no accountability to anyone.  No "charlatans or schizophrenics" disguised as messiahs or prophets, I believe was the way it was phrased, to tell us what to do. 

Of course, that can lead to irresponsibility and license rather than freedom.  Sound familiar?  Fortunately, most people, don't live that way. Sooner or later they choose one course of action over another, based on some set of values. In other words, they surrender their will to standards, whether good or bad, and act accordingly. So its not just Christian values that stifle freedom but Hellenic values, even "pagan" values. 

The real question is what kind of person do we want to be? Christians try to mold their character after the example of Jesus.  Obviously some of us are worse at it than others, but we keep trying nonetheless. Christ was the most liberated man who ever lived. His ultimate standard of behavior was: What does my Father, God, want me to do? Did that code stifle his freedom? Hardly.  He was utterly free of covetousness, hypocrisy, fear of others, and every other vice. At the same time He was free to be himself, free to tell the truth, free to love people with warmth and purity and free to surrender His life for others.

True freedom is Christ-like freedom. It consists of moral standards that are well known and well proven. Standards that still work today and it takes inspiration from the most liberated and liberating human being that ever lived.  God gave humans free will. We have the ultimate choice as to whose set of standards we will follow.

Christianity Meets Greek Philosophy

Are you proud to be who you are? Paul of Tarsus surely was. Paul was brought up in Jerusalem under the tutelage of Gamaliel, the most illustrious rabbi of his day and a highly respected member of the Jewish Council. Paul was trained in the Law and became a Pharisee, part of the religious elite of Judaism. Paul was an apt pupil, outstripping his peers in enthusiasm for ancestral traditions and the Law. He was best known for his ardent persecution of Christians. Ironically Paul's background not only prepared him to be the early Church's chief opponent but also to become its leading spokesperson.

Perhaps the chief irony of Saint Paul's life was his calling to be the "Apostle to the Gentiles."  Paul was a Pharisse, the very title meaning to separate. They separated themselves from women, lepers, Samaritans, and especially from Gentiles. So for Paul the act of taking the Gospel to the Gentiles was a total repudiation of his former life. Paul became highly critical of his culture , but only to the extent that it fostered self-righteous pride, exclusive attitudes or a belief in salvation by the Law rather than by faith in Christt. God not only helped him reevaluate his ethnicity but in the process transformed his attitude toward non-Jews. He became a man who knew who he was, so he was no longer threatened by people from other cultures. Culture provides people with a common set of experiences and values that bind them together. God never asks us to reject our roots. We can affirm our ethnic heritage as a rich gift from Him.  To be sure ethnicity ought not create barriers with other people.

During his travels preaching the Gospel, Paul arrived in Athens, a cultural center of the Roman World. Having preached in Thessalonika, Phillipi and Berea, he was compelled to leave and arranged a rendezvous with his companions, Timothy and Silas in Athens. There the gospel collided with a centuries old culture rooted in intellectualism and discourse. He addressed the Epicurean and Stoics in their own forum, the Areopagus. 

Archbishop Christodoulos describes the meeting thus:  "St Paul began by pointing out the Athenians altar to the Unknown God. He declares to them “the God that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth” , a teaching that is of course radically opposed to the Greek perception, according to which there can be no creation from nothing. But the Apostle proceeds by immediately building a bridge over to their beliefs: he rejects pagan temples, by adding that God “dwelleth not in temples made with hands” — a formulation that the philosophers among his audience must have shared to a large extent. He tells them that we men are children of God, “for we are also his offspring” . This is also a perception alien from Greek religion, which considered men and gods creatures of earth and sky. Nonetheless, even this novel teaching was not unfamiliar to them. Aratos had already taught this and his works were among the most popular in that period. Paul not only knew this, but in his speech he quotes a verse from Aratos: “because we are also his offspring” , as a reminder to help them . It is worth noting that Aratos, too, echoes a position of Cleanthes, purportedly the founder of Stoic philosophy, who taught that we men are children of God. Certainly, St. Paul did not speak on the Areopagus as the offspring of Stoic philosophy; far from that. He was the disciple of Jesus Christ, and only His. But he honored the Athens of philosophy, making sure that he would show her the true means by which she should test the quality of her thought: the light of Resurrection. We see him upholding the same position when he writes to the Thessalonians: “ye turned to God from idols, to serve [from now on] the living and true God” .

Paul’s teaching in Athens remained without continuation. He did not stay long in town nor did he ever intend to return. We have no epistle of his to the Athenians. Nevertheless, this does not imply contempt. The Athens of Paul’s time was a small town, which lived mainly on the income from the foreign students of the schools. It was a town with reputation, but without population. So Paul left Athens for Corinth, a prosperous and populous town. And it would be worth noting that there, in Corinth, where he came into contact with the powerful Jewish colony, he decided —not without soul-sickness— to put his own race aside and to direct his attention exclusively to the Gentiles."

Was Paul's strategy effective? Some of the Greeks listening to Paul called him a "babbler," others postponed judgment pending later discussion.  In his gospel, Luke names two people in particular that responded to Paul's message: a man named Dionysios, who later became Bishop of Athens  and a woman named Damaris, most likely a hetairai, a trained companion educated in subjects usually reserved for men, such as rhetoric and philosophy. A few years later a church was established in  Athens.

The Role of Faith and Reason in Christian Hellenism

Regular readers of MGO may recall the recent debate about Greek Christianity.  Getting caught in the middle of an emotional debate over a controversial post makes me prone to frequent periods of deep reflection during which I have a bad habit of tuning the world around me out while I think. Luckily, my wife Anna is there to snap me back to reality when the need arises.  I have to confess that I find thinking about these issues intellectually stimulating yet exhausting because they really make me want to delve deeper, read some more and treat the subject more thoroughly. Needless to say that takes time, an increasingly scarce asset these days in my life. The debate is a result of the "tension" between the Greek legacy of the Ancients and that of the Byzantines. It is not a new debate nor is it one that has any intention of expiring any time soon. At the crux of the debate is simply this: Are the two compatible and reconcilable? Just as important, the underlying question is how does either one affect man's eternal search for truth?

Greeks and Westerners in general, are faced with a choice, very much like that facing people in the first centuries of the early Christian era. That choice is between Christianity with its difficult message of the "gift of self"  and a despairing, narcissistic, hedonistic paganism in all its variations,  the modern forms of which are worship of progress, nature and modern science.  Hermes once informed me that I was old enough to be his father, which is quite true. Therefore I will take up the burden of at least attempting to answer some of the questions he poses in this debate in a fatherly way. Knowing of course that young men rarely pay much attention to their fathers since they are too busy putting everything under the microscope only to find us all wanting. I make no claim that I have any particular expertise in this realm. I am neither a theologian nor philosopher, just someone who is willing to stick his head out and give you my take on the subject.

Young people today are a product of a Postmodernist Western world. Postmodernists have a mission and that mission is to deconstruct the foundations of traditional Christian beliefs. Beliefs that they say are backward, dogmatic and utterly useless in the "modern" world. Beliefs that I hold dear. They claim they are always looking for the truth, unfortunately they can never seem to find it unless it comes in the form of  dubious scientific theories. This particular malady points towards relativism - a doctrine instructing that truth and morality are relative and not absolute. Relativism asserts that what is accepted as truth is relative to a person's situation or standpoint, and denies that any standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others. If truth is relative, then absolute right and absolute wrong become doubtful and obscure. And if truth is relative, then only subjective and indefinite answers exist for the purpose and meaning of life. It's all good and anything goes, as they say these days.

So is there any absolute or real truth in this complex and uncertain world? Our mutual friend, Socrates, was sentenced to death by his fellow Athenians for  corrupting the youth and impiety.  What his followers learned from him above all else, was to scrutinize, and to be skeptical. They learned not to take on authority or on faith what others told them about virtue, justice, or piety; they were seeking, as was Socrates himself, the truth of the matter—and the reasons for accepting it to be the truth of the matter.   The most tragic part of the whole affair is that Socrates was put to death for what turns out to be the beginning of all knowledge and wisdom. Scrutiny and skepticism precede any growth in knowledge whatever, and they are its necessary prerequisites. A person who does not scrutinize will not separate truth from falsity, fact from fiction, reality from myth. And a person who is not skeptical will never even begin to scrutinize. This applies to both sides of an argument.  Nowadays, this ability to think critically is a disappearing commodity.  The education system, irregardless of where one lives, has abandoned the difficult task of inculcating the requisite skills needed by a critical thinker.

Here's the crux of the problem. No matter how well we scrutinize things and how skeptical we may be, truth  is elusive.  Reason can deal effectively only with certain categories of truth. True wisdom must necessarily refuse to allow reason to overcome its limitations; and where experience or common sense plainly proves that the intellect has reasoned wrongly, then sometimes we must rely on faith alone. Faith and reason are both sources of authority upon which beliefs can rest.   Reason is generally based on the principles for a methodological inquiry.   Once demonstrated, a proposition or claim is ordinarily understood to be justified  as true or authoritative. Faith, on the other hand, involves taking a stance toward  some claim that we may not be able to prove to everyone's satisfaction. It involves a  commitment on the part of the believer.  Religious  faith involves a belief that is  understood to come from the authority of revelation. If one can't accept revelation and true Christianity gives everyone a choice in the matter, then one has to keep looking.  For some, the never-ending search for the truth and the worship of logic/science could not possibly come to terms with accepting the existence of God or anything for that matter that cannot be measured, examined or proven scientifically. Modern man has developed  a penchant for explaining everything and he now suffers from a complete lack of humility when it comes to having an explanation for everything.

Demetrios  Constantelos writes in an essay on Paidea and the Church Fathers:

"The question concerning the relations between the Christian faith and Greek thought preoccupied the Christian community for nearly three and a half centuries but it was resolved as a result of the intellectual efforts of people like the Three Hierarchs, (Sts Basil, Gregory and John Chrysostom).
What do they have to teach us today? First that our struggles and frustrations, our defeats and disappointments are not unique; that as we carry humanity’s perpetual quest for truth, for wisdom, for inner freedom, for happiness, we must think historically and let our forefathers, either of the very distant antiquity or of later ages, provide us with their experience and their wisdom. Of course, we must build our research on their discoveries and add upon the structure of human experience our own experience. The primary requirement which many of the best thinkers of the Hellenic-Christian heritage advocated – from Solon, Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch to Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom, Photios, Palamas – was a realization of man’s limitations, the need for self-knowledge and humility, for a sincere search beyond the limited views of the natural senses, and an invitation to an endless intellectual adventure. In brief, the educational ideal of the Greek and Christian heritage is the development of the human being into a cultivated person possessing faith in a core of values and a persistent effort to apply them in every day life until the ikon of the god-man Christ, the theanthropos

The Greek Church arrived at the conclusion that the study of Hellenic wisdom was both useful and desirable, provided that the Christian rejected the evil and retained all that was good and true. Christianity was baptized in the Greek stream of language and thought, in the Greek cultural milieu and Hellenistic historical setting. As a whole, however, the Fathers of the Greek Church did not seek to borrow essence and content from ancient Greek thought, for these they possessed in their sacred Scriptures. They intended to borrow methodologies, technical means, terminology, and logical or grammatical structures in order to build up the Christian edifice of theology, of doctrine and thought. Nevertheless, in this effort Christian revelation did not escape infiltration by Greek thought, and Greek cultural and intellectual influences became interwoven with Christian faith. A harmonious convergence was achieved between Greek thought and Christian faith, and a balance has prevailed in the Eastern Church to the present day.

Tο be sure, attempts were made to upset the balance. For example, the Emperor Julian (360-363) made serious efforts to restore not only classica1 learning but also the Olympian deities. John Italos in the eleventh century and George Plethon Gemistos in the fifteenth maintained that the classical religious and intellectual tradition offered everything, if not more, that man needs to know and to possess than Christianity. Other ecclesiastics, such as Epiphanios of Cyprus and Anastasios of Sinai, believed that Christianity was self sufficient and that it could not be reconciled with the classical tradition. But neither the enemies of Christianity nor the adversaries of the classics prevailed. Apollinarios the Younger established the equilibrium when he stated that "the good wherever it is found is a property of the truth." The Church recognized in this principle the legacy of the Greek classics and united them with the Christian tradition. Thus we observe in the Byzantine era the continuity of the Greek past, the Hellenistic heritage united with the new element of the Christian faith."

Christianity, emerged from Judaism, introducing a set of revealed truths and practices  to its adherents. Many of these beliefs and practices differed significantly from what the Greek religions and Judaism had held. In The Rise of Christianity (Princeton University Press, 1996) by Rodney Stark, professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington, gives us a new perspective on the formative years of Christianity. I mention Stark"s study because he is a scholar without an ax to grind against Christians and his research approaches the subject without any preconceptions. In one of the more startling conclusions from his research, Stark says that contrary to the current wisdom, the mission to the Jews of the early Christians was largely successful and continued right up to the year 300. According to Stark, the some four or five million Jews of the Diaspora had "adjusted to life in the Diaspora in ways that made them very marginal vis-a-vis the Jews of Jerusalem, hence the need as early as the third century for the Torah to be translated into Greek for the Jews outside of Israel (the Septuagint)."  For Jews who lived in the Hellenic world, "Christianity offered to retain much of the religious content of both cultures and to resolve the contradictions between them." 

It should be noted that most of the new converts to Christianity came from the Hellenized peoples of the East especially the Greeks rather than from Judaism, because Christianity had much more in common with the freedom imposed by the Greek mind than the legality of Judaism.  Christianity preached the possibility of a worthwhile and even happy existence for slaves, the weak, the poor, the ugly, even barbarians, people Aristotle  and Plato would not have regarded as capable of a happy life and people the Jews would not have regarded as those like themselves chosen by God.  During the major upheavals of the fourth century Christianity emerged as the dominant movement. The new faith engaged in both dialogue and conflict with Greco-Roman culture. Christians found themselves in conflict with pagan society and even with themselves.  Change, heresy, reformations, compromises, violence, persecutions were characteristics of the fourth century but they did not stop there.

Now was the spread of Christianity a "miracle" or just coincidental based on a combinations of existing facts?  Believers like me will lean toward the miraculous. Hermes on the other hand, wouldn't accept such an explanation, so again, I will let Stark offer the conclusions formed by his research. I stress here that historians, even those who can offer us the benefit of their research studies, can't be sure that they have all the right answers.  They are making an educated guess. Stark points out that in 165, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, an epidemic struck that carried away during the course of fifteen years up to a third of the total population of the empire, including Marcus Aurelius himself. In 251 a similar epidemic, most likely of measles, struck again with similar results. Historians generally acknowledge that these epidemics produced a depopulation which led in part to the decline of the Roman empire, more than the normally attributed cause of "moral degeneration." Stark points out that these epidemics favored the rapid rise of Christianity for three reasons. One, that Christianity offered a more satisfactory account of "why bad things happen to good people," based on the centrality of the suffering and Cross of Christ than any form of classical paganism. Second, "Christian values of love and charity, from the beginning, had been translated into norms of social service and community solidarity. When disasters struck, the Christians were better able to cope, and this resulted in substantially higher rates of survival. This meant that in the aftermath of each epidemic, Christians made up a larger and larger percentage of the population even without new converts." Last, these epidemics left large numbers of people without the interpersonal bonds that would have prevented them from becoming Christians, thus encouraging conversion. He says, "in a sense paganism did indeed 'topple over dead' or at least acquired its fatal illness during these epidemics, falling victim to its relative inability to confront these crises socially or spiritually, an inability suddenly revealed by the example of its upstart challenger."  His words not mine.

Stark introduces a number of other elements in Christianity's rise to prominence. It was an urban phenomenon based in the teeming cities of the Roman Empire especially in the East. Stark underlines the fact that Christianity brought a new culture capable of making life in Greco-Roman cities more tolerable: "To cities filled with homeless and the impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services."  Contrary to popular belief,  despite Christianity's drawing power  for the poor and slaves, it also attracted the upper and middle classes in appreciable numbers.

"Christianity was unusually appealing to pagan women" because "within the Christian subculture women enjoyed far higher status than did women in the Greco-Roman world at large." He shows that Christianity recognized women as equal to men, children of God with the same supernatural destiny. Moreover the Christian moral code of prohibition against polygamy, divorce, birth control, abortion, and infanticide contributed to the well-being of women, changing their status from powerless serfs in bondage to men, to women with dignity and rights in both the Church and the State. Go to any Church service on any given day and you will understand the importance of women within the body of the Church.

Stark establishes four conclusions based on his study. One, Christianity rapidly produced a substantial surplus of females as a result of Christian prohibitions against infanticide (normally directed against girl infants), abortion (often producing the death of the mother), and the high rate of conversion to Christianity among women. Second, as already pointed out, Christian women enjoyed substantially higher status within Christian society than women did in the world at large, which made Christianity highly attractive to them. Third, the surplus of Christian women and of pagan men produced many marriages that led to the secondary conversions of pagan men to the Faith, a phenomenon that continues today.  Finally, the abundance of Christian women resulted in higher birthrates; superior fertility contributed to the rise of Christianity. 

Why did Christianity grow then? According to Stark, "It grew because Christians constituted an intense community, able to generate the 'invincible obstinacy' that so offended the younger Pliny but yielded immense religious rewards. And the primary means of its growth was through the united and motivated efforts of the growing numbers of Christian believers, who invited their friends, relatives, and neighbors to share the 'good news'." At the heart of this willingness to share one's faith was the revealed word of God, as taught by the Church.  Acceptance of Christian doctrine was based on an article of faith. "Central doctrines of Christianity prompted and sustained attractive, liberating, and effective social relations and organization." The chief doctrine, of course, which was radically new to a pagan world groaning under a host of miseries was that "because God loves humanity, Christians may not please God unless they love one another."

George over at Ellopos Blog has his own take on the subject with a blog post entitled: "The Transition of Hellenism from Antiquity to Christianity". It is well worth reading. I would also recommend reading a book called  Christian Hellenism by Demetrios  J. Constantelos. You can read a chapter entitled "The Formation of the Hellenic Christian Mind"  here.

Are we going to change any minds? Not likely.

The Virtue of Philotimo

Growing up Greek in America, my parents used to hammer one word into my thick little skull. PHILOTIMO. Every time I turned around Mama and Baba were giving me the "philotimo" lecture. I may not have been a great practitioner of this time honored Greek virtue,  but at least I knew what it looked like when I saw it.  To me it always meant doing the right thing, a difficult task in the best of times.  Luckily for me even though I often failed to live up to the high standard of Philotimo required of a Greek, I had plenty of Greek (and non-Greek) role models in my life that epitomized this attribute encouraging me to do the same. These role models were my parents, priests, teachers, relatives, even fellow Marines.  Thankfully, they never gave up on me.

The best description of Philotimo I have ever read is the following:  "Philotimo is that deep-seated awareness in the heart that motivates the good that a person does. A philotimos person is one who conceives and enacts eagerly those things good."  Philotimo originated with our ancient ancestors but was incorporated seamlessly by Orthodox Christianity and  its importance is preached by many of the Greek-speaking elders of our Church such as Elder Paisios:

(from the book "Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain" by monk Christodoulos of Mt Athos)

Father Paisios told me an incident from his childhood years:

"When I was a child and my soul was still pure, I loved Christ very much. I used to walk in the woods carrying a cross in my hands, chanting and praying and wishing to become a monk. My parents told me that I should first grow up and then leave to go to the monastery. One day, as I was taking my usual walk in the woods, I met a fellow villager. When he saw me carrying the cross, he asked me; "what is this?" "The Cross of our Christ," I replied. Since he did not have any positive thoughts in his mind, he said to me, "Arsenios, you are silly. You don't mean to say that you believe in God. He does not exist. These religious stories are made up by some priests. We have evolved from the monkey. Christ was simply a man like all of us.

When he finished, he got up and left. His twisted thoughts filled my innocent soul with black heavy clouds. Being alone in the woods, I began to think that maybe God does not exist. As I was feeling confused, desperate and extremely asked, I asked Christ to give me an indication of His existence, so I could believe in Him. But He did not respond. Feeling exhausted, I lay on the ground to rest. Suddenly, a positive thought, full of philotimo (responsive gratefulness), entered my innocent soul; "Hold on for a second! Wasn't Christ the kindest man ever on earth? No one has ever found anything evil in Him. So, whether He is God or not, I don't care. Based on the fact that He is the kindest man on earth and I haven't known anyone better, I will try to become like Him and absolutely obey everything the Gospel says. I will even give my life for Him, if needed, since He is so kind.

All my thoughts of disbelief disappeared and my soul was filled with immense joy. The power of my grateful thought (philotimo) dissolved all the ambiguous ones. When I started believing in Christ and decided to love Him as much as I could, solely out of philotimo (responsive gratefulness), I experienced a miracle that firmly sealed my grateful thought. Then, I thought, "I do not care any more if someone tells me that God does not exist!"

As the story of the Elder regarding his grateful thought did not completely satisfy me, I asked him with a certain curiosity to tell me about the miracle he experienced I the woods. Father Paisios was found in a difficult position and replied that he could not tell me about it. This way, he indicated that I, too, should not look for miracles, but rather trust my feeling of philotimo, as it is the key which opens the door to every good.

Later on, Father Paisios told me that he had seen the Lord.

He had this to say about Philotimo:

"The righteous Christian does not practice good acts for his own benefit, i.e. in order to be rewarded or to avoid hell and gain paradise, but rather because he prefers good to evil. Everything else is a natural consequence of the good that fills our soul without having asked for it. This way, good has dignity; otherwise, it originates from the cheap attitude of "give and take."

Please read the entire essay on Philotimo at www.OrthodoxWiki.org, it's well worth a few minutes of your time. Many thanks to the friend who told me about it.

Serbian Orthodox New Martyrs of the Second World War

by Joachim Wertz

The twentieth century has seen the crowning of a multitude of martyrs. Holy Russia, from the time of the Bolshevik revolution to the present, has given us millions of new heavenly intercessors, champions of the faith. This is well known to the entire Orthodox Church. Unfortunately, many Orthodox Christians are ignorant of the sufferings of the nearly 750,000 Orthodox Serbian Christians who gave their lives in the defense and confession of the faith during the time of the last world war in the so-called "Independent State of Croatia" and in other parts of German-occupied Yugoslavia at the hands of the Croatian Nationalists and other enemies of the Orthodox Church, at the instigation of and with the open participation of the Latin clergy. This persecution was aimed at the complete elimination of the Orthodox Church in these areas. Attempts at forced conversion to Catholicism were joined to a systematic and completely overt destruction of every trace of Orthodoxy. All of this was done in such a fierce and inconceivably brutal manner and in such a short span of time and relatively small geographic area that it is difficult even to imagine. Indeed the characteristics of this recent persecution are unprecedented in the history of the Church after the persecutions of the first centuries. The sacrifice and memory of these martyrs must not be allowed to remain hidden, known only to their fellow Orthodox countrymen, but should be published and commemorated for the edification of all Orthodox Christians.

Read the entire excerpt from his book here.

Also highly recommended:

Sevtlana Novko's Journal and Byzantine Sacred Art Blog

The New Martyrs of Kosovo  by Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes

Christ is Risen - ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ

From Monachos.net

The Paschal sermon of Saint John Chrysostom is read aloud in every Orthodox parish on the morning of the Great and Holy Pascha.

According to the tradition of the Church, no one sits during the reading of St John's sermon, but all stand and listen with attentiveness.

---

 If any man be devout and loveth God,
Let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast!
If any man be a wise servant,
Let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord.

If any have laboured long in fasting,
Let him how receive his recompense.
If any have wrought from the first hour,
Let him today receive his just reward.
If any have come at the third hour,
Let him with thankfulness keep the feast.
If any have arrived at the sixth hour,
Let him have no misgivings;
Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore.
If any have delayed until the ninth hour,
Let him draw near, fearing nothing.
And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour,
Let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.

For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour,
Will accept the last even as the first.
He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour,
Even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour.
And He showeth mercy upon the last,
And careth for the first;
And to the one He giveth,
And upon the other He bestoweth gifts.
And He both accepteth the deeds,
And welcometh the intention,
And honoureth the acts and praises the offering.

Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord;
Receive your reward,
Both the first, and likewise the second.
You rich and poor together, hold high festival!
You sober and you heedless, honour the day!
Rejoice today, both you who have fasted
And you who have disregarded the fast.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously.
The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith:
Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Let no one bewail his poverty,
For the universal Kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one weep for his iniquities,
For pardon has shown forth from the grave.
Let no one fear death,
For the Saviour's death has set us free.
He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion
Unto ages of ages.

Amen.

 

Christ Crucified

The Reading is from Matthew 27:33-54:

At that time, when the soldiers came to a place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull), they offered him wine to drink, mingled with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots; then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, "This is Jesus the King of the Jews." Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, "You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, 'I am the Son of God.'" And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "This man is calling Elijah." And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him." And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe, and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!"

Orthodox Monasticism in America: A Photo Journal

A talented photographer named Nektario Kalaitzakis has taken some beautiful photographs of Greek Orthodox Monasteries in the United States & Canada: St.Anthony's in Arizona, St. Nekatarios in New York, Panagia Parigoritissa in Quebec and Holy Trinity in Michigan. To view the photo albums, click on this link.

Pascha in Dachau, May 6, 1945

" In the entire history of the Orthodox Church there has probably never been an Easter service like the one at Dachau in 1945. Greek and Serbian priests together with a Serbian deacon adorned the make-shift "vestments" over their blue and gray-striped prisoners uniforms. Then they began to chant, changing from Greek to Slavonic, and then back again to Greek. The Easter Canon, the Easter Sticheras - everything was recited from memory. The Gospel - "In the beginning was the Word" - also from memory.

And finally, the Homily of Saint John Chrysostom - also from memory. A young Greek monk from the Holy Mountain stood up in front of us and recited it with such infectious enthusiasm that we shall never forget him as long as we live. Saint John Chrysostomos himself seemed to speak through him to us and to the rest of the world as well! Eighteen Orthodox priests and one deacon - most of whom were Serbs, participated in this unforgettable service. Like the sick man who had been lowered through the roof of a house and placed in front of the feet of Christ the Saviour, the Greek Archimandrite Meletios was carried on a stretcher into the chapel, where he remained prostrate for the duration of the service."

Read the whole thing here.

Holy Week in the Eastern Orthodox Church

For those interested in the Orthodox Celebration of Holy Week. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America has a good synopsis here.  His Eminence Metropolitan Isaiah also writes about the importance of Fasting here.  Lastly, a sermon entitled "A Deadening of the Human Spirit," written by St. Ignatius Brianchaninov in 1867, which resonates even today, here.

Living an Orthodox Life

Today is Palm Sunday. The Lenten period is nearing its end and we Orthodox Christians stand on the doorstep of Holy Week. Christ enters Jerusaleum and the people are joyous. As St. Paul tells us in the Epistle reading for today: "Brethern, rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance. The Lord is at hand."  Unfortunately, not everyone is joyful in our modern world or in the world when Jesus walked the earth. The pharisees were certainly not and neither was Judas. Within a short time they would inflict their sadness and anger  on the rest.

Our Holy Orthodox Church is familiar with anger, controversy, conflict and persecution. It is always with us because the Church is a hospital for sinners and as is often evident, we bring our baggage with us. The outside world is never far away.  There are two things the Church offers: healing and resurrection. Those that have no need of either therefore have no need of the Church.  If we want to live a superficial life, in isolation and alone, without true satisfaction or spiritual healing you have no need of the Church or the things that it teaches. Unfortunately, no one is handed healing and life eternal on a silver platter. We have to struggle for it. Metropolitan Lauras of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad writes the following:

"The situation of an Orthodox person, an Orthodox Christian who lives in the contemporary world, may be described, without any exaggeration, as extremely difficult. The whole of present-day life, in all its tendencies, in one way or another is directed against a person who is trying to live according to the teachings of the Orthodox Church. In life around us, in our environment, in our heterodox surroundings, everything is essentially a total denial of Christianity. If, in the beginning of the Christian era, Christ's beloved disciple, St. John the Theologian, could write, "... the whole world lieth in wickedness" (I John 5:19), then how much more justified we are in speaking thus of our times.

Being a true Orthodox Christian, prepared to preserve unto death one's faith in Christ our Saviour, is much more difficult in our day than it was in the first centuries of Christianity. It's true there were persecutions then and Christians were tormented, but the Christians well remembered the Saviour's words, " ... fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul" (Matt. 11:28). Being fortified by God's grace, they joyfully went to their martyrdom and gave up their lives for Christ. This was also the case in Russia during the torture and persecutions. Now nobody threatens us, living here in freedom, with persecution and torture, but in spite of this, a persecution in its most diverse forms is being carried on against Christianity and against the Christian way of life. Today we see that everything connected with faith in God, with the teaching of God's Word, with Christ's teachings and the teachings of the Orthodox Church, in one way or another is being driven out of a person's life. This process that is taking place in the contemporary world is a process of apostasy, and it can be detected in every aspect of life."

Living in such an inhospitable, not to mention fallen, world, how are we to find our way?  I believe we have to do it within the body of the Church. Only within our Holy Orthodox Church will we discover the uncorrupted teachings of Christ as handed down by his Apostles, the Church Fathers, and the example of His Saints. Only within the Church can we find a community of believers that can help each other in our spiritual journey. Keep in mind however, that within the Church, different people are at different stages of that journey. Like the Ladder of Ascent we are all at different levels, some barely holding on and some hovering perilously above the abyss.  Occasionally we meet Holy people within the Church.  Yes, I said "holy." These are people who radiate a tranquil feeling of joy, love, humility and piety. All qualities exemplified by our Lord. You want to be around them and you listen hard to what they have to say.

Recently, I had the opportunity to meet a priest-monk who spent ten years in a monastery in Greece. He was brought to the United States to establish a monastery by Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver. He was invited to our community by our parish priest to conduct a Lenten retreat. I arrived late that day to find a group of parishioners sitting together listening to him. I tried sneaking in like a truant returning to school but he turned towards me, smiled, welcomed me, and asked my name. I told him my name was Stavros. His eyes lit up and he said quietly, what a blessing to be named after the holy, life-giving Cross. I grabbed a seat and listened to him speak for the next five hours, enthralled by his simple homilies and stories. By the end of the day, my entire family along with many others urged on by those of us at the retreat had gathered at our priest's home. The atmosphere can only be described as joyful. Adults were eating, conversing , children were playing happily, while we waited our turn for confession in a little prayer room upstairs.  One by one folks descended the stairs smiling. I had never seen anything like it before in my life. We were truly blessed that day in our little corner of the world.

He left the next day after the Divine Liturgy. Those who met were left with an indelible impression.  To a man and woman, every one of those who met him wanted to spend more time with him. The ascetic life is an integral part of Orthodoxy. Monastics are the Evzones of our Church and they have much to offer those of us struggling in the world.  I'd like to share two counsels he gave me. I asked him about a problem that has troubled me for sometime now and that is what approach we should take to disagreements we have within our families, in our parishes and even in our respective countries. He paused for awhile, as he often did and said, "sometimes we just have to say 'you're right' and leave it at that. Most arguments aren't worth the effort or the animosities they create."  I also queried him regarding what I should study to gain a better appreciation of my Orthodox faith. His simple answer surprised me. "Don't worry about the Theology,"  he said.  "Concentrate on the most important things for us as Orthodox Christians:  cultivating an inner quiet (hesychia), prayer,  especially repeating the Jesus Prayer, Fasting, Confession, recognizing, admitting and asking God's forgiveness for our sins, being vigilant to one's inner thoughts and opposing the bad ones, almsgiving or good works and avoiding occupying our lives around the acquirement of worldly goods."

For more information go to the Living an Orthodox Life pages at the Orthodox Christian Information Center, here.

For more information about Orthodox Monasticism go here and here.

MAY WE ALL HAVE A BLESSED HOLY WEEK FILLED WITH PRAYER AND REFLECTION.

Turning to Orthodoxy by Amy Johnson Frkyholm

On the third day of Easter, I stood in front of the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kiev, Ukraine. With me was a prominent scholar of American religion who was visiting Eastern Europe for the first time. We were watching a priest and his flock process around the cathedral with icons, incense and crosses. "Have you heard that more Americans are becoming Orthodox?" she asked me, smirking slightly. "Smells and bells. One more way to have someone tell you what to do and what to think."

Her remarks touched on a question of increasing importance in American Christianity. With trends toward mega-churches and worship as entertainment, and with heated debates in some denominations about the ordination of homosexuals, American Christianity seems to be moving in a less orthodox rather than a more orthodox direction. In the United States, Eastern Orthodox Christianity remains a very small religious group (just 1.3 percent of the population). To many American Christians, Orthodoxy is an obscure and foreign type of religion.

But the observation of the visiting scholar was not incorrect. The past several decades have seen an increase in conversions to Orthodoxy in the U.S. Frederica Mathewes-Green writes that nearly half the students in Orthodoxy’s two largest American seminaries -- Holy Cross and St. Vladimir’s -- are converts. The number of Antiochian Orthodox churches in the U.S. has doubled -- to over 250 parishes and missions -- in 20 years. The Antiochian Church, unlike most Orthodox organizations in the U.S., has committed itself to seeking converts in North America and sees itself "on a mission to bring America to the ancient Orthodox Christian faith." The missions organization of this branch of Orthodoxy estimates that 80 percent of its converts come from evangelical and charismatic orientations, with 20 percent coming from mainline denominations.

Read the whole thing here.

CRAZY WATER: An Eastern Tale retold by the Theologian and Iconographer Photis Kontoglu.

Once upon a time there was a Sultan who was good and just. This Sultan had a Vizier (Chief adviser) who was also good and just. The Vizier also happened to be an astrologer. One day the Vizier said to the Sultan he had  seen a sign in the heavens which said that it was going to rain "crazy" water, and whosoever drinks from that water will become crazy. All the people in the land will drink from that water and they will lose their reasoning, they will no longer have a good sense of anything, they will not be able to tell right from wrong, nor truth from falsehood, nor sweet from sour, not even justice from injustice.

When the Sultan heard this he turned to the Vizier and said, "Since everybody will lose their minds we must take care not to lose ours, for otherwise how will we make just judgments?" The Vizier told him that he was quite right and that he should order that the good water they now drank was collected and kept in special reservoirs, so that they wouldn't drink from the ruined water and make crazy and unjust judgments, but rather just ones, as they were obliged to. That is what happened.

A little while later it really did rain, and the rain that came down really was crazy water, and the people really did become crazy. The poor things no longer had any idea of what was happening to them. They thought that falsehood was truth, good was bad, and injustice was justice. However, the Sultan and his Vizier drank from the good water which they had stored away and so did not lose their reasoning, but rather judged everybody with justice and righteousness. However everybody took this the wrong way, and they were not pleased with the Sultan's and the Vizier's judgments. They shouted that they had been wronged, they nearly caused a revolution.

Some time later, when they had seen more than enough, the Sultan and the Vizier lost their courage, and the Sultan said to the Vizier, "Those poor fellows really have lost their minds, and they see everything the wrong way around. If we carry on like this they will kill us because we want to judge them correctly with justice. Therefore my dear Vizier, let's throw away the good water and let us also drink the crazy water. We will become like them and then they'll understand us and they'll love us again." That's what happened. They also drank from the crazy water, they lost their minds and started to make crazy and unjust judgments, and all the people were happy and congratulated the Sultan for his wisdom.

Kontoglu also commented "Let us not throw away the small amount of water that we have still kept in the reservoir of tradition. Let us rather drink from this good water, and let us call others to drink from it... Let them drink and be refreshed by the water that flows from the rock, from our good and immortal water, from the "water of life."

by  Marina M.Robb   

VISIT the Cyber Desert, an oasis for the Sahara of the Soul.  A site dedicated to prayer, the wisdom of the Holy Fathers and Mothers of the Desert and  the  ascetic  Orthodox tradition.

Saint Patrick of Ireland

Saint Patrick, the enligthener of Ireland, is venerated by the Orthodox  Church and his feast day is celebrated today. When he came to Ireland as an evangelist, it was a pagan country, and when he ended his earthly life around 461 AD, some thirty years later, the Christian Faith was established in every corner of Ireland.

Troparion (Tone 3)

Holy Bishop Patrick,

Faithful shepherd of Christ's royal flock,

You filled Ireland with the radiance of the Gospel:

The mighty strength of the Trinity!

Now that you stand before the Savior,

Pray that He may preserve us in faith and love!

Kontakion (Tone 4)

From slavery you escaped to freedom in Christ's service:

He sent you to deliver Ireland from the devil's bondage.

You planted the Word of the Gospel in pagan hearts.

In your journeys and hardships you rivaled the Apostle Paul!

Having received the reward for your labors in heaven,

Never cease to pray for the flock you have gathered on earth,

Holy bishop Patrick!

For more information about Saint Patrick's life and works go here.

Remembering The Dead

Each year before the beginning of Lent, as Orthodox Christians prepare for Pascha,  our Church has set aside three Saturdays called "Psychosavato"  or  “Saturdays of the Souls”.  On these Saturdays, the priest offers a special memorial service for all the members of God’s family that  have died.  A Divine Liturgy is held on each  of these  “Saturdays of the Souls.”  For this liturgy, we prepare  a piece of paper, make a cross at the top of it and write the names  of family members and friends who have died.  This paper is given to the priest who will read all the names and pray for these souls  during the Liturgy and the memorial service.  We also prepare "Koliva," a plate or tray of boiled wheat that we bring to church for the memorial service.  Wheat is used to remind us  that when wheat seeds are planted in the ground, even though the  seeds do not look alive, they sprout and become a green living  plant.  In the same way the soul of a person who does not look alive, and is buried, will be given a new and better life in God’s  heaven.

Tomorrow I will be attending the Divine Liturgy at our local Church.  I'll take a plate of Koliva that Mama has prepared with a list of the first names of our departed love ones including the names of four men who gave their lives for their country.  Greek military men no matter where they find themselves are the descendants of a military tradition that goes back to ancient times. As free men in free societies they put their lives on the line and sometimes pay the ultimate price. Like the Spartans at Thermopylae they guard the pass.

                          Ὦ ξεῖν’, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε

                            κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.                                                   

                                        Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
                                        that here, obedient to their laws, we lie

John W. Markoglu was a Major in the US Marines who was killed tragically in Beirut in 1983 when the building housing the battalion headquarters where he worked was blown up by a suicide bomber. He died along with over two hundred other Marines and sailors. I met John when we were junior officers stationed in Okinawa, years earlier. John left a wife and three children behind.

Sgt. John Parastratidis was a Greek soldier who fell to his death in a parachute drop in Megara, Greece in 1986. Although I didn't know him well, our paths crossed that fateful day. At the time, I was attending the Hellenic Army Airborne School at Aspropirgos and executing my first jump. I was the only American on the Hellenic Air Force C130 Hercules aircraft. John was the assistant jumpmaster. Since I was the senior man that day I had the dubious honor of being the first one out the door. Our twenty man stick jumped uneventfully. Sgt Parastratidis was pulling in our static lines when the cable they were attached to snapped suddenly, causing him to fall out of the doorway of the aircraft. His main chute became entangled and although he tried deploying his reserve, that too got twisted up with the static lines and he fell 1000 feet to his death. John had grown up in Germany. He returned to Greece to serve his military commitment and volunteered for the Hellenic Army Special Forces. He had only a few days remaining before his discharge.

Lance Corporal Dimitrios Gavriel joined the US Marine Corps after 9/11. The son of Greek immigrants, a champion high school wrestler and Brown University graduate, he walked away from a lucrative career on Wall Street to avenge friends killed in the collapse of the Twin Towers. Dimitrios volunteered to serve as an enlisted man, turning down an officer's commission. He also volunteered to be a "grunt", an infantryman. He was wounded during the vicious fighting in the Batlle of Fallujah. Undeterred by his wounds he returned to his unit and was subsequently killed in an explosion a few days later.

Flight Captain Konstantinos Iliakos was the pilot of an Hellenic Air Force F-16 fighter flying an intercept mission against Turkish military aircraft intruding on Greek airspace. His plane crashed into the Aegean after a collision with one of the aircraft. He was married with two small children. Although our paths never crossed, his loss in service to his country is worthy of my respect and remembrance.

May their memories be eternal. Pray for the repose of their souls.

"With the Saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of Your servant,  where there is no pain, nor sorrow, nor suffering, but life everlasting.  Among the spirits of the righteous perfected in faith, give rest, O Savior, to the soul of Your servant. Bestow upon it the blessed  life which is from You, O loving One."