The Patriarchal Theological Seminary of Halki is located on the Turkish island known as Heyelbiada in the Bosporus straits. It was closed in 1971 by the Turkish government and is the subject of much controversy since it is the only seminary in Turkey and the position of Ecumenical Patriarch can only be filled by a Turkish citizen. Sign the petition to reopen it at www.greece.org
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."
Why mingle ye myrrh with tears of pity, O ye women disciples? Thus the radiant angel within the tomb addressed the myrrh-bearing women. Behold the tomb and understand, for the Saviour has risen from the tomb.
Blessed art thou, O Lord, teach me thy statutes.
Very early the myrrh-bearing women hastened unto Thy tomb, lamenting. But the angel stood before them and said: The time for lamentation is passed! Weep not! But tell of the resurrection to the apostles.
Blessed art Thou, O Lord, teach me Thy statutes.
The myrrh-bearing women with myrrh came to Thy tomb, O Saviour, bewailing. But the angel addressed them saying, Why seek ye the living among the dead? For as God He is risen from the tomb!
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit:
Let us worship the Father, and His Son, and the Holy Spirit; the Holy Trinity, one in essence; crying with the Seraphim: Holy, Holy, Holy art Thou, O Lord.
Both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
O Lord God, the woman who had fallen into many sins having perceived Thy divinity received the rank of ointment-bearer offering Thee spices before Thy burial wailing and crying: Woe is me, for the love of adultery and sin hath given me a dark and lightless night; accept the fountains of my tears O Thou Who drawest the waters the waters of the sea by the clouds incline Thou to the sigh of my heart O Thou Who didst bend the heavens by Thine inapprehensible condescension; I will kiss Thy pure feet and I will wipe them with my tresses I will kiss Thy feet Whose tread when it fell on the ears of Eve in Paradise dismayed her so that she did hide herself because of fear; who then shall examine the multitude of my sin and the depth of Thy judgment? Wherefore, O my Saviour and the Deliverer of my soul turn not away from Thy handmaiden O Thou of boundless mercy.
September is always a popular month for atrocities. It doesn't take much for the haters to get riled up and unfortunately they seem to be the one's with the loudest voices in the muslim world, not to mention the one's with blood on their hands. What I find appalling is the seemingly complete collapse of the West in the face of the constant onslaught by people intent on making the rest of us conform to their religious beliefs.
So we apologize when they murder us, make nice when they desecrate our churches, invite them into our countries despite the fact that they hate us, allow them to worship freely in our countries even when they refuse to allow us to do so in their countries, give them money when they spit in our face, and worst of all abandon our values to avoid any perceived slights. It's bad enough that Western nations have systematically secularized their societies and most Westerners believe in nothing, now they increasingly kowtow to fundamenatlist muslim extremists who are bent on transforming those very same societies. To be sure there is much that I don't like about western societies but I fear that they will be replaced with something much worse. Societies where women will be relegated to second class citizenship. Free speech and religious tolerance will disappear. In this new world order the gay and lesbian community will not have to worry about whether governments will marry them, they will instead worry about governments killing them.
The flames of hate among muslims are fanned by failed governments desperate to detract attention away from the desperate poverty, hopelessness and their own glaring failures. Scapegoats are always easy to find whether they happen to be Jews, Christians, Hinus or Buddhists. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodgan, who just days ago said a movie that “insults religions” and “prophets” is not protected by freedom of speech, now is insisting that international bodies pass laws making criticism of Islam a crime. This coming from the leader of a nation that has perpetrated some of the greatest hate crimes of the century, crimes for which there has never been even so much as an attempt to render an apology let alone justice. Now forgotten are the events of another September, fifty-seven years ago when fanatical muslim Turks organized by a supposedly secular government attacked the Greek community of Constantinople. In so doing they perpetrated heinous atrocities against Christians and their religious houses of worship. Atrocities that insult religion much more than any cartoon and YouTube video ever could. Professor Spyros Vryonis meticulously documented the events of the Sepetember Pogrom in his book Mechanism of Catastrophe. He writes about the systemic desecration perpetrated against the Greek Orthodox Church:
"Altars, icons, pews, candelabra, the buidings themselves, chandeliers, Crucifixes, in particular, engaged the vandals attention. Not far behind was the desecration of the cemeteries, and the corpses buried therin and the bones in the ossuaries. Along with the abuse of corpses, defecation was particularly marked in the cemeteries although altars also seemed to have been systemactically polluted with urine and feces. The photographs taken by Dimitrios Kaloumenos bear horrible testimony to this sadder aspect of human behavior and confirm the debt and fury of rioters religious fanaticism."
Another chronicler of the events of the pogrom, Despina Portokalis writes: "In the district of Vefa they took out from the Church, the large Crucifix and as they were parading it about, from behind they were beating it and throwing stones at it. They did this as they sang lewd songs and mocked it."
In this brave new world of the coming calipahte, "moderate" muslims have been silenced and either look on with indifference or grudging support as the radicals transform their religion. Intolerance and violence are the bedrock on which their faith will be built on. A religion whose followers are afraid to compete in the marketplace of free ideas, and who insist on silencing anyone they disagree with. Violence is condoned, glorified and encouraged among the young. They are the future. Their martyrdom is not about sacrificing oneself as a testament to faith in God but rather about the murder of other human beings considered non-believers. Throughout the Middle East, the Jews have been swept into a small strip of land called Israel with their backs to the sea. They have nowhere else to flee. Now the Christians are being targeted. The Orthodox in Syria and Palestine, the Maronites of Lebanon, the Copts in Egypt. All scheduled for extinction. In its very birthplace, Christianity is on life support.
During the pogrom of 1955, the vast majority of Turks were not part of the mob but they looked the other way as their Greek neighbors and friends were targeted. In a few instances, some brave souls stood against the mob and saved lives. Half a century later the civilized world once again, stands on the sidelines. Some cheer on the criminals, others avert their eyes from the horror, bending over backwards to appease them thinking that in so doing they can save themselves.
Only when all decent people, regardless of creed, stand against the mob, will we be able to live in a better world.
M. Scott Peck wrote a book in 1978 titled "The Road Less Traveled"." The title is a quote of American Poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) who said, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." Peck's book was a New York Times bestseller and helped change the minds of millions who were shaped by the hedonistic 1960s and the self-indulgent 1970s. It was for me personally an eye-opener when I read it as a young adult struggling to find my way. I continue to recommend the book to people looking for meaning in their life.
One of the things I learned from Peck is that true discipline is the exercise of conscious choice to delay gratification, sacrificing present comfort for a future reward. He says elsewhere that this exercise of discipline is what propels us on the path of spiritual growth. However, "this awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one." I realized that I was unhappy because I was exercising little if any discipline in many parts of my life and it was causing me to fall away from God. My life was beginning to spin out of control.
I began to learn what Jesus meant when He said in today's Gospel, "Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me" in Mark 8:24 - 9:1 on the Third Sunday of Great and Holy Lent. I always wanted to follow Christ but I was confused by the conflicting messages coming from society. Our society, the world tells us to never deny ourselves. Everything around us is saying, "If you want it, get it; If you have the money, but it; If you feel it, do it." I didn't realize that following Christ required voluntary sacrifice and that meant losing my self-centered attitudes and behaviors.
This what Christ means by saying, "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it." In other words, we must lose our life of hedonism and self-indulgence. If we lose that life, for the sake of Christ, we will save our true self-the one that carries God's image. This is the very purpose for why the Church, through the scriptures and the life of the saints, gives us three exercises to strengthen our soul. It's like a fitness instructor or a coach giving you three things to practice to get stronger, lose weight or improve your skills. Those three exercises are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. If we voluntarily practice these three things, we will improve our self-discipline and strengthen our personal spiritual power.
If we do not do these three exercises daily, we will not be able to do the other thing that Christ says is necessary in order to follow Him — that is taking up our cross. Our cross or crosses are the difficult unique circumstances of our life. They can be externally imposed by others or they can be internally oriented because of physical, mental, emotional illness or weaknesses of character affected by our family of origin. By taking up these crosses we mean to take responsibility for them and deal with them in a healthy manner.
The dirt road to the Skete of St. Anna offered breathtaking views of the sea and surrounding mountains. Little did I realize as I walked that the my life was about to change in a major way and that God would test my faith. The skete belongs to the Holy Monastery of the Great Lavra. It is the largest and oldest skete of Mount Athos. It is located at an altitude of 340 m in a rugged but fertile region close to the Athos cape. It was founded the last decades of the 17th century in order to honor St. Anna.
It is a Greek idiorrhythmic skete, consisting of fifty one kalyvae inhabited by approximately 85 monks. Idiorrthymic monasticism is the oldest form of monastic life. Unlike cenobetic monasticism which emphasizes communal worship, strict discipline and manual work, monks at St. Anna's skete live a more isolated and independent life. Some are occupied with fishing and gardening, whereas others practice hagiography, wood carving, the production of incense and miniature art.
As we entered a small gate which marked the boundary of the skete we decided to rest awhile. Sipping some water I looked up surveying the high ground where the central chapel was located and where the monks often gathered to worship on feast days. The church built in 1764, preserves a relic of St Anna, her left foot and also houses her wonder-working icon. That icon is festooned with hundreds of photos of children born to childless couples. I wiped the sweat from my brow and told Nick that I wanted to venerate the Icon and relic on his mother's behalf since St. Anna is her patron Saint and namesake. I had hardly finished my sentence when a monk rounded the corner carrying the relic in a silver box. Nick and I looked at each other. He greeted us and realizing we weren't quite sure how to get to our destination offered to lead us. It seems he was returning the relic after taking it to the kalyvi of a sick monk.
As we walked to church, he informed us that the primary mission of the skete was to help childless couples to concieve through the help of prayer. Almost daily they send holy water, antidiron and instructions for prayer through the mails to those that seek their help and in return recieve hundreds of photos every month of the children born to those couples. Such is the power of faith and prayer. At St Anna's we met Father Cheruvim, a Greek American who is a graduate of Holy Cross seminary in Boston. When he realized we were from America and that Nick was a seminarian he invited us to stay at his kalyvi. There were two other monks there, both iconographers who paint icons in a small workshop overlooking the blue Aegean Sea. One of them, Father Theophilos, sat down to share coffee with us, while the younger monk prepared a mid-day meal. Fr. Theophilos talked about the Greek immigrant communities overseas and confided that they were his country's last great hope. We were in his daily prayers, even though the much respected geronta whose spiritual children now inhabit the kalyvi we found ourselves in often described America as a modern Sodom and Gomorah. Now long gone his photo hung in the simple cell that was his home for most of his life. Each kalyvi has its own chapel, and the monks who live there hold regular services. This particular one was dedicated to the entry of the Holy Theotokos into the Temple which is celebrated on the 21st of November each year and is coincidently my birthday. The Virgin Mary's parents, Joachim and Anna, who had been childless, received a heavenly message that they would bear a child despite their advanced age. In thanksgiving for the gift of their daughter, they brought her, when still a child, to the Temple of Jerusalem to consecrate her to God. Mary remained in the Temple until puberty.
We ate the evening meal in a small kitchen with Father Cheruvim and Father Theophilos. A very different experience than the communal dining at the monasteries. We talked about home, mutual acquaintances and life on Athos. Nick revealed our plans to climb to the summit of Athos the next day and both monks encouraged us to do so. "You must get an early start," advised Fr. Cheruvim and promised to have some food ready to take along to sustain us on the arduous journey we were to make. That evening Niko and I sat on a terrace watching the sun go down. He looked pensive and I asked him if anything was wrong. He looked at me and said "I want to become a monk. I have been wanting to tell you this for over a year but haven't had the courage to do it." I was too stunned to reply for awhile. Nick had spent a few weeks at a monastery in Central Greece the previous year and had returned twice. I hadn't given it much thought, thinking it was good way for him to develop spiritually since he wanted to become a priest and had completed his third year as a seminarian. God wanted my child and unlike Abraham I wasn't about to give him up so easily. "Niko, you are on Athos, of course, the monastic life looks attractive right now, however, you are way too young to make such an important decision, finish school first." Nick had a pained expression on his face, before he could say anything I got up and said, "lets get some shut eye, we have a long climb ahead of us."
It was still dark when we left the next day using flashlights to light our way. The climb became steeper as we progressed. Much of the initial climb is up stone steps that have been hewn into the rocks. Two hours into our trek I was beginning to breathe heavily and feel exhausted, we had a long way to go. Nick slowed his pace so I could keep up and often looked back at his old man, visibly worried. "Keep going" I said, jokingly, "I'll let you know if I'm going to have a heart attack." The first light of the new day began to reveal the beautiful forest that we were in. The shade of the trees protecting us from the sun's increasingly powerful rays. Now and then, we stopped to rest, took our packs off and drank water which seemed to taste better the longer we walked. We were alone with our personal thoughts, neither of us wanting to upset the other by talking about the pain each of us kept hidden. Nick saddened by my reaction to the direction he had chosen for his life and my terror at losing the future I had envisioned for my son. As we continued our climb I began to pray. I was mad at God: why me, why my son? I was ready to negotiate, to strike a deal with God himself, surely he would listen here of all places. He would let me keep my son and I would give myself up to him as a sacrificial lamb. Have mercy on me, a sinner.
The sun began to get hotter and brighter as we broke through the tree line. We could see the rocky summit in the far distance since the trees were very much diminished in the higher altitudes. I began to think of the Ladder of Divine Ascent, an icon that I had often contemplated. The terrain began to level off and in the distance we could make out the church of the Panagia. We had climbed 1500 meters. We met some other climbers who had been resting before there final ascent. There were also a few Albanian stonemasons who had just arrived with a caravan of mules after having delievered bags of cement to the summit. Construction there of the Church of the Transfiguation is nearing completion. We filled our water bottles from the cistern and pulled some crusty bread and olives out of our packs to eat. As we surveyed the summit towering above us, another 500 meter trek, I realized I was in no shape to continue on. Nick tried to talk me into trying for the top but I was spent and we both knew it. He joined the climbers leaving for the summit and I watched them move up the trail until I lost sight of them. Sitting there I thought again of that troublesome icon. It depicts many people climbing a ladder; at the top is Christ the Pantokrater, prepared to receive the climbers with open arms into Heaven. Also shown are angels helping the climbers, and demons attempting to shoot with arrows or drag down the climbers, no matter how high up the ladder they may be. Most versions of the icon show at least one person falling. I said a silent prayer for my son, my family and for myself.
The Albanians were sleeping now and the mules had gathered around a bone dry watering container. One of them kept staring at me, obviously wondering if I was going to get up and fill the container with water. I began pulling water up from the cistern and filling up the water container as the mules fought for their turn at it. They gulped down bucketful after bucketful occasionally kicking line jumpers behind them until they all had their turn. I looked back up to see Nick and the others but they were no longer visible. I found some shade and fell asleep oblivious to the bugs buzzing around my face. A few hours later, I could see climbers descending, and eventually could make out my son Nick with them. I walked out to meet him, he was visibly tired but elated to have reached the summit. He was very talkative. I sat back and enjoyed listening to the youthful enthusiasm in his voice while relating his adventure.
After resting, Nick and I began our descent hoping to arrive before dark. Descending is always easier, though it felt like it took longer than our ascent. By the time we returned to the kalyvi it was dark and the monks prepared a hot meal for us which we gobbled down. That night I had difficulty sleeping, not because I wasn't tired but rather because I was troubled by the thought of losing my son. Christ had beckoned to him and he was ready and willing to follow, was I to stand in his way or should I step aside? I tossed and turned until sleep in its mercy embraced me.
We said our goodbyes and left the next day, catching the morning boat back to Ouranoupolis, returning to the world with all its noise, pleasures and temptations. After a few more days together, Nick and I set out on our respective ways. I was returning home to Maine and Niko was returning to the monastery in the mountains of central Greece which would be his new home. Against my advice, he had dug in his heels and refused to change his mind. Forty years earlier, I had in similar fashion joined the Marines despite the wishes of my own father. My combat service had visibly aged Dad over the years until his death, always living with the fear of losing his son. The relationship between a father and son is a difficult one. The son always has his father's love, yet he must also earn his father's respect and admiration. It is by leaving home and fighting his own battles that the son is able to achieve this. Now it was my turn to put on a brave face and wish him well. I would not see him again for another eight months. Over the years I had learned that what happens in my life is not always under my control. Once again, I had to put my son, my family and myself in God's hands and trust in his mercy and love.
On the Holy Mountain days turn into years and years turn into centuries. Time has no meaning nor the world which sits at its doorstep. The door to Athos is the port town of Ouranoupolis. It was the beginning of a journey that my 22 year old son Nicholas and I would make together. Both of us had been drawn to Athos by a combination of curiosity and a genuine thirst to get in touch with a purer form of our Orthodox faith. In the process we would discover more about our relationship and about ourselves. We arrived in Ouranoupolis after a tiring eight hour drive in the early morning hours. The town was just starting to come to life and a line had already started to form at the Pilgrim's bureau. Carrying small backpacks we joined the others there to wait patiently for the paper that would allow us entry into the peninsula where twenty men's monasteries are situated. The early morning was already heating up as the shops and cafes came to life and the cacophony of life in a tourist town. With our papers in hand we sat down and ordered coffee guaranteed to wake us up. Two men argued, arms flailing and swearing at each other. Scantily clad bathers were already headed for the nearby beach. As we waited for the ferry that would transport us to the next stop I watched my son Nick, there was no trace of the boy I once knew. Before me stood a man with a beard who was seeing the world through his own eyes now. I longed for the boy he had once been even though I was proud of who he had become. We tarried there for awhile, awakened by the strong black coffee as each of each became lost in his own thoughts.
The ferry sailed at nine, it was full. We scurried up to the top deck where we found a bit of shade from the sun which was already making us sweat with its powerful rays. I looked around at my fellow travellers, men both young and old, some spoke Greek, others spoke Russian or English. There were a few Germans and Frenchmen, obviously not Orthodox. Surprisingly there were more than a few boys accompanied by their fathers. As the ferry boat lumbered along the western shore of the peninsula we left the world behind and between the small talk and excitement stood transfixed by the lush landscape emerging before us including the monasteries of Docharoiu, Xenophontos and the Russian Monastery of St Panteleimon. Our first stop was the port of Dafni; it is the bustling administrative capital of Athos, A waystation to the monasteries filled with pilgrims and monks on their way to various destinations. A strange place because it might be mistaken for any small port town in Greece with the exception that it is totally devoid of women. Our first stop was the monastery of Simonpetra. After making inquiries we found out that there was a small van going there and we rushed to find it in the bowels of the town. The monk driving the van had just finishing loading it. We inquired if there were any seats left. He looked up, smiled and nodded affirmatively. "By now the van is usually full, the Panagia has opened the road for you, may it blessed," he said, smiling.
Athos is considered the Garden of the Panagia. According to tradition, the Virgin Mary with John the Evangelist, were on their way to visit Lazarus in Cyprus, when they encountered a stormy sea that forced them to temporarily seek refuge in the port which is now the Holy Monastery of Ivira. The Virgin Mary, admiring the wild beauty of the place, asked God to give her the mountain as a present. Then the voice of our Lord was heard saying: "Let this place be your lot, your garden and your paradise, as well as a salvation, a haven for those who seek salvation." At key times during our short stay it would feel that the Panagia would again intervene on our behalf. We hurriedly got in and the van began its precarious ascent up a narrow dirt road that climbed every higher toward the monastery perched on a cliff. I sat by the window and looked down the outer edge of the road that dropped precipitously into the rocks and blue sea below. I closed my eyes and began reciting the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner." Something I would find myself increasingly doing throughout our trip.
When you first see Simonopetra it appears like some distant Shangri-La, almost like an apparition that cannot be real. How it was built in the 13th century with the existing technology of the time and how the materials used were transported up such rocky inaccessible terrain is a miracle in and of itself. The monastery was founded by Simon the Athonite. While dwelling in a nearby cave, which is accesible today by a short path, he saw a dream in which the Theotokos instructed him to build a monastery on top of the rock, promising him that she would protect and provide for him and the monastery.
During the mid 20th century the brotherhood was greatly thinned out due to great reduction in the influx of new monks. The current thriving brotherhood originates from the Holy Monastery of the Great Meteoron in Meteora as in 1973 the Athonite community decided to repopulate the almost abandoned monastery under the leadership of Elder Aimilianos. Simonopetra has thrived in the intervening years and its renewal is evident in the faces of the monks that inhabit it. They come from all walks of life, one is a former Harvard professor, and they are united in one thing, a longing to be closer to God.
Upon arrival we were ushered to the the archondariki, the guest house, where we were offered loukomi, water and small glasses of tsipouro, home brewed liquor. Our papers were examined and eventually we were escorted to the dining area to eat lunch which consisted of roast potatoes, kalamari, crusty bread and olives. From there we were taken to our rooms where a clean bed awaited us and an opportunity to wash. We had an opportunity to rest awhile. In the late afternoon we walked around and took in the magnificent views of the sea below. Nearby is a small cemetery and the reliquary where the bones of all the fathers find there final resting place.
In the evening, we marched into the dining area, where we ate a simple but delicious meal. The Abbott sat at the head table while one of the monks read from a holy book while we ate silently and listened. At the end we filed out past the Abbott who blessed each of us. Vespers lasted late into the evening in a packed katholikon. The iconostasion was painted gold and its brilliant luniensence lit up the church while two choirs of monks located on opposite sides took turns chanting. A huge chandlier hovering over us began to sway rythmically in a circle propelled by one of the monks. It was a sublime evening but as it wore on into the late evening the summer heat and dehydration caught up with me as waves of nausea engulfed me. I alternated between the service and the breezy courtyard repeating the Jesus prayer once again. Eventually I retired to my bed and slept until awakened for the morning service. I ate nothing for most of the day, we decided to press on, pack our few belongings and spent some time with Father Iakovos, a Greek American like ourselves who spoke to us at length. We were regaled with the decriptions of the huge, devout crowds encountered in Russia when the monks brough the relics of St Magdalene there. Father Iakovos sensing my discomfiture asked if there was anything he could offer me, he recommended some fresh appricots which were not only refreshing but seemed to settle my stomach. We exchanged thanks and proceeded to walk down to a small pier at the foot of the cliff where the monastery is located in order to catch the next boat to St Paul's monastery. The long walk down to the coastline was deceptively difficult in the heat and humidity of the day, within a short period of time we were drenched in sweat and wondering how long it would take to get to the pier where we could catch the boat to St Paul's monastery, our next stop. We arrived in time to see a boat passing by. Was this our boat? Had it failed to stop? The pier was empty except for the two of us. Already exhausted we sat down in the shade and decided to wait. Once again the Panagia smiled on us, or at least I'd like to think so, and another boat soon arrived docking at the pier.
The short boat ride brought us to St Paul's Monastery which looked resplendent in the distance. A distance that appeared short but would prove to be very diificult in the soaring midday heat and sun. I began reciting the Jesus Prayer as we walked on the dirt road to the monastery. My son glancing worriedly at the old man by his side. We stopped often to rest and talk in the shade of the few trees along the way. Among the various treasures and very precious relics which are preserved with much piety in the Holy Monastery of St. Paul on the Holy Mountain, without a doubt among the foremost are the Precious Gifts which the three Magi from the East offered to the baby Jesus. These gifts, as is known, were gold, frankincense and myrrh. As we ascended we could see a location known as the kathisma, marked by a cross. It was here after the fall of Constantinople that Maro, the Christian wife of the sultan Mourat II (1421-1451) and stepmother of Mohamed II, brought them in person to the Holy Monastery of St. Paul of the Holy Mountain. This Monastery was known to her father George Brangovitch, despot of Serbia, who built the Katholikon of the Monastery in honor of the Holy Great Martyr George the Trophy-bearer.
According to Athonite tradition, as Maro approached from the port of the Monastery, the Lady Theotokos prevented her in a supernatural way from reaching the Monastery and thus preserving the non-entrance of any woman but the Theotokos to her garden. This she obeyed and humbly delivered the Precious Gifts to the pious monks and fathers. The document from the sultan with the relevant information surrounding the delivery of the Precious Gifts is preserved in the library of the Monastery of St. Paul.
As we continued our climb I began thinking about the last time I had made a hike in this type of heat with a pack on my back as a young Marine during desert training at Twenty Nine Palms, Caifornia. Thirty years later I was clearly no longer the same person and the Panagia in her infinite mercy sent a small pickup truck with a cloud of dust in its wake to pick us up and deposit us at the entrance to the monastery. As we entered the monastery I was struck by the cool temperature, the shade and the hundreds of nesting swallows that joyfully flew over us chirping their welcome. We wandered about the courtyard surrounded by the monks apartment-like living quarters. In the center was the great Katholikon and as we entered to worship we were dazzled by it immense size. It is built of marble and stone and imposing to say the least.
We eventually made our way to the archontikon where we again went through the usual rite of hospitality. Then we were assigned to our sleeping quarters with a wonderful view of the sea below us. In the evening we were called to vespers by the sound of the talando, a wooden board that is rapped repeatedly with a wooden mallet that signals the start of services. We quietly entered the Katholikon with the other pilgrims and monks. I stood there lost in the darkness which was punctuated by the light of the candles that flickered in the cavernous interior while the sweetness of the burning incense and chanting swept over me. Almost instinctively I found myself in prayer and reflection as I have seldom been in any other place. As I repeated the Jesus prayer again and again I began to think about the death of my parents and the transitory nature of my own life which seemed to be moving so fast. The memories of my childhood were as if they had occurred yesterday and the faces of my past were still fresh and real to me. Yet, so much time had passsed as if in a twinkling of an eye. Standing before God in His house one cannot help but think about his own impending death and the judgement he must face but also the prospect of a new homeland devoid of all the sorrow and cares of this world. It is a humbling experience to think of all one's sins, all the things we are ashamed of and wish mightily to atone for. I continued my silent prayer for the departed and for the living. At the end of the service, the monks filed out and the pilgrims stayed to venerate the monasteries relics that were brought out for us. As we prostated ourselves and kissed each one, I was mindful that the Saints were flesh and blood people just like us. They too had their own human weaknesses to contend with and yet they persevered, ultimately overcoming those weaknesses, becoming Christlike thus earning a heavenly crown. I handed the small crucifix around my neck to the caretaker so he could sweep it over each relic, replacing it eventually around my neck. We walked out into the fading light to watch the sun setting over the vast blue sea of God's creation that stood before us.
In the early morning we left St Paul's and began the long walk to walked to St Anna's. It wasn't long before the temperature began to rise and our clothes began to stick to our bodies wet with perspiration. We stopped now and then to rest and drink water while we took in the beautiful scenery before us. Along the way we passed Albanian stonemason's working on various projects, the entire peninsula has being the reciepient of EU finds dedicated to preserving it as a cultural treasure. Although welcome the influx of monies has detracted I think in part from its major mission which is of course prayer, prayer for those us struggling in the world. It is a double edge sword, at once providing more access to Athos for pilgrims like myself who genuinely benefit from the experience while bringing the outside world ever closer. By so doing we detract from the singular focus of the monks there on another world, the heavenly kingdom of God. A world that is ultimately irreconcilable with our own earthly obsessions.
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.
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 27th: 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.”
"Do not forget there we are going through difficult times and much prayer is needed. You must remember the great need that people have for prayer today and the great expectation God has of us to pray. Praying for the general outrageous condition of the whole world that Christ may have pity on his creations for they are heading for destruction. Pray for his divine intervention in our outrageous time for the people are heading into general confusion, into madness, and an impasse.
God has called for us to pray for the people, who have so many problems. The poor people don't even have time to cross themselves. If we who are monks and nuns don't pray then who will? The soldier in wartime is on alert always ready with his boots on. The monk must also be on alert. How I would have loved to be a Maccabee, to withdraw to the mountains and pray constantly for the world.
We must help everyone with our prayer and not let the devil have his way with them. The devil has acquired rights. Not because God has given him permission, but because he doesn't want to violate man's free will. This is why we can help through prayer. When one is pained over the prevailing condition of the world and prays, then people can be helped, without violating free will. If you continue with the grace of God a little further we can begin to make some progress on the issue of prayer, to put into effect a certain order, to be a radar station of prayer, for the urgency of the times require it. We must organize a prayer task force. You must wage war with the komboschini (prayer rope). Pray with pain in your heart for the world. Do you know what great power such prayer has?
I am deeply hurt to see monks acting in human ways and not with prayer through God in matters which are difficult to achieve by human means. God can put everything in order. When one does good spiritual work, then, through prayer alone, one can build monasteries, equip them with all the necessary things and help the whole world. There is no need to even work, as long as one prays. A monk must try not to worry over every little difficulty, whether it is personal or affects a fellow human being, or even the general state of society, but should instead resort to prayer and send, through God, many divine powers. After all, a monk's work is precisely the work of prayer, and if any monk has not realized this, his life is without meaning. For this reason, he must know that every worry which urges him to seek human solutions to various problems, the suffering and headaches, is a result of demonic temptation. When you see yourself worried about matters which have no human solution you don't put them in God's hands, you must understand that this is a machination of the devil, to distract you from prayer, which God can send not only divine power but many divine powers, and this help will not then be simply divine help but a miracle from God. From the moment we begin to be troubled and anxious we prevent God from intervening. We tend to put our reasoning first rather than God, the divine will, so that we may deserve divine help. The devil tries by craftily misdirecting a monk's love, to limit him into a worldly love, to a human way of helping his fellow human beings, whereas the monk can move in his own space in his own field, which is to be a wireless operator of prayer, the unique service God has given him to do. All the other things a monk may do through his human efforts are of secondary importance.
Also it is better for the monk to help others with his prayer that his words. If he does not have the power to keep someone from doing evil then he should help him from afar through prayer, otherwise he may himself be harmed. A prayer from the heart has more power than a thousand words especially for someone who won't listen. Even though people say that I help those who come to here to see me, I consider my true help to people to be my reading of the Psalms for an hour and half each day. I view all else as entertainment; people come and tell me their problems and I give them some advice, some spiritual counsel. As such any help they may receive is not from me, for it is the prayer that really helps. If I could devote all my time for prayer, I think I would be helping people more. Let's say I see two hundred suffering people a day; are there only two hundred people suffering in the world? If I see no one and spend all day praying for the whole world, then I see everyone. This is why I tell people, "I prefer to talk to God about you, rather than to talk to you about God. This is better for you, but you don't understand me."
In these difficult years let us not neglect the work of prayer. Prayer is security; it is communication with God. Do you see what Abba Isaac says? God will not ask us why we did not pray, but why we did not have a relationship with Christ and allowed the devil to torment us."
Recently I had a conversation with a well meaning American Protestant. She began to lecture me about the threat posed to Christmas by atheists and like minded people intent on banishing Christian symbols from the public square. They believe that doing so upholds the separation of Church and State which is a founding principle of our republic. Others feel Christmas is an affront to the religious sensibilities of those of other beliefs, not to mention those who believe in nothing.
I listened patiently to her litany of ways that Christmas is being attacked while thinking to myself about how we American Christians have debased Christmas in ways much worse than any angry foaming at the mouth atheist could ever do. After listening for what seemed a really long time to her monologue I asked her if she had seen the interview on the CBS television channel of Patriarch Bartholomeow. "Who?" she asked. It was the response I expected. "He's the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians and one of the last vestiges of a two thousand year old Chrisitian presence in what is now an Islamic country named Turkey." She looked puzzled. "What does that have to do with the subject at hand?" she shot back, annoyed. "It has everything to do with it. In America they attack Christian symbols, in places like Turkey, China, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan and Indonesia, to name just a few, they attack Christians. Shouldn't we be more worried about the Christians being persecuted and marytred around the world than whether or not they removed the manger scene in front of the city hall?"
And so it goes. Most American and Europeans alike seem apathetic and the mainstream media, at least in the United States, has been less than willing to adequately cover the persecution of Christians. Perhaps it is political correctness or just plain indifference. That's why it was particularly surprising to see the popular news show, "60 Minutes," cover the continued harassment and restrictions on the Patriarch of Constantinople in a straight forward manner despite a few factual errors. Equally surprising is that the Patriarch has been unusually forthright. After all, he is a Turkish citizen, his position is tenuous and in Turkey free speech comes at a cost.
His Holiness was immediately pilloried in the Turkish press for his statement that he felt "crucified" in Turkey. A Turkish daily, "Yenicag" irreverently depicted him on a cross here. Fortunately Muslims in Turkey have nothing to fear from rampaging Christians, no matter how they insult our religion. On the other hand Christians in Turkey have learned over their long history that the have much to fear including veiled threats by a government minister:
“We consider the crucifixion an extremely unfortunate metaphor. In our history, there have never been crucifixions, and there never will be. We do not deserve it. Crucifixion has never been a part of our history. I cannot see such a comparison coming from such a levelheaded person. I hope they were pronounced by mistake. The history of the Turkish nation is built on religious tolerance. I hope this was just a slip of the tongue. The Republic of Turkey is a secular, democratic, rule of law state, and does not evaluate its citizens through their religious identities. All our citizens are equal. If Mr. Bartholomew has complaints he can submit them to relevant offices and us. What is necessary can be done. We cannot accept comparisons that we do not deserve."
So much for freedom of expression. As for the historical Turkey of tolerance and democratic pluralism that will require a separate post, once I regain my composure.
Here are the hard facts for those who deal in them:
The Turkish government imposes restrictions on the election of the Patriarch and Hierarchs who vote for him by requiring that they must all be Turkish citizens. Given that the Orthodox Christian community in Turkey which numbered over two million is down now to three thousand, the pool of candidates is shallow to say the least. The Turkish government can arbitrarily veto any candidate for the position.
The Turkish government does not recognize the "ecumenical" nature of the patriarchate even though he is considered "first among equals" and is the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians. More information here.
The Patriarch has no legal identity or bona fide legal personality in Turkey and therefore the ownership rights of the Patriarchate are not recognized and it cannot obtain work permits for non-Turkish citizens priests.
The Patriarchate cannot train new priests since the forcible closure of its theological school in 1971. by the Turkish government.
The Turkish government has confiscated thousands of properties from the Patriarchate.
Learn what you can do to make a difference, go here.
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.
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.
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 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.
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."
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.
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.
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....
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."
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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."
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.+
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.
TheArchbishop 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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 theirown 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.
"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."
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.
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 towardsrelativism - 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Today, Orthodox Christians begin the pre-Lenten season with the observance of the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. The reading from the gospel today recounts one of the many parables that Jesus used to teach his flock. This parable is one of my personal favorites because it speaks directly to what God wants to hear from us and in particular holds out hope for guys like myself.
In theparable, the Pharisee proudly stands up and boasts of his spiritual accomplishments, he prays, he fasts, he tithes. Indeed, he did all the things required by Jewish Law. The publican or tax collector however, probably did none of those things. His life was far from a shining example of virtue. All he had to say for himself is "God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Jesus teaches that this is precisely what God wanted to hear, and because of this heartfelt prayer, the Publican found favor with God, not the Pharisee
His prayer sounds very similar to "The Jesus Prayer" which goes like this: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner." My father taught it to me a long time ago and I don't know why it got stuck in my mind, but it did. Funny thing it always seems to pop up without fail especially when I feel my life is totally out of my control, when my mind goes blank and when I am scared. For example, I was once a passenger on a helicopter taking ground fire. There was a sudden thud and the aircraft began doing things that I didn't think it could do as the pilot began taking evasive action. I had no idea what was happening. I was sure we were going down. I wasn't able to do anything other than sit there, hold on for dear life and recite the Jesus Prayer. It was the first time, yet not the last, that I felt totally powerless, surrounded by a palpable fear while staring into the abyss and the Jesus Prayer has always been at my side ever since. Monks use the Jesus Prayer throughout their day as they go about their work, often using a prayer rope with knots,very much like a rosary. The Jesus Prayer is a tool for all, meant for use by all.
Luckily for us, it is quite clear that God really looks at what is in our heart and soul. A contrite and humble heart makes us receptive to metanoia or repentance. Without humility there can be no change in our lives and without change we can never get closer to God. As the words of the hymn sung on this day remind us "Whoever lives like the Pharisee lives far away from the Church."
One of the seminal works in English for those who seek a greater understanding of Orthodoxy is The Orthodox Church by His Grace, the Right Reverend Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia. He was born in Bath, England in 1934 and is also known by his lay name, Timothy Ware. He is an auxiliary bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Great Britain. From 1966-2001, he was Spalding Lecturer of Eastern Orthodox Studies at Oxford University. Bishop Kallistos was educated at Westminster School (to which he had won a scholarship) and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a Double First in Classics as well as reading Theology. In 1958, at the age of 24, he embraced the Orthodox Christian faith (having been raised Anglican), traveling subsequently throughout Greece, spending a great deal of time at the Monastery of St. John the Theologian in Patmos. He also frequented other major centers of Orthodoxy such as Jerusalem and Mount Athos. In 1966, he was ordained to the priesthood and was tonsured as a monk, receiving the name Kallistos.
In many countries, an increasing number of people are being drawn to Orthodoxy. Some find Orthodoxy through a spiritual search that draws them to the truth of the Apostolic faith, others because they perceive that their Churches have abandoned the teachings they grew up with. Most converts embraced the Orthodox Church at great personal cost. Many are despised by their relatives (even by parents and siblings) for having abandoned the family faith. Many lost friendships and relationships. Most converts have had to rebuild their personal lives and reestablish emotional connections in a Church that is culturally foreign to their previous experiences and lifestyle. Despite all of these obstacles they find their way to Orthodoxy and each journey is unique.
Bishop Kallistos has written an insightful essay here on his conversion and it should be required reading for all Orthodox Christians. Hat Tip to Athan for providing the link.
Excerpts from The Orthodox Church Part I: History and Part II: Faith andWorship are available on-line here and here
The ancient Christian tradition of spiritual eldership is either unknown or little understood in the modern world. In the Orthodox tradition, an Elder (in Greek ‘Geronda’ and in Slavic languages and Romanian ‘Starets’) is often, but by no means always, a monk. Sometimes it may be a nun, an ‘Eldress’ or ‘Gerondissa’ or ‘Staritsa’. Sometimes an Elder may be a married priest or a bishop. Elders who are monks may be a priest or may not. However, he is one who is able to give perceptive advice to people living in the world. This advice is based on revelations and even prophetic foreknowledge, disclosed only to the Elder because he has attained spiritual purity. This is indeed how we distinguish between the charlatan and the true Elder. ‘By their fruit ye shall know them’.
Whatever the country concerned, whatever the conditions, persecution or no persecution, Eldership has flourished in Orthodox societies. It can be said that the situation of Eldership is a spiritual barometer which tells you how healthy or unhealthy any given Orthodox society is. In recent years we have seen remarkable Elders all over the Orthodox world, like Fr Cleopa, Fr Paisy (Olaru), Fr Justin (Parvu) and Fr Arsenie (Boca) in Romania, Fr Paisios, Fr Amphilochios, Fr Philotheos and Fr Parthenios in Greece, and a host of Elders in different parts of contemporary Russia and even in the United States.
When knowledge of the spiritual path to Christ is absent, humanity seeks other ways to deal with the illnesses of the spirit. Modern science seeks to heal the body but falls short of effectively dealing with the deep existential problems plaguing us. Spiritual healing can only take place within the Church which is truly a hospital for the spiritually sick and the Elder acts as the hospital's finest surgeon as well as its chief medical school instructor. These Elders are the spiritual fathers and mothers in each generation, the succession of saints, stretching throughout the entire history of the Church.
Jay Sekaulow, is a radio and television personality who is also doing meaningful work as the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (A.C.L.J.). In 2005, TIME Magazine named Sekulow one of the "25 Most Influential
Evangelicals" in America and called the ACLJ "a powerful counterweight"
to the ACLU. Business Week said the ACLJ is "the leading advocacy group
for religious freedom." In addition, The National Law Journal
has twice named Sekulow one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers" in
the United States. He has recently written an excellent article in Townhall.com about the lack of religious freedom in Turkey which is a must read. His organization is providing very strong support to the Ecumenical Patriarchate at a time when it is under significant pressure from the Turkish government.
A few months ago our parish priest, who also happens to be a friend and my next door neighbor, discussed his vision for a weekend youth dance camp with me. I sat there listening politely while the sheer magnitude of such a logistical nightmare danced in my head. Oh ye of little faith! Luckily Father had enough faith in the task at hand for both of us and then some. Within a short time a group of us organized what would turn out to be a memorable and satisfying experience for both kids and parents alike.
Recently while surfing through some of my favorite sites I came across a post in the Ellopos blog. The topic was the role of the state in religious education in Orthodox countries like Greece and Russia. The Orthodox Church has been closely aligned with the State in keeping with the tradition established by the Byzantines. Religious education has historically been a part of the public school curriculum. In some countries like Greece, the bonds between State and Church are starting to unravel to an extent. For example, Greek Orthodox priests are no longer granted access to public schools. Perhaps this is due to the increasing secularization of the State and European societies in general or it is a result of the less homogeneous makeup of European societies which have welcomed immigrants of different religions into countries previously dominated entirely by the Orthodox or Catholic Church. In Russia, the Church has turned over religious education to the public schools. Incorporating religious education into public education has serious drawbacks. By doing so the Church has inadvertently relieved the two main proponents of religious training of their responsibility, the Church itself and the more importantly, the parents. What has evolved, is in fact, no longer religious evangelization of young people, just another school subject taught by teachers who have neither the training nor the motivation to give young people what they so desperately need.
Those of us who are Orthodox and who have been raised in non-Orthodox countries have developed a very different mindset about who is responsible for raising our children within the Church. Although I still believe that children should be allowed to pray and observe religious holidays in school, I certainly prefer that the State not get involved in the religious education of my child. The Orthodox Church in the Diaspora has had to survive without being propped up by the State. The entire Church organization is funded entirely by private monies donated by the body of the Church itself. This is always difficult and problematic as evidenced by the financial problems faced by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in North America. The concept of stewardship is a foreign one for some within the Church, especially recent immigrants who are not used to volunteerism and supporting their parish financially. Despite this the Orthodox Churches have remained viable and have grown. Economics aside the major task ahead for the Church is to prepare those who will inherit it, the youth. In order to accomplish this it takes a partnership of three important levels. Parental, Parish and Diocesan.
Particularly gratifying to me was watching how these three levels came together during the Weekend Dance Camp that took place in our Church. The Metropolis of Boston Office of Youth Ministry provided what we used to call in the military, a mobile training team. It consisted of young college students who have previously served as counselors at the Metropolis Camp in New Hampshire. Many of our kids knew them and were comfortable with these young adults, who by the way, served as excellent role models for the campers ages 9 to 17. I don't care how great you are as a parent, children and adolescents in particular, invariably respond differently to us than they do to those who are closer in age to their own. Youth workers are extremely important to a good youth ministry program, however, they need support from parents. Parents are the critical link in the chain because they are the ones that have to bring kids to church activities and create a faith atmosphere at home. With all of the distractions nowadays it's very easy to pass up activities at Church for sports and all the other worldly intrusions in modern life. It's up to parents to get their children involved in their spiritual home, the Church. Kids are often resistant to new experiences, that's normal. They usually need a nudge. Once they are with others their own age they warm up quickly. In a matter of no time the problem will be getting them to go home.
The participants in our group consisted of of young people from six churches from three different states. They arrived on a Friday evening. The Dance camp started with a "get to know each other" session. It consisted of talking to someone you didn't know and then giving a little presentation including drawing a poster about that person. Everyone broke up into groups and went to work. In no time at all they finished their presentations and the ice had been broken. They were having a good time in the process, oblivious to the fact that most of them were strangers to each other. After supper and a Compline service sung entirely by the assembled campers, lead by their counselors, they broke up into groups and they went to the homes that would be hosting them for the evening. My wife, Anna and I had eight boys in our home. Our biggest challenge was getting them to sleep, because needless to say the excitement level was high and the adrenalin not easily turned off. Fortunately, even the Energizer bunny runs out of steam, eventually.
The next morning we had a great hot breakfast waiting for us which a group of parents had prepared in our communal kitchen (all the meals were paid for and prepared by parents). The children were organized into groups according to dancing ability: beginner, intermediate and advanced. Each group had an instructor who taught the various dance steps and explained the origin of each dance. Greeks have created distinct regional dances, no matter where they lived. The dances ran the gamut from the popular Kalamatiano to Macedonian and Pontian dances. Greek dancing is an excellent way to get people up and moving, especially kids. There is no pressure to pair up and anyone can fake it. The important thing is that kids are spending time with each other, socializing while they learn and above all, it's fun. On Saturday we wrapped up the day by holding a mock trial. A prosecution and defense team were put together and they had to present their cases before a judge. Most kids have seen enough TV programs to understand the basic procedures involved. The defendant in this case was a young lady played by a parent who was accused of all kinds of bad behavior and of being a "bad" Christian. The verdict was handed down by the judge (a counselor) who decided that as Christians it is not our job to judge others. We need to concentrate on correcting our own faults and more importantly developing our Christian faith. After much discussion the kids agreed that professing one's faith is not enough, we must embody the tenets of that faith and live it with conviction in a world that does not value the same things.
Supper was a lenten meal in preparation for communion the next day. After the trial we had a campfire, roasted marshmallows and sat around while the kids sang. The parents made it all seamless for the counselors by taking care of the logistics: transportation, meals, campfire, providing their homes. The day ended again with a Compline service in a darkened Church lit by the flickering light of oil lamps and the candles each child held. Listening to their assembled voices rising up was a moving experience for a parent. On Sunday the kids attended the Divine Liturgy, sang in the choir and served as acolytes. During the coffee hour they put on an exhibition for the all the assembled parents, yiayias and papous, who all clapped like crazy people. After-wards, we all sat down for lunch and then said our goodbyes. Kids of all ages were were tearfully hugging each other and trading phone numbers. Promises were made to get together again for Winter Camp in February. Reflecting on the weekend we all felt like it was a special time. All of us had grown spiritually. The world is taking our children away one piece at time. Isn't time we prepared them to confront that world armed with their Orthodox faith? Isn't it time we prepared them to inherit His Church? May our efforts be blessed.
The Halki Theological Seminary was, until its closure by the Turkish authorities in 1971, the main school of theology of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It was based on the island of Halki, called Heybeliada by the Turks, in the straits between European and Asian Turkey. The seminary is housed on the site of the ruined Monastery of the Holy Trinity, which was founded by Patriarch Photius I. In 1844, Patriarch Germanos IV converted the ruined monastery into a school of theology. All the buildings except for the chapel were destroyed by an earthquake in June 1894, but were rebuilt by architect Periklis Fotiadis in 1896. Numerous Eastern Orthodox scholars, theologians, priests, bishops, and patriarchs graduated from Halki, including the late Archbishop Iakovos, the present Patriarch Bartholomew I and my Dad. Many of them are buried on the grounds of the school. The seminary includes the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, sports and recreational facilities, dormitories, an infirmary, a hospice, offices, and the school's library with its historic collection of books, journals, and manuscripts. The students at Halki included not only a large number of native born Greeks, but Eastern Orthodox Christians from around the world, giving the school an international character.
The seminary was closed by a Turkish law requiring state control of all higher education involved in religious and military training. While there are other Orthodox seminaries around the world, none can match Halki's stature. Halki has received international attention in recent years. President Bill Clinton visited Halki on his visit to Turkey in 1999 and urged Turkish President Suleiman Demirel to allow the reopening of the school. In October 1998, both Houses of the United States Congress passed resolutions that supported the reopening of Halki. The European Union has also raised the issue as part of its negotiations over Turkish accession to the EU.
My father returned there a few years ago, before his health started failing, after an absence of forty-five years. His bittersweet visit to the site of his fondest youthful memories elicited a profound sadness, which he relayed to me upon his return, at seeing a site of Orthodox Christian study for more than a thousand years lapse into a quiet oblivion. The school's desks are dusted, the buildings maintained and ancient manuscripts carefully preserved. Everything is as it was except for the lack of students. The closing of the Halki Theological School was a blow to the spiritual heart of Orthodoxy. Without the seminary, the Orthodox are denied a center for theological study and clerical training in what was the ancient Byzantine capital of Constantinople. Many Orthodox fear this could one day leave them without an Istanbul-based patriarch, who is considered the "first among equals" in the world's Eastern Orthodox hierarchy.
Turkey held sway over the Orthodox world for hundreds of years. A 1923 rule established that all ecumenical patriarchs must be Turkish citizens. That was the condition for allowing the patriarchate to remain in Istanbul under the Treaty of Lausanne, which also opened the way for a massive exchange of ethnic populations between Greece and Turkey. The once vast ethnic Greek population in Istanbul, and Turkey's Aegean and Black Sea coasts began to evaporate after the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Today, less than 3,000 remain, leaving just a handful of Turkish-born Orthodox clerics able to someday succeed the 63-year-old Bartholomew. Options for future patriarchs will be severely limited. In Turkey, however, any issue involving religion is extremely sensitive and confronts EU demands for greater religious freedom.The secular republic that succeeded the Ottoman Empire in 1923 is in the throes of an internal conflict between Islamists, in this overwhelmingly Muslim country which includes the ruling party and Turkey's civilian leadership and the secularists led by the guardians of Kemalism, the military. Women are barred from wearing Islamic head scarves in schools and government offices. Compulsory primary school education was extended to eight years in part to limit the reach of private, Islamic-oriented high schools. No independent religious schools are allowed for higher degrees, which forced the closure of the Halki seminary. Turkish officials strongly object to any reference to the patriarch as "ecumenical," meaning global or universal, or loosening the requirements that he be a Turkish citizen. They worry such moves could weaken Turkish control of the Patriarchate. According to Turkish secularists, amending the religious education rules for the Orthodox could open the door for Islamic fundamentalists and other groups to seek the same privileges.
In January of this year, a Turkish ultra-nationalist group known as the Grey Wolves, gathered in Izmir, formerly, Smyrna, to symbolically decapitate, decimate and burn in effigy, Patriarch Bartholomew. They placed his smoldering image in a small boat and cast it out into the harbor. Perhaps they were trying to remind us all of the fate of Patriarch Grigorios V. In 1821, when Greeks revolted against the Ottoman Empire, the Patriarch was hanged at the gate of his own palace and his body dragged through the city and thrown into the Bosporus. Modern Turkey is often touted by many of my fellow Americans as a secular country that should serve as a shining democratic example for other Muslim countries. Personally, I find it abhorrent that a country that calls itself European still cannot give its religious minorities a modicum of religious freedom, especially in light of its appalling history. Equally disappointing is the apathy and ignorance often displayed by the Greek-American community which has failed miserably in bringing the issue of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (under whose jurisdiction the Greek Orthodox Church in North America falls) to the attention of the American people and our political leaders. This failure is egregious and the need to address the failure compelling. We can start to rectify this failure by writing our elected representatives and signing the petition.
When I was growing up in New York. people would ask me where my family was from. Deep inside I would wince and think to myself, "Here we go again." The conversation would go something like this: "Where are your parents from? Northern Epirus. Where's that? Albania. Where's that? On the northwestern border of Greece. So you're Albanian? No, we're Greek. Is that where you were born? No, I was born in Turkey. Turkey? I thought the Greeks and Turks didn't get along. They don't but Greeks have been living in what is now Turkey way before the Turks ever got there. How can you be Greek, if your parents were born in Albania? Well actually the southern part of Albania is inhabited by mostly ethnic Greeks who speak Greek and are Greek Orthodox. So you and your family never lived in Greece but you still think you're Greek? No, we don't think we are, we know we are. How could anyone be Greek if nobody in their family ever lived there? Because God has a sense of humor."
My next few posts will deal with the land of my ancestral roots, Northern Epirus. It's history is complex, and little understood. Northern Epirus, along with Cyprus, constitutes the last remaining area where Greeks have lived for thousands of years yet is not part of the Greek state. In 1990, the small isolated country of Albania burst onto the scene when Albanians, taking their cue from the tumult throughout eastern Europe, began a flood of emigration in the wake of the collapse of the Albanian economy and the Stalinist Communist regime. Emigration from the southern Albania by ethnic Greeks was so massive that the British magazine, The Economist, would report that "most northern Epirots no longer live in Albania." This created a great deal of instability between ethnic Greek residents of Albania and their Albanian neighbors. Fields were left uncultivated, villages depopulated and during the general instability of the times, claims to property were left in the hands of old men and women.
With unemployment in Albania at 60%, Albanian workers flooded Greece and provided cheap labor for Greek farms and businesses as well as fueling a crime wave of rural banditry and urban theft. This created a situation where the emerging free market economy in Albania and the expanding Greek economy became dependent to an extent on a reciprocal relationship characterized by Greek investment in Albania and cheap Albanian labor in Greece. As a consequence the relationship is volatile and ambivalent. The two minority issues, that of the status and security of the ethnic Greeks of Northern Epirus and that of Albanian migrants in Greece, have been tightly linked.
My family roots in what is known to Greeks as Northern Epirus run deep. Northern Epirus is geographically part of the northwestern Epirus region of Greece, whose capital is Ioannina. Northern Epirus is described as a belt of land 90 km at its broadest, stretching northeasterly direction from the coast north of Corfu to the lakes of Prespa and Ochrid. It includes the port of Agios Sarande and the important towns of Agirokastro, Koritsa and Himara. My father grew up in a village called Sheperi approximately 9 miles from the border and my mother was born in Politsani, about three miles south, at the foot of a mountain range called Nemertska. These villages are part of a series of villages in one of the most beautiful and wild areas of Epirus known as Pogoni. The thirty or so villages that comprise this area extend from the south northward. Eight were unlucky enough to end up on the wrong side of the border and include the two villages where my parents, grandparents and great grandparents were born, as well as the villages of Sopiki, Sxoriades, Opsada, Tsiatista, Mavrogero, and Xlomo.
My next post will cover the history of Northern Epirus.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
C. P. Cavafy
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t of a mission group. 
Jay Sekaulow
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