Sunday of Forgiveness.Saint Sophrony the Athonite.

Saint Sophrony the Athonite.

We must say a few words about Sunday of Forgiveness. This day, when we sincerely ask forgiveness from one another, is extremely important. When forgiveness is granted from both sides, the soul then feels free and full of peace. Of course this state of freedom and peace exceedingly softens Lent. Prepare yourselves beforehand then, so that you may toss away from your heart and mind every trace of a negative stance against our brother.

          Already from the beginning of Lent we shall chant about Adam who was chased out of Paradise, and this is important. According to historical order, we shall also later remember the fall of Adam into sin and Christ's decision to blot out the curse. In this ingenious composition of the entire cycle of services, in this amalgamation of theology, prayer and doctrine, which is presented in the books of Great Lent, is written down the entire Tradition. To everything however has been given the form of prayer, so that theology can become the content of all our prayers.

          Forgive me. I have spoken now about the details of our life. Our principle aim I stated in my will. I ask you please to forget my nothingness and to keep that will. I said there that is not about something easy. Nevertheless, each time in such days, as the coming Sunday of Forgiveness, we shall realize this practice and forget all the wounds which were inflicted on us during our life! And when we forgive, from our heart all our brethren, for everything which has piled up in our full of toil, misunderstandings, sorrows, deprivations daily life, then all these are cast off, and our spirit is redeemed and obtains the liberty of the forgiven man, the redeemed from all the consequences of sin and inspired with new hope.

          We should not be surprised that misunderstandings in our life occur, especially during the period of Great Lent. We should however learn to overcome these difficulties, in order to fulfill the law of Christ Who said: "Forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father Who is in Heaven may forgive you your trespasses"[1]. Through the same act, forgiving the sins of our brother, we enter the process of salvation of the entire mankind. Every time temptations or some difficulty appear- because it is impossible to avoid frictions, the consequences of the shortcomings of our flesh-, we must without fail overcome these, and in this will show wisdom.

What is the purpose of life.?!.Father Andrew Philip.

Saint John the Baptist.
Constantinople, Turkey,
 circa 1300.

Throughout the ages at various times in their lives people in every generation have asked the questions: "What is the purpose of life? What is the point of life?".

Ancient, primitive people, obeying animal instincts, decided that the purpose of life is to multiply, to reproduce, to have as many offspring as possible, simply in order to ensure the survival of the race.

We can see this near the beginning of the Old Testament when Abraham was told “to go forth and multiply”. Gradually, however, as revelation came upon revelation to the chosen people of God in the Old Testament, this command was refined. It was revealed that people were to multiply for a reason other than survival. Barrenness was a stigma, not only because through it men and women failed to ensure survival, but also because it was revealed that somewhere one woman was called to give birth to the Messiah. The Messiah meant the Savior. Thus children were born to various devout and often aged couples, to Adam and Eve, to Abraham and Sarah, to Jacob and Rachel. Thus sons like Abel and Joseph or Joshua and Samuel and many others all in some sense prefigured the Messiah.

Who is Jesus?!.Father Anthony Coniaris.

"Jesus Pantocrator".

 Church of Saint John the Baptist.

 Douma, Lebanon. XVII century.

Who is this Jesus who says, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30) and "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:19)?!.

Who is this who says that before Abraham was born, He was living: "Before Abraham was I am" (John 8:58)?!.

Who is this Who claims that all the Old Testament prophe­cies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled in Him?!.

Who is this of Whom His enemies said, "No man ever spoke as this man"?

Who is this Who assumes the awful authority of pronounc­ing final judgment on men (Matt. 7:21-23)?!.

Who is this who equates His voice with the voice of God that spoke in the Old Testament: "You have heard that it was said to the men of old: “You shall not kill”... But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother is liable to judgment" (Matt. 5:21-23)?!.

Who is this who said not "I'll show you or teach you or lead you to the way, the truth and the life", but "I am the way, the truth and the life"?!.

Have we found paradise?.Archimandrite Aimilianos Simonopetra.

On Thursday, May 9, Archimandrite Aimilianos, the former Hegumen of Simonopetra Monastery, and spiritual father of many monks, nuns and lay people, reposed in the Lord, at the Monastery of the Annunciation in Ormylia (Chalkidiki) at the age of 85, after a long illness. Memory Eternal!.

“the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Delight to cultivate and keep it” (Gen 2.15).

Archimandrite Aimilianos
 Simonopetra.

 Those plants were like a robe of divine beauty, forming a natural world, a natural expression, of God's majestic holiness. The nat­ural world was a reflection of God's grandeur, and through nature God was visible to the eyes of our first ancestors. In tending the garden they were attending to the glory and majesty of God, care­fully tilling and cultivating the living things around them.

In the first place, then, comes work. We can never experience God without work. People who don't work bard and succeed at their earthly labors are not likely to find much Success in their spir­itual lives. We have to work.

After placing Adam and Eve in the garden, God said to them: “you may eat of any of the trees in paradise” (Gen 2.16). Don't be sur­prised by this. Eating is also a spiritual task, because paradise is a place that relates both to the senses of the body and to those of the intellect. Adam communed with God by means of the fruit of the trees, which was a figure of the food of heaven, about which Christ says: Take, eat, and drink (Mt 26.26-27). By eating of the food of the garden, Adam wasn't merely nourishing his body, but also his soul. It was a way for him to participate in God. And thus when we hear the words: Take, eat, drink, we hear the voice of God calling us to the communion of paradise. But whereas Adam's food was the fruit of the garden, we eat of the bread which came down from heaven (Tn 6.32-35).

The “Master of Eloquence and silence” between the Silence of Man and the silence of God.

Pastoral Letter of Metropolitan Silouan of Byblos, Botrys and dependencies on the 6th Anniversary of the Kidnapping of His Eminence Metropolitan Paul of Aleppo April 22, 2013-2019

 “God finished on the seventh day His work, which He had done:

and He rested on the seventh day of all His work, which He had made”
(Genesis 2:2)

       

Metropolitan Silouan (Musi).

“Metropolitan Paul of Aleppo is on an ecclesiastical mission.” This is an expression that occurred to me in the first days after Monday, April 22, 2013 (the day he was kidnapped), an expression that opened a window through which I have tried to explore the mystery of that great day, a day of God's work in the history of humanity.

Arriving at the threshold of the seventh year of this invisible “ecclesiastical mission,” we notice that infertility and drying up are encircling us; the infertility of hope and the drying up of inspiration. Consequently, you believe that time is uprooting hope from you, while you have no inspiration regarding how to defend the work of God within us and in us. In that case, how can you possibly defend your hope and your faith, and what may you say regarding this matter? An answer comes to you: “Keep silence!” But how could you manage, with silence, to defend your hope and your faith in this “ecclesiastical mission?”

Faith, Hope, and Love.Saint Tikhon Zadonsk.

Saint Tikhon Zadonsk.

Man is more beautiful than any other creature since he is in the image of God. Through the in­carnation he is justified and is no more under wrath. He has become a member of the body of which the heavenly head is Jesus Christ. He mysteriously par­takes of the life-giving Body and divine Blood. He is made worthy to become the habitation of God and the temple of the Holy Ghost. He is in communion with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. Through faith in Jesus he becomes a son, an heir, a co-heir with Christ. Read the Acts of the Apostles and you will see that all these titles are ascribed to man by the Holy Ghost. ... And what will it be in the future life, according to the unfailing promise of God! What goodness, bliss, honor and glory! The unin­terrupted flow of eternal blessedness will be like a river, incomprehensible to the present mind and in­expressible by the tongue, the blessedness which "eye hath not seen" spoken of in (1 Cor. 2. 9). The children of God will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the heavenly Father; they will be as angels, like other gods. Glory be to the Trinity for having so honored and magnified our kind !

The soul cannot live without grace. Grace and faith are the necessary conditions for the soul which strives to restore its innate nobility. "Our own strivings are power­less",read Psalm 118.

Grace is the food and clothing of the saints. It wakens grief in a man's heart, making him dissatis­fied and moving him to seek the reason of this dis­satisfaction. Grace gives sorrow and grace comforts; showing us the poverty of all things, it engenders in us a repentant sorrow for having fallen short of the love of God. . . . One who is possessed by such sorrow will always grieve, for he thinks of God's offended love and not of the fear of hell. It is a grief of love.

This state, approaching what might be called perfect con­trition, is propitious to the growing longing after God; through grace, the love of God is increased in the heart, and the soul "desires nothing more than it desires God." Hu­mility, prayer, thanksgiving, assurance of divine mercy are gifts of grace."

Faith is a spiritual gift; it enters the heart. It comes down from heaven and the heart of man is caught up to things celestial.... Faith is the com­forting perception of the gospels produced in the heart by the Holy Ghost. It purifies the heart, endows it with joy and freedom, that gift of the Son.

Faith is intimately linked with hope, for "we hope in the One in whom we believe"; moreover, faith calls forth love for Christ, which leads to pity for all, love for all and-true fruit of true faith-acts of justice and sympathy.

Alone faith in the Son of God who died for us and rose again justifies us without regard to our works, nevertheless this faith cannot be idle but engenders love as its concomitant. Faith, this divine spark, is kindled in us and bursts into flame with the help of God through the reading of and listening to the word of God, through meditation on the acts of God in the past, through prayer, through the partaking of the holy mysteries and, like a good tree, it reveals itself externally by sweet fruit of love.

Faith is not an emotion divorced from the logical powers of the mind. The creed is a matter of thought and conviction as well as of deep re­ligious emotion produced by response to its historical and spiritual assertions. He never protested against the intellect, but only against the deadly theoretical knowledge of right dogma divorced from its expression in Christian life.

True faith is the keeping and confession of right dogma, that is to say, it consists in true faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God: for knowledge of beliefs is one thing and real faith in Christ is quite another. The first often makes one haughty, arrogant, and fruit­less. Hence, many who possess a right knowledge of dogma live lawless lives; many even preach on faith, and teach and exhort others, but themselves do not move forward, as though they were mere signposts on the road. True faith in Christ is humble, patient, merciful, and full of loving-kindness.

A traditional image best expresses it: faith is the root from which a Christian grows; good works of faith are its leaves and fruits and the more fruit there is, the lower do the branches bend, as true symbols of humility.

It is always good to enquire into one's faith, especially at the present time when there are so many phantasies. Believe, together with the whole Church, what has been revealed by the word of God.

Faith is inseparable from the other theological virtues. In the trinity of the acts of man's mind, heart and will, lies his total response to the perfection of divine love. And with the support of abundant references from the New Testament: "All Christianity and all Christian duty consists in faith, hope and love."

Lord Jesus, the tree of life.

The person of Christ should be everything for us, our estimation. The main obstacle to faith and spiritual growth is estrangement from the Christ of the Bible. It is our only enemy, the Devil who sows doubt, disbelief, and despair of the goodness of God" in people's minds particularly in the mind of a monk or of a man who is making spiritual progress. The Devil strives to tear the Church by schisms, by slan­derous reports on righteous persons and, above all, by blur­ring the image of Christ in people's memory. It is the Devil who turns our eyes away from the suffering of Christ in order to prevent, or at least to endanger, out salvation.

Yet the essential freedom of man remains-that freedom so much in connection with the spiritual combat. It is on account of this freedom that man can respond to divine love, to the sacrifice of Christ, and to the whole problem of the future life and salvation. The atonement has achieved the organic regeneration of man's fallen nature. But salvation has both its divine and its human side: God's love requires man's free response. "Are then all saved?. Salvation is offered to all," but those who reject Christ, or false Christians, deliberately cut themselves away from saving grace, from the fruit of the incarnation-for Christ wishes to save all (1 Tim. 2. 4).

Salvation is both the content of Christian belief and the appropriation by man of Christ's saving life and death and resurrection; it is at once a belief and a mystical experience which has its beginnings here on earth and is to be lived and fully revealed in the life to come: "The beginning of salvation is to learn our own wretchedness”. It is here that we must seek it not after death .... But whilst we neglect it, Satan steals away our immeasurable treasure, the eternal salvation bought by the blood of Christ." Whilst he is alive a Christian must strive after that "which is his dearest hope."

We were created and, having fallen, we have been redeemed for eternal life. We are renewed in baptism and through the word of God, and called to eternal life; to this end has holy scripture been given to us, to this end did Christ the Son of God, come into the world to live as a man, to suffer and die, that we should receive this everlasting life. The first duty of a Christian is eternal salvation.

The token of salvation here on earth is true faith practiced and expressed in acts of love, triumphant in its hope over all temporal tribulations and firm in its fidelity to Christ. Salvation in the future life can be apprehended through cer­tain images and mystically experienced.

You see the rising of the sun and yet when it goes down it seems as if it had never been there­ and then again it appears. This reminds us of the death and resurrection of Christ, and of the resurrection of the dead. Victorious soldiers inspire us to contrast earthly triumphs with the so much greater triumph of the saints whose souls are at peace and who contemplate the beauty of the Heavenly Jerusalem. What rapture overtakes those who put on the garment of salvation! ... If here on earth people listen to sweet singing, and still desire to hear it, and are comforted by it beyond words, how much more so in that mansion where “the voice of praise is ceaseless”. There is peace, harmony and love, and his will, and the fellowship of the saints and angels, complete serenity and perfect wisdom.

Beauty is a reminder to man of his innate dignity; in nature it is a memory of paradise and an image of future harmony.

Reference:

Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. Nadejda Gorodetzky.(1976)

When God is Silent.

Dr.Daniel and Dr.Jane Hinshaw.*

"Do not lament me, O Mother".
20th century.

Dr. Daniel: Many people who are very sick, suffering, who are near the end of life, feel an increasing sense of isolation. If they are believers, sometimes they experience this as a sense of being abandoned by God; and we can even see this recorded in the Gospel, when our Lord on the cross cried out: “My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me.” That psalm, however, ends up with hope. I think some scholars believe that Christ probably recited the entire psalm. 

There are many different ways of thinking about silence, especially when one considers silence in the relationship between creature and creator. There is a thread within the early fathers, in the writings of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, that speaks about the Holy Trinity in a very interesting way. It says that the incarnation of Christ, God the Father spoke the Word from silence.  God in some very deep way, in the Apophatic tradition of the church, is beyond our understanding, and beyond our comprehension, therefore we encounter God in Silence. For example, in the Anaphora prayers where we speak of Christ, or God, being incomprehensible, inconceivable, beyond our knowing and that God is so utterly other from us, hence we are unable to know directly, the Father the very essence of the Divinity. But God breaks His silence, and speaks His Word, the incarnate Son of God Jesus Christ, a bridge to bring us back to God. 

Geronda Gregory abbot of Dochiariou Monastery.

The brethren of the Dochiariou monastery, who recently bade farewell to their Geronda Gregory (Zumis), offer this text in his memory.

Geronda Gregory (Zumis)

In October 9/21, 2018, around 10:30 pm, Gerondas Gregory , the hegumen of the Dochiariou monastery for 38 years, reposed in the Lord . The monk-ascetic, the charismatic leader, distinguished by an enlightened mind and a critical spirit, a skilled orator, loving spiritual father, renovator and new builder of the ancient monastery Dochiariou.

Geronda Gregory spiritually “grew at the feet” of Saint Amphilochius of Patmos and Saint Philotheos (Zervakos), abbot of the monastery of Longovard on Paros.

At the age of 29, he became the abbot of the “Mirtie” monastery in “Etoloakarnanii” and then the monastery of “Prusso” in “Evritania”. And, finally, since 1980, he became the hegumen of Dochiariou monastery in Mont Athos.

“Suffer little children to come unto me” (Mt19: 14).Father Thomas Hopko.

           

 

Father Thomas Hopko.

Father Thomas John Hopko (March 28, 1939 – March 18, 2015) was an Eastern Orthodox Christian priest and theologian. He was the Dean of Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary from September 1992 until July 1, 2002 and taught dogmatic theology there from 1968 until 2002. In retirement, he carried the honorary title of Dean Emeritus.

In addition to the intellectual and informational aspects of preparing children for liturgical and Eucharistic worship, there are spiritual and moral aspects as well. This part of the preparation, at least in the beginning with small children, has to do with external behavior. To participate fruitfully in Eucharistic worship a certain external and formal discipline must be observed so that the deeper, internal spiritual experi­ences may take place. This means that children must learn how to stand in church, how to pay attention, how not to bother others, etc. It also means that they must be trained in certain ascetical exercises in preparation for Holy Communion, as they are able, according to their age and maturity. These "ascetical exercises" include such things as praying personally and fasting as one can; dressing in a manner proper to litur­gical celebration with others, particularly adults; confessing one's sins in a formal sacramental manner when the time comes when this is possible and necessary; asking forgiveness for one's sins and faults; making acts of reparation and recon­ciliation, etc. The spiritual life the practitioner first learns the letter of the law before he or she can enter into the glorious liberty of gracious communion with the Lord. This biblical principle certainly applies to the preparation of chil­dren (and adults) for Eucharistic worship.