Memory of Death

Elder Ephraim

2010-05-23T13:18:00.006-06:00

Here is a talk given by Elder Ephraim of Holy St. Anthony's Monastery given at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church in Pittsburgh, PA. The video quality isn't the best, but a worthwhile find:

2009-12-07T00:01:00.005-07:00

The above endearing photograph is of Rafail Noica and another unknown monastic.

In other news, I've been reading the interesting post: Kalormiros on the Six Days of Creation.

З празником! (Dormition)

2009-08-28T20:48:00.010-06:00

Let every mortal born on earth,
carrying his torch, in spirit leap for joy;
and let the order of the angelic powers
celebrate and honor the holy feast of the Mother of God,
and let them cry:
Rejoice! Pure and all-blessed Ever-Virgin.

Ode 9 -- Second Canon

Christ the Eternal Tao

2009-08-05T23:02:00.006-06:00

I have begun reading an interesting book entitled: Christ the Eternal Tao, by Hieromonk Damascene. This book can be found here.

Archimandrite Zacharias on St. Silouan

2009-08-05T21:39:00.002-06:00

An interesting video featuring Archimandrite Zacharias speaking on the theology of St Silouan may be found here.

St. Hesychios -- On Sobriety

2009-07-20T20:50:00.004-06:00

103 It is necessary to toil over the guard of the things which are honourable. Honourable, of a truth, are the things which guard us from every vice both sensible and intelligible. These things, then, are the guard of the mind (nous) together with the invocation of Jesus Christ; and ever to look into the depth of the heart and everlastingly to keep stillness in the intellect (dianoia), even, if I may put it thus, from thoughts (logismoi) which appear to be good; and to be diligent that [the heart] be found empty of thoughts (logismoi), so that the thieves do not hide. And even if we toil staying beside the heart, yet consolation is near.

108 Just as it is impossible for him who gazes at the sun not to have his face richly shone upon, thus it is not possible for him who ever stoops down and peeps into the air of his heart not to be illumined.

112 The image of the outer and sensible bodily asceticism is the Old Testament. The Holy Gospel, which is the New, is the image of attention, that is to say, of purity of heart. And just as the Old Testament did not perfect [anything], neither did it give the inner man spiritual assurance in the service of God. For the Apostle says: ‘The Law made nothing perfect.’ [Heb. 7, 19.] It only forbade the gross acts of sin. For to cut off thoughts (logismoi) from the heart, which is the command of the Gospel, and wicked remembrances, is greater as regards purity of soul than to prevent one from putting out the eye and tooth of his neighbour [cf. Lev. 24, 17–22; etc.]. Thus also concerning bodily justice and asceticism—fasting, I say, and continence, sleeping on the ground, standing, keeping vigil and the rest, which by nature concern the body and make the part of the body which is subject to feeling to be still from sin in act—these things also being good, as I said regarding the Old Testament. They are a training of our outer man and a sentinel over the passions in act—but not sentinels over acts of sin in the intellect (dianoia), that is to say, they do not prevent them so as to be able to free us, with the help of God, of envy, wrath and the rest.

113 Purity of heart, however, that is to say, the keeping and the guard of the mind (nous), of which the model is the New Testament, if, indeed, the mind (nous) is guarded by us as it should be, uproots and cuts out of the heart all the passions and all the evils, and introduces instead joy, good hopes, contrition, mourning, tears, deep knowledge of ourselves and of our acts of sin, the memory of death, true humility, limitless charity towards God and men, and divine Eros (eros) in the heart.

Fr Theophanes (timiosprodromos.blogspot.com)
103, 108 (commentary)
112, 113 (commentary)

Rational Theology

2009-05-31T12:49:00.005-06:00

What is the use of reasoning about the nature of grace if one does not experience its action in oneself? What is the use of declaiming about the light of Tabor if one does not dwell in it existentially? Is there any sense in splitting theological hairs over the nature of the Trinity if a man has not within himself the holy strength of the Father, the gentle love of the Son, the uncreated light of the Holy Ghost?

Dogmatic knowledge, understood as spiritual knowledge, is a gift of God, like all forms of real life in God, granted by God, and only possible through His coming. This knowledge has by no means always been expressed in speech or in writing. The soul does not aspire to expound her experience in rational concepts when God's grace descends on her. She needs no logical interpretations then, because she knows with a knowledge that cannot be demonstrated but which equally requires no proof that she lives through God. And were there strength left in her, she would aspire to greater fulness of Divine life, and when the action of God is beyond her strength, she swoons in blessed silence.

It is impossible to clothe spiritual experience in flawless verbal form. The human tongue has no words with which duly to express the life of the spirit -- what is logically incomprehensible and inexpressible must be comprehended existentially. God is made known by faith and living communion, whereas human speech with all its relativity and fluidity opens the way to endless misunderstandings and objections.

We may be sure that none of the Saints would have sought language in which to express their spiritual experiences. They would have dwelt in silence for evermore -- silence, the 'mystery of the world to come' -- had they not been faced with the task of teaching their fellows; had not love roused the hope that someone -- 'if only a single soul', as the Staretz wrote -- might hear the word and, repenting, be saved.
...
Some people take longer than others to assimilate grace. In general, the process is as follows: the initial experience of Divine visitation strikes man to the core and draws his whole being into the inner life of prayer and struggle against the passions. His heart is alive with feeling during this initial stage which abounds in such powerful experiences that the entire mind is drawn to take part in them. The subsequent period -- the loss of grace -- plunges him into great grief and a frenzied search for the cause of his loss, and the way in which it can be remedied. It is only after long years of these alternating spiritual states, after much wrestling with the passions, reading of the Scriptures and the works of the holy Fathers, and discussions with spiritual guides and other ascetics, that man discovers in himself the light of the knowledge of the ways of the spirit, which comes secretly and unobserved. This knowledge, which is called dogmatic consciousness, is the deep-set life of the spirit, having nothing to do with abstract gnosis.
...
The Staretz testified categorically that the Divinity of Jesus Christ is made known in the Holy Spirit. The knowledge of Christ's Divinity thus acquired through spiritual experience enables man to comprehend in Christ the unfused union of two natures and two wills. The uncreated nature of Divine Light and the other dogmas of our faith are likewise made known through inner experience in the Holy Spirit. But here it must be noted that the dogmatic consciousness that comes from experience of grace differs essentially from a dogmatic knowledge which outwardly resembles it but is the product of 'faith in things heard', of academic study or a philosophical conviction in the form of a series of ideal abstract conceptions.

It is one thing to believe in God, and another to know God, as the Staretz said.
...
The rationalist-theologian is concerned with a multitude of problems whose solution he seeks through philosophical speculation. His actual religious experience is not very wide. It proceeds mainly from the rational sphere of his being, not from a lively communion with God. He counts his scientific erudition and intellectual experience as spiritual riches, rating them so highly that all other knowledge takes second place.

For the really spiritual man seeking a lively communion with the living God, the ingenuousness of the rationalist leaps to the eye. He cannot understand how an intelligent man can be content with his own conjectures and abstract interpretations. Scholars, for instance, have wrestled down the centuries trying to relate grace and the freedom of man. They forget, as it were, that there is another route to the solution of these problems -- the way of existential knowledge of the reciprocity of Divine grace and human freedom. This was the road the Staretz took. It is the Church's route in general. The Church is strong and rich, not by her secular erudition but, above all, in her actual possession of the gifts of grace. The Church lives by the Holy Spirit, breathes through Him, and through the very fact of this communion with Him knows how He operates, knows, too, how and within what limits human freedom functions.

St. Silouan the Athonite -- Archimandrite Sophrony pp. 187-190

It is not safe to swim in one's clothes, nor should a slave of passion touch theology.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent -- St. John Climacus

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

2009-04-19T09:50:00.006-06:00

Христос воскрес! Воистину воскрес!

Hristos a înviat! Adevărat a înviat!

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Click on the above links to listen to Paschal chanting.

Apolytikion in the Plagal of the First Tone

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death, and bestowing life on those in the graves.

Kontakion in the Plagal of the Fourth Tone

Though You went down into the tomb, You destroyed Hades' power, and You rose the victor, Christ God, saying to the myrrh-bearing women, "Hail!" and granting peace to Your disciples, You who raise up the fallen.

St. Diadochos of Photiki -- Gnostic Chapters (with commentary)

2009-04-10T12:16:00.006-06:00

In August of 2008 I was pleased to post some links to a translation of the Gnostic Chapters by St. Diadochos of Photiki undertaken by Orthodox Monk. Orthodox Monk is now graciously providing the same translated material, but with commentary. I will be updating this post as more material becomes available.

Chapters 1-9 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 10-15 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 16-29 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 30-36 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 37-55 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 56-62 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 63-64 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 65-67 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 68-75 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 76-78 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 79-87 (of 100) are here.

Chapters 88-100 (of 100) are here.

Annunciation

2009-04-10T11:59:00.004-06:00

Earlier this week we celebrated the feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary. Here is an excerpt from Mattins:

Today is revealed the mystery that is from all eternity. The Son of God becomes the Son of man, that, sharing in what is worse, He may make me share in what is better. In times of old Adam was once deceived, he sought to become God, but received not his desire. Now God becomes man, that He may make Adam God. Let creation rejoice, let nature exult: for the Archangel stands in fear before the Virgin and, saying to her 'Hail', he brings the joyful greeting whereby our sorrow is assuaged. O Thou who in Thy merciful compassion wast made man, our God, glory to Thee.

The Festal Menaion, p. 460

Great Lent -- Week 1

2009-03-07T11:55:00.009-07:00

From Monday through Thursday in the first week of Great Lent, the Great Canon of Repentance by St. Andrew of Crete is read during Great Compline. Here are some excerpts:

Monday -- Ode 2 Troparia:

Having formed by my pleasure-loving desires the deformity of my passions, I have marred the beauty of my mind. A storm of passions besets me, O compassionate Lord. But stretch out Thy hand to me too, as to Peter. (Matthew 14:31)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

I have stained the coat of my flesh, and soiled what is in Thy image and likeness, O Saviour. I have darkened the beauty of my soul with passionate pleasures, and my whole mind I have reduced wholly to mud.

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

I have torn my first garment which the Creator wove for me in the beginning, and therefore I am lying naked. (Genesis 3:21)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

Tuesday -- Ode 4 Troparia:

Watch, my soul! Be courageous like the great Patriarchs, that you may acquire activity and awareness, and be a mind that sees God, and may reach in contemplation the innermost darkness, and be a great trader. (Genesis 32:28; Luke 19:13-15)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

The great Patriarch, by begetting the twelve Patriarchs, mystically set up for you, my soul, a ladder of active ascent, having wisely offered his children as rungs, and his steps as ascents.

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

You have emulated the hated Esau, my soul, and have given up your birthright of pristine beauty to your supplanter, and you have lost your father's blessing, and have been tripped up twice in action and knowledge. Therefore, O wretch, repent now. (Genesis 25:31; 27:37)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

Wednesday -- Ode 6 Troparia:

Rise and make war against the passions of the flesh, as Joshua did against Amalek, and ever conquer the Gibeonites - illusive thoughts. (Exodus 17:8; Josh. 8:21)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

Pass through the flowing nature of time, like the Ark of old, and take possession of the Land of Promise, my soul: It is God's command. (Josh. 3:17; Deuteronomy 1:8)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

As Thou savedst Peter when he cried, "Save me!", forestall and deliver me from the beast, O Saviour; stretch out Thy hand and raise me from the depths of sin. (Matthew 14:25-31)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

Thursday -- Ode 9 Troparia:

Have compassion and save me, have mercy on me, O Son of David, Who didst heal with a word the demoniac. And let Thy voice of tender compassion speak to me as to the robber, 'Truly I tell you, you will be with Me in Paradise when I rise in My glory.' (Luke 9:38-42; 23:43)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

A robber accused Thee, and a robber confessed Thee to be God, for both were hanging on a cross with Thee. But open even to me, O most compassionate Saviour, the door of Thy glorious Kingdom as to Thy faithful robber who acknowledged Thee to be God. (Luke 23:32-42)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

Creation was in anguish, seeing Thee crucified; mountains and rocks were split with fear, the earth quaked, hell was emptied, and the light grew dark in the daytime, beholding Thee, Jesus, nailed to the Cross in Thy flesh. (Matthew 27:51-53; Luke 23:44-45)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

Troparia courtesy of monachos.net.

Forgiveness Sunday

2009-03-01T13:17:00.007-07:00

Today is Forgiveness Sunday.

Seasonal Kontakion in the Plagal of the Second Tone

O Master, Prudence, Guide of Wisdom, Instruction to the foolish and Defender of the poor, strengthen my heart and grant it discernment. Give me words, Word of the Father, for behold, I shall not keep my lips from crying out to You, "O Merciful One, have mercy on me who has fallen."

Alexander Schmemann on Forgiveness Sunday:

What is the meaning of this rite? Why is it that the Church wants us to begin Lenten season with forgiveness and reconciliation? These questions are in order because for too many people Lent means primarily, and almost exclusively, a change of diet, the compliance with ecclesiastical regulations concerning fasting. They understand fasting as an end in itself, as a "good deed" required by God and carrying in itself its merit and its reward. But, the Church spares no effort in revealing to us that fasting is but a means, one among many, towards a higher goal: the spiritual renewal of man, his return to God, true repentance and, therefore, true reconciliation. The Church spares no effort in warning us against a hypocritical and pharisaic fasting, against the reduction of religion to mere external obligations. As a Lenten hymn says:

In vain do you rejoice in no eating, O soul!

For you abstain from food,

But from passions you are not purified.

If you persevere in sin, you will perform a useless fast.

The Publican & Pharisee

2009-02-08T15:23:00.009-07:00

Today is the first Sunday of the Triodion; the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee.

Seasonal Kontakion in the Fourth Tone

Let us flee from the boasting of the Pharisee and learn through our own sighs of sorrow the humility of the Publican. Let us cry out to the Savior, "Have mercy on us, for through You alone are we reconciled."

Eothinon

Since the chief weapon for virtue is humility, and the greatest hindrance to it is pride, the divine Fathers have set these three weeks before the Forty-day Fast as a preparation for the spiritual struggles of virtue. This present week they have called Harbinger, since it declares that the Fast is approaching; and they set humility as the foundation for all our spiritual labors by appointing that the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee be read today, even before the Fast begins, to teach, through the vaunting of the Pharisee, that the foul smoke of self-esteem and the stench of boasting drives away the grace of the Spirit, strips man of all his virtue, and casts him into the pits of Hades; and, through the repentance and contrite prayer of the Publican, that humility confers upon the sinner forgiveness of all his wicked deeds and raises him up to the greatest heights.

Here is an exerpt from St. Silouan the Athonite (thanks to Father Stephen's blog):

Enlightened by baptism, people believe in God. But there are some who even know Him. To believe in God is good but it is more blessed to know God. Nevertheless, those who believe are blessed, too, as the Lord said to Thomas, one of the twelve: ‘Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’

If we were humble the Lord in His love would show us all things, would reveal to us all mysteries, but our trouble is that we are not humble. We puff ourselves up and boast over trifles, and so make both ourselves and others unhappy.

The Lord, though He is merciful, oppresses the soul with hunger on account of her pride, and withholds grace from her until she has learned humility. I was perishing from my sins, and would long ago have been in hell, had not the Lord and His most holy and blessed Mother taken pity on me. O, her quiet, gentle voice! A voice from heaven the like of which we shall never hear on earth! And so now in tears I write of the Lord of Mercy, as He were my own Father. It is sweet for the soul to be with the Lord: Adam tasted the sweetness of this bliss in paradise when he saw the Lord with open eyes, and we feel in our souls that He is with us according to His promise: ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.’

The Lord is with us. What more could we desire? The Lord created man that we might live and bask in Him for ever - that we might be with Him and in Him. And the Lord desires to be with us Himself, and in us. The Lord is our joy and gladness, and when pride causes us to withdraw from Him, it means that of our own accord we deliver ourselves up to suffering. Anguish of heart, dejection and evil thoughts lacerate us….

The proud man fears obloquy, while the humble man cares nothing. He who has acquired Christ-like humility will ever upbraid himself, and it rejoices him to be abused, and grieves him to be acclaimed. but this humility is still only elementary - when the soul comes to know the Lord in the Holy Spirit, how humble and meek He is, she sees herself as the worst of all sinners, and is happy to sit in shabby raiment in the ashes like Job, while she beholds other men in the Holy Spirit shining in the likeness of Christ.

May the Merciful Lord give all men to savor Christ’s humility which passes description. The soul will then know no further desire but will live for ever in humility, love and lowliness.

St. Gregory the Theologian

2009-02-07T22:10:00.007-07:00

Today (Old Calendar) we commemorate St. Gregory the Theologian.

Apolytikion in the First Tone

The pastoral flute of your theology conquered the trumpets of orators. For it called upon the depths of the Spirit and you were enriched with the beauty of words. Intercede to Christ our God, O Father Gregory, that our souls may be saved.

Kontakion in the Third Tone

O Glorious One, you dispelled the complexities of orators with the words of your theology. You have adorned the Church with the vesture of Orthodoxy woven from on high. Clothed in this, the Church now cries out to your children, with us, "Hail Father, the consummate theological mind."

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev has written an interesting article entitled: Theology and Mysticism in St. Gregory Nazianzen. Here is an excerpt:

First of all, Gregory’s theology is very central to the entire Byzantine Tradition. In Byzantium he was known as ‘The Theologian’ and was the most quoted author, after the Bible, in the ecclesiastical literature.[1] The corpus of his writings (especially his Discourses), have become not only an integral part of Byzantine paradosis (Tradition); it was in fact regarded as regula fidei (‘the rule of faith’), almost as sacred scripture. No other Byzantine author ever enjoyed such appreciation, popularity and unquestionable authority.
...

Theology ought to be inspired by God: it ought to be not the word of a human person, but the word of the Spirit which is pronounced by human lips. A true Christian theologian is the one who is able to be silent until the Holy Spirit touches the strings of his soul. And it is only when the human word falls silent and the word of the Spirit emerges from his soul, that true theology is born. From this moment ‘a lover of words’ is transformed into ‘a lover of wisdom’, a rhetorician into a theologian.

According to Gregory, not everyone can be a theologian, but only the one who purifies himself for God. Not everyone can participate in theological discussions, but only those who can do it properly. Finally, not every theological theme can be discussed openly:

Discussion of theology is not for everyone, I tell you, not for everyone - it is no such inexpensive and effortless pursuit... It must be reserved for certain occasions, for certain audiences, and certain limits must be observed. It is not for all men, but only for those who have been tested and have found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing, purification of body and soul. For one who is not pure to lay hold on pure things is dangerous,[1] just as it is for weak eyes to look at the sun’s brightness. What is the right time? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty[2] is not confused by illusory, wandering images... We need actually to be still[3] in order to know God... What aspects of theology should be investigated, and to what limit? Only aspects within our grasp, and only to the limit of the experience and capacity of our audience... Yet I am not maintaining that we ought not to be mindful of God at all times... It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe... So it is not continual remembrance of God that I seek to discourage, but continual discussion of theology. I am not opposed either to theology... but only to its untimely practice...[4]

Prayers by the Lake

2009-01-26T20:11:00.006-07:00

Prayers by the Lake -- St. Nikolai of Zicha

Are there days gone by, O man, to which you would wish to return? They all attracted you like silk, and now remain behind you like a cobweb. Like honey they greeted you, like stench you bade them farewell. All were totally filled with illusion and sin.

See how all the pools of water in the moonlight resemble mirrors; and how all the days that were lit up with your levity resemble mirrors. But as you stepped from one day to the next, the false mirrors cracked like thin ice, and you waded through the water and mud.

Can a day that has a morning and an evening as doorways be a day?

O luminous Lord, my soul is burdened with illusions and longs for one day—for the day without doorways, the day from which my soul has departed and sunk into the shifting shadows—for Your day, which I used to call my day, when I was one with You.

Is there any happiness gone by, O man, to which you would wish to return?

Of two morsels of the same sweetness the second is the more trite. You would turn your head away in boredom from yesterday's happiness, if it were set out on today's table.

Moments of happiness are given to you only in order to leave you longing for true happiness in the bosom of the everhappy Lord; and ages of unhappiness are given to you, to waken you out of the drowsy dream of illusions.

O Lord, Lord, my only happiness, will You provide shelter for Your injured pilgrim?

O Lord, my ageless youth, my eyes shall bathe in You and shine more radiantly than the sun.

You carefully collect the tears of the righteous, and with them You rejuvenate worlds.

Prayer III

Христос рождается! Славим Его!

2009-01-06T23:14:00.007-07:00

Христос рождается! Славим Eго!
Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone

Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, hath shined the light of knowledge upon the world; for thereby they that worshipped the stars were instructed by a star to worship Thee, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know Thee, the Dayspring from on high. O Lord, glory be to Thee.

Kontakion in the Third Tone

Today, the Virgin bears Him who is transcendent, and the earth presents the cave to Him who is beyond reach. Angels, along with shepherds glorify Him. The Magi make their way to Him by a star. For a new child has been born for us, the God before all ages.

Nativity -- Day 37

2009-01-03T11:53:00.008-07:00

It appears that Google video has some video talks by Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware), including:

Nativity -- Day 34

2008-12-31T15:26:00.004-07:00

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev has written an interesting article entitled: Prayer and Monasticism in Orthodox Tradition. Here is an excerpt:

‘...When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father Who is in secret; and your Father Who sees in secret will reward you. And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask them’.[1] These words of Christ may provoke the following question: what is the sense of praying if God knows beforehand what we actually need?

In answering this question, one should remember that prayer is not just a request for something; it is first of all an encounter with Someone, a dialogue with the living God. ‘Prayer is communion of the intellect with God’, according to a classic definition by Evagrius the Solitary.[2] In prayer we encounter the personal God Who hears us and responds to us, Who is always ready to come to our assistance, Who never betrays us, even if we betray Him many times. In prayer we communicate with the sublime Reality which is the only true Life: compared to It, every other reality is partial and imperfect. Life without communion with God, without prayer, is but a long pathway towards death, a gradual dying. We live insofar as we participate in God, and we participate in God through prayer.

Why does Christ command us to avoid verbosity in prayer? Precisely because it is not out of words that prayer is born: prayer is not merely the sum of our requests addressed to God. Before being pronounced, prayer must be heard within one’s heart. All true masterpieces of music and poetry were not simply composed out of disconnected letters or sounds: they were first born in the depths of their authors’ heart, and were then incarnate in words or musical tones. Prayer is also creative work, born not from verbosity, but out of a deep stillness, out of concentrated and devoted silence. Before embarking upon the path of prayer, one must inwardly fall silent and renounce human words and thoughts.

...

The lack of taste for solitude and silence is one of the most common illnesses of the modern person. Many are even scared of remaining in stillness, being alone or having free time: they feel more comfortable being constantly occupied; they need words, impressions; they always hasten in order to have the illusion of an abundant and saturated life. But life in God begins when words and thoughts fall silent, when worldly cares are forgotten, and when a place within the human soul is freed to be filled by Him.

Nativity -- Day 28

2008-12-25T11:48:00.011-07:00

Today (Old Calendar) we commemorate St. Spyridon.

Synaxarion

Spyridon, the God-bearing Father of the Church, the great defender of Corfu and the boast of all the Orthodox, had Cyprus as his homeland. He was simple in manner and humble of heart, and was a shepherd of sheep. When he was joined to a wife, he begat of her a daughter whom they named Irene. After his wife's departure from this life, he was appointed Bishop of Trimythus, and thus he became also a shepherd of rational sheep. When the First Ecumenical Council was assembled in Nicaea, he also was present, and by means of his most simple words stopped the mouths of the Arians who were wise in their own conceit. By the divine grace which dwelt in him, he wrought such great wonders that he received the surname 'Wonderworker." So it is that, having tended his flock piously and in a manner pleasing to God, he reposed in the Lord about the year 350, leaving to his country his sacred relics as a consolation and source of healing for the faithful.

Apolytikion in the First Tone

O Father, God-bearer, Spyridon, you were proven a champion and Wonder Worker of the First Ecumenical Council. You spoke to the girl in the grave and turned the serpent to gold. And, when chanting your prayers, most sacred One, angels ministered with you. Glory to Him who glorified you; glory to Him who crowned you; glory to Him who, through you, works healing for all.

Kontakion in the Second Tone

Wounded by your love for Christ, O holy One, your mind given wings by the radiance of the Spirit, you put the practice of theory into deeds, becoming a sacred altar, O Chosen by God, and praying for the divine illumination of all.

English Orthodox catechisms seem to be fairly rare; however, Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev has posted a catechism on his site.

Here is a quote from Step 11 of The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus:

2. Talkativeness is the throne of vainglory, on which it loves to show itself and make a display. Talkativeness is a sign of ignorance, a door to slander, an inducement to jesting, a servant of falsehood, the ruin of compunction, a creator and summoner of despondency, a precursor of sleep, the dissipation of recollection, the abolition of watchfulness, the cooling of ardour, the darkening of prayer.
3. Intelligent silence is the mother of prayer, a recall from captivity, preservation of fire, an overseer of thoughts, a watch against enemies, a prison of mourning, a friend of tears, effective remembrance of death, a depicter of punishment,a delver into judgement, a minister of sorrow, an enemy of freedom of speech, a companion of stillness, an opponent of the desire to teach, increase of knowledge, a creator of divine vision, unseen progress, secret ascent.

Nativity -- Day 27

2008-12-24T13:00:00.003-07:00

As of lately, I've resumed reading the excellent trilogy of books: The Psychological Basis of Mental Prayer in the Heart by Fr. Theophanes. Here is an excerpt from vol. 1: The Orthodox Doctrine of Person:

The Christian remains in this approach: seeking after the Face of the God who appeared to Jacob in Penuel. Hence, a very basic difference in structure presents itself: the Christian prays to a God who is Other, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whereas the model of consciousness we are discussing posits that there are innate structures in the human soul, taken as a mind-body holistic phenomenon, and that the spiritual life is a matter of gaining access to a spiritual experience by gaining access to these innate structures. The innate structures are taken as automatically providing the desired experience, and the spiritual quest is viewed as the manipulation of the psyche to attain to the desired subjective experience of the always present but hidden deeper aspect of the person being manipulated.

This is usually presented as a program of yoga, but we do not wish to expatiate: we are Christian, and we do not know enough about Buddhist or Hindu yoga. Hence, while it is true that both Buddhist and Hindu yogic writings refer to the grace of the guru as a means of raising the consciousness to the desired condition in the context of innate structures, there is nothing that we are aware of that corresponds to the doctrine that the Holy Spirit blows where it will (this conveys the sovereign freedom of the Holy Spirit from the constraint of him who is praying) and to the statement that you do not know whence the Holy Spirit comes and whither it goes. Orthodox spiritual writers uniformly assert this aspect of the Uncreated Light: just as Christ came and stood in the midst of his disciples, the doors being bolted,[3] the Holy Spirit is suddenly present without your knowing; and he leaves to go where you know not. In the Songs of Songs, this is an important motif: the touches of the Holy Spirit that ravish the soul of him who prays and leave her (i.e. the soul) desolate, seeking where the Beloved might be.[4]

This is important, for we will discuss a method of prayer that resembles a mantra; and we will discuss to what extent contemplation is within the voluntary power of him who prays.

The point is this: the touch of the Bridegroom, his caress upon the soul, is completely within the sovereign power and discretion of the Bridegroom; it cannot be commanded by the one who prays; it is not the manipulation of innate structures of the human soul—taken as a holistic mind-body phenomenon—that creates or gives access to these caresses of the Bridegroom. Hence, man has an innate ability to contemplate; that is what St Macrina has just said. But his ability to contemplate is restricted by the sovereign freedom of the Other.

Nativity -- Day 23

2008-12-20T19:54:00.003-07:00

Perry over at the Energetic Procession blog has written an interesting post entitled: The Christology of Feminism. Here is an excerpt:

The argument here seems to be something like the following. Women and men do not differ qua women and qua men with respect to such and so ability. Therefore they are the same with respect to said abilities. If there is no difference between them with respect to those abilities, then there isn’t any difference with respect priestly abilities. Therefore women should be permitted to be priests. If those who oppose women’s ordination were consistent, then they would oppose female physicians, but they don’t so that they are involved in a performative contradiction. I think a problematic assumption is that the ability to say words, cut bread, etc. is what characterizes the priesthood. The essence of the priesthood though, it seems to me, is not defined by function and for a number of good reasons. First, because Christ is not defined by function. Chalcedonian Christology is not per say functional. Second, If the priesthood were defined functionally, we would not be justified in restricting access to it in other ways, namely age. Can you imagine a 16year old priest? Why not a ten year old? Is ageism any less a sin than sexism? Why is it, for example that people in fact do have a problem visiting a 16 year old doctor? There have been doctors of such and so age and even if there haven’t been, I see no reason why there can’t be some prodigy of modern medicine. More directly, Karras assumes that men and women are both equally potentially priests qua men and women, but isn’t this the point at issue? So her interrogative is question begging. That’s the long answer. The short answer I suppose is better. When Christ is enhypostatically united to carpentry, I will limit my employment of carpenters to males.

Here is a quote from Step 8 of The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus:

1. As the gradual pouring of water on a fire completely extinguishes the flame, so the tears of true mourning are able to quench every flame of anger and irritability. Therefore, we place this next in order.
2. Freedom from anger is an insatiable appetite for dishonour, just as in the vainglorious there is an unbounded desire for praise. Freedom from anger is victory over nature and insensibility to insults, acquired by struggles and sweat.
3. Meekness is an immovable state of soul which remains unaffected, whether in evil report or in good report, in dishonour or in praise.
...

11. An angry person is a willing epileptic, who due to an involuntary tendency keeps convulsing and falling down.

Nativity -- Day 22

2008-12-19T16:07:00.007-07:00

Today is the feast day (Old Calendar) of St. Nicholas. An interesting series of articles about St. Nicholas and Santa Claus can be found here.

Synaxarion

This holy bishop lived in the time of Emperors Diocletian and Maximian. After having led the monastic life for a while, he was promoted to the episcopal dignity for his exceptional and eminent virtue. Because he defended the interests of Christians and courageously preached the true religion, he was seized by the city's magistrates and thrown into prison in company with other Christians, after he was overpowered by assaults and inflicted with all kinds of tortures. When the great and pious Constantine took possession of the Roman Empire by a Providential decree, all the prisoners in fetters were released. Thus set at liberty, Saint Nicholas returned to Myra and took part in the Council of Nicaea held sometime after by Emperor Constantine in 325.

He died at a very old age leaving his holy body to the faithful as a source of balm and healing. He remains as if living after his death, having received from heaven the gift of miracles. His relics are preserved in Bari, Italy. His power as a wonderworker gave birth to a marvelous legend which is the origin of traditional children's festivals in the East as well as the West.

Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone

The truth of things hath revealed thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, an icon of meekness, and a teacher of temperance; for this cause, thou hast achieved the heights by humility, riches by poverty. O Father and Hierarch Nicholas, intercede with Christ God that our souls be saved.

Kontakion in the Third Tone

Saintly One, (St. Nicholas) in Myra you proved yourself a priest; for in fulfilling the Gospel of Christ, venerable One, you laid down your life for your people and saved the innocent from death. For this you were sanctified as One learned in divine grace.

Nativity -- Day 19

2008-12-16T22:58:00.003-07:00

I've been thoroughly enjoying the book: Discerning the Mystery, by Andrew Louth. Here is another excerpt:

The notion that Christian theology is to be seen as concerned with the mystery of God, the trinitarian God who loved us in Christ and calls us to participate in the mystery which he is, suggests to me that the main concern of theology is not so much to elucidate anything, as to prevent us, the Church, from dissolving the mystery that lies at the heart of faith -- dissolving it, or missing it altogether, by failing truly to engage with it. And this is what the heresies have been seen to do, and why they have been condemned: the trinitarian heresies dissolve the divine life, either by reducing it to a monadic consciousness, or by degrading it to the life of the gods; the Christological heresies blur the fact that it is in fact in Christ that this divine life is offered to us -- that it is through him and in the Spirit that we know ourselves to be loved by God himself -- and do this either by qualifying the fact that God is who Jesus is, or by qualifying the fact that what Jesus is is truly a man; heresies concerning man's divinization are no less insidious, as they blur the fact that we are truly loved by God in Jesus and are called to respond to that love, and that in thus loving and being loved we are drawn into a real communion with God. But the heart of the matter is sharing in the mystery of love which God is.

p. 71

Nativity -- Day 17

2008-12-14T20:14:00.007-07:00

Here are a couple of video clips from the recent funeral of His Holiness, Patriarch Alexy II:

Part 1
Part 2

The attendance and respect paid by so many clergy, monastics, political dignities, and Russian people, is particularly impressive considering what transpired in Russia under Communism in the 20th century.

Memory Eternal!

The Ochlophobist has written an interesting post: almost a definition of a gentleman; seeming like a disciple of Christianity, whatever that is; the gospel of gentlemanly deduction, and here is the obligatory excerpt:

There is, and has long been, the danger that gentlemanly society replace the ethos of ascetic society in the life of the Church. This might happen when the virtues of gentlemanliness are seen as ends unto themselves - and the wisdom of the Dostoevskian prophet is to see the futility of such ends. What does it profit a man? In the posture of gentleman as the right end of man, the fundamental thing that matters, ecclesiologically speaking, is that the Church act as a civilizing force, that great socio-political vehicle of public virtues, social utility, the provocation of decency and social order. The dream of Dostoevsky's antichrist. This must not be accepted. The right appreciation and love, even, of the gentlemanly occurs when we accept its limits, when we know that it not an end, and not even a means to an end, but perhaps a means to the means to the end. And with this we must keep in constant mind that it is not the only means to the means to the end, but one of many which God may use.

I'll end this post with a quote from Step 7 of The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus:

Mourning according to God is sadness of soul and the disposition of a sorrowing heart, which ever madly seeks that for which it thirsts; and when it fails in its quest, it painfully pursues it, and follows in its wake grievously lamenting. Or thus; mourning is a golden spur in a soul which is stripped of all attachment and of all ties, fixed by holy sorrow to watch over the heart.
...
When our soul leaves this world we shall not be blamed for not having worked miracles, or for not having been theologians, or not having been rapt in divine visions. But we shall certainly have to give an account to God of why we have not unceasingly mourned.

Nativity -- Day 14

2008-12-11T20:46:00.002-07:00

The author at Second Terrace has written a worthwhile post on the recent feast of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos. Here is an excerpt:

Trinitarian Peace is the substance of the only true Revolution, whose bards poetically sing the lay of Salvation History, the real Economy of the only Theology, the only meaningful history. For this Peace is the foundation of Beauty, its memory and its aspiration. Every artist is a prophet insofar as he prophesies this Beauty of Peace. Every story, to be story, must somehow participate in the Story of the Word.
...
But mediated joy, the gift prayed for by the Theotokos, is a gift for the wise, the faithful of the Apostolic Church -- those who live in the Gospel Age and, once in a while, see a glimpse of Star and Glory.

Except for the glimpse, these Orthodox are afflicted with a special despair. Theirs is not a despondency of unresponsive Baals on Wall Street. Theirs is a psychic cost of being Orthodox. Their despair is the price of turning the world around in diurnal cycle, of keeping the Faith that upholds the universe, of believing in the Christ in Whom all things hold together.

Nativity -- Day 9

2008-12-06T22:40:00.003-07:00

Perry from Energetic Procession has written an interesting post entitled: The Plurality of the Good and the Heart of Capitalism, in which he relates ideas found in St. Maximus to economic theory. Here is an excerpt:

A common occurrence in socialistic models is large scale apathy and eventually poor workmanship. Humans for some reason don’t flourish in these contexts. In the Soviet Union, a popular saying was that the state used to pretend to pay the workers and the workers used to pretend to work. The political rhetoric is that socialistic models kill incentive and ingenuity. But why? I think that Maximus’ thought on the gnomic will and the plurality of the Good can help explain why capitalism on the whole does a better job with human nature.

The gnomic will is a particular use of the human power of choice. It is a use of the power of choice that is not yet fixed or congealed with the good that is the telos of human nature. The gnomic will is a use of a natural power that is “between” good or evil. As character formation occurs and the character of the agents “gels” the gnomic will falls away like one of Wittgenstein’s ladders. The gnomic will, like other uses of the will entails the plurality of objects of choice or alternative possibilities. In sun, this is why the gnomic will entails the possibility of evil acts.

The Ochlophobist has also written a thought provoking post related to economics, entitled: wealth, usury, and the lack of those beat-up clowns Rouault loved to paint. The excerpt:

I am particularly taken with the phrase "the virtue of suffering and poverty" and the contrast of this virtue with the quotidian praxis one finds in virtually all of American Orthodoxy - the unquestioned embrace of bourgeois lifestyles by folks who like to talk and hear about ascesis. It is no surprise that converts, virtually all of whom come from the middle classes, and immigrants, who came to America largely in order to achieve a middle class lifestyle, would embrace bourgeois banalities. What is something of a surprise is the number of these who live a bourgeois life, even defend a bourgeois life, and then have the gall to wax on and on about the Orthodox ascetical life. Just this morning I read a bit by a fellow (who for all I know may not live a bourgeois life) who was writing about how Orthodox mission, unlike that of other faiths, starts with the ascetical life of the would-be missionary or evangelist, and the life of the mission is rooted in that ascesis. I agree with this outline of things missional.

Nativity -- Day 4

2008-12-01T22:48:00.003-07:00

I've been reading Andew Louth's: Discerning the Mystery on and off for a while now. Here's an excerpt:

The notion of the tacit has deeper resonance within the Father's thought, however, than in the though of Poanyi. In them the tacit is interpreted as silence, the silence of presence, the presence of God who gives himself to the soul who waits on him in silence. The silence of the tacit makes immediate contact with the silence of prayer: and prayer is seen in the Fathers to be, as it were, the amniotic fluid in which our knowledge of God takes form. Participation in the tradition of the Church implies participation in a life of love, of loving devotion to God and loving care of our neighbour. Participation in the tradition is indeed a moral activity: it implies a growing attentiveness to Our Lord, and a growing likeness to him. In other words, the Fathers understand the place of what we have called, following Gadamar, paideia in making us into those who are capable of knowing God, or rather in making us receptive to God's revelation of himself in Jesus Christ. Hort's assertion that 'the perception of truth depends as much on the state of him that desires to perceive as on the objects that are presented to his view' is axiomatic for the Fathers.

The idea that theology must work within the alleged heritage of the Enlightenment now looks much less compelling. For it is just this heritage that is the object of the criticism of Gadamar and Polanyi. And it is not simply that theology is free to return to a way of approach that was so fruitful in the early centuries; more than that, we find not only that a common pattern emerges from the criticism of Gadamar and Polanyi, despite their very different starting-points, but that this common pattern has a striking resemblance to the pattern that we can discern in the approach of the Fathers of the Church. The way of much theology since the Enlightenment – with only a few notable exceptions, in England those who drank deep of the wine of the Fathers, such as the fathers of the Oxford Movement, and such as Hort – is seen to be based on assumptions about how we come to knowledge that are being rendered increasingly incredible and naïve.

Nativity -- Day 3

2008-11-30T15:41:00.001-07:00

I've recently discovered the Russian bishop: Hilarion Alfeyev. His Grace has an impressive repertoire of publications and articles. One of these articles is: St. Isaac of Ninevah and Syrian Mysticism. Here are some excerpts:

The idea of God as love is central and dominant in Isaac’s thought: it is the main source of his theological opinions, ascetical recommendations and mystical insights.

Divine love is beyond human understanding and above all description in words. At the same time it is reflected in God’s actions with respect to the created world and humankind: ‘Among all His actions there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy, love and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and the end of His dealings with us’.[2] Both the creation of the world and God’s coming on earth in flesh had the only aim, ‘to reveal His boundless love to the world’.[3]
...
And what is a merciful heart? - It is the heart’s burning for the sake of the entire creation, for men, for birds, for animals, for demons, and for every created thing; and by the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful man pour forth abundant tears. From the strong and vehement mercy which grips his heart and from his great compassion, his heart is humbled and he cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in creation. For this reason he offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner he even prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns without measure in his heart in the likeness of God.[29]
...
When you attain to the region of tears, then know that your mind has left the prison of this world and has set its foot on the roadway of the new age, and has begun to breathe that other air, new and wonderful. And at the same moment it begins to shed tears, since the birth pangs of the spiritual infant are at hand. For grace, the common mother of all, makes haste mystically to give birth in the soul to the divine image for the light of the age to come.
...
Question: And whence does a man know that his has attained to the perfect love of God? Answer: When the recollection of God is stirred in his mind, straightway his heart is kindled by the love of Him and his eyes pour forth abundant tears. For love is wont to ignite tears by the recollection of beloved ones. A man who is in this state will never be found destitute of tears, because that which brings him to the recollection of God is never absent from him; wherefore even in sleep he converses with God. For love is wont to cause such things.[11]
...
Abandonment has been an experience of the whole of humanity since the fall of Adam. It is both an experience of believers and of unbelievers. However, for a believer it is an experience of the temporary absence of God, which gives place to an intense feeling of presence, whereas for an atheist it is an experience of constant and irreparable absence. An atheist considers the absence of God as the norm, whereas a believer endures the feeling of absence as a very strong and most painful suffering. He cannot cope with the absence of God: even though in his mind he knows that God has not forgotten him, his soul and heart thirst for conscious experience of God’s presence. The life in God is accompanied with the feeling of God’s presence, and when this feeling is lost, one cannot find calm until it returns.
...
The periods of darkness and abandonment are compared by Isaac with winter, when natural life almost completely ceases, but the seeds lie in the depth of earth, waiting for spring, when they bring forth shoots. One should not fall into despair but rather wait patiently until the afflictions, despondency and abandonment that one has endured bring their fruits.[18]
...
The theme of prayer is undoubtedly the most frequently discussed and most thoroughly developed theme in St Isaac of Nineveh. When reading his works, one not only receives a clear idea about how he and other members of the Church of the East prayed in his times: one also gains a detailed picture of the theory and practice of prayer in the whole of the Eastern Christian tradition.
...
Spiritual prayer, according to Isaac, is participation in the age to come, the experience of paradise on earth. The experience of contemplation which the saints have in the future life is given to one in one’s earthly life through ‘spiritual prayer’: ‘The soul does not pray a prayer, but in awareness she perceives the spiritual things of that other age which transcend human conception; and the understanding of these is but the power of the Holy Spirit. This is noetic contemplation, not the movement and entreaty of prayer, although it has its starting-point in prayer’.[10]
...
In Isaac the term ‘contemplation’ very often appears as a synonym for the ‘vision of God’. He speaks of the supernatural state of the soul, which is ‘her movement in the contemplation of the transubstantial Deity’.[2] In this state, the soul ‘rushes forward.., and on the wings of faith she soars aloft, taking leave of visible creation; she becomes as one drunken in awestruck wonder of her continual solicitude for God; and by simple, uncompounded vision, and by unseeing intuitions concerning the Divine nature’.[3] At the same time Isaac emphasizes that the righteous cannot see the essence of God: when one is raised to the contemplation of God, one sees not God’s essence, but ‘the dark cloud of His glory’.[4] One can see only a reflection of God’s essence, though this vision will be fuller in the age to come: ‘The more a man becomes perfect with respect to God, the more he follows after Him. But in the age of truth, God will show him His face, although not His essence. For however much the righteous enter into the contemplation of Him, they behold an enigma of His vision, like an image that is seen through a mirror;[5] but yonder they behold the revelation of the truth’.[6]

Nativity -- Day 2

2008-11-29T21:11:00.008-07:00

I have almost completed reading the book: On Prayer, by Archimandrite Sophrony. Archimandrite Sophrony provides a lovely point of contact with the wisdom and humility of the blessed St. Silouan. Here is an excerpt on the distinction between impersonal asceticisms and the personal Christian asceticism:

The way of our Fathers requires strong faith and long-suffering, whereas our contemporaries attempt to acquire spiritual gifts, including even direct contemplation of the Absolute God, through pressure and in a brief space of time. Often one can remark a disposition in them to draw a parallel between prayer in the Name of Jesus and yoga or 'transcendental meditation' and the like. I think it necessary to point out the dangers of this delusion -- the danger of looking on prayer as a very simple, easy 'technical' means leading to direct union with God. I consider it essential to emphasise the radical difference between the Jesus Prayer and all other ascetic theories. All those are deluded who endeavour mentally to divest themselves of everything that is transitory, relative, in order in this way to cross some invisible threshold, to realize their being 'without beginning', their 'identity' with the Source of all that is; in order to return to Him, to be merged in Him, the nameless trans-personal Absolute; in order in the vast expanse of what is beyond thought to unify one's personal individuality with the individualised form of natural existence. Ascetic efforts of this kind enabled some strugglers to a certain extent to rise to meta-logical contemplation of being; to experience a certain awe; to know the state when the mind is stilled, when it goes beyond the bounds of time and space. In like states man may feel the peace of divestment of the constantly changing manifestations of the visible world; may uncover in himself freedom of spirit and contemplate mental beauty.

The ultimate development of such impersonal asceticism has led many ascetics to perceive the divine origin in the very nature of man; to a tendency to the self-divinisation that lay at the root of the great Fall; to see in man a certain 'absoluteness' which in essence is nothing else but the reflection of the Divine Absoluteness in the creature created in His likeness; to feel drawn to return to the state of peace which man knew before his appearance in this world. In any case after this experience of divesture some such form of mental aberration may arise in the mind. I am not setting myself the task of listing all the various types of mental intuition but I will say from my own experience that the True, Living God -- the I AM -- is not here in all this. This is the natural genius of the human spirit in his sublimated impulses towards the Absolute. All contemplation arrived at by this means is self-contemplation, not contemplation of God. In these circumstances we open up for ourselves created beauty, not First-Being. And in all of it there is no salvation for man.

The source of real deliverance lies in unquestionable, wholehearted acceptance of the Revelation, 'I am that I am... I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.' God is Personal Absolute, Trinity One and Indivisible. Our whole Christian life is based on this Revelation. This God called us from non-being into life. Knowledge of this Living God and discernment of the manner of His creation releases us from the obscurity of our own ideas, coming 'from beneath,' about the Absolute; rescues us from our attraction -- unconscious but for all that ruinous -- to withdrawal from existence of any sort. We are created in order to be communicants in the Divine Being of Him Who really is. Christ indicated this wondrous way: 'Strait in the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.' Apprehending the depths of the Creator's wisdom, we embark on the suffering through which Divine eternity is to be attained. And when His Light shines for us we unite in ourselves contemplation of the two extremes of the abyss -- one on the one side, the darkness of hell, on the other, the triumph of victory. We are existentially introduced into the province of the Uncreated Divine Life. And hell loses power over us. We are given grace -- to live the state of the Incarnate Logos-Christ Who descended into hell as Conqueror. Then by the power of His love we shall embrace all creation in the prayer: 'O Jesus, Gracious Almighty, have mercy upon us and Thy world.'

pp. 168-170

Nativity -- Day 1

2008-11-28T20:37:00.002-07:00

I've come across an interesting article by Bishop Kallistos Ware, entitled: Body, Intellect, Heart: Prayer of the Total Self. Here are some excerpts from the article:

We commune with God, in Evagrios' words, without any intermediary. Prayer at its higher level is an experience of unmediated unity. "When we are engaged in contemplative prayer," says Evagrios, "we are no more aware of the fact that we are contemplating than we are conscious of our own sleep."
...
What about the heart, now? Let's turn from Evagrios to Macarios. In one of my favorite books, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery, the fox has some very helpful words for us. "Good-bye," says the fox, "and now here is my secret. It is very simple. Only with the heart can one see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. Only with the heart can one see rightly." My spiritual father, a Russian priest long since dead, always liked to quote those words to me.
...
Two texts from Proverbs are very popular in the Greek spiritual tradition. They come up frequently in the Philokalia: "My child, give me your heart" (Proverbs 23:26) - that means, "Give me your total self" and "Guard your heart with all vigilance" (Proverbs 4:23) - that means, "Keep watch over the entirety of your inner life, know yourself, know yourself as God granted and God taught." Finally, "The heart is deep" (Psalm 63:6 ). That is another popular hesychast and Philokalic text. It means the human person is a profound mystery.

Ostrov, etc

2008-11-18T17:37:00.006-07:00

I've recently viewed an excellent movie called Ostrov. Here's the synopsis from imdb:

Somewhere in Northern Russia in a small Russian Orthodox monastery lives an unusual man whose bizarre conduct confuses his fellow monks, while others who visit the island believe that the man has the power to heal, exorcise demons and foretell the future.

Wikipedia has a more lengthy description (with possible spoilers) here.

If you're looking to purchase this movie, the best deal I've found is here.

One of my favourite scenes is here.

A worthwhile article: Paradise and Hell According to Orthodox Tradition, by Protopresbyter George Metallinos. Here's an excerpt:

On the Last Sunday of Lent "we commemorate the Second and Incorruptible Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ". The expression "we commemorate" of the Book of Saints confirms that our Church, as the Body of Christ, re-enacts in its worship the Second Coming of Christ as an "event" and not just something that is historically expected. The reason is, that through the Divine Eucharist, we are transported to the celestial kingdom, to meta-history. It is in this orthodox perspective, that the subject of paradise and hell is approached.

On Prayer

2008-11-16T21:11:00.003-07:00

I've been enjoying the book: On Prayer, by Archimandrite Sophrony. He writes about kenosis and recapitulation:

To transport ourselves in mind, whenever we suffer tribulation, into universal dimensions makes us like unto Christ. If we do this, everything that happens to us individually will be a revelation of what happens in the whole world. Streams of cosmic life will flow through us, and we shall be able, through personal experience to discern both man in his temporal existence and even the Son of man in his two natures. It is precisely thus, through suffering, that we grow to cosmic and meta-cosmic self-consciousness. By going through the trial of self-emptying in following Christ, crucifying ourselves with Him, we become receptive to the infinitely great Divine Being. In wearying penitential prayer for the whole world, we merge ourselves spiritually with all mankind: we become universal in the image of the universality of Christ Himself, who bears in Himself all that exists. Dying with Him and in Him, we here and now anticipate resurrection.

The Lord suffered for every one of us. His sufferings do indeed cover all our ills since the fall of Adam. In order to know Christ properly, it is essential that we ourselves enter into His anguish, and experience it all, if this be possible, as He Himself did. Thus, and only thus, is Christ-God made known, existentially -- i.e., not abstractly, through psychological or theoretical faith that is not converted into deeds.

From the outset when I returned to Christ, with a little more understanding now of Who Jesus was, my heart underwent a change and my thoughts took a different direction. From my inner conflicts I spontaneously shifted to humanity at large, and found myself suffering with all mankind. The experience made me see that we must not only live the ordeals that fall to our lot within the narrow framework of our individuality but must transfer them in spirit to the universal plane -- in other words, realize that the same cosmic life that flows through us flows in the veins of everyone else. Because of this apparently natural psychological impulse, I began to feel all the ills -- disease, disasters, feuds, enmities, natural catastrophes, wars, and so on -- that befall the human race, with increased compassion. This really quite normal compulsion was to bring forth precious fruit for me: I learned to live the fate of all mankind as if it were happening to me personally. It is precisely this that is enjoined by the commandment, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself'.

pp. 76, 77

Romanian Hermits

2008-10-27T00:33:00.002-06:00

I've found an interesting video on contemporary Romanian hermits here.

Gulag Archipelago

2008-10-17T19:50:00.005-06:00

Today I was rather surprised to notice that I've not posted in almost two months. In the meantime, I've completed a few books which I hope to eventually review, and have started a few others. One of the books I've been reading is: The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Here are a couple of excerpts:

[p.168]
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: Know thyself!

Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.
...
[p.181] Evidently evildoing also has a threshold magnitude. Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree or the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return.

Feast of Transfiguration

2008-08-18T20:34:00.004-06:00

Tonight we had Matins commemorating the Feast of Transfiguration (click on the icon to read more about it). Here is an excerpt from one of the canons:

Thou wast transfigured upon Mount Tabor, showing the exchange mortal men will make with Thy glory at Thy second and fearful coming, O Saviour. Elijah and Moses talked with Thee, and Thou hast called the three disciples to be with Thee. As they gazed upon Thy glory, O Master, they were struck with wonder at Thy blinding brightness. Do Thou who then has shone upon them with Thy light, give light now to our souls.

I have been iteratively updating the post on The Gnostic Chapters by Saint Diadochos of Photiki to reflect the newly translated chapters which OrthodoxMonk has been graciously posting.

I'll end this post with some Saint John of Kronstadt, from My Life in Christ:

Cultivate the Christian art of doing good, of heartily blessing those who curse you, by which you will please your Lord Christ, Who said: "Bless them that curse you. Love your enemies" sincerely, not regarding their enmity -- but respecting in them the image of God, according to which they are created, and seeing in them your own self. "Do good to them which hate you," as the Son of the heavenly Father, Who is kind even "unto the unthankful and to the evil," believing that you will overcome evil with good, because good is always more powerful than evil. "Pray for them which despitefully use you," so that through your prayer you may save them also, by God's grace, from the evil malice and the snares of the Devil, and save yourself too from misforturne. "Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again," for everything comes from God, and, should the Lord will, He can take everything away from you. Remember, that you yourself have come naked out of your mother's womb, and naked shall you return thither, and shall not take anything away with you. If you will thus live, you will gain for yourself the priceless treasure of peace and love, and shall live long on the earth: for "the meek-spirited," it is said, "shall possess the earth: and shall be refreshed in the multitude of peace."
...
Do not grow despondent and enfeebled in spirit, seeing the constant struggle within you of evil against good, but like a good and valiant soldier of Jesus Christ, our great Founder, struggle courageously against evil, looking at the crown, prepared by the Lord for all who conquer evil in this world and in their flesh. "To him that overcometh, will I grant to sit with Me in My throne."

Confession

2008-08-08T19:22:00.004-06:00

I've come across a nice article on confession here. Here's the obligatory citation:

The first turning point of spiritual healing is in the Sacrament of Baptism. Here the believer is cleansed from all sins and is spiritually reborn for righteous living. However, the predisposition towards sin, which is interwoven with his free will, is not completely eliminated. As time passes, an individual falls into sin due to carefree ways, inexperience, and different temptations. Supposedly eliminated, sin, similar to cancerous cells left after surgery, begins to propagate once again, gaining strength and striving to totally control the individual's will. The individual once again becomes spiritually sick and consequently unhappy and bitter.

In this difficult and dogged battle with sin, the Sacraments of Confession and Communion are powerful tools available to us. In the Sacrament of Confession the penitent Christian, in the presence of the spiritual confessor, opens to God his darkened and sick heart and allows the heavenly light to enter, cleanse and heal it. In Confession, as in Baptism, the great rebirthing power of the crucified Son of God is concealed. This is the reason that after this Sacrament, the truly penitent person feels cleansed and renewed, as a newly baptized infant. He obtains new strength to battle the evil within himself and to restart a righteous life.
...
Repentance, to be effective, should not be limited just to awareness of ones sinfulness or to a cold admission of unworthiness. It should be accompanied with a deep feeling of regret and a sincere desire to become a different person. It requires the decision to battle with one's evil inclinations and the will to correct one's way of life. The penitent opens his soul to God, the true and loving Physician, and asks for mercy and help in the battle with bad tendencies. Such heartfelt contrition is necessary so that the effectiveness of the Sacrament will extend not only to the removal of committed sins but also to bring the Divine remedy into the receptive soul and strengthen it against future temptations.
...
At the end the penitent kneels before the cross, and the priest, covering the head of the penitent with his stole, reads the following prayer of absolution:

O Lord God of the salvation of Your servants, merciful, compassionate and long-suffering; Who repents concerning our evil deeds, not desiring the death of a sinner, but that he should turn from his way and live. Show mercy now on Your servant [name] and grant to him (or her) an image of repentance, forgiveness of sins and deliverance, pardoning all his (or her) sins, whether voluntary or involuntary. Reconcile and unite him (or her) to Your Holy Church, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to Whom, with You, are due dominion and majesty, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

May our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, by the grace and compassion of His love for mankind, forgive you, my child, [name], all your transgressions. And I His unworthy Priest, through the power given me, forgive and absolve you from all your sins, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Following this prayer, the penitent rises, kisses the Cross and the Gospels and, receiving a blessing from the priest, steps away thanking God.

St. Diadochos of Photiki - Gnostic Chapters

2008-08-03T17:30:00.017-06:00

Orthodox Monk has begun posting a translation of the Gnostic Chapters by St. Diadochos of Photiki. Those who have read this sort of literature will already know that the terms "gnostic" and "gnosis" have a much wider application than denoting a tenet of Gnosticism. The study of gnosis is an epistemological study which may entail ideas and conclusions either heterodox or orthodox. In the case of St. Diadochos, we have an orthodox form.

From the introductory post:

We hope to publish over the next short while the complete text of our translation of the Gnostic Chapters of St Diadochos, Bishop of Photiki in Epirus. Not much is known about this 5^th Century prelate. His see was located somewhat north of present-day Preveza in Greece. His work is included in the first volume of the Philokalia and was one of the works that St Symeon the New Theologian was given to read when he was a novice. It is the first recorded work to speak explicitly of the Jesus Prayer.

Chapters 1-25 (of 100) are here. A sample:

When the temper is set in motion against the passions, it must be known that it is the hour of silence. When one sees that confusion coming to serenity either through the prayer or through almsgiving let him set the wing of the mind in motion in the love of the sayings of God, being secured with the bond of humility. For if one does not humiliate oneself greatly, he is not able to speak concerning the grandeur of God.

Chapters 26-35 (of 100) are here. A sample:

One thing is the love which is natural to the soul and another thing is the love which occurs to it from the Holy Spirit. For the first is set into motion moderately, when we wish, from our own will, and for that reason it is easily plundered by the demons when we do not restrain our own intention with violence[11]. The second, however, so much enkindles the soul towards the love of God that then in an unutterable way all the parts of soul fasten on to the goodness of the divine longing in a certain infinite simplicity of disposition. For having then become as it were pregnant by the spiritual activity,[12] the mind spouts a certain fountain of love and joy.

Chapters 36-50 (of 100) are here. A sample:

As an example of this, let there be for us the servant who is hailed by night by his master from in front of the yard of the house after a long absence abroad. To whom the servant absolutely refuses the opening of the doors. He has been frightened lest, plundering him, the similarity of voice prepare him to become betrayer of the things that were entrusted by the master. With whom his lord is not angry once it has become day but finds him worthy of many praises, for he thought that even the voice of the master was a deception, not wanting to lose any of his goods.

Chapters 51-60 (of 100) are here. A sample:

When we are greatly disgusted with the bodily anomalies that occur to us,[6] it must be known that our soul is still enslaved to the desires of the body. For just that reason the soul, longing for material well-being, does not wish to depart from the good things of life but also considers it a great lack of leisure not to be able, on account of the illnesses, to make use of the fine things of life. But if with thanksgiving the soul accepts the troubles that arise from the illnesses, it is known not to be far from the boundaries of dispassion, whence it even then accepts death with joy, as being, rather, the occasion of true life.

Chapters 61-70 (of 100) are here. A sample:

Just as when they are open the doors of the baths quickly impel the inner warmth towards the outside, thus also the soul, when it wishes to speak much, even if it should say all things well, disperses its own remembrance through the gate of the voice. Whence the soul is thenceforth deprived of seasonable thoughts[52] and speaks the clashing of its thoughts[53] more or less in a mob[54] to those who happen to be there, because henceforward it does not have the Holy Spirit preserving it so that it have an intellect without fantasy. For the Good, being foreign to agitation and every fantasy, ever flees garrulousness. Therefore silence is good in its proper time, being nothing other than the mother of the wisest thoughts[55].

Chapters 71-80 (of 100) are here. A sample:

Grace, as I said, is hidden in the depth of the mind from the very instant in which we are baptized, hiding, however, the very perception of its presence. However, whenever one should begin to desire God ardently from his whole intention, then by means of the sense of the mind, Grace, using a certain unspeakable word, begins to speak to the soul some certain part of its goods.[30] Whence, thenceforward he who wholly wishes to hold on to this discovery securely comes to a desire of divesting himself of all present goods with great joy, so that, really, he acquire the field in which he has found the hidden treasure of life. For when one divests himself of all the wealth of this worldly life, then he finds the place[31] where the grace of God is hidden.

Chapters 81-85 (of 100) are here. A sample:

The Lord says in the Gospel that it is not possible to expel the strong one from his house unless someone who is stronger, having bound and despoiled him, expels him. How is it therefore possible that he who has been expelled with so much shame should enter in again and sojourn with the true householder who is reposing however he wishes in his own house? For not even a king who at some time has struggled greatly against the tyrant who has rebelled against him will countenance having this person in the palace. Rather, he will slaughter him immediately or, having bound him, hand him over to his own troops for a long punishment and most miserable death.

Chapters 86-90 (of 100) are here. A sample:

The pedagogic surrender brings much sorrow and humbleness and moderate despair to the soul, so that the part of it which is ambitious and liable to fall come appropriately into humility. It immediately brings to the heart the fear of God and tears of confession and great desire for most beautiful silence. On the other hand, the surrender which is according to the aversion of God allows the soul to be filled with despair together with disbelief and wrath and delusion[5]. We must, knowing the experience of both types of surrender, approach God according to the manner of each.

Chapters 91-95 (of 100) are here. A sample:

To those who are beginning to desire piety ardently the way of virtue seems extremely rough and very gloomy not because it is that sort of thing but because directly from the womb human nature consorts with the range of the pleasures. To those who are able to come to middle of it, the way is shown to be wholly approachable and comfortable, for having been subordinated through the activity[18] of the good, the bad is destroyed by the good habit along with the memory of the irrational passions.[19] Whence, thenceforth the soul gladly passes through the all the paths of the virtues. For this reason, the Lord, introducing us to the road of salvations, says: ‘How narrow and strait is the road leading to the Kingdom and few are they that enter in by it.’ To those who with much intention wish to come forth to the keeping of his holy commandments, he says: ‘For my yoke is good and my load is light.’ Therefore, in the beginning of the struggle it is necessary to work the holy commandments of God with a certain violent act of the will, so that seeing our purpose and effort the good Lord send us a certain act of the will very much ready to serve his glorious wishes.[20] For then: ‘The will[21] is prepared by the Lord;’ so that we unceasingly work the good in a certain great joy. For then, really, we will perceive that: ‘God is he who acts in us both to want and to act beyond expectation.’

Chapters 96-100 (of 100) are here. A sample:

Those who are friends of the pleasures of this world come to the actual missteps from the thoughts[1]. For borne by an undiscerning judgement they desire to bring almost all their impassioned conceptions[2] to lawless words and unholy works. Those however who are endeavouring to accomplish the ascetic way of life come from the actual missteps to the evil thoughts and to certain evil and damaging words. For if the demons see such persons gladly tolerating abuse [of others] or speaking certain idle or unseasonable things or laughing as it should not be or angered immoderately or desiring to see empty and vain glory, then they arm themselves in a group against them. Moreover, taking ambition as an excuse for their own evil they jump as it were through a certain dark window and plunder the soul. Therefore it is necessary that those who wish to dwell together with the multitude of virtues not seek glory, nor meet with many people, nor make use of continual departures [from the monastery] or abuse certain persons (even if those who are abused are worthy of the abuse), nor speak much even if they are able to say all things well. For dispersing the mind without measure, garrulity not only makes the mind idle in relation to its spiritual labour but also delivers it to the demon of accidie[3], which weakening it without measure delivers it thenceforth to the demons of sorrow and to the demons of anger. The mind must therefore ever be occupied with the keeping of the holy commandments and with the deep remembrance of the Lord of Glory. For he says: ‘He who keeps the commandment will not know an evil word;’ that is, will not deviate into bad thoughts or words.

Saint John Climacus

2008-07-29T00:08:00.005-06:00

The following is from The Ladder of Divine Ascent, by Saint John Climacus:

Obedience is absolute renunciation of our own life, clearly expressed in our bodily actions. Or, conversely, obedience is the mortification of the limbs while the mind remains alive. Obedience is unquestioning movement, voluntary death, a life free of curiosity, carefree danger, unprepared defence before God, fearlessness of death, a safe voyage, a sleeper's progress. Obedience is the tomb of the will and the resurrection of humility. A corpse does not argue or reason as to what is good or what seems to be bad. For he who has devoutly put the soul of the novice to death will answer for everything. Obedience is an abandonment of discernment in a wealth of discernment.
...
When motives of humility and real longing for salvation incite us to bend our neck and entrust ourselves to another in the Lord, before entering upon this life, if there is any cleverness and prudence in us, we ought first to question and examine, and even, so to speak, test our helmsman, so as not to mistake the sailor for the pilot, a sick man for a doctor, a passionate for a dispassionate man, the sea for a harbour, and so bring about the speedy shipwreck of our soul. But when once we have entered the arena of piety and obedience, we must no longer judge our good manager in any way at all, even though we may perhaps see in him some slight failings, since he is only human. Otherwise, by sitting in judgment we shall get no profit from our subjection.
...
It is the property of angels,' he continued, 'not to fall, and even, as some say, it is quite impossible for them to fall. It is the property of men to fall, and to rise again as often as this may happen. But it is the property to devils, and devils alone, not to rise once they have fallen.
...
He whose will and desire in conversation is to establish his own opinion, even though what he says is true, should recognize that he is sick with the devil's disease. And if he behaves like this only in conversation with his equals, then perhaps the rebuke of his superiors may heal him. But if he acts in this way even with those who are greater and wiser than he, then his malady is humanly incurable.
...
He who is not submissive in speech, clearly will not be so in act either. For he who is unfaithful in little is also unfaithful in much, and is intractable. He labours in vain, and he will get nothing from holy obedience but his own doom.

Saint John of Kronstadt

2008-07-26T11:44:00.002-06:00

I haven't completed any books recently, so here's a quote from My Life in Christ, by Saint John of Kronstadt:

Everything that constitutes me man (the soul), lives solely by God, and only in union with Him, whilst when the soul separates itself from God, then it experiences extreme distress. But the life of my soul consistes in the peace of my spiritual powers, and this peace proceeds exclusively from God. There is, it is true, a carnal peace also, but it is a delusive one -- the forerunner of spiritual storm -- of which the Lord says: "When they shall say (to men), Peace and safety, then suddenly destruction cometh upon them"; but spiritual peace, which proceeds from the Spirit of God differs, as heaven from earth, from such carnal peace. It is heavenly blissgiving, "Peace I give you," often said the Lord to His disciples, giving them His peace, and the Apostles also gave "peace to believers," and wished them God's peace as the highest blessing, because God's peace constitutes the life of our soul, and witnesses to the union of our soul with God. The absence of peace in the soul -- disturbance, by which all the passionate conditions of our soul are distinguished -- is spiritual death and the sign of the action of the enemey of our salvation in our hearts.

The Prodigal Son

2008-07-05T16:54:00.007-06:00

Today, while listening to some Orthodox chant, I encountered a lovely hymn that hearkens back to Great Lent and the Sunday of the Prodigal son:

Make haste to open unto me Thy fatherly embrace, for as the Prodigal I have wasted my life. In the unfailing wealth of Thy mercy, O Saviour, reject not my heart in its poverty. For with compunction I cry to Thee, O Lord: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee.

The Valaam, Russian rendition of this hymn can be found here. Click on the icon to read more about the Sunday of the Prodigal Son.

Some new additions to my library:

2008-06-28T13:02:00.019-06:00

It's been a while since I've posted; so here's a somewhat voluminous attempt to make up for that.

Readings:

Wisdom from Mount Athos - Archimandrite Sophrony

Here is an excerpt from the book (p. 25):

At all times I beseech the Lord who is merciful to grant that I may love my enemies; and by the grace of God I have experienced what the love of God is, and what it is to love my neighbour, and day and night I pray the Lord for love, and the Lord gives me tears to weep for the whole world. But if I find fault with any man or look on him with an unkind eye my tears dry up and my soul sinks into despondency. Yet do I begin again to entreat forgiveness of God, and the Lord in His mercy forgives me, a sinner.

This book contains some of the writings of Saint Silouan (depicted above), and makes a great companion to the book "The Monk of Mount Athos" which I have mentioned in an recent post. In the introduction to the book, Archimandrite Sophrony writes (pps. 6, 7):

The Athonite monk is convinced beyond doubt that the Orthodox Church is privileged with the most authentic knowledge of the One True God. The way to the Father lies uniquely through the Son, only-begotten and consubstantial with the Father. He, and He alone, 'knows the Father' with complete knowledge, and 'no man cometh unto the Father, but by the Son'. Knowledge is acquired through prayer of the mind united with the heart, and our whole being given over to God. The heart is the spiritual centre of the human personality and the mind is enlightened through the heart. The monk knows the travail of launching the mind in the heart. But he knows, too, that this secret realm cannot be entered painlessly, and so he embarks willingly on the ascetic struggle. When the roots of the Tree of life press into the human heart the monk feels a sort of spiritual pain. In many ways suffering of the spirit is unlike physical suffering. Spiritual pain is the source of the energy needed to resist the pull of earthly attractions for the sake of that other divine and eternal world. Through this form of asceticism we may discover the hidden meaning of the apparnet paradoxes of the Beatitudes - Blessed are the poor in spirit; Blessed are they that mourn, Blesed are they which are persecuted; and so on.

The Possesed - Fyodor Dostoevsky

From Amazon's writeup:

Famous for accurately predicting twentieth-century totalitarianism, Dostoevsky’s The Possessed is an emphatic howl of protest against the fervor of revolution and terrorism that gripped Russia toward the end of the nineteenth century.

Based on a true event, in which a young revolutionary was murdered by his comrades, The Possessed provoked a storm of controversy for its harsh depiction of a ruthless band of Russian intellectuals, atheists, socialists, anarchists, and other radicals who attempt to incite the population of a small provincial town to revolt against the government. In contrast to Dostoevsky’s savage portrait of these radicals and the violent ideas that have possessed them like demons, the author expresses great sympathy for workers and other ordinary people ill-served by those who presume to speak in their name.

Often regarded as the greatest political novel ever written, The Possessed showcases Dostoevsky’s genius for characterization, his amazing insight into the human heart, and his shattering criticism of the desire to sway and control the thought and behavior of others.

In my estimation, this book lived up to the hype reflected in the writeup above. A free online copy of this book can be found here. Of the three Dostoevsky books I've read thus far, I would rank them as follows, from best to almost the best:

Crime and Punishment
The Possessed
The Idiot

I've been saving what I expect to be the best, for last; namely: The Karamazov Brothers.

Standing in God's Holy Fire - John Anthony McGuckin

From the rear cover:

The Orthodox Byzantine tradition is still often undervalued and misunderstood in the Western churches, this book is a vivid introduction to leading figures, key themes and values of this this living and ancient form of Christian spirituality, which has endured and survived a recent history of systematic persecution. At the center of the Byzantine experience are ideas which western Christians share, and from which they still have much to learn beauty, endurance, and hopefulness. John Anthony McGuckin is a priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Professor of Early Church History at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, New York, and Adjunct Professor of Religion at Columbia University.

This book provided a good historical overview of Orthodox spirituality, covering many of the primary influences. I recommend this book to those seeking an introduction to the topic. Another introductory book, from a slightly different perspective, but worth reading, is Orthodox Spirituality: A Brief Introduction - Archimandrite Hiertheos Vlachos. Here is an excerpt from it:

Orthodox spirituality is the experience of life in Christ, the atmosphere of the new man, regenerated by the grace of God. It is not an abstract, emotional and psychological state of being. It is man's union with God. Within this framework we can detect some characteristic traits of Orthodox spirituality. It is firstly Christ-centred, since Christ is the one and only "remedy" for people, by virtue of the hypostatic unity of the divine and human nature in His person. Secondly, Orthodox spirituality is Holy Trinity-centred, since Christ is always united with the Father and the Holy Spirit. All the sacraments are performed in the name of the Triune God. Being the Head of the Church, Christ cannot be thought of as being outside of it. Consequently Orthodox spirituality is also Ecclesiastic-centred, since only within the Church can we come into communion with Christ. Finally, as we shall explain later, Orthodox spirituality is mystical and ascetical.

Orthodox Monk has posted some measured wisdom to a young man inquiring about monasticism. Here's an excerpt:

Moreover, there is a complicated psychological and spiritual matter here. We believe in Orthodoxy; we think it’s true. However, that does not mean that everyone who is interested in joining the Orthodox Church has completely pure motives. It is possible—especially given Justin’s age and the tendency at that age to rebellion—that his interest in the truth of Orthodoxy is mixed up with an adolescent arrogant rebellion against his parents’ values. In that case, as part of the process of becoming Orthodox, Justin, before he enters the Church, has to humble himself and purify his motives! It might be that his parents sense this—that he is not as spiritually inclined as he thinks he is—and that they see some aspects of his impure motives. This does not prevent Justin from becoming Orthodox—or even later a monk!—but it does complicate matters and does require that Justin humble himself so as to acquire a deeper appreciation of the weakness of human nature and in particular of the impure aspects of his own interest in Orthodoxy. If Justin is not free of such arrogant tendencies, later there will be a serious problem in his spiritual life and in such a case it is not out of the question that he might later either leave the monastery or, God forbid!, the Church.

Perry from Energetic Procession has posted some interesting considerations surrounding the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Here's the standard excerpt:

If Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith, who is the judge that is to apply the rule? And what authority does such a judge possess? It seems to me that Sola Scriptura includes the thesis of the right of private judgment, namely that every believer can make normatively binding judgments and that only a believer can make judgments that are binding upon his or her conscience. Further, if as Michael writes that advocates of Sola Scriptura hold that there were two sources of authority for the first say 400 years of the church, the one being tradition which was a summary, albeit a fallible one, of what was written by Scripture and accepted by the universal church, where is such a summary to be found? What document is a token of this summary? And what constitutes the “universal church?” Where is there an example of the “universal church” in the first four hundred years? If Protestants walked into that church, would they recognize it as their own in polity, worship, etc.? I don’t think so.

I've recently received, or have on order, the following additions to my library:

Theoria

2008-06-22T17:26:00.003-06:00

I've recently stumbled upon what is in my opinion, a well-written wikipedia article, on the topic of theoria (click on the image to go to the article). Here's an excerpt:

Theoria (Greek θεωρία) is Greek for contemplation or perception of beauty as a moral faculty (OED). From within Eastern Orthodox theology it is "the vision of God" and theoria then also takes on a number of meanings that pertain to union with God (theosis), (theo-) and holiness, the quintessential goals of Christianity (see the Philokalia). The love of beauty, transcending the love of wisdom, manifesting in the love of God (theophilos). The vision of God being the culmination of Theophilos through hesychasm. The word has its origin in the Greek language as being akin to the word theory, or speculation as in "Beauty shall Save the World". This expression of the idea comes from a religious gnosiology perspective (rather than say, a scientific or cultural one), that apperception through faith in God (action through faith), leads to truth through our contemplative faculties.^[1] It is used to express the experience of life as "one who watches a play or activity", the state of "being" is defined as spectator. Hence it means to focus ones attention exclusively to one thing and separate that object (by focus) exclusively, Beauty or God being the object of focus. The act of experiencing and or observing is through the nous or "eye of the soul". Matthew 6:22-6:34

Readings

2008-06-05T21:04:00.007-06:00

I've finished the following books in the last while:

Early Christian Attitudes toward Images - Steven Bigham

From the Orthodox Research Institute:

For all iconophiles, that is, those who accept the dogma of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, but especially the Orthodox who claim that the icon has a sacramental and mystical character, it is naturally disquieting to hear the claim that the early Christians were aniconic and iconophobic. If this claim is true, the theology and the veneration of the icon are seriously undermined. It is, therefore, natural for iconophiles to attempt to disprove the thesis according to which the early Christians had no images whatsoever (aniconic) because they believed them to be idols (iconophobic). It is equally natural for iconophiles to want to substantiate, as much as this is possible, their deep intuition that the roots of Christian iconography go back to the apostolic age. This study weakens the notion and credibility of the alleged hostility of the early Christians to non-idolatrous images, providing a more balanced evaluation of this question.

I found this book to be informative, both in terms of presenting some of the historical texts involved in the debate, and by delving into some contemporary archeological discoveries which shed new light upon various theories. The next book on icons which I plan on reading is: Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council - A. Giakalis

The Monk of Mount Athos - Archimandrite Sophrony

An excerpt from the book:

What does the Christian understand by sin?
Sin is primarily a metaphysical phenonemon whose roots lie in the mystic depths of man's spiritual nature. The essence of sin consists not in the infringement of ethical standards but in a falling away from the divine eternal life for which man was made and to which, by his very nature, he is called.
Sin is committed first of all in the secret depths of the human spirit but its consequences distort the whole individual. A sin will reflect on a man's psychological and physical condition, on his outward appearance, on his personal destiny. Sin will, inevitably, pass beyond the boundaries of the sinner's own life to burden all humanity and thus affect the fate of the whole world. The sin of our forefather Adam was not the only sin of cosmic significance. Every sin, secret or manifest, committed by each one of us, has a bearing on the rest of the universe.

This was an exceptional book, although a scant 124 pages in length. This book is packed with profound insight into the Orthodox mind as acquired and lived by St. Silouan (click on the photo to read more about him).

Blog Readings

2008-05-25T15:49:00.004-06:00

Here's an excerpt from an interesting post by the Ocholophibist at Energetic Procession:

Very much inferred in all this is the notion that to be in the presence and love of the Word is to be free, but to chose corruption means to be instantly bound to the determinisms of death. If we choose death, we choose the patterns and cycles and cosmic consequences of death. Though I am no scholar of St. Athanasius, it seems to me that it is consistent with his line of thought to believe that the cycles of death and corruption that we witness in the universe are brought about because of man’s choosing of corruption. Only we male and female persons are the likeness and image of the Word. We men and women are the mediating microcosms of the cosmos, and the rest of the material cosmos is bound to the determinisms we introduce, or to the freedom we introduce (that being relative freedom, for only God is completely free - our freedom resting in mimetic contingency upon God). In this manner we either bless or we curse the entire cosmos in our own volitional acts to either preserve our likeness through constant contemplation of the Word (a restoration and preservation now made possible through Holy Baptism and the Mysteries) or to choose that which is corruptible.

There are also some worthwhile comments associated with the post.

Readings

2008-05-20T13:34:00.007-06:00

Here are a couple of books I've recently completed:

The Beauty of the Infinite - David Bentley Hart

From the book:

One moves in God's infinity only if one moves upon surfaces. To be raised up eternally into glory, to be deified, is to traverse every series of being in such a way as to see God's beauty expressed in each, in endless variety. Sin, violence, cruelty, egoism, and despair are the discords that disrupt the surface, but always as privation, a failure of love; they are no part of being's deep music, but only shrill alarms and barren phrasings, apostasies from music altogether. Evil, for all its ineradicable ubiquity, is always originally an absence, a shadow, a false reply, and all violence falls within the interval of a harmony not taken up, within which the true form of being is forgotten, misconstrued, distorted, and belied. This is not to imagine being as a music without dissonances, but as one without ultimate discords for the soul that turns its motion toward God's all-embracing eternal order of love, seeking to recover the theme of this love and articulate it anew forever.

An interesting book, in spite of my inability to fully penetrate, let alone master, the dense layers of philosophical prose and nomenclature. A variety of reviews can be found online, or purchased from various journals; however, seeing that I'm not entirely satisfied with any of the free ones, I'll defer recommendations.

Unseen Warfare - as edited by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and revised by Theophan the Recluse

From the book:

This book, which profits the soul, is justly named 'Unseen Warfare'...For it teaches not the art of visible and sensory warfare, and speaks not about visible, bodily foes but about the unseen and inner struggle, which every Christian undertakes from the moment of his baptism, when he makes a vow to God to fight for Him, to the glory of His divine Name, even unto death. (It is of this warfare that the book of Numbers speaks allegorically: 'Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of the Lord' [Numbers xxi. 14].) It speaks of invisible and incorporeal foes, which are the varied passions and lusts of the flesh, and of the evil demons who hate men and never cease to fight against us, day and night, as the divine Paul says: 'For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places' (Eph. vi. 12)
This book teaches that the warriors who take part in this unseen war are all who are Christians; and their commander is our Lord Jesus Christ, surrounded and accompanied by His marshals and generals, that is, by all the hierarchies of angels and saints. The arena, the field of battle, the site where the fight actually takes place is our own heart and all our inner man. The time of battle is our whole life.

I enjoyed this book; it was quite practical, and more accessible than the heavier ascetical works within the Philokalia collection of writings and St. John's Ladder.

Icons

2008-05-05T20:33:00.003-06:00

I've stumbled across an interesting article on icons. Here's an excerpt:

When the baptised person has entered the seemingly insignificant door of his heart, he finds himself in Paradise, in the open space where Christ walks with his disciples. He is transfigured, and sees things otherwise unseen. As St. Maximus wrote, one pure in heart experiences "a change in his senses and passes from the flesh to the Spirit. The Spirit brings about a transformation of his sensible energies and strips away the veils of passions from the intellectual faculty" ( 10). And again, "In Christ, those who were baptised become light in light, and they know the one who begot them " Then the iconographer paints those whom he has seen with his own spiritual eyes. Then he paints not images of images, but an image taken from the living prototype. Certainly he will receive the physical likeness of the saint from existing icons, but these icons he experiences sacramentally, not as a replacement for the real thing, but as a sacramental bearer of the very person depicted. He meets the saint personally in Christ through the Holy Spirit, just as Peter, James and John met Moses and Elijah on Mount Tabor. The outer likeness he receives from the Spirit through icons, and the "inner" likeness, the personal relationship with the saint, he receives from the same Holy Spirit through purity of heart. In that way the physical likeness which the iconographer receives through icons is not something exterior to his life in the Spirit, because the Spirit who has guarded this likeness through icons is the same Spirit who fills his heart with light.

Christ is Risen!

2008-04-27T08:13:00.006-06:00

Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling down death by death,
And to those in the tombs Bestowing life!

Tonsure and Quotations

2008-04-19T20:35:00.003-06:00

I've done a little bit of research on the meaning of the tonsure (cutting of the hair) at baptism. The best insight comes from the actual service, as described here:

O MASTER, LORD OUR GOD, who has honored man with Thine own image, Thou hast fashioned him from a reason-endowed soul and a comely body (for the body serves the reason-endowed soul): for Thou hast set the head on high, and hast endowed it with the most important of the senses, which, nevertheless, do not impede one another; and Thou hast covered the head with hair, so it will not be injured by changes in the weather, and hast fitly joined together all his members, that he may give thanks with them unto Thee, the Great Designer. Thou, the same Master, through Thy chosen vessel, the Apostle Paul, hast given us a commandment that we should do all things to Thy glory: Bless, now, Thy servant, (name), who is come to make a first offering shorn from the hair of his head, and likewise his Sponsor; and grant that they may all exercise themselves in Thy law, and do those things which are well pleasing in Thy sight.

For Thou art a merciful God, who lovest mankind, and unto Thee do we give glory, to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.

Choir: Amen.

Taking the scissors, the priest cuts the hair of the newly-baptized person in the form of a cross.

Priest: The servant of God, (name), is tonsured in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Choir: Amen.

The cutting of the hair signifies a man's submission to God.

Priest: Glory to Thee, O Christ our God and our hope, glory to Thee.

Choir: Glory to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen. Lord, have mercy; Lord, have mercy; Lord, have mercy. Father, bless.

Priest: May Christ our true God, through the intercessions of His most pure Mother, and of all the Saints, have mercy on us and save us, forasmuch as He is good and loves mankind.

Choir: Amen

An OCA article states:

After the baptism and chrismation the person newly-received into God's family is tonsured. The tonsure, which is the cutting of hair from the head in the sign of the cross, is the sign that the person completely offers himself to God -- hair being the symbol of strength (Jud 16:17).

Quotations:

The following is from the first rung of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John Climacus:

Those who aim at ascending with the body to Heaven, indeed need violence and constant suffering, especially in the early stages of their renunciation, until our pleasure-loving dispositions and unfeeling hearts attain to love of God and chastity by manifest sorrow. This is a great toil, very great indeed, with much unseen suffering, especially for those who live carelessly, until by simplicity, deep angerlessnesss and diligence, we make our mind, which is a greedy kitchen dog addicted to barking, a lover of chastity and watchfulness. But let us who are weak and passionate have the courage to offer our infirmity and natural weakness to Christ with unhesitating faith, and confess it to him; and we shall be certain to obtain his help, even beyond our worth, if only we continually plunge the depth of humility.

The following is from My Life in Christ, Saint John of Kronstadt:

The problem of our life is union with God, and sin completely prevents this; therefore flee from sin as from a terrible enemy, as from the destroyer of the soul, because to be without God is death and not life. Let us therefore understand our destination; let us always remember that our common Master calls us to union with himself.

Holy Unction

2008-04-17T20:01:00.002-06:00

Tonight was the service of Holy Unction. This was a very special occasion attended by the bishop, three priests and what I believe was a deacon.

On another note, I've found an interesting collection of video talks by Bishop Lazar of All Saints Monastery, here.

Received into Orthodoxy

2008-04-12T12:25:00.007-06:00

Today I was received into Orthodoxy via baptism and chrismation; following which, I partook of the Eucharist for the first time.

April 14th will commemorate St. Martin the Confessor, Pope of Rome. St. Martin the Confessor was a contemporary of St. Maximus the Confessor; both of whom suffered on account of their opposition to the Monothelite heresy.

Click on the icon to read more about St. Martin.

Troparion (Tone 3)

You strengthened the Church with true doctrine,
Wise hierarch Martin.
You declared the two natures of Christ,
Putting heresy to shame.
Entreat the Lord to grant us His great mercy.

Kontakion (Tone 8)

High Priest and teacher of the mysteries,
You poured forth streams of doctrine.
You expounded the true doctrine of the two natures and wills of Christ.
Intercede for those who cry: "Rejoice, blessed Father Martin."

Readings

2008-04-07T21:16:00.004-06:00

The Non-Orthodox: The Orthodox Teaching on Christians Outside the Church - Patrick Barnes

Is a person required to believe that everyone outside of the Church is damned? As we demonstrated in previous chapters, the affirmation that heterodox Christians are separated from the Church does not imply that we pass judgment on them or make any pronouncements about their eternal destiny. “[B]ut he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts. . . .” (I Cor. 4:4-5). In keeping with Her apophatic mindset, the Church remains circumspect. Therefore, to state that there is “no salvation outside of the Church” is not the same as stating “no one outside of the Church can be saved.”

This is a good article which addresses the apophatic approach to those outside of the Church without diluting the exclusivity of the Church with relativistic pluralism.

The Iconic and Symbolic in Orthodox Iconography - Bishop Auxentios

In his now classical treatment of the subject [The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church], the Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky makes a Patristic distinction between two ways of theologizing, these, in turn, based on corresponding approaches to knowing and experiencing of God. This distinction is so significant, that Lossky uses it as a focal point in every subdivision of his theological inquiry (e.g., Trinitarian theology, Christology, cosmology, anthropology, etc.). The first of these ways is the cataphatic or "positive" way, and corresponds to man's normal way of relating to his world. It involves, above all, affirmation. From this perspective, we would speak of God in normal cognitive categories, attributing to him such characteristics as supreme good, truth, justice, mercy, love, beauty, compassion, and so on. This first way, this "natural" way, Lossky argues, must rest on constant qualifications and is strongly limited by comparison to a second apophatic, or "negative," way. This second way is ultimately more appropriate to the objective of knowing God or of theologizing. From this more accurate perspective, the human language can only be used to deny or to express negation. Human cognition becomes a method of negation, rather than affirmation, and truth rises above (simply because it lies beyond) cognitive knowledge. Here, one who truly loves, experiences, and knows God (to the extent that such is humanly possible) is compelled to speak as follows: "God is not good, truth, justice, etc. It is not, of course, that God is the opposite of these things (evil, falsehood, injustice...); rather, these characteristics must be refuted, since they are the products of human experience of the created universe. God, being uncreated and, in His divine essence, wholly transcendent, cannot, in the depths of His being, in the internal life of the Trinity, be known in any cognitive manner whatever.

This article, cited in part above, addresses the apophatic approach as it concerns theology.

God, History, and Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes and their Cultural Consequences - Joseph Farrell

Ok, I haven't finished this book yet; in fact, I'm only a short way into volume 1. However, I couldn't help but share a bit. I've provided a couple of contextual clarifications, which are hopefully not confusions in: [ -- M].

For the First Europe [i.e.: Orthodox -- M], the divine ubiquity is not a generalized metaphysical truth about God's essence derived from philosophical speculation, but rather a divine-human reality accomplished in the events surrounding Christ's Crucifixion, Burial, Resurrection, Ascension, and Second Coming. In a sense, he First Europe understands the order of questions differently. The Second Europe [i.e.: Augustinian, Latinized / Protestant -- M] argues from the divine ubiquity and generalized philosophical conceptions about God's Essence to their generalized characteristics, or Attributes, and only at the end of its thought comes to "historical" manifestation and application, the Persons. This is its classic ordo theologiae or "order of doing theology: Essence, Attributes, Persons. but the First Europe argues from their historical manifestation to their generalized conception; God is, so to speak, ubiquitous because the Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are understood to have done certain things, "Operations" [Greek word omitted -- M], and on that basis, concludes certain things about the essence underlying the operations which the Persons do. This is its classical ordo theologiae: Persons, Operations, Essence. Thus, the religious mentalities of th Two Europes not only start in exactly opposite places, but proceed in opposite directions, and at the crucial second stage, refer to a fundamental category of metaphysical thought by different terms, one indicating something static, and the other something dynamic. More will be said about the First Europe's ordo theologiae in the Second Chapter; suffice it for the present to point out its personalism, as distinct from the Second Europe's impersonalism.

Fascinating stuff.

Fantasy - Orthodox Monk

This Orthodox understanding of fantasy is grounded in a deep understanding of human psychology. Fantasy is the world of images and dreams that draw their force from our passions. As we have remarked, our passions are our emotional tendencies to sin. Fantasy is the world of images and dreams provoked by our passions. Indulgence in these images and dreams stimulates the passion further. And recall that there are eight passions, not just the obvious one.

Moreover, at the risk of alienating some of our more Westernized readers, the demons are the disembodied intelligences with a hatred for God (whatever those demons say and teach) that both provoke the images and dreams by stimulating our passions and teach us false doctrine.

This article tweaked my interest in terms of considering the propriety of watching a movie like Mel Gibson's: The Passion of Christ. I'm not prepared to unpack a necessary relation which impugns the latter, but the potential relation intrigues me. The following quotation from here, is in a similar vein:

The idea of spiritual senses of the mind (nous) analogous but not identical to the bodily sense organs is fundamental to Evagrian contemplative psychology. It is with these spiritual or mental ‘organs’ or faculties that the ascetic will contemplate. This has nothing to do with the visualization of angels, Heaven, the Passion, Resurrection or Ascension of Christ and so on, in the sense of directed fantasy or imagination. Something else is involved, and that something else is expressed by the formula: ‘…but the intelligible eye either has not seen, or, when it sees, it immediately surrounds from all sides that which it sees.’ This ‘surrounding from all sides’ conveys the complete cognition of the object being contemplated at whatever stage of contemplation the ascetic is; that is the import of this chapter concerning the five spiritual senses. They should not be considered to be ‘shadow’ bodily sense organs superimposed on the body. Evagrius is describing metaphorically certain operations of intuitive apprehension or cognition by the mind (nous). However, it is well to bear in mind the qualification introduced by Evagrius in Gnostic 40, that the gnostic apprehends the reasons (logoi) of objects of sense in proportion to his measure and that only the Christ possesses the first reason (logos) of any object. Hence, this surrounding from all sides is in proportion to the spiritual measure of the ascetic.

Saint John Climacus

2008-04-06T14:42:00.009-06:00

Today is the fourth Sunday of Great Lent, commemorating Saint John Climacus. St John authored a book entitled: The Ladder of Divine Ascent.

From the reading here:

The Ladder of Divine Ascent, is a sure guide to the ascetic life, written by a great man of prayer experienced in all forms of the monastic polity; it teaches the seeker after salvation how to lay a sound foundation for his struggles, how to detect and war against each of the passions, how to avoid the snares laid by the demons, and how to rise from the rudimental virtues to the heights of Godlike love and humility. It is held in such high esteem that it is universally read in its entirety in monasteries during the Great Fast.

Perhaps becoming Orthodox is to mount the ladder on the first rung. It seems that the podvig, the struggle, of Orthodoxy, is inseparable from Orthodoxy itself. So, on that note, here is an excerpt from Step 1, point 4:

Monasticism is an angelic order and state achieved in an earthly and soiled body. A monk is one who holds only to the commands of God in every time and place and matter. A monk is one who constantly constrains his nature and unceasingly watches over his senses. A monk is he who keeps his body in chastity, his mouth pure and his mind illumined. A monk is a mourning soul that both asleep and awake is unceasingly occupied with the remembrance of death. Withdrawal from the world is voluntary hatred of vaunted material things and denial of nature for the attainment of what is above nature.

Although the immediate audience is monastics, I agree with what was written here:

The monastic life is modeled after the life of the Angels and monks are supposed to set the example of good spiritual life for lay people.

I've begun reading two books (more to follow upon completion):

My Life in Christ - Saint John of Kronstadt
I am looking forward to the wisdom found within this collection of thoughts from Saint John.
God, History, and Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes and their Cultural Consequences - Joseph Farrell
If the prolegomena is indicative of the four volumes comprising this work, this will be a fascinating historiography.

So, for the recently completed reading:

The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Wikipedia has a good description of the plot (warning spoilers), and the following is from Amazon:

After his great portrayal of a guilty man in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky set out in The Idiot to portray a man of pure innocence. The twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium, returns to Russia to collect an inheritance and “be among people.” Even before he reaches home he meets the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose obsession with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. In Petersburg the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation. Scandal escalates to murder as Dostoevsky traces the surprising effect of this “positively beautiful man” on the people around him, leading to a final scene that is one of the most powerful in all of world literature.

I enjoyed this book, but not as much as Crime and Punishment. This may have had something to do with reading the book over the course of a few months and the difficulty of keeping track of characters who are called by a variety of names in true Russian style (or maybe not, I actually don't know much about Russian style).

The Forgotten Medicine: The Mystery of Repentance - Archimandrite Seraphim Aleksiev

From Saint Herman Press:

In THE FORGOTTEN MEDICINE, the renowned Bulgarian spiritual father Archimandrite Seraphim (†1993) details the reasons many give for not coming to Confession, and for each of these he clearly brings forth the truth of the matter. For those who feel awkward because of not knowing how to approach Confession, he explains in depth how to prepare beforehand and what to do afterwards.

This was a short, but interesting and informative book on the Orthodox sacrament of Confession.

On Miracles and Signs - Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov

An excerpt:

“Many,” says Isaac of Syria, “performed signs, resurrected the dead, laboured in the conversion of the lost, performed great miracles, and after this, they themselves, who had given life to others, fell into evil and the abomination of passions and gave themselves over to death” (Homily 56). Blessed Macarius the Great tells us that a certain ascetic who lived near him received the gift of healing in such abundance that he would heal the sick with just the laying on of hands, but being glorified by men, he became proud and fell into the very depth of sin (Conversation XXVII, ch.16). In the Life of the venerable Anthony the Great, a certain young monk is mentioned who ruled over wild beasts in the desert. When the great one heard of this miracle he expressed distrust in the spiritual condition of the miracle worker. Not long after word came of the grievous fall of the monk (Alphabetical Patericon).

As per the excerpt above, this article provides some weighty considerations when it comes to miracles and their proper context. In Orthodoxy I've found an ordo theologiae which begins with the revelatory Triadology and Christology found in Holy Scripture and Tradition, and upon that foundation, proceeds to a dogmatic and mystical context for the miraculous.

The Path of Reason in Search of the Truth - A.I. Osipov

An excerpt from the article:

APOLOGETICS (Greek apologia— protection, justification, intercession; a speech, said or written in someone’s defense; apologeomai — to defend oneself, to justify oneself, to state or present in one’s personal defense) in the general sense is any kind of defense of Christianity from the accusations and criticism of its enemies; in the specific sense — a branch of theology, whose goal is to reveal and substantiate the truths of Christian faith, and which has to give an answer to anyone asking, or to refute the incorrect religious, philosophic or other world views which stand in opposition to Christianity.

This was a book-length article on apologetics from a Russian perspective. Within, an eclectic collection of topics are given a cursory treatment. The article's interaction with a variety of philosophies and scientific theories is interesting, and if nothing else, will provide the reader with a better awareness of the considerations which factor into an apologetical endeavour.

Heaven & Hell in the Afterlife, According to the Bible - Peter Chopelas

An excerpt:

The idea that God is an angry figure who sends those He condemns to a place called Hell, where they spend eternity in torment separated from His presence, is missing from the Bible and unknown in the early church. While Heaven and Hell are decidedly real, they are experiential conditions rather than physical places, and both exist in the presence of God. In fact, nothing exists outside the presence of God.
This is not the way traditional Western Christianity, Roman Catholic or Protestant, has envisioned the afterlife. In Western thought Hell is a location, a place where God punishes the wicked, where they are cut off from God and the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet this concept occurs nowhere in the Bible, and does not exist in the original languages of the Bible.

While there is no question that according to the scriptures there is torment and "gnashing of teeth" for the wicked, and glorification for the righteous, and that this judgment comes from God, these destinies are not separate destinations. The Bible indicates that everyone comes before God in the next life, and it is because of being in God's presence that they either suffer eternally, or experience eternal joy. In other words, both the joy of heaven, and the torment of judgment, is caused by being eternally in the presence of the Almighty, the perfect and unchanging God.

This article was a good explication of the Orthodox view of heaven and hell insofar as I've encountered it in my limited study of the topic. This is another topic where I find the implications of Orthodox anthropology and theology to be quite fascinating. Another interesting treatment can be found here.

Two Months Later

2008-03-21T11:25:00.012-06:00

During the first week of Great Lent, the Great Canon of Repentance (Saint Andrew of Crete) was read in the parish:

The Great Canon of St Andrew is read each year as part of the ascetic labour of the Great Fast (Lent). Divided into four portions, these are read during the services of Great Compline on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings of the First Week ('Pure/Clean Week') of the Fast.

This seemed to be a very fitting way to begin the Lenten season.

Last Saturday, I was received into the catechumenate at the parish I attend. A rendering of the Service of the Catechumens can be found here.

Last Sunday was the Sunday of Orthodoxy. There was a pan-Orthodox Vespers at the Romanian parish this year. This was a great occasion to participate in a service involving Orthodox clergy and laity from all jurisdictions. A wonderful meal was provided afterwards.

God willing, I will be received into Orthodoxy on the 5th Saturday of Holy Lent (April 12th)[Updated].

Some new additions to my library:

Russia, Ritual and Reform - Paul Meyendorff
God, History and Dialectic - Joseph Farrell
Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom - David Bradshaw
Commentary on the Divine Liturgy - Nicholas Casabilas
Wisdom from Mount Athos - Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov
Great Lent - Alexander Schmemann
The Way to Nicea - John Behr
The Nicene Faith - John Behr
My Life in Christ - Saint John of Kronstadt
Sayings of the Desert Fathers - Benedicta Ward
The Hidden Man of the Heart - Archimandrite Zacharias
Saint Silouan the Athonite - Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov
Unseen Warfare - Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain
Standing in God's Holy Fire - John McGuckin
Lenten Triodion - Kallistos Ware
On the Unity of Christ - St. Cyril of Alexandria
St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts - John McGuckin

Reading:

Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works - Hieromonk Damascene

From Eighth Day Books:

Father Seraphim was the secret hero of thousands in Russia and Eastern Europe during the Communist era. His commitment to the ancient Christian faith and his skill in communicating that faith made him a source of hope to all who read his works or observed his life. This Book chronicles Father Seraphim’s early life and explains his conversion to Orthodoxy in terms of his painful search for truth in the confused culture of California in the 1960’s. At the end of his earthly life, those who knew him best believed him to truly be a man of integrity -- that is, one whose whole being had been ’’integrated’’ by deep love for Christ. For those interested in Father Seraphim specifically, or twentieth-century Orthodoxy generally, this is a must-read -- a beautiful book that awakens courage and hope and joy in all who struggle to love Christ.

This was one of the more interesting biographies I've read. Insofar as one can know another from a book, I found a good deal in common between myself and Fr. Seraphim. In particular, I admire how he handled the trying circumstances of his times; weathering the various difficulties which beset American Orthodoxy.

Becoming Orthodox - Peter Gillquist

From the rear cover:

This is the story of a handful of courageous men and their congregations who risked stable occupations, security, and the approval of life-long friends to be obedient to God's call.

It is also the story of every believer who is searching for the Church. Where Christ is Lord. Where holiness, human responsibility, and the Sovereignty of God are preached. Where fellowship is more than a covered-dish supper in the church basement. And where fads and fashion take a back seat to apostolic worship and doctrine.

This book provides an interesting, anecdotal account of a group of Protestant pastors and congregations who converted to Orthodoxy about two decades ago.

The Disputation With Pyrrhus of our Father Among the Saints Maximus the Confessor - Joseph Farrell

From the introduction:

The Disputation with Pyrrhus, like all other works of St. Maximus the Confessor, is centered around the mystery of the Incarnation and enhominization of the only and eternally begotten Son and Word of the Father...

At the center of St. Maximus' tehological and christological universe is the doctrine of Recapitulation. It is this doctrine which forms the basis of all that the New Testament and the Fathers have to say in connection with the Incarnation. While the term "recapitulation" itself appears only twice in the New Testament, the concept itself occurs repeatedly; one has only to recognize its principles of operation order to know when it is being applied. These may be categorized as follows: 1) preeminence 2) repetition and recontextualization, 3) reversal, and 4) fulfillment.

This is a heavily footnoted translation of the disputation, from the Greek, by Joseph Farrell. This book lends a lot of valuable insight into the monothelite position held by Pyrrhus, and the dyothelite position held by St. Maximus. Monothelitism was officially condemned at the sixth ecumenical council, and this book provides some of the arguments involved in this important controversy which is often overlooked.

A Beginner's Guide to Prayer - Michael Keiser

From Light and Life:

Drawing from nearly 2000 years of Orthodox spiritual wisdom, this book offers the average person a deeper relationship with God through the habit of prayer.

This book provided a casual overview of prayer from a contemporary Orthodox perspective. For lighter-weight introductory writings on prayer, I would also recommend the following:

Beginning to Pray - Anthony Bloom
On the Prayer of Jesus - Ignatius Brianchaninov

The Ladder of Divine Ascent - Saint John Climacus

St. John Climacus, sixth-century Abbot of Sinai, compared the spiritual life to a ladder of thirty steps, and explained in detail the challenges presented by each of these steps. This spiritual classic has brought inspiration and edification to every generation since that time, and has been treasured by both monastics and laymen. This edition includes a full-color frontispiece of an icon of the Spiritual Ladder, from Mount Sinai.

From Eighth Day Books:

Read chapter 18 of this manual, ’’On Insensitivity,’’ and experience honest terror; or chapter 28, ’’On Prayer,’’ and be reminded how limited and solitary our conception of prayer is, when we come across the following: ’’Prayer is by nature a dialog and a union of man with God. Its effect is to hold the world together (emphasis ours)... prayer is the mother and daughter of tears...’’ The work of the seventh-century abbot of St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai, The Ladder is probably the single most important text in the spiritual literature of Eastern Christendom. Read in monastic refectories and churches every year during Lent, The Ladder is a text of utmost seriousness and earnestness. Psychological subterfuge and self-delusion are surgically stripped away, leaving the reader two choices: run away or repent.

This is a fascinating book which resides within the Philokalia class of writings. A longer description of the work can be found here.

I'm presently in the midst of a few other books and articles which I will hopefully post about in the next while.

Fr Seraphim Rose

2008-01-22T17:43:00.008-07:00

Death to the World has posted a great wallpaper of Fr Seraphim Rose. To learn more about, and view more pictures of this notable, American monastic, click here.

As of today (Feb 18, 2008) it appears that the wallpaper has disappeared. In lieu of that, enjoy this photo:

New Books

2008-01-21T17:24:00.000-07:00

Some new additions to my library:

Recent Reading

2008-01-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the works I've recently completed reading:

God's Human Face, by Christoph Schonborn

Artists and theologians have meditated upon the mystery of God's human countenance and tried to express it. This book seeks to present the great sources of this meditation--sources which today are widely unknown, or have become foreign or obscure. These sources are above all the great masters of early Christianity. In their meditation upon Christ, Bishop Schonborn seeks the sources of the art on the Icon. The reader will find not only an engaging introduction to the meaning and beauty of Icons, but an invitation to draw closer to the One who inspired these Masters of theological expression and holy art.

This is an interesting book which provides insight into the iconoclast controversy culminating in the seventh ecumenical council. Although the Roman Catholic author deviates somewhat from an Orthodox view of icons, the historical analysis warrants the read.

Hesychian Sobriety, a commentary on the St. Hesychios text by Fr. Theophanes

The Psychological Basis of Mental Prayer in the Heart is a three-volume work dedicated to the the study of the foundations of the Jesus Prayer. It has been written by an Orthodox monk, Fr Theophanes (Constantine). The complete text has been published on-line on the Internet, and the links given below are to the actual transcribed texts of the volumes.

The third volume, Hesychian Sobriety, comprises a new translation of a text of St Hesychios, On Sobriety, taken from the first volume of the Philokalia, and a very detailed commentary on that text. This commentary draws extensively on the texts of Evagrius that were discussed in Volume II.

This volume ends with an epilogue which summarizes the three-volume work as a whole.

This is the fascinating third volume of the trilogy: The Psychological Basis of Mental Prayer in the Heart. This is the most interesting book I've read on Orthodox asceticism and prayer. The epilogue of this book provides the best summary of the discussion contained therein.

Partakers of the Divine Nature, by Normal Russell

The deification of man is the characteristic Byzantine way of expressing the goal of human life. Far from implying a heretical notion of man's absorption into God, as Western writers sometimes assume, the term encapsulates a number of widely differing approaches to the doctrine of salvation. Among the Greek Fathers deification is expressed variously as filial adoption through baptism, as the attaining of likeness to God through gnosis and dispassion, as the ascent of the soul to God, as the participation of the soul in the divine attributes of immortality and incorruption, as the transformation of human nature by divine action, as the eschatological glorification of both soul and body, and as union with God through participation in the divine energies(1). In Byzantine writers the emphasis falls on the Pauline aspect of filial adoption and incorporation into Christ, the sacraments becoming all-important as the means by which divine life is communicated to the believer. With Palamas the chief focus of deification settles on participation in uncreated grace, which enables the human person to transcend himself and live with the life of Christ, so that he becomes 'uncreated through grace'(2).

A good article on the history of 2 Peter 1:4 in the Byzantine tradition. Some worthwhile blog posts on the essence / energies distinction can be found here.

Vacation Reading

2008-01-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

Having returned from vacation, here's what I'm reading:

The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I'm midway through and may have some comments once I'm finished.

Here's what I read:

Two Paths: Papal Monarchy -- Collegial Traditions, by Michael Whelton

From Light and Life:

A brilliantly written book that explains compassionately, simply and factually the historic, theological and liturgical differences between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions. Includes Peter and the Papacy, Collegial Tradition, Filioque and Schism, Donation of Constantine; Infallibility; the New Mass of Vatican II versus the Orthodox Liturgy and much more.

This was an interesting introduction to the historical ecclesiologies of East and West and the role these divergences played in the Great Schism.

Dancing Alone, by Frank Schaeffer

From Light and Life:

Chronicles the spiritual journey of Frank Schaeffer to Orthodox Christianity, a pilgrimage which began in 1976. Converting to Orthodoxy is, undoubtedly, an act of inner spiritual strength and courage for any proselyte. It was an especially courageous decision for Frank Schaeffer, who is the son of the world renowned and respected Protestant author and preacher, Francis Schaeffer. This book can be used as a missionary tool to reach out to brethren who thirst for the eternal truths of the Orthodox faith.

Frank Schaeffer provides in this book an interesting perspective on the historical/philosophical development of Protestantism and the contemporary consequences.

For the Life of the World, by Alexander Schmemann

From St. Vladimir's Press:

In For the Life of the World Alexander Schmemann suggests an approach to the world and life within it, which stems from the liturgical experience of the Orthodox Church. He understands issues such as secularism and Christian culture from the perspective of the unbroken experience of the Church, as revealed and communicated in her worship, in her liturgy - the sacrament of the world, the sacrament of the Kingdom.

This was a particularly interesting book. The penetrating insight into the secularism permeating Christendom resonated with my own experiences and observations, reminding me of David Bentley Hart's article mentioned here. An interesting treatment of the Western symbol vs. reality dialectic is found in this book.

Thirsting for God in a Land of Shallow Wells, by Matthew Gallatin

From Light and Life:

Philosophy professor Gallatin, who found the fullness of faith in Orthodoxy, expresses many of the struggles that a Protestant will encounter in coming face-to-face with Orthodoxy: such things as Protestant relativism, rationalism versus the Orthodox sacramental path to God, and the unity of Scripture and Tradition. He also discusses praying with icons, praying formal prayers, and many other Orthodox traditions. An outstanding book that will help Orthodox readers more deeply appreciate their faith and will give readers a more thorough understanding of the Church.

This is a great introductory book; especially for Protestants who are accustomed to the winsome style of contemporary Christian literature.

Saint Barbara

2007-12-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (December 17th, Old Calendar) will be the feast day of Saint Barbara, the patron saint of the Russian Orthodox parish I attend. Until this weekend, I had only read about holy relics and seen pictures. The relics of Saint Barbara residing at this parish were brought out for veneration on this special occasion. (Click on the image to the right to read more about Saint Barbara.)

Troparion - Tone 8

Let us honor the holy martyr Barbara,
for as a bird she escaped the snares of the enemy,
and destroyed them through the help and defense of the Cross.

Kontakion - Tone 4

Singing the praises of the Trinity,
you followed God by enduring suffering;
you renounced the multitude of idols,
O holy martyr Barbara.
In your struggles, you were not frightened by the threats of your torturers, but cried out in a loud voice:
"I worship the Trinity in one God-head."

Readings: Week of Dec 9

2007-12-11T23:04:00.000-07:00

I've begun reading: Two Paths: Papal Monarchy — Collegial Traditions, by Michael Whelton. A snippet from the book can be found here.

A short Second Terrace post on Revival (in the extract below, the author comments on what Revival has come to mean):

Revival means the absence of historic order and hierarchy. It means the absence of old-fashioned fanciness (e.g., icons, gold chalices, lampada, incense, bells); although new-fashioned fanciness would be okay, because one must have their transparent plexiglass lecterns, ferns, and Amway auditoriums with horns, drums and gurgling fountains.

Revival means not just absence: it means the presence of a quasi-informality, an adoption of a practiced boisterousness, a tragic hybridization of modern idioms (e.g., self-help and temperance movements, business and townhall models) with expositions of isolated scriptures.

It also means the adoption of ecstasy or catharsis as the gold standard. "I was blessed at Church." "The anointing is here." "The Spirit was really there last night." "Revival broke out."

Another interesting, Second Terrace, fourfold blog post on: Power/Revolution, Nature/Time, Prayer/Particularity, and Heroes/Beast. Below, the author comments on prayer:

It is always better to opt for God as a Divine Neighbor than a philosophical construct. Any flower or tree, mountain or sea, if properly looked at, will keep one from knowing about God rather than knowing Him. One cannot denature the Apostolic Vision into propositions. One cannot subject theology to philosophical categorization, simply because theology is not an intellectual object: as it is the empirical experience of God's Uncreated Energies, it is above all academic captures and caricatures.

Perhaps in the West it is permitted to define theology as "a word about God," but not in the East. Theology is the experience of Triune energies, the apostolic vision of the Uncreated Light: any intellectualized confinement of "theology" -- especially in a dialectic manner -- is a diminution of the term. The intellectual prejudice against experience is the reason why St. Paul's rhetoric at Mars Hill was a mixed success. St. Dionysios heard and received the Word -- not because he was an intellectual, but because he was willing to be called a fool for a bright enough light.

Bajis, Jordan - Common Ground:

Provides clear, stimulating answers to the challenging questions that American Christians typically put to Orthodox. But the book goes farther than this. Common Ground begins by showing how Christianity is inherently Eastern, and from there, gently challenges the Protestant and Roman Catholic reader to re-evalute his or her own views of Christianity against the Orthodox perspective. Common Ground is perfect for the Western Christian interested in Ancient Faith, the sincere student of Orthodoxy, and the mission minded Eastern Christian who desires to communicate his faith in a sensitive but compelling manner. The book is a product of three years extensive research and is thoroughly documented. Common Ground definitely helps fill the need for Orthodox literature which can address the concerns of the American Christian. There is no book like it.

I've been reading this book bit-by-bit for quite sometime now. It's a good introduction to some of the more Protestant-contentious aspects of Orthodoxy. Of course, those looking for a detailed treatment of the various topics should consult the resources listed in the well furnished bibliography. This book is worthwhile simply for the copious footnotes at the end of each chapter.

New Books

2007-12-10T17:18:00.000-07:00

Some new additions to my library:

Readings: Week of Dec 2

2007-12-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

As a change from sporadic posting, I've decided to create weekly posts which accumulate the noteworthy reading. I will be adding the references in descending order by date (i.e.: the most recent at the top).

Hieromonk Damascene on Resentment and Forgiveness:

Rather than resenting those who wrong us, we are to love them, and we express this love by blessing them and praying for them. We do this because we are commanded to do so by Christ. He has commanded this for our own sake, for our own salvation, because He loves us; and we do it for His sake, because we love Him. Our fallen nature rebels against this: "What? Bless and pray for that person who wronged me?" But for Christ's sake, we go against our fallen nature, and force ourselves to pray. We ask God to bless and have mercy on the person who hurt us, we wish good things for him, we wish his salvation, just as our Lord wishes his salvation. In this way we begin to become like God Himself, Who, according to the words of Christ, is kind to the unthankful and the evil (Luke 6:35). In going against our fallen nature, we return to our original nature—the image of God in us—and we grow in the likeness of God.

The Ochlophobist has unleashed another barrage of incisive social commentary here:

God will not be mocked by the consumnivors' perverse mimesis of Christ's trampling down of death by death. And after that last breath, the rich man who has lived to 178 may well find that the ignoring of so many little Lazaruses who twitched and wreathed in their painful unborn deaths, and so many poor Lazaruses who felt the sting of a cut out emptiness in their souls and begged God for help and mercy, does not bode well for him on that day. Better to die young and without the blood of innocents in one's genetic modifications or bio-engineered medicines.

Perry from Energetic Procession has posted some interesting thoughts on the West, Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism here. Here's the standard sample:

The same Platonic metaphysic guides and drives the Reformed thinking in Predestination as well. There isn’t much difference in essence between the late Platonic predestinarianism of a fall which was necessary and voluntary on the part of the soul into the material world for which it is culpable and the Reformed notion of a predestined yet voluntary fall with imputed corporate guilt. The same subordinating relationship can be seen in soteriology in so far is God is active, humans must be passive, if God is good, humans must be depraved. Here the dialectical relationship between God and creation is clear. Salvation is a return to the One along a predestined path.

...This is why the Reformed have to understand union with Christ in moral and legal terms, because these denote an extrinsic relationship because the Reformed adhere to the same fundamental doctrine as Rome-union with God is had through means of a created similitude. This is why Christ must merit righteousness and it can’t be the righteousness whereby God is intrinsically righteous. If it were, the collapse of the opposition between created and creator would imply for them absorption in the simple divine essence. Rome and Protestants both think that grace is created, it is just that one is realist and the other a nominalist, but there is nothing more than a causal contiguity between God (cause) and creation (effect), which makes a farce out of 2 pet 1:4. It is not possible for humanity to perform divine activities.

Readings from Florovsky

2007-11-30T19:43:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of worthwhile reads from Georges Florovsky:

From The “Immortality” of the Soul:

...When we discuss the problem of Immortality from a Christian point of view, we must keep in mind the creaturely nature of the soul. The very existence of the soul is contingent, i.e., as it were, "conditional." It is conditioned by the creative fiat of God. Yet, a given existence, i.e., an existence which is not necessarily implied in the "essence," is not necessarily a transient one. The creative fiat is a free but ultimate act of God. God has created the world simply for existence: ektise gar is to ine ta panda (Wis. 1: 14). There is no provision for revoking this creative decree. The sting of the antinomy is exactly here: the world has a contingent beginning, yet no end. It stands by the immutable will of God.

...A spiritual regeneration can be wrought only in perfect freedom, in an obedience of love, by a self-consecration and self-dedication to God, in Christ. This distinction was made with great insistence by Nicolas Cabasilas in his remarkable treatise on The Life in Christ. Resurrection is a "rectification of nature" (i anastasis physeos estin epanorthosis) and this God grants freely. But the Kingdom of Heaven, and the beatific vision, and union with Christ, presuppose the desire (trofi estin tis theliseos), and therefore are available only for those who have longed for them, and loved, and desired. And immortality will be given to all, just as all can enjoy Divine providence. It does not depend upon our will whether we shall rise after death or not, just as it is not by our will that we are born. The death and resurrection of Christ bring immortality and incorruption to all in the same manner, because all have the same nature as the Man Christ Jesus. But nobody can be compelled to desire. Thus Resurrection is a gift common to all, but the blessedness will be given only to some (De vita in Christo II, 86-96). And again, the path of life is the path of renunciation, of mortification, of self-sacrifice and self-oblation. One has to die to oneself in order to live in Christ. Each one must personally and freely associate himself with Christ, the Lord, the Savior, and the Redeemer, in the confession of faith, in the choice of love, in the mystical oath of allegiance. He who does not die with Christ cannot live with Him. "Unless of our own free choice we accept to die unto His passion, His life is not in us" (St. Ignatius, Magnes, 5; the phraseology is Pauline).

This is no mere ascetical or moral rule, no mere discipline. This is the ontological law of spiritual existence, even the law of life itself. For only in communion with God and through life in Christ does the restoration of human wholeness gain meaning. To those in total darkness, who have deliberately confined themselves "outside God," the Resurrection itself must seem rather unnecessary and unmotivated. But it will come, as a "resurrection to judgment" (John 5:29 (anastasis tis kriseos). And in this will be completed the tragedy of human freedom. Here indeed we are on the threshold of the inconceivable and incomprehensible. The apokatastasis of nature does not abolish free will, and the will must be moved from within by love.

... St. Maximus did not believe in the inevitable conversion of obstinate souls. He taught an apokatastasis of nature, i.e., a restitution of all beings to an integrity of nature, of a universal manifestation of the Divine Life, which will be evident to every one. But those who have deliberately spent their lives on earth in fleshly desires, "against nature," will be unable to enjoy this eternal bliss. The Light is the Word, that illuminates the natural minds of the faithful; but as a burning fire of the judgment (ti kavsi tis kriseos), He punishes those who, through love of the flesh, cling to the nocturnal darkness of this life.

This notion of the apokatastasis (i.e.: inevitable salvation) of nature is rather intriguing. This is a predestination of human nature, and thereby, all hypostases of that nature, to immortality. However, a distinction of nature and person is critical -- it exonerates Orthodoxy from an Universalist apokatastasis of all persons unto well-being (e.g.: theosis and theoria).

From The Darkness of Night

One defines evil as nothingness. Certainly evil never exists by itself but only inside of Goodness. Evil is a pure negation, a privation or a mutilation. Undoubtedly evil is a lack, a defect, defectus. But the structure of evil is rather antinomic. Evil is a void of nothingness; but it is a void which exists, swallowing and devouring beings. Evil is a powerlessness; it never creates--but its destructive energy is enormous. Evil never ascends; it always descends--but the very debasement of being which it produces is frightening. Nevertheless, there is an illusory grandeur even in this baseness of evil. Occasionally there is something of genius in sin and in evil. Evil is chaotic; it is a separation, a decomposition constantly in progress, a disorganization of the entire structure of being. But evil is also, without doubt, vigorously organized. Everything in this sad domain of deception and illusion is amphibolic and ambiguous. Undoubtedly, evil only lives through the Good which it deforms, but it also adapts it to its needs. But this deformed "Universe" is a reality which asserts itself.

Archangel Michael

2007-11-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (Old Calendar) is the Synaxis of the Chief of the Heavenly Hosts, Archangel Michael and the Other Heavenly Bodiless Powers. The angels receive regular mention in Orthodoxy prayers and liturgies. In other words, they are significant. (click on the image to read more)

Memory of Death???

2007-11-18T21:51:00.001-07:00

Why choose "Memory of Death" as a blog title? Appropriating a unique title on blogger is quite a challenge when so many titles have been spoken for. Moreover, in Orthodox asceticism, the memory of death holds a special significance. The free, online book: The Psychological Basis of Mental Prayer in the Heart provides an excellent treatment of this topic within the greater context of the Jesus Prayer and Hesychasm. Here are some excerpts from the book:

St John of Sinai speaks of the memory of death in Step 6 of the Ladder of Divine Ascent. There it is clear that the memory of death is a charism of the Holy Spirit. This charism, when it is properly exercised, automatically engenders nepsis or sobriety in exactly the same way that the double fear (the fear of hell and reverence for God our Father) automatically engenders nepsis.

...

When one has attained to the guard of the mind, one prays in sober clarity; one’s love is true. There are no tears: although St Hesychios recognizes that tears are a fruit of his method, he does not emphasize them, and does not speak at all of their cultivation. That is the other road, the one of tears and compunction. Here, in the guard of the mind, the memory of death takes the form of a silent love which recognizes the end of this world. This is a love compassionate for all living beings and silent; it is the presence of the Holy Spirit in the soul, breathing a gentle breeze through the mirror of the intellect, the sea of the soul being fanned.

...

If we take the Kingdom of the Heavens to be natural contemplation and the adoption as son to be Theology—without our necessarily wishing to impose the Evagrian schema of the spiritual life on St Mark—then what is being said is that natural contemplation and Theology are not the wage of our ascetical works—our bodily ascesis; our spiritual charity, meekness or humility; our practice of the immaterial war by means of humility, attention, rebuttal, the continual invocation of our Lord Jesus Christ and the memory of death—but are the ‘grace of the Master readied for faithful slaves’.

...

However, the essence of such a practice of the memory of death does not lie in our fantasizing about our departure for the next life, despite the apparent indications here to the contrary. The memory of death is a charism, and that means that it is a matter of attending spiritually to the conception (ennoia) or mental representation (noema) of the memory of death: the memory of death is a spiritual apprehension maintained in the intellect that we are here only in a passing way.

Thursday Reading

2007-11-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of blog posts:

From Strauss to Christ, an interesting post which expresses some of my own concerns in the realms of apologetics, reason, and faith. Here's the conclusion:

Accepting revelation is not tantamount to turning off reason; it is not to become a fideist in the strictest sense of the word. It does mean, however, the dismissal of a purely intellectualized interpretation of the world. Reality means something more than what reason alone can examine. Reason’s limits are dismissed and with that dismissal comes a freedom more dangerous than one any atheistic “philosopher” ever drooled over in their shabby polemics. The philosophic life is, after all, a restricted life—not with regard to its questions, but to the chance it has any permanent answers. And is it not the answers, even the wildly fantastic answers, which give rise to the actions that shape the way in which we live? In the end, this all circles back to faith and not just any faith, but the Faith in God Incarnate, Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior of all. “Faith” is the substantial evidence most scorned by non-believers and least defended by those aforementioned minds committed to a tensionless existence between what they have learned and what they claim to believe. It is, however, what must be taken or rejected if being a Christian is possible. Leo Strauss—a Jew who consciously renounced his people’s orthodoxy—saw this. He saw it so clearly that he knew if his choice for the philosophic life was to amount to more than a mere act of decisionism, revealed religion had to be confronted, exposed, and ultimately rejected. Unlike so many moderns, he believed and, dare I say, he demonstrated that such an assault had not been properly undertaken in modern times. Its claim to victory was a hollow claim; its acceptance came more by way of reception of a questionable tradition than an irreproachable demonstration. Christians—even Orthodox Christians—still receive this tradition; they still embrace it and from there believe that the reasonableness of the critique can only be met by showing, in some convoluted way, the greater “reasonableness” of their Christianity. They may be well-meaning, but they are still ashamed by the Cross. They want to know—and they want the world to know that they know—more than it.

The Ochlophobist offers some insightful comments on the topics of linguistics and flattery here. Here's a sample:

The degeneration of language that we now see is the sad putting on of appearances by demons still trembling in fear because of the word of the Theotokos spoken in accordance with the Word she accepted and bore. They have every reason to fear now, for in their pursuit of the flatteries and fabrications of Nothing their potential victims need only bend the neck and utter from the heart a "be it unto me" and the whole game is over - even in metal shops, and classrooms, and sales meetings, and Lord knows where else. God, who energetically seems to make occasion for irony, appears rather intent on expressing salvation in the most seemingly impossible situations. In fact, as St. Paul makes clear and as many of us have experienced, the greater the degree of realized need, the greater the degree of our potential clarity in seeing grace. Thus in Christ's new order, the order of Nativity, when things get worse, there is all the more power in what is better. Flattery abounds, but in such a context the icon of a real word spoken or written only serves to bear a greater witness.

Lord's Day Reading

2007-11-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the things I've been reading today:

The Word Lifted Up in the Wilderness
-- a blog post from the Ochlophobist who cites Josef Pieper's book: Abuse of Language -- Abuse of Power on the topic of flattery. Here's a sample:

What, then, is flattery?... The decisive element is this: having an ulterior motive. I address the other not simply to please him or to tell him something that is true. Rather, what I say to him is designed to get something from him! This underlying design makes the message a flattery, even in the popular meaning of the word. The other, whom I try to influence with what he likes to hear, ceases to be my partner; he is no longer a fellow subject. Rather, he has become for me an object to be manipulated, possibly to be dominated, to be handled and controlled.

I suspect this proclivity for power manifests in various forms when we objectify others; justifying the utilization, or rather, profanation, of living images of God upon the pretense of an ennobled end.

Free Choice in Saint Maximus the Confessor, by Joseph Farrell

It's taken a few months to complete this book, but it was well worth it. This is a book worth rereading -- it is packed with paradigm altering considerations. To avert the ineluctable discrepancies that would follow upon any attempt to recapitulate the content in my own words, I will simply quote the following:

These observations on St. Augustine and St. Maximus permit us to speculate about possible applications of the Confessor's theology to the doctrine of predestination and free will, which speculations I present in proposition form for the sake of clarity.

(1) Proper theological method subsumes theological questions and doctrines under the two correlative headings of Christology and Triadology, for all properly theological doctrines would appear to have christological and triadological implications. Any proposition, method, or other statement which does not start directly and consciously from this context does not go under the name of Christian theology.
...
(2) Proper christological method is recapitulational, for Christ possesses and is all the fullness of Deity and of humanity; He is the Logos and logoi of all universals common to Deity and humanity. In Him, therefore, are to be found the logoi of predestination and of free choice, and He is thus the means by which to distinguish any Christian doctrine of predestination from Stoic, Neoplatonic, Judaic, or Mohammedan counterparts.
...
(3) The One Son freely chooses, according to the unique hypostatic mode of existence proper to Him as Son and Word, in both of His natures, each nature actively willing the salvation of all men.
...
(4) In Christ's human nature which is consubstantial with all men, God humanly wills, decrees, and perfectly fulfills the salvation of all men [according to nature, and not to be mistaken for a universalism in respect of persons -- M], for no human being is untouched by His Incarnation, and nothing is detracted from His sovereignty as God if individual persons choose not to accept salvation.
...
(5) Christ, being truly consubstantial with all men, truly died for all men, and thus His atoning Passion, Death, and Resurrection are in no way limited.
...
(6) The distinction between person and nature is fundamental to any biblical exegesis on the question of predestination and free will.
...
(7) Concepts such as prevenient grace should be referred to the Incarnation and to the Holy Spirit's eternal abiding upon the Word; God is thus in men "to will and work His good pleasure" by virtue of His Incarnation and because of the Holy Spirit's unique relationship in the Economy to the human nature in Christ.
...
(8) The dispute between Calvinism and Arminianism perhaps results because of the lack of a clear theology and application of the categories of person and nature. Therefore, both parties in this iternecine dispute share a common lack of the distinction between natural will and the mode of willing.
...
(9) From the standpoint of the theology of St. Maximus, the roots of any fatalistic system would therefore seem to be threefold:
1. in the failure to distinguish between person and nature
2. in the failure to distinguish between a nature and its energies, and
3. in the inability of any system which accepts the absolute simplicity of the divine essence to admit of a real plurality of Goods in the Good.

Lord's Day Reading

2007-11-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the things I've been reading today:

Christ and Nothing by David Bentley Hart

For indeed Christianity was complicit in the death of antiquity and in the birth of modernity, not because it was an accomplice of the latter, but because it alone, in the history of the West, was a rejection of and alternative to nihilism’s despair, violence, and idolatry of power; as such, Christianity shattered the imposing and enchanting façade behind which nihilism once hid, and thereby, inadvertently, called it forth into the open.

David Bentley Hart also has a great little book on theodicy called The Doors of the Sea.

And speaking of theodicy, these blog posts by Perry Robinson are a worthwhile read.

Non-conventional psyche and Nameless and out of time from the Second Terrace blog. These are two posts that briefly touch upon an Orthodox demonology. From the first post:

But they are also lustful -- and this is not mentioned all that much, if at all. The signal characteristic of Hades is that the malevolent intelligences are subject to passions without any means by which these passions may be assuaged. In a horrific possibility, it seems that the demonic seeks any human soul to surrender to passion for the entertainment of the spiritual entity. At every act of lust, there is always a voyeur, if not a vicarious participant. That is why rape is always violent, as it is always, always demonic.

I've found that reflecting upon the reality of our immaterial warfare confers a certain sobriety -- a sobriety which is fleeting in a world that either concedes only a token recognition or proffers an unwieldly caricature of the subject.

Saint Demetrios

2007-11-02T17:13:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow (Old Calendar) there will be a Divine Liturgy coinciding with the commemoration of the holy Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica. (click on the image to read more about the saint and day)

Crime and Punishment

2007-11-01T17:07:00.001-06:00

I've recently finished reading Crime and Punishment (be forewarned, there are spoilers in that article) by the renowned Fyodor Dostoevsky. This classic furnishes insight into human nature and relationships -- an insight poignantly relevant to our own times. Those familiar with the life of the author should also appreciate the depths from which the tale is drawn.

An interesting lecture on the book can be found here (spoiler warning).

I'm hoping to tackle The Idiot next. It should be an interesting contrast, seeing that Crime and Punishment is about a guilty man, and The Idiot is about an innocent man.

Dostoevsky, a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, once wrote:

If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.

New Videos of Elder Cleopa

2007-10-28T13:20:00.000-06:00

Two videos featuring Elder Cleopa have been added. Please find the links on the bottom right (click on the image to start the video).

In the first video, Elder Cleopa speaks of being mindful both of death and of God. Naturally, the mindfulness of the former is inextricable from the latter. Interestingly, I have read that this is a gracious charism from God.

In the second video, Elder Cleopa speaks on prayer. The Orthodox approach to prayer has been for me one of the most interesting topics of study.

Thanks to "ioancasian" for uploading these with translation to Youtube.

Welcome

2007-10-27T23:56:00.000-06:00

Welcome to my new blog.

My intention for this blog is primarily to post snippets from what I am studying. I may also post some comments or questions that are on my mind.

Dear Readers,

Reasoned and reflective comments are welcomed. I may post them directly (moderation is enabled) or reply to them in another post. If you desire your comment to be confidential, please let me know, and I will honor your request.