Why do you pray for the departed?

 

“Why do you pray for the departed? The Bible clearly says it is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgement. Recall the rich man after death!” Unfortunately, you begin this by asking a question which you then seem to answer and then offer chastisement. Perhaps you are assuming that the Orthodox doctrine concerning the Last Things are identical with those of other bodies, specifically Roman Catholicism, which is not the case either.

We believe that death is the result of sin, that death is not a part of God’s original design for mankind: “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God; so turn and live” (Ezek 18:32). Death was not “created” by God, who is the Source and Author of all life and Who, by revealing His Name as “I AM” to Moses reveals that He is Existence Itself: “God did not make death, and takes no pleasure in the destruction of any living thing; He created all things that they might have being” (Wis 1:13). Death is a consequence of the first sin, a consequence which touches all humanity. Jesus Christ came into the world to conquer death, to point the way to new and eternal life, to offer a refuge from corruption and all that corrupts God’s “good” creation. This was accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who “has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Cor 15:20-26). Finally, our hope as Christians is to share in Christ’s victory over death: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (Jn 11:25-26).

Death, for Orthodox Christians, is always a tragedy, something which distorts the goodness and beauty of God’s creation. By His own example at the tomb of His friend Lazarus we see that death is always tragic, even for the One Who conquers death. Christ came to proclaim new life, to acknowledge that death is not a transition into eternal oblivion, to announce that “through [Him] God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thess 4:14). We also believe that “if we have been united with HIm in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. ...If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Rom 6:5,8). Concerning prayers for the dead, your question, which is more of a statement, seems to be directed at those who teach that after death humans may encounter “purgatory,” an intermediate state in which the “punishment” accorded to sin must be “purged” before one can enter the eternal Kingdom of God. This teaching, found among the Roman Catholics but completely alien to Orthodox Christianity [which rejects the doctrine of purgatory], implies that one should pray for the release of the souls of the departed from such punishment and may imply that the departed, of their own will, can freely repent of the sins they committed during this lifetime.

Orthodox Christians pray for the dead so that the Lord will have mercy on their souls, that He will grant them eternal rest “in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” that He will extend His unfathomable love upon them, and that He will receive them into that state “in which there is neither sickness, nor sighing, nor sorrow, but life everlasting.” Saint Paul clearly teaches that those who have gone before us are still members of the Body of Christ, the Church. And it is the duty of the members of the Church to pray for one another. Just as the living continually beseech God to have mercy on them—and may rightly offer prayers to God on behalf of their living spiritual sisters and brothers as well as request prayers on their own behalf from others—so too we have the duty to pray for all members of the Body of Christ, even those who have departed this life and still “belong to Christ.” One will find that the early Christians, surrounded as they were by death as a result of official persecution on the part of the Roman Empire, took great care to honor the dead, to bury them with great care and reverence—to the point of offering the Eucharistic celebration on their graves, which is one of the earliest indications of the veneration of their relics!—and to remember them especially on the anniversary of their deaths which were seen as “birthdays” into eternal life. In asking God to have mercy on the souls of the departed, we also ask God to have mercy on us who are still in this life, and we recognize that we too shall die. All members of the Church, living as well as faithful departed, cry before the throne of God, “Lord, have mercy on us.”

I might add here that the standard Reformed reactions to prayers for the dead are reactions to certain teachings in Roman Catholicism. The arguments against these teachings and practices should not, in blanket fashion, be used against Orthodox Christianity which rejects some of the very same teachings and practices, such as the recent reintroduction of “indulgences” by Pope John Paul II. Orthodoxy is not a form of Roman Catholicism and it should not be assumed that the teachings of the Orthodox Church are one and the same as those of Roman Catholicism.

It should also not be assumed that, just because the Orthodox may have a similar ritual to another Christian body, it has the same meaning. One must look beyond externals, as Christ continually challenged the pharisees, and evaluate things on the spirit which drives those externals.

 

Excerpted from https://oca.org/questions/teaching/mary-prayer-death





April 29: Ss. Jason & Sosipater of the 70

Learn about these wondrous Saints celebrated on April 29 each year: 

http://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com/2009/04/sts-jason-and-sosipater-apostles.html 

 

 

Saints Jason and Sosipater, intercede for us! 

 

Guard yourselves

Don’t glue yourselves before the television.  Don’t forget that the button is not only used to turn it on, but for us to turn it off, also.  Guard yourselves from this means of mass blinding.  

The Holy Great Martyr George

Our parish church is named in honor of the Holy Great Martyr George.  Although we celebrated his feast day last Wednesday, I did not put out a posting on this wondrous Saint of God that day.  I would like to refer you to a posting on his life and miracles from April of 2012 which is greatly edifying and educational.  Please click here:  http://otftd.blogspot.com/2012/04/on-great-martyr-george.html

May the Holy Great Martyr George shelter all those who look to him as an intercessor and protector before God!  Xronia Polla! to all who have St. George as their Patron Saint.



Christ is Risen! Well, so what?

 

It’s the greatest message that humanity has ever heard.

It’s also the most ignored message in the world.

I look out in the post-Pascha world and little has changed. The war goes on, gas prices continue to rise, and the rats are still running the race. A poor woman was just found in a basement with her children, and she had been a prisoner there for 25 years. Christ is risen. You might think it impious of me, but I must ask: Well, so what?

It’s one of the most amazing and perplexing passages of Scripture. “Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted.” (Matthew 28:16-17, NKJV)

“Some doubted.” Doubted? How in the world could this be possible? It’s like some of them are actually looking at the Resurrected Lord and asking, “Well, so what?” I am absolutely sure that if I saw the Resurrected Lord with my own eyes, I would believe. After all, I’ve heard that “seeing is believing.” I’m sure that I would believe and I would change. I would be faithful. Wouldn’t I?

Maybe not.

After all, despite the glory of Pascha, I am still an unrepentant sinner. I am worse than St. Thomas because he touched the Lord’s flesh once and proclaimed, “My Lord and my God.” Eventually, Thomas made it all the way to India. I touch the Lord’s Body and Blood every Sunday and have done so for over 12 years, and I’ve hardly made it out of my house.

So, maybe the world ignores the greatest message of all time because the witness of my life is that He is still dead and I remain a slave to sin. Why does the stone remain over the tomb for me? What power keeps the stone from rolling away?

In Hebrews, chapter 2, it says, “…through death He (Jesus) might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

Now, this is interesting. So, it is the fear of death that binds me and blinds me and makes me a slave to sin. Well, I don’t spend most of my day worrying about my physical death, but I do worry about a lot of things. Yet, I thought it was the fact that sin was fun or pleasurable that bound me to it. No, to be honest, beneath it all is fear. As I think about the Lord’s life, how many times did the angels say, “don’t be afraid?” How many times did the Lord Himself say, “Be not afraid?” Am I afraid, really?

Yes, I am.

For example, I live to eat, not eat to live. Why do I eat so much? Am I afraid that I won’t get enough to eat? Perhaps, its because deep in my heart I am afraid-maybe I’m not really loved; maybe I’m ugly; maybe I really am a failure. I find I can eat and kill the this hunger and pain in a carbohydrate haze. After all, a bag of Oreo cookies and a tall glass of cold milk can make me feel real good.

Another example is that I judge others because it makes me feel superior to them. I need to feel superior because I am afraid that people will see what an utter fool I really am. I know exactly why the Pharisee was glad that he was not “like that man.” I’m glad too because it eases the fear that I am a fool and hypocrite. Afterall, I can’t be too bad when there are so many people who are obviously more sinful and more foolish than I.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Fear permeates every aspect of life and it lies at the foundation of every habitual sin that plagues us. It was that way for our Parents. When Adam and Eve broke God’s commandment, they hid in the bushes because they were afraid. When you think that previously they had “walked with God in the cool of the evening”, how sad that they hid themselves from their Father. In the Icon of the Resurrection, Adam and Eve come from the shadows with great joy. Yet, some still hide in the semi-darkness.

Like Adam and Eve, I’m hiding because of fear, and it’s fear that binds me. Even though I proclaim with my lips, Christ is Risen, my heart is wrapped in chains. Is there no help?

Orthodoxy proclaims that Christ “trampled down death by death and upon those in the tombs, He bestowed life.” By trampling down death, he destroys the binding power of death, which is fear. He defeated the one who wields this power, the devil. This means that my fears, though real to me, have no real power. To know this, I have to be willing to open the dark corners of my soul to the light of the Resurrection. One way that I begin to do this is by confession which allows me to begin to come out from my hiding place in the bushes.

I remember hearing this story when I was young. Apparently, almost 10 years after World War II had ended, a lone Japanese soldier was found on a small island in the Pacific Ocean. He had spent a decade believing that the war was still going on, and so he stood his post and every day watched for the enemy.

I’m just like that poor soldier. Christ has won the war and the enemy has been defeated. The problem is, I haven’t heard the good news yet. Well, I’ve heard it, but I just don’t believe it. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

Maybe next Pascha, I will truly hear the Good News. The grave will open for me and the Risen Lord will stand before me and I will worship Him and not doubt. Maybe then I will know the glorious freedom of Christ. Maybe I will take the same hand that he extends to Adam and Eve and to the whole world. Then, I will proclaim the great message “Christ is Risen”, and those who hear it will believe because they will see that the message has transformed the messenger from a slave to fear into a slave of God.

The President was right, "There is nothing to fear but fear itself." John the Revelator heard it from the Lord "Be not afraid…I hold the keys of Death and Hell."

Truly He is Risen!

Source: Ramblings of a Redneck Priest; Source: http://www.pravmir.com/christ-is-risen-well-so-what/#ixzz2zuYvJ2F0

Pascha in Afghanistan

Pascha takes place in the spring; the season of increasing light that comes as the world emerges from the darkness of winter. While the Feast of Nativity takes place at the darkest point of the year, the Feast of Feasts takes place within the context of increasing light after the long months of darkness. In both Feasts, we celebrate the emergence (or breaking through) of light in the midst of the dark. Nowhere have I experienced the profundity of this reality more poignantly than at Kandahar Airfield, Regional Command South, Afghanistan.

The only standing Christian “churches” in Afghanistan belong to the Romanian Orthodox Church, and they were built by Romanian military personnel with the help of other men and women belonging to various military and/or civilian organizations with whom the Romanians share bases. In Kandahar, a U.S. Army Staff Sergeant helped to supply materials and building expertise in order to construct a replica of one of Romania’s beloved monastic chapels. The Romanians have vowed to disassemble this chapel and take it home with them when their time in Afghanistan comes to a close.

Fr. Sean prepares the chapel for Pascha

 

Other chapel facilities exist on every base in the country, but these buildings facilitate all sorts of meetings and are not, strictly speaking, Churches. The Church in Kandahar, where I served Holy Week and Pascha in 2011, belongs to the Romanian Orthodox Church, and this temple remains dedicated to Orthodox Christian worship. On its main cupola, their stands, stretched high into the sky over the base, the Life-giving and Honorable Cross of our Lord; the only such religious symbol of its type on the base.

We started with nocturnes in the darkened Church located in southern Afghanistan, and this service spoke, with the most profound depth, of the threat of sin and death. On Holy Friday, in the center of the Church, we placed a wooden iconographic representation of the winding sheet (since it is not practical to use an actual epitaphios, which would be quickly ruined by travel and dirt). There lay the Savior, and with Him the hope of the whole world, dead and entombed on a simple foldout table covered in black cloth in one of the world’s most dangerous war zones.

Gathered around that table, people from the United States, India, Egypt, Romania, Bulgaria, and several other countries experienced two distinct types of darkness: the darkness of the Crucifixion and the darkness of war. Fighting men and women stood solemnly by the tomb of the One who gave His life without a fight in order to save the world. The irony struck my mind hard creating one of those moments of intense cognitive dissonance that one never forgets. I thought to myself, “Does this even make sense? How can we reconcile all of this? What does this irony really mean? Am I desecrating the very idea of “Life in Death through surrender” by celebrating this service for war fighters in a combat zone? Does this belong here?”

Fr. Sean shares the light

 

Several moments later, we extinguished all light, and then began chanting, “Thy Resurrection, O Christ our Savior, the angels in heaven sing. Enable us on earth to glorify Thee in purity of heart.” From the darkened sanctuary, through the Royal Doors, I brought forth the paschal light shining from the trikiri, and the light spread through the darkened chapel as the faithful lit their candles. We concluded our procession around the chapel and proclaimed the resurrection on the chapel steps, and then entered the brightened nave. At that moment, clarity washed over me as did the light of Holy Pascha: of course the Cross/Resurrection belongs in a combat zone; in fact, where else on this war-torn planet could such glorious realities be more aptly proclaimed?

 

The Paschal Procession

 

For the Orthodox faithful celebrating these services, the true Light of the Gospel burst forth right in the midst of the heart of darkness. Outside the fence of that base existed an active and dangerous war zone; arguably one of the most dangerous and volatile places on earth. What better place could there be in which to shine the light of the reality that war will not have the last word. War remains one of the most graphic reminders that this world has not yet been fully redeemed, Cain still slays Able daily on this cosmic battlefield/cemetery, and the deceiving and destructive perpetrator of sin and human brokenness still prowls about reaping havoc. And right there, in the midst of that utter darkness, the Light of Pascha burst forth and shined with all the glory of the Life that trampled down death by death; that Life that walked out of the tomb having harrowed hell itself.

 

For the rest of that Paschal service, I felt very much “at home.” Thousands of miles away from the safe parishes of the United States, I sensed that I had been instrumental in bringing Pascha to exactly the place where it was the most “needed.” All of us would have preferred to celebrate this glorious Feast of Feasts in the various parishes of our native countries, for sure. Yet Pascha is Pascha wherever you celebrate it, and that night/morning of 23/24 April 2011, we raised war-torn Kandahar, Afghanistan into the realm of the reality that “Christ IS risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!” We celebrated the Light of Life in the midst of the darkness of war and death, and the shadows fled.

 

“Pascha is Pascha wherever you celebrate it”

 

Photos in this article are courtesy of  The U.S. Army and taken by Sgt. Jennifer Spradlin, 16th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

Source: http://www.pravmir.com/pascha-afghanistan/#ixzz2zfK5GV8f

It is Pascha, not Easter

I hear occasionally from someone who sometimes accuses the Orthodox Church of being “foreign”, and so unsuitable for the British. A few days ago he sent me a card saying “the word in English is Easter”. My reply was “the word in Greek (and, therefore, English), is Pascha.”

This is a much more important subject than a mere dispute about words. If the word in English is Easter, then one is bound to ask “what word?” Was there some word which, when translated into English, became “Easter”? The plain answer is “no”. There is one simple reason for this, Jesus Christ in the days of his flesh never visited these shores, and his words were not written in English. He spoke Aramaic, and his sayings were recorded in Greek, as were the words of the other NT writers like Paul and Peter. An example of the desire to replace the word “Pascha” with “Easter” is the King James version translation of Acts 12:4 which describes the arrest of Peter by Herod and his intention “after Easter to bring him forth to the people.” The Greek word here is pascha, and all modern translations rightly now translate the word “passover.”

We need to realise also that there is no equivalent word for “Easter” in the Greek language, for one simple but important reason, the word is an Anglo-Saxon word for a pagan festival. The word in its original use is entirely pagan. According to the English Church historian Bede, it derives from a pagan spring festival in honour of Eastra or Ostara a Teutonic goddess. It has no associations whatsoever with Christ, His death and Resurrection, or indeed anything Christian. Is it not, therefore, unsuitable to be used to describe the greatest day in the life of the Church? The French, Italians and Spanish do not make the same mistake. Their words come from the proper source – Passover, which in Greek is the word “Pascha”.

 

Pascha is derived from the Jewish word Pesah which means “Passover.” And here there is a direct link with the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 5:7 we read, “for our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed”. According to St John, Christ was crucified at the very time that the paschal lambs were being killed. There is another link with the Old Testament because of the importance to the Jews of the Feast of the Passover. The verbal form means to protect and to have compassion as well as “Passover.” The experience of the Israelites was literally a “passover,” but it was also an experience of both God’s compassion for his people, and a great act of protection, as for example, the passage through the Red Sea. The crucifixion and later Resurrection of Christ took place during the Passover Feast. So for Christians Christ was clearly the Paschal Lamb, the fulfilment of all that the Passover had foreshadowed since the first Passover which celebrated the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Let us remember that because the word “Pascha” is in its origin a Hebrew word, by using it we are a witness to the Jewish community, for whom the Passover is still one of the most important words in their religious faith.

Orthodox believers living in the West have always been under pressure in all directions to conform to western ways, ideas and practices. There is nothing new in this. The Crusades were the worst and most blatant attempt by the West to bring the East to heel. But the pressures continue, albeit in more subtle ways. And one example of this is our constant temptation to drop the word “Pascha” and for clarity (and sometimes charity) use the western word “Easter.” But perhaps the time has come for us to make a stand against this. In our increasingly secular and pagan society the use of a pagan word, of which no one knows the meaning, is hardly suitable to describe the greatest day in the Christian year. When most people knew the Christian meaning of the word “Easter” one could perhaps make out a case for using the word. But not today!

To be practical

There are still some for whom the word “Easter” has all the right resonances. Let us not want for a moment to deprive them of that blessing. Easter for them does not mean hats, chocolate eggs, parades or watching football; it means the Cross of Christ and his glorious Resurrection.

But let the Orthodox stick to the right word, which is “Pascha”. Let us use it in our own circles, and discard the pagan word “Easter”. We should do this – not to be different, but to be truthful.

However, when we are in mixed company, for the sake of clarity (and charity) let us use both words, if possible with a simple and humbly presented explanation. For example – “We shall soon be celebrating Pascha – or as you call it “Easter.” Or, “we shall soon be celebrating Easter, or as we call it “Pascha.”

We should encourage the West to unite with us in using the right word, which is Pascha.  And finally, let us not get dragged down with a dispute about mere words. St Paul warned believers in his day “to avoid wrangling about words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening” (2 Timothy 2:14). The important matter here is not what the Festival is called, but the reality of the Death and Resurrection of Christ. Yes, Christ is Risen! If we can agree there, then what we call it, important though that is, can be seen in its proper perspective.

Source: http://www.pravmir.com/it-is-pascha-not-easter/#ixzz2zXICy5Iq