On poverty of spirit

Let us not seek pleasure or visions.  We are sinners unworthy of spiritual pleasures and visions, unfit for them on account of our decrepitude.  By attentive prayer, let us seek to turn the gaze of our mind to ourselves so that we may discover within ourselves our sinfulness.  When we discover it, let us stand mentally before our Lord Jesus Christ in the company of the lepers, the blind, the deaf, the lame, the paralyzed, the possessed; and let us begin our mournful cry of prayer before Him from the poverty of our spirit and from a heart crushed with sorrow for our sinfulness. 

 

The Nativity: An icon of the Christian Family

Thinking of our brethren who are celebrating the Feast of our Lord’s Holy Nativity on the Julian calendar—today is the second day of Christmas: 

Everyone’s favorite time of the year is the period before Christmas, when the air is filled with joy, peace and expectation. We are blessed to live in a country that looks forward to Christmas although we might seem to have lost some of its meaning along the way. We have radio stations that air carols without ceasing, exalting the season, although many of them speak about snow, jolly figures carrying gifts, family time and other things that are all fine, but missing maybe the point of all this festival. It is wonderful that everyone celebrates Christmas, in their own way, and even people that don’t believe in God enjoy the season and try to be “good for goodness’ sake”, as a recent billboard from our atheistic friends reads recently (we can discuss some other time about the origin of Good).

One of the Christians staples of the pre-Christmas period is the Nativity Scene that adorns most churchyards and many of the lawns in our neighborhoods. People count on these scenes to convey to the world the true meaning of Christmas although every year they seem to be the object of national debate, as our world moves more and more towards political correctness, and less towards mutual respect for everyone’s beliefs. But I might be digressing…

The Nativity Scene strives to portray the ideal Christian family on a backdrop of simplicity and humbleness. The perfect “Baby Jesus” is born in a loving family with a Holy Mother and a loving adopted father casting a caring arm around those he was called to protect. The angels sing, the magi come with gifts, the shepherds praise and even the animals care of the Newborn with their warm breath. Christ is welcomed in the world with joy and is surrounded by love. All Creation gathers at the manger of Bethlehem in perfect harmony to glorify the Incarnation of the Son of God. All is more than perfect. Is this however the true story of Christmas?

Looking for other sources of inspiration I recalled a similar tradition from my home country Romania where the priest brings the icon of Nativity in everyone’s homes singing the troparion of the Feast. It is, if you want, a reversed pilgrimage where Christ comes and visits you where you are, in your house, an icon of the Incarnation of God in itself, a reenactment of His coming to earth where we are at home.

Mary and Joseph kneel at the crib of the infant Christ in this detail of an icon

from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. 

 

Analyzing the Nativity icon in its Orthodox Byzantine rendering, we see an interpretation that is not as idealistic as a Nativity Scene. We see a Christ born in a cold cave because no one has opened the door for Him. In place of a crib He has to cope with an animal manger so the prophecy of Isaiah will be fulfilled: The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel has not known me, and my people have not understood. The shepherds do not come on their own, but an angel gathers them. Joseph himself is not portrayed very flattering, as he is represented far from the Mother and Child, doubting the whole story, conversing with a sinister character that is no other but the devil tempting him. The Virgin, now Mother of God, is also many times portrayed with her head turned towards Joseph, worrying about the state of his soul.

This is the true world in which Christ was born, but this imperfect world is the very reason for His coming. Even the ones closest to Him are not perfect and they, as well, are in need of the salvation He will preach and accomplish by His death on the Cross. The reality of the Cross is not missing from this icon because the swaddling clothes are also his funeral shroud, the manger His coffin and the cave His tomb. Everything is depicted through the realistic perspective of the need for redemption, without cosmetic surgery or idealization. Christ came to save the sinners, along with the righteous.

The iconographic detail of the ox and the donkey further illustrates this point. From the Law of the Old Testament we know that the ox was a clean animal while the donkey was not. They are symbols of the chosen people and of the gentiles, of those under the Law and those outside of the Law, of the sinners and the righteous. Their presence in the icon suggests one more time that Christ has come for all, good or bad, without prejudice, without expectations, ready to sacrifice Himself for those that will crucify Him. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do!

Looking at the season through the reversed perspective of the Orthodox icon of Nativity, we might grasp a better understanding of the world in which we live, with all the things that are plaguing it from all directions. Yes, we complain today that the world expects Christ with a generic message, that our traditions are void of content, that we have lost the meaning of Christmas, but when actually was the world ready for the coming of Christ? When He was born in the midst of His own chosen people and they couldn’t care less? When the Christians were persecuted by Roman emperors and thrown to the lions? When the French revolution shouted triumphantly that they would hang the last king with the intestines of the last priest? When the communists have demolished the churches and thrown the priests in the gulag? The world has never been ready for the coming of Christ, just as it is not ready now, but it is exactly this fact that makes it essential. The unpreparedness of the world underscores the unfathomable love of Christ for His dysfunctional family.

This infinite love should make us all want to change something within our hearts, to make our heart a place fit for Christ. To give him there a proper place to be born, to grow and to save each of us from the inside out. Then, and only then, the Christians will truly become a cloud of witnesses for the Incarnation. Then, and only then, the world will be able to understand the meaning of the miracle from the manger of Bethlehem.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Fr. Vasile Tudora

Orthodox Christian Network

21 / 12 / 2015

Why do we bless homes on Theophany with Holy Water?

Why do we bless homes on Theophany with Holy Water?

Father Paul Christy of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church blesses

the Semos family home in Germantown, TN. Photo by Mark Weber. 

Why do we bless houses (and almost anything else that we can sprinkle) with water?

Many years ago, when I was yet a deacon, I was visiting with some non-Orthodox friends who were inquirers into Orthodoxy (they sadly, never followed through with their interest - or even their promise to become Orthodox) and we were discussing this topic in the context of blessing their house. I look at it like this. This world, this creation, is in captivity; it is enemy held territory. The evil one, having enslaved all of creation at the fall, has laid claim to every nook and cranny of this earth. And for a while it looked as though he might be able to hold onto it. But then he reached too far and attempted to enslave the Master of All and to bind Life with the chains of death and his power was broken. But creation is still fallen, it is still contested land in the spiritual battle.

We, as Christians, are engaged in this struggle to reclaim fallen nature for the Kingdom of God. We often talk about this in terms of our own salvation, but the Church, addressing all of creation in a wholistic manner, also reaches out and reclaims a bit here and a bit there of creation in general. We do this in order that we might restore the usefulness of creation for working out our own salvation. Hence we bless anything that might help us in our salvation - and by blessing it we reclaim it for the Kingdom of God.

There are few things more vital to our lives than our homes. In our homes we pray, we work, we talk to others, we order our lives, we work out our marriages, etc. What more important place to reclaim for the Kingdom of God - or is it better to continue living in a place which is occupied by the enemy. For the most effective working out of our salvation, we must drive the enemy out of our homes, and keep him at bay by our prayers, our righteous life, and the annual sprinkling by Holy Water at Theophany.

(From a Post to the Orthodox mailing list, dated April 30, 1996 by Priest David Moser
St Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Church, 872 N 29th St, Boise ID
Used with permission)

Orthodox.net

22 / 01 / 2011

Sourced from:  http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/44235.htm

A thank you & a shared honor

From Fr. Nektarios Serfes, President of the Decani Monastery Relief Fund:

God bless you!  I write to you today with a joyful heart.

During my recent trip to Kosovo/Metohija I was honored with one of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s highest awards.  My desire is to share the honor of the St. Sava Award with all those who sustain the Decani Monastery Relief Fund.  Please click the link below.  The honorable St. Sava Award was conferred on me by his Holiness Patriarch Irinej and the Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church: 

http://media.wix.com/ugd/ed4a69_57e27368e96045089a460cbc1d3cc55d.pdf

I was humbled to receive this honor.  However, the work of the Fund is shared by many people.  There would be no Fund, no humanitarian relief, if it were not for you, beloved brethren.  So, please let me say that this award belongs to all the benefactors of the Decani Monastery Relief Fund.  What relief and encouragement would I bring to the brethren if we did not co-labor together?   

Further, I send joy and great thanks from the Decani Monastery as God saw fit to bless our Fund with $10,050. at the end of December.  Now, we are more assured that the brethren will not only have needs met but also receive some extra provisions for their Christmas holidays, beginning January 7.  Thanks be to God!  Thank you, all of our helpers and benefactors!  The blessings of God be with you—peace to you soul!

+Archimandrite Nektarios (Serfes)

Children in Osojane, Kosovo expressing thanks to their benefactors

Holding icon prints of the Mother of God, Quick to Hear

Hand-written by Ariane Trifunovic Montemuro, DMRF Board Member

 
 

Have you fed the hungry lately?

 

https://frsergei.wordpress.com/2016/01/02/have-you-fed-the-hungry-lately/

At the Second coming of Christ, He will reward those who fed the hungry, visited the sick and the imprisoned, clothed the naked… We all know this Gospel passage. As Christians, we try to get involved in prison ministries and soup kitchens--and this is very important and well-deserving of our efforts. But pay close attention: when Christ addresses the righteous, they are genuinely surprised: “When have we ministered to you Lord?” Do you think that anyone involved in a soup kitchen can be genuinely surprised at Christ’s words? It is more likely that they will say: “Yes, Lord, I ministered to the hungry as if they were You, and I saw Your image in each of their faces.” The ones who are surprised are not the ones who were involved in Christian ministries and visited the prison inmates because it was a Christian thing to do. They are the ones who ministered to the needy out of a profound sense of oneness with them. If your child is hungry, you feed him because you are family, not because it is a Christian thing to do. When your brother is in prison you go there not because you participate in a Christian ministry or because you enjoy visiting inmates; in fact, you may hate going there, but you go anyway--because he is family. When we treat others as family, we do not expect to be rewarded for feeding them or visiting them in prison, we do not expect any reward for this and will be genuinely surprised to get any. If we let a stranger in not because he might turn out to be an undercover angel but merely because he is a fellow human being, he is family, then we have understood that to call God ‘Father’ means to call a stranger a ‘brother’--not in a “churchy” way, but quite literally.

Blessed, spiritually profitable New Year

Let us start out this new calendar year with the life of a Saint who is certainly a man for our times.   He is worthy of emulation, to be sure.  May we call upon Holy Hieromartyr Hilarion, a Saint for this age, and receive his intercessions and holy help.  Pres. Candace

The Fruit of Tribulation

Source:  http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/62985.htm

S. Ivleva, Holy Hieromartyr Hilarion on Solovki

Today, at the Liturgy for the commemoration of the uncovering of the relics of Holy Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky) and Equal-to-the-Apostles Princess Olga, Archimandrite Tikhon, the abbot of Sretensky Monastery, gave a sermon on the Gospel reading.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Today we commemorate the uncovering of the relics of our heavenly protector, Holy Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky). The Gospel reading for today (Mt. 12:38–45) is about how the people came to their teacher and demanded a sign from the heavens—a sign as pay for their faith in God. “We would see a sign from thee” and we will believe, they said. However, Christ did not accept that plan. He said, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.

So, what is that sign? It is the sign of overcoming tribulations and understanding the meaning of trials, suffering, and the cross. The prophet Jonah received great mercy from God—Divine wisdom—but not before he had been cast into tribulation, and through this tribulation he received the gift that he had requested: wisdom, eternal life—a foretaste of eternal life. Thus did our Lord Jesus Christ say. So should you also be emulating this example. He Himself emulated His own servant Jonah, who was once unwise but later became a God-seer and prophet, when He said, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. He would have to endure mockery and death, and all those tribulations that we are talking about today.

There is no other path to the knowledge of God, and there is no other path to the knowledge of eternal life, other than this path. Why? Because it is God’s will. A Christian (and we are now talking about Christians) should through their own life experience be cast out of this world, oppose this world, so that having rejected the world he might have the opportunity to receive eternal life; to have the opportunity to receive a higher understanding of the eternal ways of God. We have to reject the temporary in order to receive the eternal.

During St. Hilarion’s time, probably many were saying, “Such tribulations! Where can we find the strength to have faith?” These were the times just after the Revolution—times of terrible trials. But in order to preserve their faith they may have said, “Give us a sign, if only to have something to grab onto.” But for all times and for all peoples, the Savior’s words have resounded about how when we ask for a sign, we become a part of that evil and adulterous generation. The tribulation itself and our overcoming it brings us the greatest fruit. The tribulation itself gives us a sign, wisdom, an understanding of God’s ways, and the strength of spirit to endure. Holy Hierarch Hilarion showed us to the fullest measure that acceptance of this sign. Time has to pass; trials and patience must have the quality of completion, the term must be completed. A woman must have nine months for a new life to be born. The human soul must also have a certain time period, and an overcoming of trials, so that an understanding of God’s will can be born.

Yes, people wanted it to come more quickly; they wanted the terrible yoke of godlessness to end right away. Many tried inwardly to speed up the process; but God-seers such as St. Hilarion knew that sooner or later that time would come, and they remained joyful and calm, as we can read in people’s reminiscences of him—especially of his concentration camp period. He was joyful and peaceful. Just like a new Jonah in the belly of the whale, experiencing fear, confusion, temptation and sorrows, he knew that God would nevertheless lead His people to the truth.

An ascetic of our very recent history, a man of holy life although not yet a canonized saint, Elder Paisius of Mt. Athos (who died in 1994) said, “What I see around me would drive me insane if I did not know that no matter what happens, God will have the last word.” Neither did St. Hilarion demand any signs. He knew, just as all of us should know, that sooner or later the time will come for tribulations. No one can pass by Golgotha if he wants to follow Christ and consider himself a disciple of Christ. When that time comes, do not ask, beg, or demand a sign, or that this cup would definitely pass you by. But say only, “May God’s will be done,” just as our Lord and Teacher Himself said. Then and only then, after having drunk that cup, we will begin to understand that no matter how bitter and sorrowful it might be, at the bottom is its fruit, which is the most precious thing there is in the world.

The apostle says that you are called not only to be disciples of Christ, but also to co-suffer with Him. Why? So that you can become like Him. So that you can receive sonship, become sons and daughters of God. To do this you must travel the path that He travelled. This path is inescapable for the Christian. The cross is unavoidable for a person with a conscience, and even more so for a Christian. The cross is unavoidable for a disciple of Christ. Having carried the cross to the end, a person receives the fulfillment of that sign in the kingdom of heaven—the sign of God’s omnipotence, the power of His divine love, His endless care for mankind—His amazing gifts that He sends down to us. However, not only in the kingdom of heaven but even here on earth we begin to be aware of this, to feel and perceive it, and understand. It is the “higher math” of Christianity, and we have to approach it gradually.

Not in vain did Christ speak to His disciples only in stages about His death and not all at once. Because a person who is striving for happiness—human, earthly happiness—for a painless path, a life without problems, will find this very difficult to hear. It is hard for us to hear that we are sick and in need of healing. It is hard to understand that we are mortal, yet called to immortality. We will inevitably have to walk this path, and due to a great many circumstances this path is painful. We will pray to Holy Hieromartyr Hilarion, who, like no one else, nobly, wisely, calmly, and joyfully walked that path to the end. His last words were amazing. He was in a horrific prison hospital in Leningrad, sick with typhus. He had just returned from Solovki, sent from there by prison convoy to Central Asia, to what could have been an even more horrible prison. How they had tried to grab his soul and his freedom—the OGPU, who demanded that he submit to them, the schismatics, and his brother clergymen who fell into faintheartedness. He experienced a multitude of sorrows—we cannot even imagine all that he had to endure in prison. He was beset upon from all sides. But as people testify who knew St. Hilarion, he was always joyful and even merry. He never demanded of God or of people that this would “pass him by”, because he understood that he must bear all of it to the end—for his own sins, for the sins of others, and of all Russia. He knew that he must bear that burden. But in those difficult moments when he could feel he was already passing over the boundaries of this world, when he knew his soul would be free of it, his last words were, “Now, no one will be able to reach me.”

Let us pray to pray to Holy Hieromartyr Hilarion that he would strengthen us in courage, that he would free us from faintheartedness, and from all those demands that the Lord does not bless us to make of Him—demands of special signs, demands of special status among His disciples. Because we have to remember always that when it is needed He will send us consolation, awareness, and signs; but only when our divine and omniscient Teacher sees it all and says, “Now you it is time for you to know this.” Amen.

Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov)
24 / 07 / 2013

 

On the struggle against thoughts

When we struggle against demonic thoughts, the struggle will be considered as a martyrdom.  This is because one suffers a great deal when evil thoughts attack, and God, seeing the toil and pain of his soul, considers it to be a martyrdom.