Luke 14:13

 

Beloved readers, 

I hope you had a blessed Lenten period and have felt joy on this Palm Sunday Feast.  As we accompany Christ during His Passion this week, may we sense His real presence in each service. 

My heart is filled with hope as I write to you today.  The reason is that I have witnessed, first hand,  your commitment to Christ and love for the brethren not so long ago.  On somewhat short notice, back in January, you, beloved readers, helped make it possible to send $8,000 to Kosovo to bless the oppressed Christians of that region.  A good portion of that amount was raised as a result of your own caring and sincere love.  The message that returned to me in response was one of excessive joy and appreciation from the fathers of the Decani Monastery who are Christ’s hands and feet on the ground there.  Part of their ministry is to obtain and distribute necessities for life—food, firewood (fuel), medicines and more to the faithful of the region.  The one thing they cannot procure without assistance are funds to make this possible.  This is where we have opportunity to bless and be blessed.   

It is one thing to say, “I love or I care about…” and another thing to demonstrate it.  When we meet genuine needs of people who suffer for the sake of their faith, we share their burden and relieve it.  We give hope, simply through showing that someone in hardship is not forgotten, that someone cares whether they feel hope, joy or consolation.  This is a ministry that is within our reach.   

Pascha is less than a week away.  The Decani Monastery Relief Fund once again looks to God to bring tangible blessings to the Serbian Orthodox Christians of Kosovo and Metohija.  Although we may not hear much about this region in the news, it nevertheless remains an area of extreme hardship.  Believers suffer at the hands of authorities who do not share their Christian faith.  Theirs is a “rough neighborhood.”  Never fully secure from harm, except in Christ.  Never fully nourished, except through Christ.  Never fully warmed, except through Christ.  Did you turn up your thermostat during the recent harsh winter months?  I did.  The Christians in Kosovo and Metohija did not have that luxury.  God has entrusted us with so much material wealth…let us be good stewards of it, and I write this message to myself, first of all. 

The Christians of this region are truly poor—not of their own will, but due to circumstances outside of their control.  For most, there is no path out of the hardship they live with day to day.  There has been war in the area, there is hatred for Christians, the faithful suffer.  At this point, it is costly for them to obtain even basic items.  This is hardship.  It is not something we in the United States are familiar with.  We have not walked in their shoes.  However, we can lift the burden.  God has given us the ability and the choice whether to do so.   

As I contemplated this message, this passage from Luke chapter 14 came to mind.  Christ is speaking at a dinner hosted by a Pharisee: ¹² He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. ¹³ But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, ¹⁴ and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. 

The brethren in Kosovo cannot repay any generosity you extend.  However, what a joy to bless someone in adversity—a brother or sister in Christ whom you may never meet in this life.  And see what the Scripture above says to us, “…and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.  You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”  Repaid by God Himself.  What a promise can be ours-- bless someone in adversity now and be repaid later by God Himself!  For a believer, can there be any better offer?   

So, now I ask you--will you join me in making this coming Paschal feast a time of joy for the Orthodox Christians of Kosovo?  Doing so will be like inviting these dear souls to your own Paschal table—spiritually, they will be there—thanking God, and you, in their hearts!  Your gift of any amount will surely brighten their celebration of this most Holy Feast.  It is easy to contribute, too.  Simply visit the DMRF site and access the Paypal button:  http://www.thedecanifund.org/ 

The DMRF is a non-profit tax-exempt charity.  For those who don’t use Paypal, donations via check may be sent c/o Fr. Nektarios Serfes, the Decani Monastery Relief Fund President, below:   

                                                            Decani Monastery Relief Fund

                                                            c/o Rev. Fr. Nektarios Serfes

                                                            2618 W. Bannock Street

                                                            Boise, ID   83706

 

Thank you so much, dear brothers & sisters—thank you! 

A small blessing for you:  a glimpse of the Decani Monastery:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0dVGqV9WMg&list=PL00C458C423B2E3C7

Your sister in Christ,

Presbytera Candace

Our God is not indifferent to us--Jesus wept

 

 

Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.  Romans 12:15

The Gospel of John verse 11:35 is one of the shortest verses in the Bible. It consists of two words: Jesus wept. The verse is brief, but it should be read slowly. Just two words, but each one is precious.

In the first verses of his Gospel the apostle John writes that The Word became flesh (Jn. 1:14). He continues to witness to this here also, in relating the events surrounding the resurrection of righteous Lazarus. Jesus wept, and that means that truly the Son of God became the Son of Man, like us in everything except sin. This includes the ability to weep.

Jesus wept. These two words show that God arranged the salvation of people not coldly and indifferently, not because he had to, was forced to, but because he desired this fervently. Christ’s tears reveal the Lord’s inner world: He loves His creation, He grieves that death deforms people, separates them from one another, brings anguish and melancholy into the world, and deprives people of happiness.

Jesus’s tears remind us that God is not a stranger to the world, that He is not an indifferent Absolute, as the Greeks once thought. Their monotheistic philosophy described God as a totally passionless Being. Rightly supposing that God is completely perfect, they came to the conclusion that He could not change in any way. After all, any change would mean a departure from the Ideal. The philosophers considered feelings to be a kind of change. A feeling God is a God Who suffers from feelings—which, as the Greeks thought, means He is not God.

So, Jesus’s tears show that God does not fit into the framework of human deductive reasoning. He after all loves us, co-suffers with us, and worries about us with a deeply personal, fatherly interest, while remaining perfect God—all powerful and almighty.

Never say to your crying little sons that men never cry. This is not true. The best of men have wept. The Best of the best also wept.

Jesus’s tears teach us not to be ashamed to weep. If Christ was not ashamed, even less so should we be ashamed. If only our tears would always be as pure, noble, and compassionate. Such weeping is pleasant to God. But there are tears of envy, hatred, unforgiven offenses, dark depression, or drunken declarations. Such tears have nothing in common with Jesus’s tears. We have no need for them.

Christ’s tears tell us that God wants to co-suffer with us to the full extent. It was not enough for Him to weep from the heavens over our disaster. No, He came down to us, entered the crowd of weepers and wept with them, providing an example, establishing the commandment that the apostle Paul would later clothe in words.¹

We can also suppose that having seen the funereal setting, seeing the human grief, He was transported to the future with His divine mind to when His most pure body, killed by Jewish malice, would also be laid in the grave, and His disciples both men and women would be crushed with grief. Perhaps His tears were over this as well.

The Lord Christ’s actions reach through the ages. Weeping with Martha and Mary at the tomb of Lazarus, He weeps also with us at the burials of our family and friends. We are not alone, no matter how the devil tries to suggest otherwise. However there is a time to weep and a time to laugh (Eccl. 3:4). The Lord raises Lazarus and wipes away both His own and our tears. For, all is well that ends well. It will be well for us—He will resurrect our close ones, too. And He will resurrect us.

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/78394.htm

Priest Leonid Kudryachov
Translation by OrthoChristian.com

03 / 04 / 2015

1 Rom. 12: 15. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.

"Of whom I am chief..."

Priest Sergei Begiyan

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

—1 Tim. 1:15

Repentance is the musical string of Great Lent. Like a violin, it can produce different notes. If you simply run the blow across it will make one sound, if you press it with your finger it will make another. And the sound changes depending upon the segment of the neck at which you press the string.

It is the same with repentance. On Forgiveness Sunday, one sound emits from the repentant soul, at confession another, and at home while reading evening prayers yet another. We all pour our souls out to God in different ways, but at nevertheless it is all the same. Any priest who hears confessions will tell you this. Repentance is the same because we are all of the same nature. The color red will be the same for me as it is for you. What tastes sour to me will also taste sour to you, I think. Nevertheless, we all experience a sour taste in different ways: one person likes it while another doesn’t. Ask me and my wife to draw red apples and each will turn out different not only in shape, but also in shade. In the same way, we all feel sin differently.

Why do we go to confession? In order to be free of the force of sin. I would seem to have freedom, but when I look at my behavior—alas, what kind of freedom are we talking about? O wretched man that I am! writes the Apostle, For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I (Rom. 7:24, 15). In connection with this, repentance awaits us as a most joyful event, because we come to church in bonds, and there the Lord releases us, so that we would commit acts truly according to our own will, and not at the will of sinful dependency. Why then is the color of repentance black, and Great Lent is the time of lamentation? Because it is one thing to be absolved of sin and another to be punished for sin. It is not difficult for God to save us from all sins and passions in a moment. Only, what benefit would this bring to us? On the one hand, we would instantly become super saints, which would be just beautiful. But on the other hand?

Just imagine: Your child took something precious to you without asking and broke it, although you had told him many times not to touch it. You say to him, “No problem. Good boy. Keep playing.” Of course the same thing will happen again. Therefore the correctional corner awaits the wrong-doer along with a sentence and its subsequent carrying out. “Stay in the corner and think about what you’ve done,” is what we say as we leave him in the expectation that in the corner his conscience will speak up, and in the future he will beware of doing something similar.

We are just the same kind of unreasonable children before the face of God as our little ones. If you give me right now complete deliverance from sinful passions, without me ever doing any work to uproot them—we don’t know to what hellish depths I will fall in my unearned “sainthood”. After all, when I am struggling against sin, fasting, praying, and trying to cut off my will and thoughts, I become not only the conqueror but also the conquered. And we don’t know who is more often in the lead. But from defeat is inevitably born humility; also anger… at myself, and hatred for the tyrannical sin. The soul is shattered from all of this like a clay pot, and we begin not just to ask but to beg the Lord for deliverance. But God does not always hasten to deliver us, because remaining for a little while in a state of broken shards is something extraordinarily beneficial to us. And only when a person has already approached the edge of total despondency does God reveal Himself in all His blinding fullness, and give us consolation beyond our highest expectations.

This state of feigned abandonment by God is that very time of increased fasting and prayer. And everyone has his own term of “punishment”, or it would be better to say, being brought to reason. And the Lord chooses the term of penance according to the physical and spiritual capabilities of each person. Those who are yet weak in their faith experience this more quickly, and the character of their temptations are not so universal as for those who are toughened and manly. Here it is appropriate to recall St. John the Much Suffering of the Kiev Caves. For thirty years (!) he was warred against by fleshly lust, regardless of the great ascetic labors that he performed in order to rid himself of it. Why didn’t the Lord free him from that passion? The Lord Himself answered this question: “This was sent to you according to the measure of your patience,” He said to the ascetic. “So that you would be tried by fire and become pure as gold; God does not allow a person to be tempted beyond his strength, so that he would not grow faint and be put to shame by the evil snake. But as a rational master delegates the greater and heavier work to the stronger and healthier slaves, but the gives the lesser and lighter work to the weak, so you also must understand concerning the struggle with bodily lust, which makes you pray.”

During Great Lent such oppressive states often come to a person to test and try his faith. Sorrows can come from various quarters: sickness, problems at work, discord in the family, or material hardships. It is important that behind this stands the one and only goal: purification of our Lenten prayer through a crushed heart.

Read more here:  http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/78200.htm

Hail to the Mother of God

 

Hail to you forever, O Virgin Mother of God, our unceasing joy...You are the pearl of great price that belongs to the Kingdom; the fate of every victim, the living altar of the Bread of Life.  Hail, O treasure of the love of God.  Hail, O fount of the Son's love for man. 

Visit this link for the life of St. Mary of Egypt, written for children:  http://otftd.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-life-of-st-mary-of-egypt.html

The Christian curative

From the sacrament of the cross you receive both food and drink; let the wood, which availed at Mara in a figure for sweetening the taste, avail you in truth for soothing the softened breast, and you will not labor for the remedy for increasing the health. Cure yourself at the source from which you had been wounded. Love those whom you hated before; esteem those whom you envied with unjust disparagements. Imitate the good, if you can follow them; if you cannot follow them, surely rejoice with them and congratulate your betters. Your debts will be forgiven you, when you yourself shall forgive. Your sacrifices will be accepted, when you shall come to God as a peacemaker.  

A holy soul cares for his neighbor

Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s (I Cor 10:24).  That is the principle of the saints of God, both in times past and at the present time, from all ages to the end of the world.  That is the principle of all true social structure.  On that principle can be

founded a human society that is the most perfect, the most pleasing to God and the happiest. It is a saving principle in every kind of difficulty that people today encounter, against which they struggle without victory and without hope.  A holy soul cares for his neighbor, either close at hand or far away.  He cares where the homeless will spend the night, how the hungry will be fed, with what the naked will be clothed.  He cares and he prays for the salvation of his neighbors; that their hearts may be filled with love towards God, that their minds may be directed towards God, that the wicked may turn from the paths of wickedness, that the hesitant may be confirmed in the Faith, that the firm may persevere, that the departed may behold the Face of God, that the living may be written in the book of Life in the Kingdom of Light. 

 

 

Memory Eternal--Fr. Thomas Hopko

+Fr. Thomas Hopko of Blessed Memory reposed on March 18 at about 3 PM

 

By Abbot Tryphon

MOURNING THE LOSS OF A LOVED ONE And the need to embrace our grief

We need to mourn. One of the most tremendously rewarding and challenging aspects of the priesthood is comforting people in their darkest moments of sorrow. Do not be mistaken and think that priests are exempt from the pain of those whom they try to comfort, or that we have magical words that somehow ease the pain or bring order to the chaos of grief. Platitudes are useless in dark days of mourning. Telling someone who has suffered the loss of a loved one that they are “in a better place,” is oddly of little comfort. In a powerful witness of human behavior, Christ “does not say, ‘Well, now he is in heaven, everything is well; he is separated from this difficult and tormented life.’ Christ does not say all those things we do in our pathetic and uncomforting attempts to console. In fact he says nothing—he weeps.”

We need to embrace the grief, and honor the bereavement process. Grief is confirmation that our loved one was a person of value, a beloved son or daughter, a cherished brother or sister, a treasured friend. Grief is how we honor a well-lived life, for the death is grief-worthy. In grieving, we do their memory justice, and follow in the example of Jesus, who wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus. Like martyrs of the ancient church, like Lazarus in the New Testament, the death of a loved one is galling for those of left behind, for we wonder how we are going to fill the space that they once occupied. The mystery of a future without our friend or relative is a daunting, as the mystery of death itself.

As a priest-monk of the Orthodox Church, I am comfortable with this mystery, as all Christians should be. Death can be a mystery precisely because the triumph over death is not a mystery. As the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote, “in essence, Christianity is not concerned with coming to terms with death, but rather with the victory over it.” In the light of everlasting life, in the name of Jesus Christ, the dreadful threat and dark mystery that is death is transformed into a happy and victorious event for the believer, and “Death is swallowed up in victory." (1 Cor. 15:54)

So mourning is an ancient ritual, one in which Jesus participated, just as those before Him. For all of us, all people, death is a common element of humanity, the common trait that we share, and the common enemy of our loved ones. And like grief, victory over death binds people together in a larger, more powerful community, the community that is found in the Christian faith. People accuse Christians of being members of a “death cult,” obsessed with a dying savior and focused on the afterlife to the exclusion of the present; but they are wrong. Christianity does not deny life, Christianity affirms life. Christianity affirms life even in death, because for Christians, death does not remove the relationship that exists. In death, as in life, we love and honor our friend or loved one, and death cannot take them from us. Death may take them, but it has also provides us with the opportunity to live with the hope of one day joining them. And a life with hope is a good life.

So for us, death is the beginning of the true life that also awaits us beyond the grave, if indeed we have begun to live it here. Christ, “the resurrection and the life,” (John 11:25) transformed death. Christ assumed human flesh, Christ was crucified, resurrected, ascended to heaven and waits for us there, and Christ ushers us into new life both now and after our death. Therefore, even as death exposes our frailty and our grief, death does not reveal our finiteness; instead it reveals our infiniteness, our eternity. To this end, the Christian does not ponder the mystery of death in a way that is paralyzing, negative and apathetic, but in a way that is productive, positive and dynamic.

God, to whom you have entrusted your soul, is a good and perfect God. This God will do what is right with your child, what is just with your sister or brother, and what is honorable with your friend. There is no saying, no claim, no scripture that will give us peace in our loss right now or even calm our troubled souls; but we can find comfort and peace in God who is present with us, and in us and through us today as we gather in the intimacy of grief.

With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon