| Athonite monasticism at the dawn of the third millennium As it reached the end of its first millennium in 1963, the monastic republic of Mount Athos seemed to have completed its life cycle and to be breathing its last. It had been born, grown to maturity, produced a rich harvest of fruit, and grown old. As it reached the end of its first millennium in 1963, the monastic republic of Mount Athos seemed to have completed its life cycle and to be breathing its last. It had been born, grown to maturity, produced a rich harvest of fruit, and grown old. Its strength was shockingly reduced. The numbers of the monks had fallen considerably and their average age was now over fifty-five. The elders were dying naturally, without seeing younger men come to take their place in the monasteries and hermitages. Huge monastic complexes that had once pulsated with life now stood derelict and deserted. Everything betokened decline and decay. Certainly, this was not the first decline the monastic republic had experienced in its long history. Yet almost everyone believed it would be the last. Many of the monks, even, had come to believe that they would have no successors. And so, on the fringes of the millennial celebrations, it was being said that the festivities were in fact the ‘funeral service’ or even the ‘requiem’ for Athonite monasticism. The first decade of the second millennium gave every indication of confirming the gloomy prognostications. The monks’ numbers continued to dwindle, the signs of depopulation were unmistakable, and the future looked bleak indeed. What was more, the notion began to glimmer in the minds of some of those responsible, and of others less responsible, that efforts should be made to exploit the inestimable treasures of this thousand-year-old republic as tourist attractions. But the prospects in this direction were not promising. Special studies showed that the cost of bringing tourists to Mount Athos and possibly of replacing the monks with custodians to look after and |
| In that sense, we can say, with Metro. John Zizioulas (Being and Communion), that from the time of the early Church, there have been two basic types of spirituality in Holy Orthodoxy: one may be called “eucharistic”, because it is based on the eucharistic community, its experiences and disciplines. The other type is called ‘monastic’ by Zizioulas, but I prefer to call it ‘hesychastic’, both because it more precisely describes the type of spirituality that we are distinguishing from the ‘eucharistic’, and also because I do not want to imply that the eucharistic dimension can ever be separated from monasticism–or from hesychasm, for that matter. (We are distinguishing here, let us recall, not to separate but only to unite.) In both the eucharistic type of spirituality and the hesychastic, the practice of asceticism is fundamental: the individual struggles against the passions, strives toward the virtues, seeks grace in prayer and union with God in Christ. Hesychastic spirituality is characterized not only by renunciation of the world and austere asceticism but especially by submission to the spiritual authority of a geron or staretz, which includes such practices as strict obedience and daily revelation of thoughts, activities not practicable for the average lay person. Eucharistic spirituality, on the other hand, is characterized by an ascetical and noetic participation in the eucharistic community as a way to overcome philautia: self-love and its deadly children, gluttony, avarice, vain-glory, etc. Ultimately, however, both types of spirituality are but modes of the one spirituality of the Orthodox Church, which is the path of becoming a temple of the Holy Spirit by participating in the uncreated grace and the deifying energy of God. Orthodox spirituality, then, both eucharistic and hesychastic, is the spirituality most perfectly embodied in the saint. The instruction of the great elder and saint, Paisius Velichkovsky, for the tonsure to the Monastic Order, is equally applicable, with slight adaptation, to Orthodox married and non-monastic single persons. |
| It has become more difficult to buy 90 types of medical products from abroad. “A Third Wheel” – how it affects patients Source: Pravmir (Russian) This mechanism will help the economy, but not medicine The head of the government of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Mishustin, signed a decree that expanded the “third wheel” mechanism in the state purchase of medical products. 11 items have been added to the list and now there are 90 types of different medical devices: medical microscopes, biochemical analyzers, therapeutic laser devices, and surgical ultrasound devices. It will be more difficult to buy them from abroad. The rule of the “third wheel” implies that a foreign company cannot participate in the purchase of products if there are two or more Russian or Eurasian suppliers. The list includes about 90 types of various medical devices. “It’d Be Better to Leave Everything as it Was” Pavel Brand. Photo: Facebook Pavel Brand, medical director of the family clinic chain, said: “The government is doing this in order to transfer orders to the medical industry, supporting the domestic manufacturer. Appetites are growing, production facilities are opening in Russia, we need to help them. So everything is logical here from the point of view of economics. And from the point of view of medicine, it is not very useful. Because medicine is an industry that is highly dependent on the quality of equipment. And if the quality decreases, instead of improving, then this is reflected in the final consumer, that is, the patient. To be honest, it is difficult for me to be objective in this situation, because I do not know the quality of Russian products. But, as practice shows, on average, the products of companies that have been producing medical equipment for 50 years, and of companies that have been producing them for 5 years, are somewhat different in quality. It is rather difficult to compare Russian equipment with similar equipment from Germany, America, Korea or Japan. I believe that if we do not produce goods of similar quality, it is better to leave everything as it was. |
| If you really want the job, take religion off your resume December 22, 2014 People march in the American Muslim Day Parade on September 26, 2010 in New York, New York. So you " re a recent college grad who just blasted your resume to a thousand employers, and none of them is calling you back? Here " s a suggestion: take religion off your resume. At least, that " s what a sociologist from the University of Connecticut suggests. According to a study published earlier this year, and co-authored by UConn " s Dr. Michael Wallace, putting any type of religious identifier on a resume minimizes an applicant " s chances of landing a job. For their study, which was published in the June issue of sociology journal Social Currents, researchers created 3,200 resumes for fictitious job applicants and sent them to prospective employers through a " popular employment Web site. " Each employer was sent 4 different applications containing " varying biographical information but comparable job qualifications. " The only thing that set the resumes apart from each other was the mention of involvement with a particular religious group — for example, " Muslim Student Group " or " Campus Jewish Association. " The religious groups randomly assigned by researchers to the fake resumes were atheist, Catholic, evangelical Christian, Jewish, pagan, Muslim, and a fictitious religion called " Wallonian. " There was also a control group that contained no reference at all to religious involvement. The results? Resumes that mentioned any of the seven religious affiliations on average " received 29 percent fewer emails and 33 percent fewer phone calls than the control group. " (Researchers set up fake email accounts and voicemails for their made-up applicants.) In general, this " antireligious bias " was not specific to any religion — even those resumes with the made-up religion of " Wallonian " on them received the same treatment. Certain groups did fare worse than others, though. Muslims, for instance, received 38 percent fewer emails and 54 percent fewer phone calls than the control group. |
| The Dogmas of the Post-Christian World: Obstacles to Evangelism Every culture lives by dogmas—that is, by moral presuppositions and habits of mind so ingrained that they are rarely openly asserted, much less examined or defended. Few people examine their fundamental presuppositions; rather these presuppositions form the prism through which they examine everything else. To people these presuppositions as so self-evident that they scarcely need examination or defense. In the modern West there are a number of these presuppositions that impede the Church’s work of evangelism and make it difficult for the average westerner to accept the Church’s view of Scripture. These reigning dogmas of the modern West include the following. 1) Truth is relative . The modern West allows for a multitude of competing and mutually incompatible worldviews and for the open practice of many religions. This is a good thing, for tolerance of contrary opinion allows for personal growth and charity. But our political pluralism which found room for many different religions has morphed into a tacit agreement that there is no one true religion—or at least that if there is, society as a whole is incapable of discovering it. One now therefore hears expressions like “That is your truth” or “What is true for you is not necessarily true for me”. These assertions are not just admissions that opinions differ, but the more radical view that an absolute truth, discoverable and available to all, does not exist. In this understanding, religious pluralism in society is not merely political inevitable; it is also philosophically necessary. There can be no national commitment to a particular faith because it is impossible for the nation to discover which religion is true. This presupposition that society should not opt for a dominant religion is ingrained, and is never examined or questioned. That is why we look back in history upon societies which did make a religious choice with studied incomprehension, if not with a fair bit of revulsion. For example, just as pagan Rome insisted on a public honouring of their gods as the state cult, so also the Christians ejected the old gods and substituted the worship of Christ when they came to power. Their logic was clear: the old gods were demons and worshipping them would mean forfeiting divine favour. Therefore, the old gods had to go and a different choice be made for state allegiance. It took some time: the altar to the goddess Victory was not cleared out of Rome until 382 by the Emperor Gratian. Two years later when Symmachus, the senator and prefect of Rome, wrote to the next emperor asking to have it restored, his request was strenuously opposed by St. Ambrose, who succeeded in having the request denied. |
| Those now looking back at men such as Ambrose regard him and those like him as petty and tyrannical. What was wrong with those people? Why couldn’t they just live and let live? Who cares if there was an altar to a pagan goddess in the senate house for those like Symmachus who wanted it there? Such incomprehension reveals how different is the new world in which we now live. Ambrose (and Symmachus) both believed that a state must choose a religion, and that it mattered supremely which religion it chose. Our modern secular society just as firmly believes that a state must not make a choice of religion. We have retreated from the ancient and all but universal view that truth matters both nationally and individually. Truth has become culturally relative. In this philosophical climate, the notion of conducting a “crusade” to convert large multitudes to the Christian faith (as Billy Graham did) or to enshrine Christian principles in law (such as outlawing abortion) strike the average citizen as intolerant ideological imperialism. 2) Truth is determined by the individual alone . This dogma is of course closely allied with the previous one. Since the state must not make a national or societal choice of ideology, those choices are therefore left to others. Those others, of course, need not be individuals. In Islamic societies as elsewhere, choice of religion is dictated by family and tribe, and it is all but inconceivable there that an individual would rebel against family traditions and choices by choosing another path. But in the modern West the individual has been exalted above family and tribe, and we now regard religious affiliation as less than completely authentic unless it has been freely and individually chosen. Saying “I am a because my father is” is regarded as evidence of immaturity. A mature person, we feel, will decide for themselves and not base their decision on solidarity with family tradition. Individual choice becomes the sine qua non of ideological authenticity. And, consistent with this dogma, we feel that to the degree that one’s choice is influenced by family, to that degree it is not valid or genuine. |
| About Pages Проекты «Правмира» Raising Orthodox Children to Orthodox Adulthood The Daily Website on How to be an Orthodox Christian Today Twitter Telegram Parler RSS Donate Are You a True Christian? Navigation Russian Church says over half of pilgrims venerating St Nicholas’s relics non-Muscovites Source: TASS Russian News Agency " Of the total number of people, women made up about 60% and men, 40%, " the Reverend Alexander Volkov, the head of Moscow Patriarchate " s press service said Natalya Mihailova 13 July 2017 MOSCOW, July 13./TASS/. More than 60% pilgrims who came to Moscow " s Cathedral of the Savior to venerate the relics of St Nicholas in the period of May 22 to July 12 are non-Muscovites, the Reverend Alexander Volkov, the head of Moscow Patriarchate " s press service told reporters on Wednesday. Photo: Sputnik/Grigory Sysoev “Of the total number of people, women made up about 60% and men, 40%,” he said. “Fifteen percent of the pilgrims were adolescents, and people with physical restrictions constituted about 12% The overall number of pilgrims who came from other regions exceeded a million people and this is about 60% of all pilgrims.” Residents of the Central, Volga, and Southern Federal Districts made up the majority of pilgrims. Also about 260,000 pilgrims came from other countries. “Most frequently, the pilgrims came from Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia, and the U.S.,” the Rev Volkov said. The maximum length of the queue to the Cathedral of the Savior reached 7 kilometers and the average time of queuing up to it totaled seven hours. About 5,000 singers took part in the services as choir members. Police did not register any serious incidents during the stay of St Nicholas’s relics in Moscow, said Konstantin Blazhenov, a deputy chief of Moscow City’s department for nationalities policy and inter-religious relations. “During all these days we didn’t register any incidents,” he said. “Some 1,850 citizens turned for assistance but this is less than a percentage point, especially if you look at how many elderly people came there. |
| 243 Refugees in Lesvos Test Positive for COVID-19, while Mt Athos Monastery Quarantined Source: The Greek Herald Photo on left by Reuters/Yara Nardi. Photo on right by katra.eu (kastrologos). After testing the thousands of refugees who have now been resettled at the new Kara Tepe camp on Lesvos after the Moria fire, 243 of them have been found positive for the coronavirus. Speaking during a regular briefing on Monday, Stelios Petsas, the spokesman for the Greek government, said all 7,064 people who entered the new camp had been tested. The average age of those confirmed positive was 24 and most were asymptomatic, Petsas said. A further 160 people, mainly police and administrative staff who had come into contact with the refugees, were tested and all were negative for the virus. Migrants are seen inside the new temporary refugee camp in Kara Tepe, on the northeastern island of Lesvos, Greece, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020. Photo: AP Photo/Panagiotis Balaskas. These positive cases from Lesvos were added to Greece’s official coronavirus figures on Monday, with the country recording a record 453 new cases in total. There were six deaths. Mt Athos monastery quarantined: Greek health authorities ordered an Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos to be placed under quarantine on Monday, after at least eight confirmed cases of coronavirus were recorded among the monks living there. The monastery of Agios Pavlos (Saint Paul), founded in the late 10th to early 11th century by Saint Paul of Xeropotamou, is in the western part of the Athos peninsula. According to an Athens-Macedonia News Agency (AMNA) report, the condition of one of the monks is considered “serious” and he has been evacuated for treatment to a Thessaloniki hospital. The monastery, with 31 monks, ranks fourteenth in the hierarchy of all the Athonite monasteries. Its library contains 494 hand-lettered manuscripts, and over 12,000 printed books. Code for blog Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. |
| About Pages Проекты «Правмира» Raising Orthodox Children to Orthodox Adulthood The Daily Website on How to be an Orthodox Christian Today Twitter Telegram Parler RSS Donate Navigation Was Moses Really the Author of the Pentateuch? How should the Orthodox be? I would suggest, above all, not imposing grievous ties on oneself by confusing the stubbornness of Protestant fundamentalism with Patristic Tradition. For them, the authority of Scripture is based upon a literal interpretation of Revelation: God dictated these words to the great Prophet Moses, and therefore they are trustworthy. But for them, on the other hand, there is no such thing as Tradition. Dr. Andrei Desnitsky 15 August 2014 The average Orthodox reader of the Bible doesn’t think about questions such as the authorship or dating of individual books. The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch of Moses? Of course, the Prophet Moses wrote it – after all, that’s what it’s called, and that’s what Scripture and Tradition teaches. And whoever doesn’t agree is an impious atheist. But then this Orthodox reader might come up against arguments from the other side. He either rejects them out of hand, starting directly from the conclusions without bothering with the arguments, or… he considers them and agrees with some of it. Does this then mean Scripture and Tradition are unreliable? Some draw this conclusion. Let’s stop and think about it. Tradition is a difficult and diverse thing; in it one can find all kinds of different statements (for instance, about a flat earth, the sun revolving around the earth, and the marriages of hyenas with morays), but only some of them are in fact of doctrinal significance. The question of the authorship of Biblical books clearly is not one of them. But what about the name the “Pentateuch of Moses”? Doesn’t it indicate an author? Not necessarily. Thus, the Psalter bears the name of King David, but David definitely didn’t write Psalm 136, “By the waters of Babylon,” simply because he died long before the Babylonian captivity. It’s unlikely that Jonah, Ruth, and Job themselves wrote the books that bear their names. And the Prophet Samuel certainly didn’t write the two books bearing his name in the Hebrew tradition (First and Second Kings in ours [i.e., in the Septuagint]) simply because he died in the middle of the first book. |
| Theological Illiteracy A talk given by Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou on Clergy Laity Conference, November, 2010. “People are not interested in theology these days. We need to address the issues which concern them”. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard comments like this, even from clergy and theologians. This seems to have become our mantra of defeat, and we have somehow allowed this world to convince us that theology is not relevant or of interest to modern man. As a result, adult catechism or religious instruction, where it has not disappeared altogether, is often reduced to an explanation of symbols, customs and rituals. Often these explanations are disassociated from theology, and the explanations are, therefore, sometimes erroneous. Furthermore, we find ourselves unable to explain the Church’s position on a whole host of issues which are rooted in theology, for example: why can non-Orthodox not take communion or play an active role in Orthodox sacraments? The first challenge for adult catechism, therefore, is to find ways to get people interested in theology and to help them understand why it is important. Furthermore, we must stop seeing theology purely in terms of a field of academic study, of interest only to priests, professors and theology students, and start seeing it for what it is: the very essence of Christian life and faith. The absence of theology in Christian catechism and the theological incoherence of some ecclesiastical practices mean that the average layperson is able to understand little of the Church’s services, scriptures and rules. So often we hear people complain that they do not understand the language of Greek Orthodox services. But the issue of language is oversimplified, as though the answer to all our problems is abandoning New Testament Greek for Modern Greek or English. We need to address the problem not only of language comprehension (whether the solution is using a modern language or teaching an ancient one), but also the problem of what I would call ‘theological and ecclesiastical illiteracy’. Whatever language we use, many people are unable to understand the scriptures, hymns and prayers of the Church, because they are not familiar with basic theological language, e.g. God the Word, Incarnation, Resurrection, Consubstantial, Catholic, Apostolic, Ecumenical. The problem of language is therefore first and foremost one of acquaintance with the language of the Church and of Orthodox theology. |
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