| Craig S. Keener Conflict Over the Healing of a Blind Man. 9:1–10:21 This narrative demonstrates Jesus» claims in the previous context and chronologically follows directly on Jesus» departure from the temple on the last day of the festival (7:37; 8:59). It probably begins not far from the temple (cf. 9:7). This section opens with the healing of a blind man (9:1–7) and closes with the recognition that this miracle was not what one expected from a demon (10:21). The narrative between includes Pharisaic charges that Jesus» healing cannot be from God (9:16,22,24), a response from the formerly blind man that challenges the logic of their paradigm (9:25, 27, 31–33), and a response from Jesus, who reverses the charge and shows that it is his opponents who are not from God (9:40–10:18). 7009 Jesus» claim in this section to be the good shepherd (10:11) implicitly advances his previous claim to deity (8:58). Blindness and Sin (9:1–34) Contrary to what the elite supposed (9:34), the man was not born blind due to a sin (9:2–3), nor was his healer a sinner (9:16, 24); by contrast, the elite themselves are sinful and spiritually blind (9:39–41). The true connection between blindness and sin links together the entire section 9:1–41. But because 9:40–41 begin the response to the Pharisees which is continued in 10:1–18 and 9:35–39 begins Jesus» defense of the healed man, we have limited the first section to the material directly related to the healing and responses to it (9:1–34). The following section (9:35–10:18) traces Jesus» own response to the varied responses to his act, especially the responses of the healed man and the Jerusalem elite. Moreover, the contrast between physical and spiritual blindness (dependence on Christ and opposition to him) of 9:39–41 is already implicit at the beginning of this section. Jesus became invisible in some sense to his enemies in 8:59, so they could not see him; but here Jesus cures a man physically blind and so despised by his enemies (9:2, 34). (Indeed, worldly evaluations of the reasons for blindness form an inclusio around Jesus» healing and the man " s fidelity to him; 9:2, 34.) Epistemological terms («know») dominate the dialogue scenes and probably provide the metaphoric meaning of «sight» language also prominent in the chapter. 7010 |
| Photo: http://www.pravoslavie.ru/ In the Epistle to the Galatian church (Gal. 1:11-19), we hear St. Paul’s discussing the validity of his conversion and Apostleship. We know from the book of Acts that he was not a typical convert from Judaism to Christianity. His conversion was more significant and complete than simply exchanging a synagogue for a church. It took an encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-6) to change St. Paul from a persecutor of the Christian faith to one of Christ’s greatest disciples, responsible for spreading the Gospel message throughout the far reaches of the Roman Empire. Like many of us who converted to Orthodox Christianity from another religious tradition, St. Paul ran into those who had doubts about the validity of his conversion. Think back to the time you told your family and friends that you were joining the Orthodox Christian Church: What was their reaction? Was it complete acceptance, total skepticism or something in between? Proving the strength of your conversion was probably even harder if you came from no “religious” background at all. To go from a man or woman of the world to a true follower of Christ is quite a change in one’s life, involving more than just getting up early on Sundays. It requires not only going to church but loving the church. It requires a total change in the way we order our lives and priorities. It might even mean having to cease certain activities or friends that conflict with our new-found faith, while also resisting the pull of our previous life. And what about your new-found church family? How might we expect them to react? If you had spent your life not just denying but persecuting the Church and its people, it would only make sense that they would be suspicious of your dramatic change in attitude. We recall from the Acts of the Apostles that it was same Paul (then known as Saul of Tarsus) who as a young man approved of the stoning of St. Stephen, the first holy martyr of the Church (Acts 7:58-8:1). Furthermore, it was while on the road to Damascus to persecute the Christians in the city that Saul was struck blind and had his life-changing encounter with Christ. |
| The story of Lazarus, which occurs before Christ’s suffering and death, specifically addresses the heart of the Church after Christ’s suffering and death. For though we rejoice in Christ’s death and resurrection, it is our dead brother (mother, father, sister, friend) who lies heavy on our hearts. St. John’s Gospel records the story of Christ’s raising Lazarus from the dead as the last action of Christ before His entry into Jerusalem. That setting has given rise to the feast of Lazarus Saturday in the Orthodox Church – a small Pascha before Holy Week. The three synoptic gospels make no mention of these events, to which I draw no historical conclusions. The gospels include and exclude events for many reasons, historical considerations seeming to be of the least importance. Which stories, and in what order, primarily serve deeper theological concerns. For St. John, the story of Lazarus serves as the occasion for commentary and teaching on the resurrection of believers, much like the Feeding of the Five Thousand serves for commentary and teaching on the Eucharist. “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” (Martha’s words) echoes the universal voice of the Church in the face of Christ’s delayed Second Coming. It is the plaintive heart of believers who wonder why God allows suffering. And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?” (Joh 11:37) It is an obvious question, repeated in various forms by believers as well as scoffers through the centuries. The story of Lazarus, which occurs before Christ’s suffering and death, specifically addresses the heart of the Church after Christ’s suffering and death. For though we rejoice in Christ’s death and resurrection, it is our dead brother (mother, father, sister, friend) who lies heavy on our hearts. “Your brother will rise again.” These words of Christ, like a statement of Church doctrine, bring little comfort to someone stuck in their grief. It is Christ’s affirmation, “I am the resurrection and the life,” that sums up the encounter. The people do not understand, not even when Lazarus is raised from the dead. That Christ Himself is the resurrection and the life does not become clear until His own resurrection. |
| In our currcultural context, the witness of true Christian marriage simply must become visible, vibrant, and robust, if it is to be taken seriously by mainstream cultureent . Photo: doski.ru It’s unfortunate when we become so focused on the symptoms of a problem that we ignore its underlying causes. Some Christian rhetoric on same-sex marriage has done precisely that and has failed as a result to transcend the dynamics of conventional partisan politics. Instead of illuminating the unique glory of the life-giving union of husband and wife as an icon of the Holy Trinity and of the salvation of the world, the defenders of traditional marriage often merely skim the surface of public morality. The fundamental problem isn’t that increasing numbers of Americans approve of same-sex marriage; it’s that many Christians and others have forgotten the holiness and unique vocation of the man-woman relationship. Once we lose that key link, the possibility of thinking coherently—and faithfully– about human sexuality is gone. In order to speak with integrity on marriage and family issues, we need first to take a sober look at the failure of the churches to equip our members to embody chastity and sexual purity, and thus to be a witness of holiness in stark contrast to the moral corruption so pervasive in our culture and world. Especially since the dawn of the sexual revolution, Christians have too often turned a blind eye to promiscuity, pre-marital sex, serial divorce and remarriage, and a hedonistic culture that excuses all things in the name of an individual’s pleasure and self-defined happiness. No wonder so many Americans seem to dismiss opposition to same-sex marriage as self-righteous hypocrisy and arbitrary discrimination. Those who tolerate—and at times even seem to condone—sex and cohabitation for unmarried men and women have little standing to criticize the prospect of legal sanction for gay unions. If there is no visible difference between how Christians and others handle these crucial life-shaping matters, why should anyone take seriously what we have to say? If we do not call heterosexuals to holiness, why all the bother about the much smaller population of homosexuals? |
| What Pre-Marital Relationships are Considered Fornication and Why? Responses of Pastors Source: Pravoslavie.ru (Russian) Increasingly, we hear couples say, who are living together without legally registering their relationships and even more so without having a church wedding, “We have a common law marriage” (For some reason common law relationships are called “civil marriages” in Russian, even though there has been no civil ceremony and the “marriage” has never been registered in a court of law – translator’s note). And if such a couple is reproached for fornication, they will be very surprised and offended. “After all, we are married!!!” Parents turn a blind eye to such “marriages” and believe that this is “trying out family life,” teaching their children that because they now have experience they can now consider entering into a real marriage. Is this marriage or fornication? After all, we are used to considering fornication to be when there is a random change of sexual partners, but in this case the couple live together for years. Is it really possible to consider such “marriages” as lawful marriages? In general, what is a “common law marriage,” and how does the Church regard such a marriage? Why does the Church unequivocally condemn such cohabitation as fornication and in what way is this considered to be sinful and dangerous? Fornication is not marriage, but the opposite of marriage Igumen Luke (Stepanov): “Fornication is not a preparation for marriage, but its opposite”, determined the luminary St. John Chrysostom. What is good and what is bad in this world is not explained by man, but is established and revealed to us by God. Grave sins can seem attractive only if one does not yet acknowledge that we are free-sentient creatures made by God who exist under the moral law established by our Creator. From this it clearly follows that there are two physical states for those who are aspiring to inherit Eternal Life: innocence-chastity-widowhood or the married conjugal state. Discussions about this with our contemporaries are inevitable, but every position which opposes the revealed moral teaching of God will be an attempt to screen one’s “right to debauchery.” |
| Bishop Irenei Addresses a Symposium on “The Mother of God in Our Lives” in Los Angeles Source: Orthodox Europe Over the weekend of Friday to Sunday , June 4-6, 2021, His Grace Bishop Irenei of London and Western Europe was the keynote speaker at a symposium organized by Patristic Nectar Publications in the USA, on the theme of “The Mother of God in Our Lives.” Held at St Andrew Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Antioch) in Riverside, CA (near Los Angeles), in the presence of the wonder-working icon of St Anna from St Tikhon’s Monastery, the three-day symposium drew together a large in-person audience, as well as an even larger group of participants via on-line live streams. Other speakers at the symposium included His Grace Bishop Basil of Wichita (Patriarchate of Antioch), Archimandrite Maximos (Constas), Hieromonk Calinic (Berger), Archpriest Chad Hatfield, Archpriest John Parker, and the symposium’s convenor and Rector of St Andrew Church, Archpriest Josiah Trenham. Bishop Irenei delivered four addresses during the symposium, taking as his starting points four of the feasts of the Mother of God. Beginning with a talk entitled “The Race of Adam Beholds the Birth of Eve: The Nativity of the Theotokos,” His Grace then spoke on “The Human Temple of God: The Feast of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple and the Life of Christian Worship,” and concluded the Saturday events, following the evening Divine Services, with a talk entitled “The Mother of God and the Mother of the Light: The Annunciation and the Transformation of Man.” On Sunday morning, at the invitation of His Eminence Metropolitan Joseph of the Antiochian Archdiocese of America, Bishop Irenei was greeted at the Temple and presided over the Divine Liturgy for the Sunday of the Blind Man. Co-serving His Grace were Archpriest Josiah Trenham, Rector of the Parish, together with the large assembly of local clergy as well as those in the area specifically for the symposium. Following a post-Liturgy luncheon for participants, Bishop Irenei concluded with a fourth talk entitled “The Sleep of Death that Wakes the World: The Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos.” |
| Accept The site uses cookies to help show you the most up-to-date information. By continuing to use the site, you consent to the use of your Metadata and cookies. Cookie policy Metropolitan Hilarion: Patriarch Bartholomew does not want to admit his fault in the Ukrainian problem Ukrainian authorities have invited Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Pope Francis to attend the celebrations of the 30 th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. Ms. Gracheva, the host of “The Church and the World” TV program, asked Metropolitan Hilarion, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations (DECR), to share his opinion on whether the invitations would be accepted. “While I don’t want to be a soothsayer, I think that Patriarch Bartholomew will accept this invitation, but Pope Francis won’t,” said the archpastor. “Patriarch Bartholomew is a man who lives in the cloudland of his illusions, ambitions, emotions, who seems to have lost touch with reality, presenting his fantasies as actually occurring things,” Metropolitan Hilarion noted. “For example, he turns a blind eye to the existence of the multimillion-strong Ukrainian Orthodox Church with twelve and a half thousand parishes, over 100 bishops, over 250 monasteries and millions of the faithful. His attitude is as if this Church were non-existent; he asserts that there is some kind of another ‘church’ which he has knocked up from two schismatic groups.” “That is why, – the DECR chairman believes, – Patriarch Bartholomew will come to Ukraine just to demonstrate to the world once again that the ‘autocephalous church’ which he has created is the Ukrainian Church, whereas reality testifies to the opposite,” Metropolitan Hilarion underscored. “Patriarch Bartholomew has made a great mistake, but unfortunately he will not and cannot admit it,” continued Metropolitan Hilarion. “He would make whatever moves to convince the world into believing that he has made no mistake, but all others have been mistaken.” |
| On May 2, 1999, the rite of canonization of the blessed eldress Matrona , ascetic of piety of the twentieth century and national consoler in the atheist years so mournful for the Church, was celebrated before a large gathering of people. This blessed Christ-pleaser shines with a special light amidst the great host of Russian saints standing before the Throne of God. From birth, she was bereft of the ability to see, but she possessed blessed spiritual vision—the gift of clairvoyance. Photo: svMatrona.ru Do we understand what it means to be blind from birth, to live ever in impenetrable darkness? It’s impossible to escape from it—nothing and no one, and there’s just darkness without end, beyond which is eternal darkness after death. Matronushka was not just blind, but she didn’t even have eyes. Her eye sockets were tightly covered by closed eyelids, like that white bird had that her mother saw in a dream before her birth. In the sixth week of Pascha, on the Sunday of the Blind Man, we hear the Lord’s explanation of the meaning of Blessed Matrona’s sufferings. Who sinned—he or his parents? the Lord’s disciples anxiously ask about the man blind from birth (Jn. 9:2). All troubles are associated with sin; even earthquakes, floods, and droughts are from our sins, and there is a mysterious law of justice, according to which punishment from sin reaches unto the third and fourth generation, but the mercy of God upon a saint extends unto a thousand generations. However, this law is always hidden and mysterious, and we should beware of making straightforward conclusions. It’s not without reason that the Ecclesiast laments that so often the righteous endure affliction, while the wicked prosper. This is a sticking point for many, not just for yesterday’s professional atheists, denying the existence of God because of the terrible suffering and injustices in the world, although in their outrage itself you can sometimes see a good blindness—an unconscious yearning for God; our desire for perfection and a higher justice is already the light of God within us. |
| The feast of the Life-giving Spring has its origins in the fifth century. It commemorates the consecration of the Church built next to it outside of Constantinople. The very large and beautiful church named in honor of the Theotokos of the Life-giving Spring was built by the Emperor Leo the Great (457-474) in Valouki, west of Constantinople (now Balkl, Istanbul). Emperor Leo (January 20), before his ascension to the throne, had encountered a blind man, who being tormented with thirst asked him to help him find water. Leo felt compassion for him and went in search of a source of water, but found none. Leo then heard a voice that called him “Emperor” and told him that he would find muddy water in the densely wooded place nearby; he was to take some water and anoint the blind man’s eyes with it. When he had done this, the blind man received his sight. Emperor Leo raised up a church temple over the spring, whose waters worked many healings, as well as resurrections from the dead, through the intercessions of the Theotokos who brought forth life: her son and our God, Jesus Christ. From this, it came to be called the “Life-giving Spring.” Emperor Justinian the Great (527-565) was also cured by the waters of “The Life-giving Spring” and in gratitude built a new church temple, larger than the first. It was destroyed by earthquakes but rebuilt by Justinian’s successors. (The Life-giving Spring, modern day) After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, this church temple was razed to the ground and the materials from it were used for building the mosque of Sultan Beyazt. Nothing remained of that church’s ancient beauty, except for a small chapel, almost completely buried in the ruins. This chapel had twenty-five steps going down into it, and a transom window on the roof, from which it received a little light. Toward the western side of the chapel was the holy spring, fenced about with a railing. In 1821, at the start of Greek independence form the Turks, even that little remnant was destroyed. The sacred spring was buried with it and disappeared altogether. But in the days of Sultan Mahmud, when those subject to him were rejoicing in their freedom to practice their religion, permission was gained by the Orthodox Christian community to rebuild at least the chapel. It was consecrated on Bright Friday in 1835. But on the night of September 6-7, 1955, it — along with 73 other Orthodox churches in Istanbul — was desecrated and burned to the ground by the Turks. The church has been restored yet once again, but not anywhere its former magnificence. |
| Tweet Поделиться Subhumanity – The Philosophy of the Absurd Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) The present age is, in a profound sense, an age of absurdity. Poets and dramatists, painters and sculptors proclaim and depict the world as a disjointed chaos, and man as a dehumanized fragment of that chaos. Politics, whether of the right, the left, or the center, can no longer be viewed as anything but an expedient whereby universal disorder is given, for the moment, a faint semblance of order; pacifists and militant crusaders are united in an absurd faith in the feeble powers of man to remedy an intolerable situation by means which can only make it worse. Philosophers and other supposedly responsible men in governmental, academic, and ecclesiastical circles, when they do not retreat behind the impersonal and irresponsible facade of specialization or bureaucracy,usually do no more than rationalize the incoherent state of contemporary man and his world, and counsel a futile “commitment” to a discredited humanist optimism, to a hopeless stoicism, to blind experimentation and irrationalism, or to “commitment” itself, a suicidal faith in “faith”. But art, politics, and philosophy today are only reflections of life, and if they have become absurd it is because, in large measure, life has become so. The most striking example of absurdity in life in recent times was, of course, Hitler’s “new order”, wherein a supposedly normal, civilized man could be atone and the same time an accomplished and moving interpreter of Bach (as was Himmler) and a skilled murderer of millions, or who might arrange a tour of an extermination camp to coincide with a concert series or an exhibition of art. Hitler himself, indeed, was the absurd man par excellence, passing from nothingness to world rule and back to nothingness in the space of a dozen years, leaving as his monument nothing but a shattered world, owing his meaningless success to the fact that he, the emptiest of men, personified the emptiness of the men of his time. |
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