| SYMBOL In Orthodox usage, the manifestation in material form of a spiritual reality. A symbol does not merely stand for something else, as does a " sign’; it indicates the actual presence of its subject. For example, the dove is the symbol which brought to Jesus the descent of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:13-16). SYNAXIS Literally, " gathering " or " assembly. " Synaxis is the word used for the anґcient Greek Senate. The first part of the Divine Liturgy is called the synaxis because the faithful gather to sing, to hear the Scriptures read, and to hear the homily. The saints’ days are also called a synaxis, such as the Synaxis of St. Michael and all the angels. SYNERGISM (from Gr. syn: same, together; ergos: energy, work) Working together, the act of cooperation. In referring to the New Testament, synergism is the idea of being " workers together with " God (2 Cor. 6:1), or of working " out your own salvaґtion ... for it is God who works in you " (Phil. 2:12, 13). This is not a cooperation between " equals, " but finite man working together with Almighty God. Nor does synerґgism suggest working for, or earning, salvation. God offers salvation by His grace, and man’s ability to cooperate also is a grace. Therefore, man responds to salvation through cooperation with God’s grace in living faith, righteous works and rejection of evil Qames 2:14-26). See also FREE WILL and PASSIONS. SYNOPTIC (from Gr. syn: same, together; optic: eye, vision) The books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which hold essentially the same viewpoint and " look alike, " are called the synoptic Gospels. TEMPTATION The seductive attraction of sin. Christ was tempted by Satan and has overcome the power of temptation. Those united to Christ are given His power also to withstand the temptation of sin through patience, courage, and obedience. See Matt. 4:1-11; 1 Cor. 10:13; Heb. 2:17, 18; James 1:12. THANKSGIVING To be grateful, to offer thanks, especially to God for His love and mercy. The Eucharistic prayer is called the thanksgiving (see 1 Thess. 5:18). |
| Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, Michael D. Peterson Скачать epub pdf THE WAY THE WAY (also called the Two Ways). In Scripture (q.v.): Participation in the Kingdom of God and salvation are tied to ethical and mission-oriented action. This action is symbolically described as “The Way of the Lord.” The Two Ways for men and women are 1) the way of the Lord, or the good and right way ( Gen 18:19 ; Ps 18:21, 25:9 ; 1Sam 12:23 ); and 2) the way of evil, that of sinners and the wicked ( Ps 1:1 ; Prov 2:12 ; Jer 18:11 ; Ezek 3:18 ). Although a person’s way may be either good or evil (1 Kgs 8:36; Gen 6:12 ) depending on his free will, the way of the Lord is always right, perfect, just, and true. As the Old Testament text states, the Lord desires not the death of anyone, but that he turn from the evil way and live. When God began to teach and lead his people under the first covenant, the way of the Lord was identified with the Mosaic Law. Jesus talks about the way in his teaching ministry: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life and those who find it are few” ( Mt 7:13–14 ). The New Testament writers saw the way of the Lord, as it was proclaimed by the prophets, completed and fulfilled in Christ ( Mt 3:3 ; Mk 1:2–3 ; Lk 3:4 ; Jn 1:23 ; 1Cor 12:31 ). In John’s Gospel (14ff.), Jesus says to the disciples “and where I go you know the way . . . I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” The “new and living way” (Heb 10:20) to God was made possible by Christ as a way of salvation, of truth, and of peace. Thus, Luke rightly identifies Christianity as “the Way” and emphasizes this repeatedly. The Two Ways in the Qumran documents (“Dead Sea Scrolls”): These antedate Jesus and are a condensed course in ethics or proper moral behavior. This religious community had as its purpose to keep the Law and the Covenant in the True Way. Unfortunately, members of the community were taught “to be unremitting in hatred towards all men of ill repute, and to be minded to keep in seclusion from them.” Jesus and Joh n the Baptist were, no doubt, familiar with the Qumran Community. The genius of Joh n the Baptist as he is described in the New Testament, and as distinct from the Qumran community, lies in the fact that he did not limit the practice and preaching of the Good Way to a closed community. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Cross JOHN A. MCGUCKIN Orthodox theology approaches the cross of Christ most characteristically as a trophy of divine glory. It is the cipher above all others that sums up and encapsulates the love and mercy of the Lord for his adopted race. It is the “sign of salvation,” the icon of hope. In many Orthodox painted crosses the title bar does not read “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews” (INRI in Latin, INBI in Greek, IHЦI in Slavonic), but is made to read “The Lord of Glory,” and often on Orthodox devotional crosses one reads marked there the generic superscription Philanthropos Theos: “The God Who Loves Mankind.” At first, early Christian theology demonstrated mainly a horrified sense of awe that the powers of wickedness could treat the Lord in such a violent way (Acts 2.22–35). But the tone was decidedly that God’s glorification of his servant Jesus far outweighed the dishonor that the dark spiritual powers tried to inflict. The Apostle Peter, in his speech to the people of Jerusalem, sums it up in the words: “God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2.36). There is a regular contrasted pairing of the ideas of humiliation (in the cross) and exalted glorification of Jesus by God (because of the faithfulness to the point of crucifixion) such as can be seen in the ancient hymn which the Apostle Paul quotes ( Phil. 2.6–11 ), as well as in the schemes of Ascent (Anabasis) and Descent (Katabasis) that structure St. John’s theology of crucifixion and glorification in his profound gospel (cf. Jn. 3.13–15 ). St. Paul took a decisive step when he made the cross not merely a scandal to be explained away but a mystery of faith and God’s love that ought to be celebrated as pivotal ( Gal. 6.14 ). The cross in Christian use was already, and rapidly, shifting away from a thing of shame to being the great sign of the new covenant of reconciliation ( Eph. 2.16 ; Col. 1.20; Heb. 12.2). In the early apologists and apostolic fathers the cross is rarely mentioned (though see Ignatius of Antioch, Letters to the Ephesians 9.1; 18.1; To the Trallians 11.2; To the Philadelphians 8.2). But popular devotion to it as a confident symbol of Christian victory over the powers of this world was steadily growing, as can be seen in the appearance in art and inscription from the 2nd century onwards of the cross-shaped monogram Fos – Zoe (“Light and Life in the Cross”: one must imagine the words written at right angles to one another, Fos down vertically, Zoe horizontally, making a cross, with the middle letter of both being shared in common). |
| Archive Congratulation sent by Primate of the Polish Orthodox Church to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill on his 75th birthday 20 November 2021 year 14:47 His Beatitude Sava, Metropolitan of Warsaw and All Poland, congratulated His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia on his 75th birthday. Your Holiness, For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain… I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far (Phil. 1:21, 23). With these words St. Paul calls all, especially the archpastors of the Church, to focus their life around Christ. For in Him we live and move and have our being… (Acts 17:28). Each day of our life belongs to Him. Our life and our death are in His hands (cf. Phil. 1:20). Christ leads us through earthly life to today’s Golgotha and puts us, just as He did St. John, at the foot of the cross and asks us what else we can do for the Church. He has made everything, and we should preserve these inexhaustible reaches received on Golgotha, i.e., the faithful standing with Him in the evening of our life and in the morning of our resurrection. With the Easter’s “Christ is Risen”, we raise the depressed world and it becomes new. Never before has our service of Christ been so important as it is today. Concern for the healthy Orthodox ecclesiastical family has become for us the primary task of our archpastoral ministry. Faith, hope, love and wisdom are our success. Humbleness and unity are our fortress. The Word of God is our sword. The destiny of our Church is victory and resurrection. Everything passes while Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Heb. 13:8). He is the corner stone. We and our Church are the foundation built on it. Your Holiness, today marks the 75 years of your life on earth and this year marks the 45 years of your episcopal ministry and 12 years of your Patriarchal service. Your Holiness, you, like a solid foundation, hold the walls of the Russia Orthodox Church. You take upon yourself all the blows of the wave of the modern world. Under your wise archpastoral omophorion the Russian Church is developing, and attention is given in much of this to the whole Orthodoxy, which is in crisis today. I congratulate Your Holiness on your 75th birthday and wish you much spiritual joy, good health and successful fight for the salvation of many. I remember with gratitude the visit of Your Holiness to the Polish land. Your Patriarchal blessing and witness to the Lord’s truth before our society stands to this day. May the Lord save you for this! Once again, I greet you on your 75th birthday, brotherly embrace Your Holiness and exclaim, Many Years of life to Your Holiness! With love in Christ, + Sava, Metropolitan of Warsaw and All Poland Календарь ← 7 April 2024 year |
| Photo: Greek Mythology made the curiosity of Pandora the primary cause of suffering in the world. She fails to resist the lure of finding out what is in a box she is told to leave closed. Opening the box, she unleashes sorrow and suffering into the world. We humans are a curious lot. We want to know everything about our business and much about what is not our business. In a world that has deeply internalized the notion that everything is a democracy, we cannot bear hearing that not all knowledge is meant for us. And I know such a man– whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows–how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. (2Co 12:3-4) We fail to understand that knowledge is an act of communion . In some measure, everything we “know” becomes a part of us, and in becoming a part of us, we are changed. We are injured not only through the experience in which we gain knowledge but through the continuing burden of the knowledge that now lives in us. Such knowledge often leaves us broken and burdened in need of healing and relief. The change wrought by some knowledge can come close to destroying the one who knows it. We love knowledge. To be excluded from being “in the know” often leaves us feeling ashamed and angry. We trust ourselves with everything and find out to our dismay that somebody else’s business can be a terrible thing. This is also true with the things of God: For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (Heb 5:13-14) The Biblical writer suggests that not everyone is ready for “solid food.” I have rarely met anyone who thought that the verse applied to them. Valeria Alfeyeva, the mother of Met. Hilarion Alfeyev, wrote a very captivating spiritual novel, semi-autobiographical, Pilgrimage to Dhzvari . It relates the story of a woman coming to grips with faith in the waning days of the Soviet Union. She finds herself and her son at a monastery in Georgia that is in the process of being restored and rebuilt. The abbot is deeply insightful. I was struck in reading it when the abbot becomes very upset with her after learning that she has read St. Maximus the Confessor . He wonders if she can possibly be saved. Needless to say, she was completely taken aback. His advice to her was interesting: “You should read no more in a day than you pray.” |
| May God Give You Wisdom! The Letters of Fr. John Krestiankin. On the Work of a Pastor / On the Work of a Pastor Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8) Pastorship is one of the great treasures of salvation, granted and blessed by Christ through His Holy Church. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine … and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd (Jn. 10:14, 16). And they have gone, and go even now, and save themselves, embodying God’s will in life. God’s Church and God’s world were created by instructorship, preaching, and pastorship. God’s Church lived in unity of spirit and peaceful union. The Church grew and flourished during the centuries of the great ecumenical teachers, Holy Fathers, holy elders, martyrs, and the people of God. Obedience to the Church and its Fathers formed the great work of mankind’s salvation. The voice of truth, heard and received by the heart, continued the truth of life, while the reply and reward for this truth was the gift of God – piety shown forth in its great strength. What nourished the truth of life? What fed and raised up people of spirit, strength, and courage? First of all, faith in God the Creator and Provider; second, love for God and awareness of His boundless magnificence and goodness; together with the humble awareness of one’s ultimate infirmity and inadequacy. The great ideals of purity and holiness gave birth to the desire to live and labor in the name of these ideals, and humility rewarded those laborers with strength from God and their perfection. Faith, love, and humility were the sure guides of those people in the swirling sea of life, leading them into true life, sincerity, and simplicity. The people of God lived in one spirit with their pastors, with one and the same understanding and yearning for salvation. The power to bind and loose, given to father confessors by the Savior, bound them with the great responsibility for the souls of their flock, enabling their formation, and not their destruction. |
| 1:17, 2:11), who declares that “Here we have no continuing city” (Heb. 13:14). Once we belonged to this earth with her multitude of tribes and tongues, but in baptism Christ chose us out of the world, so that we are now in the world, but not of it (Jn. 15:19). Patriotism is compatible with this eschatological orientation; we can deeply love our country even while confessing that our fundamental citizenship is in the Kingdom (Phil. 3:20). One can be both a true patriot and a true Christian. But the nationalism I have been describing is not as compatible with it, for it defines our citizenship and primary loyalty to be in our earthly country, not our heavenly one. The nationalist will think that if the Theotokos is wrapped in the flag of his country, she must therefore side with it when it quarrels with another country. If, for example, we wrap her in the American flag, she must support American foreign policy; if we wrap her in the Canadian flag, she clearly supports Canada. That is why we must refuse to wrap her in the flag of any country, for she loves and prays for all countries with the love of her Son, shining upon the just and the unjust (Mt. 5:45). God may perhaps indeed side with one country over another when nations quarrel, but humility will confess that we are inadequate judges of such things. The temptations to pride and blindness are too great and terrible; it is better to do our humble best down here and not presume to speak on God’s behalf. Patriotism is good. But its days are numbered, for patriotism is rooted in our earthly existence, and earth’s days are numbered. Eventually Christ will return and “the heavens will pass away with a loud noise and the elements will be dissolved with fire and the earth and the work that are upon will be burned up” (2 Pt. 3:10). That will be the end of patriotism. But not the end of joy—the good things we have known and loved in our countries, these good things will abide, transfigured and made eternal in the new heavens and the new earth. That joy and those good things—earthly things such as love, friendship, kindness, loyalty—these things will not pass away. Meanwhile as we wait for that day, let us thank God for the good things He gives us now and look to Him for help in our sorrows. The Mother of God is the joy of all the earth. She loves everyone here in this life, and leads us to our true home in heaven. |
| The expectation of death and the aerial tollhouses should not cast the Orthodox Christian into despondency. For such a constant remembrance of death and the tollhouses can be crowned by the joy of passing through them and a successful ascent to the Heavenly Kingdom. St. Isaiah the Hermit said, “Have death before yours eyes every day and caringly contemplate how you will have to leave your body, pass by the powers of darkness that meet us in the air, and stand without stumbling before God, spreading your gaze also to the terrible day of His Last Judgment and reward of each person for his deeds, words, and thoughts.” 1 It is said, Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession (Heb. 4:13-14). Believing in the One “that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession,” for we confess Him not only as having “for us men and for our salvation came down from the Heavens,” but also “for us men and for our salvation” “ascended” in the body “to Heaven,” having provided those who believe in Him with ease in passing through the aerial tollhouses. St. Isaiah the Hermit likewise writes: “What joy do you think the soul will have, who completes his work after having begun working for God successfully? At his departure from this world his work will make it so that the angels will rejoice with him, seeing that he is freed from the powers of darkness. For when the soul leaves the body, the angels travel with it; all the powers of darkness come out to meet it, wishing to seize it and search out anything in it that belongs to them. Then the angels war with them, and the works done by the soul protect it like a wall and guard it from them so that they would not touch it. When its deeds take the victory, then the angels (going) before him sing until he stands before God in joy. In that hour he forgets about all the affairs of this world and about all of his labors.” 2 |
Не удалось извлечь искомое из базы ((( |
|
|
| It is a sad fact of life that small sins are as unavoidable as dust in the air. Just as it is necessary to wash every day and to clean one " s room, it is equally necessary to repent constantly for one " s daily failings. Who would consider himself holier or more perfect than Christ " s Apostles? Yet even they did not regard themselves as being sinless. " In many things we offend all, " wrote St. James the Apostle (Jas. 3:2). " If we say that we have not sinned, then we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us...If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, " wrote St. John the Apostle (1 John 1:10, 8-9). St. Paul the Apostle is painfully aware of his own unworthiness: " Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief " (1 Tim. 1:15). Note that he does not say " I was, " but " I am, " evidently because he continued to repent for having once persecuted believers. Tradition tells us that the Apostle Peter " s eyes were always somewhat reddened, for, when he heard roosters crow at night, he would wake up, remember his denial of Christ and begin to weep. St. John the Apostle teaches Christians to look after their spiritual state in these words: " My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world....But if we walk in the light...the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin....And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure " (1 John 2:1-2; 1:7; 3:3). Similarly, St. Paul writes: " Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God " (2 Cor. 7:1; cf. Heb. 9:13-14). Clearly, in these passages the Apostles are not summoning pagans to repentance, but Christians, and the words they use, " cleanseth " and " let us cleanse, " suggest that moral purity has its gradations, as does sinfulness. For the same reason another scripture says: " He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still " (Rev. 22:11). |
|
|
