| The next spirit is variously translated as “despair” or “meddling” What do despair and meddling have to do with each other? Despair is often the result of failed pride. And what causes most meddling? Pride and the belittling spirit of superiority. It should go without saying that these never cease to fail us in the moral life. Besides that, they learn to be idlers, gadding about from house to house, and not only idlers, but gossipers and busybodies, saying what they should not We should, rather, strive for hope and joy. This is the goal of the spiritually moral person. Despair is of the devil. St. Symeon the New Theologian, an experienced spiritual physician, recognized that long and untimely sorrowing of the heart ‘darkens and disturbs the mind,’ it banishes pure prayer and compunction from the soul and creates a painful pining of the heart which results in hardness and painful callousness. This is how the demons bring about despair In admitting the defeating sin of despair and meddling, we are able to open our eyes to the Sovereign Lord of Hope and Joy. Note the words of St. Paul: Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praise-worthy — meditate on these things How can we avoid the “lust of power” when our culture makes of it a supreme goal? This moral self-love is advertised by our media and taught by our culture to such an extent that it seems archaic to criticize it. But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them What of the moral person? It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many |
| St. Anthony " s Monastery —And why did you choose the Monastery of St. Anthony the Great ? —Once my spiritual father, Archpriest Alexander Fekanin, the rector of the church of St. Symeon the New Theologian in Birmingham, advised me to go to St. Anthony’s Monastery. My first time there I was twenty-six. I met the founder of the monastery, Elder Ephraim—a spiritual child of Venerable Elder Joseph the Hesychast. I said to him in broken Greek: “Father, I want to become a monk,” and he blessed me. I came here a few more times; I liked it, but I was confused: I wasn’t sure that I was supposed to stay in this monastery. I even wanted to return to Russia and enter seminary. I had just graduated from my university in Alabama, and after my defense and all my work I felt tired, and my spiritual father blessed me to go on vacation to the west coast. California is a huge, beautiful state: mountains, the Grand Canyon, nature, monasteries… I went to St. Anthony’s and told the fathers that soon, after my vacation, I was going to Russia, and rented a car and drove to California. I went to the convent of the Lifegiving Spring Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, which Elder Ephraim had also founded, in 1993. There I met one mother, Schemanun Fevronia, who bore obedience in the guest house. We started talking, and I told her: “You know, I’m soon returning to Russia,” to which she replied: “You forget to add a phrase.” “What phrase, mother?” “If it’s God’s will”… I spent three days there, and somehow Mother Fevronia, and she was a spiritually experienced person, began to talk with me about the monastic life. At the end of the conversation I felt like she wanted to tell me something, but she wasn’t saying it. It’s a sign of a spiritual person, to not enforce his point of view, but to wait until you ask. And if you ask, then he answers. That is, he speaks to those who are ready to listen. Elder Ephraim I asked her: “Mother Fevronia, it seems to me you want to say something to me…” and she responded that she had prayed for me all night. She told me: “God’s will for you is to go to Fr. Ephraim and be a monk in his monastery.” I was amazed. Then she advised me to go to San Francisco to the “Joy of All Who Sorrow” cathedral, to St. John of Shanghai . His relics are in a wooden shrine under glass, and underneath there’s an opening where anyone who wants to can drop a note to the saint. |
| Lifted upon Thy Cross, O Christ, Thou hast raised us up who were fallen into evil. I have slipped into the pit of sin: bring me out and set me firmly on the rock of salvation, that I may glorify Thy power. Instructions for those entering into the Fast If the soul of a Christian longs for purity and seeks spiritual health, it should strive with all its might to make use of this time so advantageous for the soul. That is why those who love God appropriately greet each other with the beginning of the Fast. Physical fasting means nothing without spiritual fasting of the inner man, which consists in guarding oneself from the passions. This fast of the inner man is pleasing to God and will reward you where your physical fasting lacks. —St. Barsanuphius the Great Let us apply all our strength so that we might make good use of this brief time, preserving our works pure of all evil, so that we might be saved from the hands of the princes of evil who meet us; for they are wicked and have no mercy. —Abba Isaiah the Recluse We shall not behave ourselves like this: today we have temperance and meekness, but in the morning we have intemperance and pride; today we have silence, vigilance, and humility, but tomorrow we have entertainment, unquenchable sleep, insubordination, and everything like that. —St. Ephraim the Syrian We must be sure that no matter how hard we try, we can never do anything if we do not make use of help from on high. —St. John Chrysostom Truly, if one does not give himself over to be slain like a lamb for every virtue, even the slightest, and does not spill his blood for it, he will never acquire it. Thus has God ordained in His economy, that we should purchase eternal life by voluntary death. You do not wish to die a voluntary death and live in eternal life? Then, you are dead. —St. Symeon the New Theologian The sorrow that comes with cutting off sinful habits brings joy as a result, and spiritual well-being urges us towards thankfulness to God for His inexpressible mercy toward us. |
| “But whoever does the will of God abides forever.” That is our calling! To be doers of the will of God. The rich man in the parable did not do the will of God. He failed to feed the poor one at his very feet. He failed to show mercy. The rich man was a stranger to mercy and love and for this reason he was a stranger to God and His love. But let us not live like this rich man, attached to our pleasures and our own will, but marrying ourselves to the will of God our Father who loves us and wants to give our lives real purpose and meaning. How do we know if we are being pleasing to Jesus Christ and doing His will? Our obedience to His commandments and teachings. Our obedience to the teaching and life of the Church. Our imitation of the lives of the saints. These are our surest guides. Let me leave you with this verse from St. Symeon the New Theologian. He writes “Let us flee the world. For what have we got in common with it? Let us run and pursue until we have laid hold of something which is permanent and does not pass away, for all things perish and pass away like a dream, and nothing is lasting or certain among the things which are seen.” Discourses 2.14 May we truly struggle for what is permanent and does not pass away, that is our Lord Jesus Christ, His kingdom, and His righteousness. And Glory be to God forever and ever, AMEN. 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. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. |
| Attention, my dear ones, is very important in human life. St. Basil corrected Greek wisdom. In Delphi there was an inscription, allegedly by the prophetess Pythia, stating: “know thyself” (gnothi seauton). Socrates and his disciples liked to repeat this. But Basil says in one of his homilies that man cannot know himself, but he can be attentive to himself. This is from his homilies on Genesis, when God tells Lot to leave Sodom and, in so doing, to be attentive to himself: Proseche se afton. Instead of “know thyself,” St. Basil the Great says: “be attentive to thyself.” The attentive person can do much more for himself and within himself: first of all, he can draw God’s attention, God’s love, God’s grace. St. Symeon the New Theologian says that one must struggle, pray, weep, repent, and undertake ascetic labors – but all the while recognizing that it is not ascetic struggles that save us, but attention, God’s eyes, which see us in this spiritual disposition and condition. It is He, the Lord, Who saves us. Through one’s ascetic struggles one simply demonstrates that one desires salvation and that one is disposing oneself to it, that is, that one is attentive to it. In the Old Testament more importance is attributed to the sense of hearing. The ancient Greeks always emphasized the sense of sight: everything is marvelous; everywhere there is beauty, kosmos [ornament, order]. There is a good series of books about this by Losev: History of Classical Aesthetics. All Greek philosophy comes down to aesthetics. Florovsky writes that this was likewise the case in nineteenth-century Russian philosophy, even for Soloviev. Such is the temptation of aesthetics, that everything must be beautiful. Of course, this does not negate the importance of vision in Holy Scripture. For instance, here I am delivering a lecture and looking at you. Who is more attentive – is it the person looking at me? Of course, one can look while being absent. When we were little boys – there were six of us – Mother would suddenly say to me, for example: “Where are you? Where have you gone?” “No, I’m here.” But she saw that I “had gone,” even though I was looking at her. But if one pays attention to sound, one cannot be absent. One is more focused when one pays attention to sound. And so St. Basil says: “Be attentive to thyself.” |
| The reason for the first part of Lossky« " s statement is that without theology apophaticism has no content and genuine experiences of the transcendent cannot be distinguished from false ones. The second part of the statement is based on the assumption that verbal and conceptual pursuits cannot exhaust the «wholly Other» God of Christianity. It is very relevant in this respect the comment made by the same author, that the Eastern Church has reserved the title «theologian» to only three really mystical sacred writers: St. John the Evangelist, St. Gregory of Nazianzus and St. Symeon the New Theologian. According to Orthodox thinking the mystical approach to theology could offer protection against an exaggerated rationalism in oné " s theological pursuit as well as guard the theologian from the natural tendency of reducing the transcendence of God to a human system. the Truth is not an idea, but a person, even the Incarnate Lord.» 21 2 . Another distinctive aspect that Bria mentions centers around the Orthodox emphasis on sacraments and worship: the Orthodox Church is highly sacramental and of all the functions of the Church, worship is by far the most prominent. The Orthodox term for sacrament is «mystery», which is understood as personal appropriation of the life of God». 22 In the opinion of Georges Florovsky, in the sacraments does the Christian Community pass beyond the purely human measure and become the Church». 23 Among the implications of the Orthodox sacramentalism we can mention the tendency of institutionalizing the ministry of the Holy Spirit (because all exercise of the gifts of the Spirit is controlled by and most of the times reserved to professional clergy) and the neglect of other aspects of the Church life, like the ministry of the Word, the life in community, and the involvement in missions (because of the exaggerated importance given to liturgy in relation to the other aspects). 24 Lex orandi is a common ground for establishing dogmatic orthodoxy both for the Church Fathers and the modern Orthodox theologians. 25 The emphasis on what Bria calls «a doxological dogmatic» protects theology from becoming theoretical and rationalistic, giving it an existential character. From an Orthodox perspective theology is not called to deal exclusively with abstract ideas, but also with persons and the real world; it has to be existential. It calls man to a concrete experience with Christ through the sacraments, in the context of liturgy. Christ is not a text but a living Person, and He abides in his Body, the Church. " 26 It is not surprising then that prominent modern Orthodox theologians, like Berdiaev, Bulgakov and Staniloae, have been attracted and influenced by the existentialist philosophy. |
| Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) revived the emphasis placed by the Macarian Homilies upon conscious experience: Do not say, It is impossible to receive the Holy Spirit. Do not say, It is possible to be saved without him. Do not say, then, that one can possess him without knowing it (Hymn 27.125–7) The conscious experience ofthe Spirit takes the form of a vision of the light of Christ (for Christ and the Spirit are inseparable). Symeon affirmed clearly and definitely that this light is not physical and created, but non-material and divine: “Your Light, my God, is you yourself” (Hymn 45.6). The divine light has a transforming effect upon the one who beholds it, so that he himself becomes light. Although Symeon has left accounts of how Christ spoke to him out of the light, it seems that he did not actually see the face of Christ in the light. As with Diadochos, the vision is one of pure luminosity, without shape or form (although in one vision Symeon saw his spiritual father standing close to the light). HESYCHAST CONTROVERSY In the last years of the 13th century an Athonite monk, Nikiphoros the Hesychast, wrote a short but influential treatise On Watchfulness and the Guarding of the Heart. Here he spoke of “returning” or “entering” into oneself and “seeking the treasure within the heart.” To facilitate this, he suggested that the recitation of the Jesus Prayer should be accompanied by a psychosomatic technique, involving the descent of the intellect, along with the breath, into the heart. A similar technique was recommended by another Athonite monk in the following generation, Gregory of Sinai (d. 1346). Gregory set the Jesus Prayer in a sacramental context, seeing it as a means whereby we rediscover the grace received in baptism: prayer, he said, is nothing else than “the making manifest of baptism” (On Commandments and Doctrines 113). Using Eucharistic symbolism, he also described how the hesychast through prayer enters “the inner sanctuary,” where he “celebrates the triadic liturgy,” “offering up the Lamb of God upon the altar of the soul and partaking of him in communion” (On Commandments and Doctrines 43, 112). |
| Carson, D.A. New Testament Comntenlary Survey (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993). , and Woodbridge John D., eds., Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986). , and Woodbridge John D., eds., Scripture and Truth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1963). Chadwick, Henry, «The Bible and the Greek Fathers», The Church’s Use of the Bible: Past and Present, ed. E.E.Nineham (London: SPCK, 1963) 25–39. , Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966). Charlesworth, H., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vols.1 and 2, (Garden City: Doubleday, 1986). Childs, Brevard S., The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985, 1984). , Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979). , Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). Chilton, Bruce, Beginning New Testament Study (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986). Chrysostom, John, Homilies on the Gospel of John, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol.14, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1969). Collins, J.J. and Crossan J.D., eds., The Biblical Heritage in Modern Catholic Scholarship (Wilmington: Glazier, 1986). Congar, Yves, The Revelation of God (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968). Coniaris, A., Preaching the Word of God (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1983). Conzelmann, Hans, Interpreting the New Testament: An Introduction to the Principies and Methods of New Testament Exegesis, trans. S.S.Schatzmann, (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1988). Cullmann, Oscar, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr: A Historical and Theological Study (New York: Meridian Books, 1964). Danielou, Jean, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956). deCatanzaro, C.J., Symeon the New Theologian: Discourses (New York: Paulist, 1980) de Margerie, Bertrand, Introduction to the History of Exegesis (Petersham: St Bede’s Publications, 1993). |
| Among other things, they urged that memorial services should be celebrated on the correct day, Saturday (not Sunday); hence the sobriquet »Kollyvades». But this was far from being their main liturgical concern. Much more important was their firm and unwavering advocacy of frequent communion; this proved to be highly controversial, and brought upon them persecution and exile. Secondly, they sought to bring about in theology a Patristic renaissance; and in this connection they undertook an ambitious programme of publications, in which the Philokalia played a central role. Thirdly, within the Patristic heritage, they emphasized above all else the teachings of Hesychasm, as represented in particular by St Symeon the New Theologian in the eleventh century and by St Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth. It is precisely this Hesychast tradition that forms the living heart of the Philokalia, and that gives to its varied contents a single unity. Such, then, is the cultural context of the Philokalia. It forms part -a fundamental and primary part- of the Patristic ressourcement that the Kollyvades sought to promote. The Kollyvades looked upon the Fathers, not simply as an archeological relic from the distant past, but as a living guide for contemporary Christians. They therefore hoped that the Philokalia would not gather dust on the shelves of scholars, but that it would alter peoplés lives. They meant it to have a supremely practical purpose. In this connection it is significant that St Nicodimos and St Makarios intended the Philokalia to be a book not just for monks but for the laity, not just for specialists but for all Christians. The book is intended, so its title page explicitly states, «for the general benefit of the Orthodox» (ες κοινν τν ρθοδξων φλειαν). It is true that virtually all the texts included were written by monks, with a monastic readership in mind. It is also true that, with the exception of seven short pieces at the end of the volume, the material is given in the original Patristic Greek, and is not translated into the Demotic, even though St Nikodimos and St Makarios used the Demotic in most of their other publications. |
| Elder Makary did not tolerate idleness among the brethren. He introduced various handcrafts: bookbinding and woodworking. He also adorned the skete with mass planting of flowers. His greatest contribution to Optina, however, to initiate its work of publishing patristic texts. This was historically significant since Peter’s reforms had greatly curtailed such activity which subsequent laws restricted to ecclesiastical print shops. The result was that many works of Holy Fathers existed only in manuscript form or in very limited editions. Meanwhile, the secular press was churning out translations of mystical-philosophical works from the West, some of them plainly hostile to Orthodoxy. With the blessing and earnest support of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, and the active collaboration of the Orthodox writer and philosopher Ivan Kireyevsky, Elder Makary began meticulously editing manuscripts translated from the Greek by Paisius Velichkovsky, which he had acquired in Ploshchansk, and other patristic manuscripts donated by various individuals, thus launching an undertaking which, in 50 years, produced more than 125 books in 225,090 copies. These were sent to libraries and seminaries all over Russia, putting into circulation the works of St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Symeon the New Theologian, St. Nil of Sera, Elder Paisius and others, and inspiring a growing circle of religiously inclined intelligentsia. Hieroschemamonk Hilarion Elder Hilarion was born on Pascha night and baptized Rodion. In the world he was a tailor and ran a clothing store, devoting his spare time to missionary work among the schismatic Skoptsy. He spent a year visiting various monasteries before settling in Optina in 1839, drawn by the presence of Elders Leonid and Makary. When the latter was appointed skete superior, he chose Rodion as his cell attendant, an obedience he fulfilled for 20 years, until Elder Makary’s repose. In addition he worked in the gardens, made kvass, baked bread and looked after the apiary He was characterized by simplicity, goodwill and a readiness to help. With his missionary background he showed special concern for those outside the Church. Although he remained for posterity in the shadow of his more famous fellow elders, his spiritual greatness may be judged by the fact that Elder Makary entrusted to him, as well as to Elder Ambrose, his spiritual children. |
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