| St. Isidore of Pelusium ( † ca. 436): An ascetic author in the tradition of the Desert Fathers, who lived in a monastery near the Egyptian town of Pelusium.—Trans. St. Isaac the Syrian ( † ca. 700): Bishop of Nineveh (near present Mosul in Iraq), who later went into a life of seclusion as a hermit. He is best known for his profound homilies on the inner spiritual life.—Trans. St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies 6 (Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1984), p. 58. Carl Jatho (1851–1913): A Lutheran pastor in Cologne, Germany, whose controversial preaching was extremely unconventional, abandoning the basic essentials of Christianity. He was accused of heresy and removed from office in 1911.— Ed. Arthur Drews (1865–1935): A German philosopher and writer, known for his opinions that Jesus Christ as a historical person never existed in the world, and therefore his life described in the Gospels is no more than a myth.—Trans. In pre-Revolutionary Russia it was customary for each classroom in public schools to contain an icon of Christ.—Trans. For more details on this subject see: Holy New Martyr Ilarion (Troitsky), Christianity or the Church? ( Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1985, reprint 1997) (in English).— Ed. Literally, “the same through the same.” A kind of illustration that makes no real addition to the determination of a question under consideration.— Ed. “Story of the white calf ”: A Russian saying that usually designates the impossibility of drawing a logical conclusion from something.—Trans. Alexei Khomiakov (1804–1860): A Russian religious philosopher and poet, belonging to the movement of the Slavophiles. His most important works focus on Orthodox ecclesiology, where he defends the catholicity and unity of the Church.—Trans. The Church is One 5 (tr. Robert Bird, On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader, eds. Boris Jakim and Robert Bird [Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne Books, 1998], pp. 34–35). Also known as The Confession of Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and approved by the Council of Jerusalem of 1672. It was sent in 1723 to Russia and England.— Ed. |
| Bethlehem shrine’s treasures being restored It is revered by different Christian sects and draws more than a million visitors to the Holy Land every year, making it the biggest tourist attraction in the Palestinian territories. The Church of the Nativity, built by Roman Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, sits in Bethlehem above what’s believed to be the birthplace of Jesus in one of the most politically divisive regions of the world. The church is administered jointly by Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic authorities, and all have monastic communities there. Since 2013, Italian experts from the art restoration firm Piacenti SpA have been working with the Palestinian government to overcome cultural and religious differences and forge ahead with an ambitious restoration expected to cost million (14 million euros) when completed. “For those who have faith, this is the place where God arrived on earth, born in a cave that really existed under this church,” Giammarco Piacenti, head of the project, told Religion News Service on a visit to Rome. “It was immediately venerated, so historically and archaeologically it is very important.” Around 170 experts have been working on the restoration of the church’s ceiling, wooden architraves and walls for the past three years. During their research, they uncovered a mosaic angel, the seventh that still remains in the church, and cleaned and restored more than a million brilliantly colored tiny mosaic tiles. “This work has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of people from different companies, with different backgrounds and skills,” Piacenti said. “It’s also involved people of different religions, nationalities and cultures.” The church was completed on Constantine’s orders in 339 A.D. but later destroyed during conflict in the sixth century. A new basilica was built by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in 565 A.D. and lined with colorful wall mosaics much later, during the 12th century. |
| Archpriest Nikolai Sokolov praying before the Vladimir Icon It is understandable that housing such an icon required a special technical solution in order to ensure its complete safety. Specialists from a Moscow base metal factory offered to make a special capsule that would not only ensure its safety, but also maintain the temperature from 18 to 20 degrees Celsius, with 55% humidity. This is a unique engineering solution that had not previously existed in Russia, and also required money. The armored glass alone cost about 10,000 marks, which in the mid-1990s was no easy matter. Moreover, technical solutions from the experience of mausoleums and combat aircrafts were used. As a result, the capsule ensures the icon’s safety in any situation, whether in water or fire; it can sustain a grenade blast and a round from a Kalashnikov; it even cuts off ultraviolet and infrared radiation. The process of manufacturing and debugging the whole system took several years. At first the icon was brought in, put in place, and checked for its climatic condition. Then it was removed and checked for safety. Even now, staff members regularly open the glass and check the icon’s condition. Today the faithful can venerate the Vladimir Icon through the glass; the icon case is opened only for His Holiness the Patriarch. After a series of experiments and several variants of capsules, a final decision was made in 1999, and on December 15, the director of the Tretyakov Gallery issued order No. 958, prescribing that the sacred object be placed in the icon case. Russia’s foremost sacred object has been kept in the St. Nicholas Church since January 2000. This has been done in large part thanks to the labors of the gallery’s director, Valentin Alekseevich Rodionov. He was able to establish the best possible relationship with the Church, which today allows for the gallery’s thousands of visitors to see and do justice to these great sacred objects, and for the faithful to pray before them. Interview conducted by Evgeny Strelchik |
| In 1917, after the Communist Revolution, there began a bloody persecution of the Church. Thousands of bishops, priests and laymen were executed or perished in concentration camps. Thousands of Churches were destroyed or closed and the Church was deprived of any possibility to teach and propagate her faith. In spite of this persecution, the Church survived, and during World War II, was given certain limited rights. However, she is still under full control of the Communist government and her whole life is confined to worship. She has no access to schools, press or any other possibility of evangelism and is under constant attack on the part of state-supported atheistic propaganda. 4. Orthodoxy in America At the end of the 18th century, the Orthodox faith was brought to Alaska, then a Russian territory, by a group of Russian monks from Valamo. They converted the Aleuts and in 1848 the first Bishopric was established in Sitka. From Alaska it spread along the Pacific Coast and then moved to the East, encountering a wave of Orthodox immigration that began in the second part of the 19th century. Prior to World War I, all Orthodox parishes, regardless of their national origin, were under the canonical jurisdiction of the Russian Church, forming a Diocese with the Bishop, who, since 1906, resided in New York. After the war, virtually every ethnic group formed its own Diocese with direct dependence on its national mother-Church in the Old World. The years 1920-39 were the peak of this acute “nationalisation” of Orthodoxy in America. There existed, in the U.S.A. and Canada, more than ten Orthodox jurisdictions which, although in communion with one another, maintained very loose contacts among themselves. After World War II the need for cooperation, the challenge of a new generation — American born and American educated — and many other factors raised the inescapable question of greater unity. Three years ago, after several unsuccessful attempts, a first concrete step was taken with the establishment of The Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops in America. 5. The Russian Metropolia |
| Issues relating to Scripture existed at each of the Seven Ecumenical Councils (q.v.). The primary theological debate over Scripture at the First Council had to do with its use within a common creed, later called the Nicene Creed. Gnosticism and Arianism (q.v.) had created a crisis that only the Greek word “homoousios” or “consubstantial”-a non-Biblical word-could address. The Church Fathers (q.v.) maintained that the description of Jesus Christ as “homoousios” or “of one essence with the Father” was in fact “Biblical,” though the word itself does not appear in the Bible. Other canons from the Ecumenical Councils relate to Scripture: Apostolic Canon #85 is the earliest canonical reference to a list of the books of Scripture. The Orthodox Church’s list of books is the longest of all the churches, containing all the “apocryphal” (in Protestant terminology) books or deuterocanonical books found in the RSV or NRSV. The Metered Poems of St. Gregory the Theologian (mid-4th c.), the Iambics of Amphilocius, Bishop of Seleucus, and African Code, Canon #24 all give advice as to which are the “genuine books” of Scripture. Quinisext, Canon #2 (7th c.) gave blanket approval to all canons previously recognized in the Church. The Seventh Ecumenical Council (787) in its first canon accepted all the canons of the Sixth Ecumenical and the Quinisext, reinforcing the same view. For contemporary questions regarding Hebrew and Greek Bibles, a few remarks are in order. Since both the Greek and Russian Churches use the Lucianic Septuagint liturgically, there is a tendency among the faithful to romanticize the unanimity of the liturgical witness and beauty of language, depicting the history of the Greek Scriptures as devoid of controversy and independent of the Hebrew. History reveals flaws in this attitude. For example, during the 4th c. there were three different Septuagints in use in the major Christian centers of the eastern Mediterranean: 1) the churches in Antioch and Constantinople (qq.v.) used the Lucianic recension; 2) Caesarea (q.v.) in Palestine utilized a translation by Origen (q.v.) that was updated by Pamphilus and Eusebius (q.v.); and 3) Alexandria (q.v.) had a third recension by a certain Hesychius about which little else is known. The Constantinopolitan practice, based on a translation done by the Presbyter Lucian (who preferred Attic forms), finally won out. (For the history of the Slavic and Russian Bible, see Constantine-Cyril; Gennadievskii Bible; Methodius; Ostrog Bible; Russian Bible.) |
| Russian Space Center Gets Own Priest MOSCOW, July 26 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian Orthodox priest has been assigned to an aerospace defense unit stationed at a space center in northern Russia, the Moscow Patriarchate said Friday. Archpriest Artemy Emke will be responsible for religious work with the unit’s personnel as deputy commander on religious issues at the Plesetsk space center, a church representative said. “Any military unit should have a priest to help believers among soldiers and officers, in line with the Russian Constitution, to follow their religious beliefs, take the sacrament, and participate in the life of the Orthodox Church,” said Sergei Privalov, head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department for Cooperation with the Military, Law Enforcement and the Security Services. “The work of a priest in the military aims at preventing hazing and suicides, and is intended to cultivate high moral and patriotic standards among the personnel,” Privalov added. He expressed hope that the appointment of 240 priests from four major religions (Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism) as deputy commanders of military units would be completed in the near future. According to Privalov, 77 priests, including 74 Orthodox, 2 Muslim and one Buddhist have been assigned to military units so far. In July 2009, after a meeting with the heads of Russia’s main faiths, then-President Dmitry Medvedev supported a project to restore full-scale military priesthood, which had existed from the 18th century to the start of the Soviet era. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, two-thirds of the country’s armed forces personnel consider themselves religious. Some 83 percent of them are Orthodox Christians, about 8 percent are Muslims, and 9 percent represent other confessions. Source: RIA Novosti 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 The Priest and the Parish Council Source: Straight from the Heart: Orthodox Reflections by Father Lawrence Archpriest Lawrence Farley 06 March 2017 Photo: http://www.propheteliassc.org Parish Councils are like personal computers in a number of ways. The initials for both are P.C.; neither existed before very modern times, and we can scarcely imagine life in the church here in the West without them. It is sobering and somewhat instructive to learn that in the early church parish councils didn’t exist. Well, actually they did, but they consisted of the local council of presbyters. In the first several centuries, the local pastor was the bishop, who presided over and was the focal point of unity for all the churches in the city or village. The bishop was the one whose confession of faith determined the faith his flock, and he was the one who accordingly presided at every baptism that took place in the city or village. Accordingly they saw their bishop every Sunday; he was the one who personally excommunicated anyone needing excommunication and he was the one who welcomed them back and restored them to Eucharistic communion when they repented, laying his hands upon them and praying for their absolution. But he did not make the pastoral or administrative decisions: those were made by his local council of presbyters. Thus, for example, if the church had a candidate for reader or subdeacon, the decision to ordain or not to ordain was made by the presbyteral council, not by the bishop. Obviously the bishop had a fair bit of moral clout, and his own opinion and wishes usually carried the day. But the power of administrative and pastoral decision lay with his council, not solely with him. (How things have changed. If you want to see the canons mandating the change, you can’t. There aren’t any.) The presbyters were not elected each year for a term of office as present-day parish council members are. They were chosen and then ordained by the bishop for life. If all of the congregation couldn’t fit into one place and required a second meeting place, this second “overflow” congregation was presided over by one of the presbyters. But the bishop still remained the pastor for all the Christians in the same village. |
| 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 Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanich) on the Newly Formed “Church”: “Titanic” is Built and Hits the Road Source: Orthodox Life (Russian) Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanich) speaks about the signs of the true Church, persecution of Christians, church raiding, and the newly formed “church”. Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanich) 15 January 2019 – Your Eminence, why is there persecution of Christians? It seems as if it is increasing all over the world. – Persecution of Christians and hatred of them have existed since the very beginning of Christianity. God immediately warned us about it and commanded to find salvation, “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake” (Matthew, 24:9). There is no other way to salvation. Christians challenge the world, worldly laws while keeping the Lord’s commandments. They prevent others from committing iniquities with their lives and moral values. Therefore, the world seeks to destroy them, to wipe them off the map. Christians awaken conscience that calls for the change and repentance, and this is a very painful and difficult process. It is easier to remove the stimulus than to change oneself. Indeed, persecution of Christians around the world has reached unprecedented proportions and cruelty these days. We know about the killings of Christians in the Middle East: in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt. According to official estimates, the Christian population in the region has declined by two thirds in just five years. It is the hardest trial that involves strength of mind and strong faith, which modern confessors and martyrs display. For all Christians this is an example of courage and devotion to Christ till the end. – In our country, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has also faced persecution, but in a slightly different form. There is a substitution of concepts: black is called white and vice versa. The Church’s enemies want the true Church to disappear from the face of the earth, want to replace her with a fake, a false church. Why does it happen and how should one deal with it? |
| As is often the case in religious wars, the differences between the two sides’ positions were rather wild and unintelligible: should you make the sign of the cross with two fingers or three, or should you spell the name Jesus in Russian “Isus” or “Iisus”? People were prepared to flee the country, submit to torture, or be burned at the stake, all because a few letters were changed. It became a criminal offence to be a dissenter, and anyone who informed on a dissenter would acquire the property of the condemned. As well as being persecuted, the dissenters themselves split into a huge number of sects. The main issue was where to find priests. Orthodox priests were supposed to be ordained and part of the hierarchy headed by a bishop or another spiritual figure. For a long time there were no Old Believer bishops and, thus, no one to appoint priests. Some of the dissenters found a radical solution to this problem by rejecting the clergy and priests altogether (becoming the “Bespopovtsy,” or “priestless” in English). Some appointed for themselves priests who had been ordained by bishops who accepted the reform — many such priests ended up defecting over to the Dissenters’ side. Later the Old Believers managed to create several hierarchies of their own. The painting " Boyarynia Morozova " by Vasily Surikov. Feodosia Morozova was one of the best-known partisans of the Old Believer movement. Source: Public domain The “priestless” Old Believers were also divided on a wide variety of principles — on church sacraments, for example. If there were no priests, there was no one to baptize, bury or marry people. In some priestless groups the functions of priests were fulfilled by respected citizens, as in some Protestant groups. Others simply abandoned certain sacraments — in particular, marriage. This meant they rejected both marriage and child-bearing, so as not to give birth to children in sin. These groups have existed for centuries, however, casting a certain amount of doubt on their faithfulness to their principles. |
| A complete translation of the Greek collection of the Homilies of Isaac the Syrian into the Slavonic language was done by the Bulgarian monk Zacchaeus at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Before that in Slavonic there existed only fragments of the works of Isaac (in particular those that formed part of thePandects of Nicon of Montenegro). In the second quarter of the fourteenth century on Athos there appeared yet one more Slavonic translation of the Homilies of Isaac made by the elder John. Both translations had become widespread by the fourteenth century, especially in monastic circles: this is attested by the numerous surviving manuscripts . At the end of the eighteenth century Paisius Velichkovsky edited anew the Slavonic translation of Isaac the Syrian, published in 1812, but suppressed by the censorship of the time and therefore was not widespread until 1854 when it was published for a second time by the Monastery of Optina Pustyn. In the same year of 1854 there was published a complete Russian translation of Isaac the Syrian made by the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1911 professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Sergei Sobolevsky translated anew the Homilies of Isaac the Syrian from the Greek . Only separate Homilies from this volume are today in the translation from the Syriac, which are Homily 76, translated by Sergei Averintsev , Homily 54, translated by me , Homilies 19, 20 and 21, also translated by me and Homily 1, translated by Alexei Muraviev . I express the hope that sooner or later in the hands of the Russian reader there will appear the complete text of the first volume in translation from Syriac, which would become a landmark in the mastering of the legacy of the great Syrian by our contemporaries. As for the second volume of the works of Isaac, then scholars knew of its existence at least since Bedjan’s edition appeared: he published fragments from it according to the text of the manuscript which later in 1918 was lost . However, in 1983, professor Sebastian Brock discovered in the Bodleian Library at Oxford another manuscript containing the complete text of the second volume and dated at the tenth or eleventh century . From this manuscript Dr. Brock made his own edition of the Discourses 4 – 44 from the second volume , comprising about half of its content. The other half of the volume includes Discourses 1 -3, from which the latter is divided into 400 chapters under the general heading of Chapters on Knowledge. This collection still awaits its publication, although there have already appeared its complete or partial translations into a number of European languages. |
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