| Photo: eadiocese.org On Tuesday, August 9, 2022, Holy Cross Monastery in Wayne, WV celebrated the feast day of its patron saint, the Holy Great-Martyr and Healer Panteleimon. His Grace Bishop Nicholas of Manhattan celebrated Divine Liturgy, inspiring the faithful not only with his reverence at the altar, but also with his unflagging dedication, since he did not arrive at the monastery until close to midnight the evening before due to flight cancellations and delays. At the Little Entrance, Hieromonk Basil (Blevins) was awarded the right to wear the nabedrennik for his service to the Church. The brethren rejoiced also at the great number of communicants, including many of the local and regional clergy and faithful, in addition to those who traveled great distances to celebrate the feast. Following Holy Communion, Bishop Nicholas gave a heartfelt sermon on the necessity and value of turning wholeheartedly to St Panteleimon in prayer. He reminded everyone how the saints are always praying for us, even when we ourselves forget to pray. He also called to mind the words of St Panteleimon’s troparion (O holy Passion-bearer and Healer Panteleimon, intercede with the merciful God, that He grant unto our souls forgiveness of offenses.) and how we can use them as a guide for how to pray. First, we begin by calling on the name of God and His saints, for their names are powerful. Then we recall God’s limitless mercy, sincerely offering our petitions for whatever is on our heart and especially for the forgiveness of our offenses. After Divine Liturgy, Bishop Nicholas led the clergy and faithful in a festal moleben to St Panteleimon, wherein all those were commemorated who wrote to ask the prayers of the great martyr for themselves and their loved ones. They will continue to be commemorated at special molebens for eight days following the feast, each day having its own appointed canon being read to the saint. That evening, a panihida was served at the monastic cemetery for Schemamonk John (Dezorzi), who reposed on St. Panteleimon’s Day in 2015. Afterward, Bishop Nicholas held a synaxis with the brethren, sharing reminiscences of the recently reposed Metropolitan Hilarion of blessed memory. The next morning, the fathers bade His Grace farewell to the peal of bells. May the Lord direct the steps of our beloved Bishop Nicholas, through the prayers of St. Panteleimon! |
| It is again conceived as a story of states and nations, and as such it is denounced and condemned. Paradoxically, it ceases to be, in this interpretation, the history of man. It is assumed that man has nothing to do, that is, to create or to achieve. He simply expects judgment, or, in any case, stands under it. But in fact, man is becoming – or, indeed, is failing to become – himself precisely in his historical struggle and endeavor. Eschatologism, on the contrary, condemns man to a dreamy mysticism, that very trap and danger which eschatologists pretend and attempt to evade. He is doomed to detect and contemplate, unredeemably, the abyss of his nothingness, is exposed to dreams and nightmares of his own vanity and spiritual sickness. And a new mythology emerges out of these unhealthy dreams. Whatever kind of «man’s historicity» may be claimed as a discovery of such an impoverished Christianity, the actual historicity of man is thereby, implicitly or often quite explicitly, denied and prohibited. Then history, in such an interpretation, actually becomes «hopeless,» without a task, without a theme, without any meaning. Now, the true history of man is not a political history, with its Utopian claims and illusions, but a history of the spirit, the story of man’s growth to the full stature of perfection, under the Lordship of the historical God-man, even of our Lord, Christ Jesus. It is a tragic story, indeed. And yet the seed matures, not only for judgment, but also for eternity. The Christian historian does not proceed actually «on Christian principles,» as is sometimes suggested. Christianity is not a set of principles. The Christian historian pursues his professional task of interpreting human life in the light of his Christian vision of that life, sorely distorted by sin, yet redeemed by Divine mercy, and healed by Divine grace, and called to the inheritance of an everlasting Kingdom. The Christian historian will, first of all, vindicate «the dignity of man,» even of fallen man. |
| Archive Пн His Holiness Patriarch Kirill approves texts of prayerful supplications in view of the spreading coronavirus infection 21 March 2020 year 20:30 His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia approved texts of prayerful supplications in view of the threat of the spreading coronavirus infection. With the blessing of His Holiness, the prayers will be lifted up during the Divine Liturgy at all churches of the Russian Orthodox Church. Tomorrow, on March 22, Third Sunday of Lent, these supplications will be read out for the first time during the Patriarchal divine service. Earlier, at its session on March 11, the Holy Synod adopted the Statement Concerning the Spread of Coronavirus Infection. “In times of epidemics the Russian Orthodox Church always bore its ministry of witness, never refusing spiritual care and full participation in her Sacraments to anybody,” the Statement reads, “We call for restraint, sober-mindedness and prayerful tranquility, and note that a believer should not get into a panic or be gripped by fears caused by the spread of unchecked information about the infection. At the same time, it is inadmissible to take the coronavirus lightly, neglect medical advice and ignore preventive measures, thus putting at risk of infection oneself and those around.” The Holy Synod called upon the hierarchs, pastors, monastics and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church to lift up “fervent prayer for overcoming the disease and granting strength to the doctors combating it.” On March 17, the Holy Synod approved the instructions to rectors of parishes and metochions, abbots and abbesses of the monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church in view of the risk of the spreading coronavirus infection. Prayer read during the Spread of Devastating Pestilence O Lord our God, enter not into judgement with Thy servants, and compass us about with protection from the devastating pestilence stirred up against us. O kind-hearted Lord Who art inclined toward benevolence, have compassion on us, Thy humble and unworthy servants, who fall down before Thee with broken hearts and hope in Thy mercy. |
| After the sack of Rome in 410, Augustine began a work of large-scale apologetic to answer those who laid the blame for the decadence of the Western Empire at the door of the Christians. Between 412 and 427 he produced a monumental work called the City of God, where he elaborated the first extensively considered ethical and political view of what Christianity conceived of as a civilized order, in distinction to preChristian ideas. He stresses the earthly city’s (human society’s) radical dissociation from the true City of God (the eschatological realization of the kingdom), but makes a case for how the earthly city is informed and guided by heavenly ideals. Slavery is a prime symptom of the inherent corruption of the world’s affairs. In the midst of endemic violence and disorder the church has the destiny to represent mercy and reconciliation, guiding society to a perfection it might never attain, but to which it is inexorably summoned. To stand with the Confessions and City of God, in his triad of “world classics,” we should add Augustine’s monumental work of theology On the Trinity, composed between 399 and 419. In this he constructs a major anti-Arian apologetic around the Nicene faith in Christology and pneumatol- ogy. He demonstrates from a wide variety of triadic cosmic patterns the reasonableness of the trinitarian doctrine of three divine persons subsisting in one single divine nature. Much use is made of triadic patterns of human psychology (the soul as the image of God), and he emphasized once again his deeply sensed connection between self-scrutiny and theological method (something common to Augustine and the Platonic tradition). His vast corpus of writings became, of course, his own form of ascetical exercise. The great extent of his work made him function as an encyclopedic theological authority for the next millennium in the West. But he had only a very minor influence on the Eastern Church, though translations were made of him into Greek in the medieval period, and he had a small circle of interested Greek readers. |
| During the Liturgy, a prayer for peace in Ukraine was said. After the service, a thanksgiving before the Icon of Archangel Gabriel was celebrated outside the church. Metropolitan Niphon of Filippopolis, representative of the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, thanked Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, as well as representatives of the Local Orthodox Churches to the Moscow Patriarchate, and all the worshippers for the joy of common prayer on the feast day and conveyed to all those present the blessing from His Beatitude Patriarch John of Antioch and All the East. Metropolitan Hilarion greeted all the worshippers on behalf of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, saying in particular: “Today during the Divine Liturgy we lifted up our zealous prayer for the suffering Ukrainian people, asking God to have mercy upon them and stop the internecine war and restore peace in the Ukrainian land. We also fervently prayed for the cessation of persecution against Christians in the land, which is, actually, the cradle of Orthodoxy – in Syria, Iraq, and other Middle Eastern countries, where Christians today are subjected to the most severe inhuman persecution, and where the very existence of Christian churches is under threat. “…the holy Russian Church is doing all she can to help the holy Church of Antioch and all Christians in the Middle East, subjected to persecution. Our Church, in the person of His Holiness Patriarch, hierarchs, clergy, and our pious people, will always help the Church of Antioch, feeling solidarity with her and remembering the words of St. Paul, “and whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it” (1 Cor 12:26). Whether Christians, our brothers and sisters, suffer in the land of Ukraine or in the Middle East, the whole body of our Christian Church suffers. The heart of every believer is bleeding when he hears about new sufferings and persecutions against the holy Church and the Orthodox faith. |
| Concerning those who have fallen without compulsion, without the spoiling of their property, without danger or the like, as happened during the tyranny of Licinius, this Synod declares that, though they have deserved no mercy, they shall be dealt with mercifully. Those who were previously communicants, if they heartily repent, shall spend three years among the hearers; for seven years they shall be prostrators; and for two years they shall join the people in prayers, but still as yet without receiving the Eucharistic gifts. Canon 20 prohibited the practice of penitential kneeling during the Church’s Sunday Liturgy, as well as during the entire Pentecostarion season. The Nicene Council also established guidelines for determining the date of the annual celebration of Pascha-thus helping to bring the Quartodecimans’ practice to an end. Finally, this council affirmed once and for all, at least for the Eastern Churches, the propriety of allowing married men to be ordained as deacons, presbyters, and at that time even bishops, and to still have a normal married life. While the Roman Church during the 4th century began trying to force its clergy to be celibate, it was not until the 12th century that it was finally able to enforce this rule. Saint Athanasius and his defence of Nicea The doctrinal definition of the Nicene Council was not universally accepted throughout the Church for a long time. The Arian controversy raged for over five more decades, and because several Christian emperors in this period gave their support to the Arianizers, the defenders of the Nicene Faith were greatly persecuted. With imperial support, Church councils were held in Milan, Sirmium, Rimini, Seleucia, and elsewhere, to try to articulate the mystery of Christ’s divinity and humanity, but all with varying degrees of Arian influence. Saint Athanasius (c. 298–373) attended the Nicene Council as a deacon of the Church in Alexandria. Though only 27 years old, he was a leader at that council in promoting the crucial word homoousios as most fitting to affirm the truth that the Son of God has the same uncreated divine nature as God the Father. |
| The only problem with which this type of people is concerned is the problem of individual «salvation.» . Thirdly, there is an Existentialist type of opposition. Its basic motive is in the protest against man’s enslavement in civilization, which only screens from him the ultimate predicament of his existence, and obscures the hopelessness of his entanglement. It would be unfair to deny the relative truth of the contemporary Existentialist movement, the truth of reaction; and probably the modern man of culture needed this sharp and pityless warning. In all its forms, religious and areligious, Existentialism exposes the nothingness of man, of the real man as he is and knows himself. For those among the Existentialists who failed to encounter God or who indulge in the atheistic denial, this «nothingness» is just the last truth about man and his destiny. Only man should find this truth out for himself. But many Existentialists have found God, or, as they would put it themselves, have been found by Him, challenged by Him, in His undivided wrath and mercy. But, paradoxically enough, they would persist in believing that man is still but «nothing,» in spite of the redeeming love and concern of Creator for His lost and stray creatures. In their conception, «creatureliness» of man inextricably condemns him to be but «nothing,» at least in his own eyes, in spite of the mysterious fact that for God His creatures are obviously much more than «nothing,» since the redeeming love of God moved Him, for the sake of man, to the tremendous Sacrifice of the Cross. Existentialism seems to be right in its criticism of human complacency, and even helpful in its unwelcome detection of man’s pettiness. But it is always blind to the complexity of the Divine Wisdom. An Existentialist is always a lonely and solitary being, inextricably involved and engaged in the scrutiny of his predicament. His terms of reference are always: the ALL of God and the Nothing of man. And, even in the case when his analysis begins with a concrete situation, namely his personal one, it continues somehow in abstracto: in the last resort he will not speak of a living person, but rather about man as man, for ultimately all men stand under the same and universal detection of their ultimate irrelevance. Whatever the psychological and historical explanation of the recent rise of Existentialism may be, on the whole it is no more than a symptom of cultural disintegration and despair. |
| And they ought to attribute it to the spirit of these Christian times, that, contrary to the custom of war, these bloodthirsty barbarians spared them, and spared them for Christ " s sake, whether this mercy was actually shown in promiscuous places, or in those places specially dedicated to Christ " s name, and of which the very largest were selected as sanctuaries, that full scope might thus be given to the expansive compassion which desired that a large multitude might find shelter there. Therefore ought they to give God thanks, and with sincere confession flee for refuge to His name, that so they may escape the punishment of eternal fire– they who with lying lips took upon them this name, that they might escape the punishment of present destruction. For of those whom you see insolently and shamelessly insulting the servants of Christ, there are numbers who would not have escaped that destruction and slaughter had they not pretended that they themselves were Christ " s servants. Yet now, in ungrateful pride and most impious madness, and at the risk of being punished in everlasting darkness, they perversely oppose that name under which they fraudulentlyprotected themselves for the sake of enjoying the light of this brief life. Chapter 2.– That It is Quite Contrary to the Usage of War, that the Victors Should Spare the Vanquished for the Sake of Their Gods. There are histories of numberless wars, both before the building of Rome and since its rise and the extension of its dominion; let these be read, and let one instance be cited in which, when a city had been taken by foreigners, the victors spared those who were found to have fled for sanctuary to the temples of their gods ; [The Benedictines remind us that Alexander and Xenophon, at least on some occasions, did so.] or one instance in which a barbarian general gave orders that none should be put to the sword who had been found in this or that temple. Did not Æneas see Dying Priam at the shrine, Staining the hearth he made divine? Virgil, Æneid, 2:201–2. |
| According to Filaret’s thinking, the flourishing of the country is directly dependent on the preservation by its citizens of the divine commandments. And, again, he acknowledges the American nation’s frontline role in the struggle against communism as its chief merit. During the Cold War era, the ROCOR sincerely supported the external political course of the Western countries without receiving in return any financial support, nor increase in prominence, nor access to administrative resources. After the collapse of the system of global socialism and the Soviet Union’s disappearance from the political map, the role of the USA and other Western countries as bulwarks of anti-communism was past. The conservatism of the Russian Church Abroad remained unchanged. Her attention in the realm of worldly affairs now turned from already non-existent communism toward the situation of the Russian and other Orthodox nations. Here the positions of the ROCOR was hardly ever consistent with those of the countries of the West. The Balkan crisis provides a clear example. In spite of the fact that the Synod and the majority of the parishes the Russian Church Abroad are located in the USA, the church came forward with a decisive condemnation of NATO’s military aggression against Serbia. Thus the letter of Hierarchal Council which was held in the Lesna Convent in France in 1994: “In the course of the fall of communist Yugoslavia, with its unnatural internal borders, the incomprehensible recognition by Western countries of the new governments that have arisen from this country has led to a war, in which a significant number of our brothers the Serbs will have to defend territories which have already been their homes for centuries. The Western mass media, having themselves no sufficient knowledge or understanding of the local situation, have from the beginning tarred the Serbian nation as the ‘aggressors.’ “We know that in such a terrible war, started by the communists, who despise not only spiritual values but national ones as well, there are no righteous ones. Innocent people are fighting on both sides. But we, Russian hierarchs and our flocks, who have received great benevolence from our brothers the Serbian Orthodox people during the bitter time of our emigration, raise our voice in prayer to the Almighty, that He may grant our Orthodox Brothers the Serbs peace and great mercy.” |
| Pay vows to Juno: overbear Her queenly soul with gift and prayer. In conformity with this opinion, Porphyry – expressing, however, not so much his own views as other people " s – says that a good god or genius cannot come to a man unless the evil genius has been first of all propitiated, implying that the evildeities had greater power than the good; for, until they have been appeased and give place, the good can give no assistance; and if the evil deities oppose, the good can give no help; whereas the evil can do injury without the good being able to prevent them. This is not the way of the true and truly holy religion; not thus do our martyrs conquer Juno, that is to say, the powers of the air, who envy the virtues of the pious. Our heroes, if we could so call them, overcome Hêrê, not by suppliant gifts, but by divine virtues. As Scipio, who conquered Africa by his valor, is more suitably styled Africanus than if he had appeased his enemies by gifts, and so won their mercy. Chapter 22.– Whence the Saints Derive Power Against Demons and True Purification of Heart. It is by true piety that men of God cast out the hostile power of the air which opposes godliness; it is by exorcising it, not by propitiating it; and they overcome all the temptations of the adversary by praying, not to him, but to their own God against him. For the devil cannot conquer or subdue any but those who are in league with sin; and therefore he is conquered in the name of Him who assumed humanity, and that without sin, that Himself being both Priest and Sacrifice, He might bring about the remission of sins, that is to say, might bring it about through the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, by whom we are reconciled to God, the cleansing from sin being accomplished. For men are separated from God only by sins, from which we are in this life cleansed not by our own virtue, but by the divine compassion; through His indulgence, not through our own power. For, whatever virtue we call our own is itself bestowed upon us by His goodness. And we might attribute too much to ourselves while in the flesh, unless we lived in the receipt of pardon until we laid it down. This is the reason why there has been vouchsafed to us, through the Mediator, this grace, that we who are polluted by sinful flesh should be cleansed by the likeness of sinful flesh. By this grace of God, wherein He has shown His great compassion toward us, we are both governed by faith in this life, and, after this life, are led onwards to the fullest perfection by the vision of immutable truth. Chapter 23.– Of the Principles Which, According to the Platonists, Regulate the Purification of the Soul. |
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