Scripture within the Church

 “The person who loves God values knowledge of God more than anything created by God, and pursues such knowledge ardently and ceaselessly.”

    Within Christianity, nothing is more debated, discussed, misinterpreted or misused than Scripture. Within Protestantism, one verse can create new denominations, new sects and new heresies all together.  Scripture is seen in their eyes as the final authority on all matters, the epitome of everything that God has given us, and nothing else matters. However as you might can tell, the Orthodox have a completely different view of Scripture.  

    Orthodoxy has and always has had, the view that Scripture forms part of the Holy Tradition of the church. That is the oral and written histories of the church. The canon of what is now the Holy Bible was not even completely formed when the Church was established at Pentecost, it would take several hundred years, and a few ecumenical councils later for the full canon of the church to be completely set in stone and even then, debates raged on which books should or should not be included.  St Irenaeus in 178, said that it would take time to collect and form the canon of the church scripture. St. Peter though calling St. Paul's writing scripture, says that it is difficult and needs interpretation. Protestants, who believe in Sola Scriptura will often say, that whatever God lays on their heart that is what the scripture says.  The Orthodox Church refutes this by saying, "Does it match with what others have taught?" The Orthodox Church in its wisdom to guard against heresy and the everything goes mentality that is ravaging the West, has said that through the use of Holy Tradition, through the use of the patristic fathers, that Scripture can be understood.  That does not mean, that God hasn't given us what he wanted us to have, that those things that are included within the canon of the Holy Bible are not inspired writings, that they don't have benefits for our lives, rather one must be within the Church to fully understand the writings and the teachings held therein. The Bible is therefore, just like the painted icons of Christ, a written icon of the second person of the Trinity, that is the Divine Logos. The Word of God. The Bible in and of itself is not the word of God, rather the Bible depicts the actual Word of God that is Jesus Christ.  From Genesis to Revelation, the entire canon of scripture directs and calls us to Christ just like the icons that border our iconostasis at the entrance to our altars. The scriptures never in themselves point to anything more or less than Jesus Christ. Without the Church as its mother, the Scriptures become meaningless, just a collection of books that have been assembled for the purpose of good living and teaching and they do not have any substance beyond their confined pages.  Rather for us Orthodox, the scriptures must be lived, through their reading, through the divine services, through the teachings of the holy fathers and teachers of not just our age but the age of all ages.  We cannot have the Church without its teachings and the teachings without the Church. 

    As stated heresy and the everything goes mentality of the West has led many to fall astray and begin teaching many things not found in the scriptures. One such heresy is the prosperity gospel, where God simply wants us to be happy and healthy and wealthy and achieve great success here on earth. When we compare that to the experience of the Church and the life of many saints especially in the East, we see that does not match the experience of the Church, especially that of Greece where for 500 years the Ottoman Turk Muslims controlled the people and persecuted harshly those of the Christian faith. We must therefore use Scripture in its proper place, to teach, to rebuke, to correct and to call to righteousness. 

    In conclusion, Scripture is a part of the life of the Church, not the only part of the life of the Church. We must always place Jesus in the forefront of the Church and place our faith not in the written word of God, but the eternal life giving Word of God. 

Amen. 

St. Haralambos

 

St. Haralambos, Bishop of Magnesia is one of the oldest saints we have on record in the Orthodox Church, and perhaps one of the oldest relics we have as well. Its not very often that the witness of a saint causes so many to mass convert, especially those of his torturers.  But that is exactly what happened when St. Haralambos was tortured and martyred for the faith in 202 AD.  At the time of his martyrdom he was 103 years old and very aged for a saint in his day.  St. Haralambos was the bishop of Magnesia a city in modern day Turkey in Asia Minor, where he preached and lived the gospel on a daily basis.  St. Haralambos eventually caught the eye of Lucian and Lucius, two of the leaders of the area in which Haralambos lived. When he was brought before them to stand trial, he refused to accept worship to the pagan idols and tortured.  This torture included scraping off all of his skin painfully.  He is quoted as saying, "Thank you, my brethren, for scraping off the old body and renewing my soul for new and eternal life."  St. Haralambos was then continuously tortured with iron hooks.  Two soldiers and three women were converted to the faith because of this act.  Lucius who became extremely distraught and angry over this seized the hooks himself but his arms were cut off. Lucian's head was twisted backwards.  Both of them prayed to the saint to heal them, and after their miraculous healing, converted to the faith.  St. Haralambos was sent to the Emperor himself Septimius Severus, where he was to endure even harsher tortures. St. Haralambos was sentenced to death, but gave up the spirit before the executioner could even swing his blade. Gallina the Emperor's daughter converted to Christianity and buried the saint herself. 

By St. Haralambos' actions, he was able to witness the truth of Christ at the highest level in the Empire.  Like St. Theodore the Commander, he lived what he preached.  However the miracles of St. Haralambos do not end at his death. Like so many of the saints, miracles have occured after his death through his relics that now reside in Meteora in Greece. Through study and research that I conducted before writing this particular blog, Zakynthos was saved from the black death in 1728, the city of Epirus was saved from the plague in 1812, Avra was saved from disease in 1930, and Mount Athos, the holy mountain itself was saved from a devastating illness by his intercessions in 1908. While we do not know the day or the hour that this current pandemic will end, perhaps if we pray to St. Haralambos for his intercessions, this pandemic of Covid-19 will subside sooner rather than later. We pray that even if it is not the will of God to end this pandemic soon, that St. Haralambos will intercede for us and that we might be found worthy of Jesus Christ. 

Amen. 

St Zeno...the Mailman?

​Okay. So out of all the saints of the Orthodox Church, I might just have found the coolest one. No not because he was some great ascetic, which he was, no not because he was a great spiritual leader, which again he was, but because of his job title. Yes St. Zeno the Hermir was in fact, a mailman. St. Zeno offered his services to Emperor Valens when the position of Postman came open. Upon his acceptance into the position, St. Zeno was given one of the greatest responsibilities within the empire, carrying the messages and words of the Emperor himself. Over time Zeno would visit monasteries and churches throughout the empire and become close with many of the Church Fathers. Upon the death of the Emperor in the year 378 AD, St. Zeno decided that it was time to retire from the life of a postman and seclude himself from the world. That is where he found the fullness of God, in a cave near Antioch where he spent 40 years without human interaction. As we see in so many lives of the saints, they spend 40 years in the wilderness  This 40 years is seen as a time of completion, a time of renewing and of repentance. That is exactly what St. Zeno did. He is known to have slept on a mattress made of grass, to have only eaten every two days, and to have aquired much humility and ascetism through his prayers. He once blinded an army that was invading the regions through his prayers and they missed his cell though many of the surrounding hermits perished. While we might not think of Postmen today as a very important job, we see that this humble postman, who gained the trust of the Emperor ultimately found true trust in the Emperor of all Creation. 

May St. Zeno the Hermit pray for us that we might be found worthy of Jesus Christ. 

Amen. 

Fighting the Passions

​“Fight all your battles with Prayer and you shall always win.”
Archbishop Makarios of Australia

Continuing our discussion earlier from my earlier blog on Prayer, which I ask you read as much as this one, let us now talk about fighting the passions. The passions are saturated by our senses, they control how we react and how we interact with everything in our surroundings. Food for example is something we all crave. We need food to help us produce energy and for our general well being. When we deny ourselves food, often times we become angry and frustrated. This, too, is a passion because we become unlike Christ.  We become enraged because we want what we want and seek our own pleasure. Food becomes for us an idol. By fasting we free ourselves from the desire of food, from the very need for food. Food no longer becomes entertainment and distraction from God, but rather a means of nourishment and strength. Likewise when we pray we empty ourselves of our desires and fill ourselves with God’s will and God’s desires. The Passions enslave us to our earthly desires, our earthly bodies. The Passions cause us to reject God and reject the very power that has the authority to set us free. We become haughty, proud and we lose the humility that God requires from us. The passions separate us from the love of God which we as Christians desire above all other things. When we fight the passions, through prayer, through fasting, through attending of the divine services, we lose all of our own thoughts and enter into the divine mystery of theosis and uniting our wills with God. Without training and practice we lose control, just like baby that you raise needs training and teaching before it can grow up and take care of itself. It is cliché, unfortunately among the Orthodox to say, be constantly vigilant and on guard watching and praying at all hours of the day. However that is the most important part of fighting the passions. Watching what we say, do, eat and act all play a part in taming ourselves and living the life that God has for us. Everything good is of God. Nothing that is false or detrimental to us is from God. So when we choose to go against that which God has for us, we reject this goodness that if only we surrendered freely we would receive in over abundance. No, we won’t receive a brand new house, a new Mercedes, a job promotion, or large sums of money. If God wills it, that it is good for us, and for our salvation, then by all means, yes we will receive those things as blessings from God.  But by fighting the passions we accept that God is the Lord of our lives, that God in his divine providence knows far more what is better and what is profitable for our souls. Only then can we become true Christians and become servants of the Word. 

Amen. 

Prayer

 “It is necessary that the Holy Spirit enter our heart. Everything good that we do, that we do for Christ, is given to us by the Holy Spirit, but prayer most of all, which is always available to us.”- St. Seraphim of Sarov 

    If the Divine Liturgy is the participation of the Christian in the divine on earth, prayer is the participation of the Christian in the work of the Holy Spirit.  Without prayer, the Christian has nothing. It is the act in which the Holy Spirit works in the life of the Christian healing it from the stains and the scars of the passions.  As Orthodox Christians, we believe that sin, is not just an offence against God, but also a sickness that effects all of us.  Prayer is the medicine that heals this sickness and creates in us a clean heart.  That is why in most Orthodox services, Psalm 50 (Psalm 51 in Western bibles) is prayed, because it lays out the very nature of our soul.  We pray within that Psalm that God would restore to us the joy of our salvation, and that he would not take His Holy Spirit from us.  We see from the lives of people like King Saul and King Solomon that our actions can effect the Holy Spirit and that without a successful fight against the passions that God will and can withdraw himself from us.  Prayer corrects this.  When you love someone, like I do my wife, you wish to spend as much time with them as possible. When I first met my wife, we would spend hours upon hours conversing, discovering who we were, and getting to know each other.  In the same way, God who is the creator of all, wants us to show Him our love, to delve into the depths of his infinite powers and draw closer to him.  Now, unlike in the West, the East understands that God is unknowable, that we can only scratch the surface of the eternal Creator.  It is one thing to have a list of facts and dogmas that one can rattle off, as so many in the west can, through their use of Bible Drills and various children's church activities, and it is another entirely to know God and to see God through uniting our hearts and minds with His in absolute communion.  When we pray we openly seek to take our human nature, our hearts and our minds and to draw God in.  Some would say, as the Calvinists do, that God forces himself upon us, you're either with God, or against God.  However, the experience and tradition of the Church teaches us that God is free and loving, and humble enough that he does not force himself on us.  Prayer must be a willing act, an act of submission to the Divine Logos and the enthronement of God in our hearts.  For some, like the monastics on Mount Athos, prayer is short.  Prayer does not have to be long. So many today drone on and on about Father God, and Loving God, and try to flatter God with many words.  Trust me, I've seen in first hand in Protestant churches here in America where the Pastor just continues on and on without really saying anything.  That is not prayer.  When we pray we must open our hearts to the will of God. We must make our requests known, even though God, who knows all things already knows what is best for us.  We must not be vain, we don't seek a comfortable life here on earth, we don't need that new Mercedes or that Lambo in the front yard.  What we do need is God.  Prayer allows us to achieve this, and as St. Theophan the Recluse says, “If you are not successful in your prayer, you will not be successful in anything, for prayer is the root of everything." So my suggestion to all of you reading this blog, is to take the simplest of prayers, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner", and pray this continuously throughout the day.  It does need to be a long period of time, two-three minutes, maybe five.  And use it to draw yourself closer to God.  Uniting yourself with the uncreated energies of the Divine Creator.  

May God have Mercy on us all. 

Amen  

The Divine Liturgy.

​Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

With those words the Priest begins the Divine Liturgy. No other act within the church is more important than the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy is the participation of the Christian in the worship of the divine, that is the Triune God. Without the Divine Liturgy one cannot call himself Orthodox. The Divine Liturgy is the joining of the church on earth with those in heaven. In the Orthodox Church we don’t believe that our loved ones are in some far off place where they are away from us and can’t hear us or see us. Rather those who have fallen asleep in the Lord, are still an active part of the church, and now though their earthly bodies have returned to the dust of the earth, their spirit now sits at the footstool of God, interceding on our behalf, and participating in the liturgy of Heaven. Not only that but the Divine Liturgy transcends time and space. Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey stuff yea yea I know.  At that moment we are no longer on earth, but also at the throne of God. Also we are within all of the church history. We are participating in the continuous worship of the church and the continuous sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist. No Jesus is not being sacrificed again, but we enter into Golgotha, we enter into the Last Supper. We witness along with the Apostles the breaking of the body of Christ and the pouring out of his blood. The Divine Liturgy allows us to have the blessings of Heaven upon earth and the blessings of the divine. That’s why it’s called the Divine Liturgy after all. The Divine Liturgy incorporates the litanies and scriptures of the Church and has been discharged by the priests of Orthodoxy for two thousand years. Within the space of two hours, those who attend the Divine Liturgy will hear the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. That doesn’t mean that every single verse is read, rather the scripture that is prayed covers the entire collections of books that make up holy scripture. From the moment the Liturgy begins the gospel is proclaimed, whether that be in the form of St. Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. The Psalms are sung, the Epistles of Paul, sometimes Peter or James or John are read. The very essence of the liturgy is the holy scriptures which have been handed down to us through Holy Tradition. We proclaim the faith, through the Nicene  Creed, also called the Symbol of Faith, given to us by the church fathers at the First Council of Constantinople sometimes called the Second Ecumenical Council. We pray the prayer our Lord gave to us, the Our Father. We partake in the divine body and blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself declared in John, that those who eat of his flesh and drink of his blood will have everlasting life and that he will dwell in them. For us as Orthodox Christians we see this, as did the church fathers, that it is literal. That the bread and wine that appear on the Holy Altar is indeed the same body and blood that was poured out for us on Great and Holy Friday. That is why it is the most important part of the Liturgy. It is the moment when Christ enters our bodies and resides in us. It is not merely symbolic or merely a metaphor, for Orthodox Christians, it is the epitome of faith. The Divine Liturgy encompasses all of this and so much more. In these few moments that we have in earthly time, we glimpse eternity and that is the most amazing thing one could ever witness. 

May God have mercy on us all. 

Amen.

St. Philaret Voznezsenky

​Incorruptibility is a usually a sign of sainthood. We see this today in so many of the orthodox saints around the world.  Also, we see in so many of the saints that persecution forges the best of us. It is during these times that great men and women are thrust to the forefront of society to draw us back to the Creator.  One such man is the first hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia, St. Philaret Voznesenky. St. Philaret like many of the saints that came before him was born to a pious priest and his wife in rural Russia, where he was raised before the family moved from Russia to Manchuria. After his mother died, his father became a monk as per tradition of the church and his father was eventually ordained a bishop. Philaret or George as he was known at this point attended college and received a degree in electromechanical engineering before attending pastoral theology school and being himself tonsured a monk in 1930. While he was there in Manchuria, Soviet and Communist Chinese forces seized control of the land and Philaret became an outspoken critic of the communist teachings and the state. It is at this point that the communists began to heavily persecute him. The communists set fire to his monastic cell trying in earnest to burn him alive. He was miraculously saved from the fire but suffered severe burns. He was able to flee to Brisbane in Australia where most of his flock was then living and became Vicar of Australia and Bishop of Brisbane. In 1961 a meeting of the Bishops of ROCOR, he was elected the first hierarch of the church and appointed as such. After his death in 1985 ROCOR procured his relics and buried them underneath the altar in Jordanville New York. Where his relics were discovered incorrupt. 

Not much more can be said about this man. He lead his flock with dignity and grace. He called people to reject the heresies of communism. He secured the prosperity and the faith of the Russian people outside of Russia when at the time inside of Russia the church was going through its darkest days. Let us humbly ask St. Philaret for his prayers that we might be found worthy of Jesus Christ. 

Amen.