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This is the testimony of a young Greek man who was raised a nominal Orthodox Christian, contemplated monasticism and came to love the simplicity of the Saints. Having turned into a worldly man in pursuit of gain, his sister converted to Islam in search of simplicity. Inspired by her he also turned to Islam. He left Christianity because of ignorance of his Orthodox Christian Faith and of who God is. He rejected the doctrine of the Holy Trinity because he could not "understand" it, and was attracted to the unity of Allah. I offer this to inspire the need for the proper education of the Faith for our youth. Because they will seek the truth somewhere, if not in Orthodoxy then somewhere else.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Testimony of an Orthodox Christian Who Became a Muslim
Papoulakis: Saint Joachim of Vatopaidi (11)
...continued from Part 10
THE SAINT’S REPOSE
On March 1, 1868, blessed Papoulakis was resting on his hard mat at the home of a Christ-loving man named H. Paizi Lianou in Vathy. He peacefully and calmly foretold that he was preparing for his eternal journey. Lying on his scanty mat on the floor, and now completely exhausted, he refused all food. His friend Maratos the doctor visited him and asked if there was anything that he needed or that he could do for him. The Elder replied, “There is nothing that I need; I’m getting ready to depart.” He called for the devout and virtuous priest-monk Agapios to draw near him for the last time. Having confessed, he then became silent, waiting to give over his spirit to its Maker whom he so loved and to whom he had devoted his entire life.
As Friday night progressed toward Saturday - March 12 - Papoulakis’ condition became quite serious; at five o’clock on Saturday morning, he slept the blessed sleep of the righteous, in whose ranks he had shown himself to be numbered since childhood through a life of fasting, vigils, and ardent struggles. At the instruction of the Metropolitan, the Abbot of the Monastery of the Katharon (the Pure) undertook the Saint’s burial. Going through his clothing, they found not even the smallest amount of money. With his material poverty he set his seal on the meaning of poverty in its fullest sense, something he had practiced throughout his entire ascetical life.
They discovered that in his right hand, on a paper rolled up like a small cylinder, he was holding his final wish: to be buried outside behind the sanctuary of the church of Saint Barbara — for which he had toiled so much for its construction and completion — in the place where he had planted a myrtle tree with his own hands.
The Elder’s desire, of course, was carried out, but only after much agonizing effort and struggle on the part of the church officials, because of the great numbers of people that were gathered there. As soon as it became known to the people that their beloved Papoulakis had reposed and was going to be buried, such a multitude of people flowed in from all over the island that it became impossible to make the preparations for the burial. They first took his holy remains to the church of Saint Nicholas of the Strangers (ton Xenon) in Vathy, where they chanted the service for the dead. His body remained there throughout the night, and the veneration of the holy relic continued without a pause. In the morning, the Chancellor (Protosynkelos) of the Metropolitan See extolled the Elder’s virtues and righteous life. Afterwards, he ordered his remains to be taken to Stavros, in order to be buried there at the church of Saint Barbara, according to the Saint’s wish. The entire crowd followed behind the body in a drenching rain. In spite of the downpour, his holy remains stayed dry, and this moved the crowd to compunction all the more.
Arriving at the church of Saint Barbara, they placed the Saint’s casket in the middle of the church and, once again, the faithful began to draw near. With tears they expressed their unbearable grief; as they themselves said, they had lost their common father, benefactor, protector, and, in general, the one person who supported them. His remains were in danger of being cut up due to the devotion of the people, who had cut to pieces most of the shroud for holy keepsakes and for the blessing of water. When night was drawing near, the Abbot of the Katharon, being responsible for his burial and seeing that the congestion was great, announced to the people that the burial would supposedly take place the following day. The people believed the Abbot’s words and departed for the following day. Thus they found the opportunity to do the burial that same day - the evening of March 3, the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross - outside, behind the Holy Sanctuary, in accordance with the desire of holy Papoulakis.
MIRACLES AFTER THE SAINT'S REPOSE
Olympia Lekatsa from Kalyvia relates that there was a family — of N. Sykioti (Bouloumpasi) — that came from Ithaki but was living in Romania. They were very wealthy and had made many donations to the Church of Saint Barbara that Saint Joachim himself had built. They had an only child who suffered from an incurable disease. The doctors had thrown up their hands, saying, “It is up to God from here on.”
One evening, the boy’s parents saw Papoulakis in their sleep telling them, “Don’t be afraid; I will make your child well.” The parents vowed to make a votive offering of a bell to the Church of Saint Barbara. The child became well, and they brought the bell, which still exists today. Because the bell was big, however, they did not install it at Saint Barbara’s; instead they exchanged it with the bell at the parish church in the community of Stavros.
***
Olympia Megalogeni Lekatsa recounts that a relative of hers, Meropi Lekatsa, was a poverty-stricken orphan. One evening, she saw Saint Papoulakis in her sleep, and he told her, “Tomorrow, go out from the Panagia, where the rock is. Lift up a stone that is there; under it there are two pentares.” Meropi went to the place Papoulakis had indicated and indeed found the two pentares. Papoulakis spoke to her once again. “Every morning, go there and lift the stone, and you will find two pentares.” Thus the poor girl went every morning and received her “salary.” Out of her excessive joy she mentioned this to others, and from then on she no longer found anything there. From this we see that, even after death, the saints prefer to remain in obscurity and to do their almsgiving “in secret” (Matt. 6:4).
***
Magdalini Floka-Sykioti from Stavros tells us that from childhood she had asthma and had been praying continually to blessed Papoulakis to make her well. In her sleep, she saw herself going to Saint Papoulakis’ grave and venerating it. A monk (it was Papoulakis) was following her and spoke to her. “Magdalini, I will always be with you.” From that moment her asthma ceased. Because of this, she made a votive promise to make the platter of kollyva, the sweetened boiled wheat, every year at the Saint’s memorial service, for the rest of her life.
Where we should note that the inhabitants of Ithaki gather at Saint Barbara’s every year on the day of his repose and hold a memorial service for him at his grave, believing that this is the way to honor him as a Saint.
***
Gerasimos Kouvaras relates that, during World War II, he was on the front line. One evening in his sleep, he saw himself behind the Holy Sanctuary of Saint Barbara’s, where Papoulakis’ grave is. When he awoke, he wondered what this meant and called upon Saint Papoulakis with faith. Shortly thereafter, he was overcome by a high fever and vomiting. They notified the sergeant, who ordered that they take him down to the doctor, two hours by foot from the front. The doctor could find nothing wrong with him. In the meantime, the Italians had launched a mortar attack and demolished the front line. Returning healthy to his place, Kouvaras realized that, if he had been there, he would have shared the fate of the others. Thus from what took place, he saw that Saint Papoulakis had indeed protected him.
***
Ismini Kaladelphou from Stavros relates that when she was eleven years old, in 1936, her father was very ill. The girl had a great devotion to Saint Papoulakis and prayed ardently that he would make her father well, because he was in danger of dying. One morning, she was assisting at the archaeological excavations at the Pilikata site. While she was by herself and absorbed in her thoughts, she saw the Saint in a vision telling her, “Don’t cry, my daughter; your father will get well. But you must go and light the votive lamps before Saint Papoulakis and Saint George, because they have gone out; and don’t worry about your father.” The Saint then immediately vanished from before her. Her father miraculously became well, since she had gone on her knees to the Saint’s grave and lit the votive lamps.
***
Eleni Karagiorgou recounts that her grandmother, Anastasia Kallinikou, was so poor that she had no place to wash her children’s clothes. Thus she washed them at the stone trough where Papoulakis used to sit when visiting their home. One evening, however, she saw Papoulakis in her sleep. He poked her and said with a severe expression,
“Anastasia, I don’t like what you are doing, washing the children’s soiled clothing in my trough.” When the woman ceased using the Saint’s trough following his intervention, a large swarm of bees nested inside it that produced many kilos of honey.
***
Anna Megalogeni states that when she was a child, her brother Vasilis developed a seizure disorder. Their mother, Akrivi, went to the trustee of Saint Barbara’s Church, who told her, “Don’t be afraid; we have the Saint. Make a votive offering to the Saint.” “What should I offer?” asked the forlorn mother. “Offer an ihrami,” she replied (that is, a heavy woolen bedcover). As soon as she promised the ihrami to the Saint, her son became well. She sewed into this bedcover a hair from the Saint’s belt, which she had wrapped around her sick child as a blessing.
***
Anastasia Lekatsa from Kalyvia remembers that when she was fifteen years old, the shepherd S. Paizis would sleep on the mountain with his flock during the summer nights. The shepherd said with awe that one night he saw light ascending from the opposite mountain of Vigla. It went to the Church of Saint Barbara, and would drop from sight behind the church, where Saint Joachim’s grave is located.
To be continued...Part Twelve
THE SAINT’S REPOSE
On March 1, 1868, blessed Papoulakis was resting on his hard mat at the home of a Christ-loving man named H. Paizi Lianou in Vathy. He peacefully and calmly foretold that he was preparing for his eternal journey. Lying on his scanty mat on the floor, and now completely exhausted, he refused all food. His friend Maratos the doctor visited him and asked if there was anything that he needed or that he could do for him. The Elder replied, “There is nothing that I need; I’m getting ready to depart.” He called for the devout and virtuous priest-monk Agapios to draw near him for the last time. Having confessed, he then became silent, waiting to give over his spirit to its Maker whom he so loved and to whom he had devoted his entire life.
As Friday night progressed toward Saturday - March 12 - Papoulakis’ condition became quite serious; at five o’clock on Saturday morning, he slept the blessed sleep of the righteous, in whose ranks he had shown himself to be numbered since childhood through a life of fasting, vigils, and ardent struggles. At the instruction of the Metropolitan, the Abbot of the Monastery of the Katharon (the Pure) undertook the Saint’s burial. Going through his clothing, they found not even the smallest amount of money. With his material poverty he set his seal on the meaning of poverty in its fullest sense, something he had practiced throughout his entire ascetical life.
They discovered that in his right hand, on a paper rolled up like a small cylinder, he was holding his final wish: to be buried outside behind the sanctuary of the church of Saint Barbara — for which he had toiled so much for its construction and completion — in the place where he had planted a myrtle tree with his own hands.
The Elder’s desire, of course, was carried out, but only after much agonizing effort and struggle on the part of the church officials, because of the great numbers of people that were gathered there. As soon as it became known to the people that their beloved Papoulakis had reposed and was going to be buried, such a multitude of people flowed in from all over the island that it became impossible to make the preparations for the burial. They first took his holy remains to the church of Saint Nicholas of the Strangers (ton Xenon) in Vathy, where they chanted the service for the dead. His body remained there throughout the night, and the veneration of the holy relic continued without a pause. In the morning, the Chancellor (Protosynkelos) of the Metropolitan See extolled the Elder’s virtues and righteous life. Afterwards, he ordered his remains to be taken to Stavros, in order to be buried there at the church of Saint Barbara, according to the Saint’s wish. The entire crowd followed behind the body in a drenching rain. In spite of the downpour, his holy remains stayed dry, and this moved the crowd to compunction all the more.
Arriving at the church of Saint Barbara, they placed the Saint’s casket in the middle of the church and, once again, the faithful began to draw near. With tears they expressed their unbearable grief; as they themselves said, they had lost their common father, benefactor, protector, and, in general, the one person who supported them. His remains were in danger of being cut up due to the devotion of the people, who had cut to pieces most of the shroud for holy keepsakes and for the blessing of water. When night was drawing near, the Abbot of the Katharon, being responsible for his burial and seeing that the congestion was great, announced to the people that the burial would supposedly take place the following day. The people believed the Abbot’s words and departed for the following day. Thus they found the opportunity to do the burial that same day - the evening of March 3, the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross - outside, behind the Holy Sanctuary, in accordance with the desire of holy Papoulakis.
MIRACLES AFTER THE SAINT'S REPOSE
Olympia Lekatsa from Kalyvia relates that there was a family — of N. Sykioti (Bouloumpasi) — that came from Ithaki but was living in Romania. They were very wealthy and had made many donations to the Church of Saint Barbara that Saint Joachim himself had built. They had an only child who suffered from an incurable disease. The doctors had thrown up their hands, saying, “It is up to God from here on.”
One evening, the boy’s parents saw Papoulakis in their sleep telling them, “Don’t be afraid; I will make your child well.” The parents vowed to make a votive offering of a bell to the Church of Saint Barbara. The child became well, and they brought the bell, which still exists today. Because the bell was big, however, they did not install it at Saint Barbara’s; instead they exchanged it with the bell at the parish church in the community of Stavros.
***
Olympia Megalogeni Lekatsa recounts that a relative of hers, Meropi Lekatsa, was a poverty-stricken orphan. One evening, she saw Saint Papoulakis in her sleep, and he told her, “Tomorrow, go out from the Panagia, where the rock is. Lift up a stone that is there; under it there are two pentares.” Meropi went to the place Papoulakis had indicated and indeed found the two pentares. Papoulakis spoke to her once again. “Every morning, go there and lift the stone, and you will find two pentares.” Thus the poor girl went every morning and received her “salary.” Out of her excessive joy she mentioned this to others, and from then on she no longer found anything there. From this we see that, even after death, the saints prefer to remain in obscurity and to do their almsgiving “in secret” (Matt. 6:4).
***
Magdalini Floka-Sykioti from Stavros tells us that from childhood she had asthma and had been praying continually to blessed Papoulakis to make her well. In her sleep, she saw herself going to Saint Papoulakis’ grave and venerating it. A monk (it was Papoulakis) was following her and spoke to her. “Magdalini, I will always be with you.” From that moment her asthma ceased. Because of this, she made a votive promise to make the platter of kollyva, the sweetened boiled wheat, every year at the Saint’s memorial service, for the rest of her life.
Where we should note that the inhabitants of Ithaki gather at Saint Barbara’s every year on the day of his repose and hold a memorial service for him at his grave, believing that this is the way to honor him as a Saint.
***
Gerasimos Kouvaras relates that, during World War II, he was on the front line. One evening in his sleep, he saw himself behind the Holy Sanctuary of Saint Barbara’s, where Papoulakis’ grave is. When he awoke, he wondered what this meant and called upon Saint Papoulakis with faith. Shortly thereafter, he was overcome by a high fever and vomiting. They notified the sergeant, who ordered that they take him down to the doctor, two hours by foot from the front. The doctor could find nothing wrong with him. In the meantime, the Italians had launched a mortar attack and demolished the front line. Returning healthy to his place, Kouvaras realized that, if he had been there, he would have shared the fate of the others. Thus from what took place, he saw that Saint Papoulakis had indeed protected him.
***
Ismini Kaladelphou from Stavros relates that when she was eleven years old, in 1936, her father was very ill. The girl had a great devotion to Saint Papoulakis and prayed ardently that he would make her father well, because he was in danger of dying. One morning, she was assisting at the archaeological excavations at the Pilikata site. While she was by herself and absorbed in her thoughts, she saw the Saint in a vision telling her, “Don’t cry, my daughter; your father will get well. But you must go and light the votive lamps before Saint Papoulakis and Saint George, because they have gone out; and don’t worry about your father.” The Saint then immediately vanished from before her. Her father miraculously became well, since she had gone on her knees to the Saint’s grave and lit the votive lamps.
***
Eleni Karagiorgou recounts that her grandmother, Anastasia Kallinikou, was so poor that she had no place to wash her children’s clothes. Thus she washed them at the stone trough where Papoulakis used to sit when visiting their home. One evening, however, she saw Papoulakis in her sleep. He poked her and said with a severe expression,
“Anastasia, I don’t like what you are doing, washing the children’s soiled clothing in my trough.” When the woman ceased using the Saint’s trough following his intervention, a large swarm of bees nested inside it that produced many kilos of honey.
***
Anna Megalogeni states that when she was a child, her brother Vasilis developed a seizure disorder. Their mother, Akrivi, went to the trustee of Saint Barbara’s Church, who told her, “Don’t be afraid; we have the Saint. Make a votive offering to the Saint.” “What should I offer?” asked the forlorn mother. “Offer an ihrami,” she replied (that is, a heavy woolen bedcover). As soon as she promised the ihrami to the Saint, her son became well. She sewed into this bedcover a hair from the Saint’s belt, which she had wrapped around her sick child as a blessing.
***
Anastasia Lekatsa from Kalyvia remembers that when she was fifteen years old, the shepherd S. Paizis would sleep on the mountain with his flock during the summer nights. The shepherd said with awe that one night he saw light ascending from the opposite mountain of Vigla. It went to the Church of Saint Barbara, and would drop from sight behind the church, where Saint Joachim’s grave is located.
To be continued...Part Twelve
To Avoid Greed and Lust Avoid Temptation, says New Study
August 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Whether it's highlighted in major news headlines about Argentinean affairs and Ponzi schemes, or in personal battles with obesity and drug addiction, individuals regularly succumb to greed, lust and self-destructive behaviors. New research from the Kellogg School of Management examines why this is the case, and demonstrates that individuals believe they have more restraint than they actually possess - ultimately leading to poor decision-making.
The study, led by Loran Nordgren, senior lecturer of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, examined how an individual's belief in his/her ability to control impulses such as greed, drug craving and sexual arousal influenced responses to temptation. The research found the sample, on average, displayed a "restraint bias," causing individuals to miscalculate the amount of temptation they could truly handle, in turn leading to a greater likelihood of indulging impulsive or addictive behavior.
"People are not good at anticipating the power of their urges, and those who are the most confident about their self-control are the most likely to give into temptation," said Nordgren. "The key is simply to avoid any situations where vices and other weaknesses thrive and, most importantly, for individuals to keep a humble view of their willpower."
In developing their case, the study's authors cited previous research demonstrating that people often have difficulty appreciating the power of impulsive states. People in a "cold state" (not experiencing hunger, anger, sexual arousal, etc.) tend to underestimate how a "hot," impulsive state will influence their behavior. To expand upon these findings, the study authors set out to test whether:
- People in a cold, non-impulsive state will overestimate their ability to control impulses
- People in a hot, impulsive state will have a more realistic view of their capacity for impulse control
- People who perceive they have a high capacity for impulse control will expose themselves to more temptation and will ultimately exhibit more impulsive behavior.
To test their hypotheses, the researchers conducted four experiments focusing on hunger, addiction and mental fatigue. Each experiment resulted in significant "restraint bias."
For example, one experiment focused on cigarette addiction found those who overestimated their capacity for self-control were much more likely to smoke a cigarette after simply watching a movie about smoking. Another experiment centered on hunger.
Results found a satiated group was significantly less likely to return snacks than a hungry group who limited their temptation by choosing less appealing snacks.
"A system which assumes people will control themselves is going to fall prey to this restraint bias; we expose ourselves to more temptation than is wise, and subsequently we have millions of people suffering with obesity, addictions and other unhealthy lifestyles," said Nordgren.
"And, while our study focused on personal behaviors like smoking and eating, it is easy to apply our findings to a broader context. Understanding the power of temptation, you might also ask about the extent to which we need oversight or regulatory guidelines for business and political leaders."
Furthermore, this research suggests observers should think twice before judging those who fall prey to temptation because most people overestimate their capacity to control their own impulses, Nordgren concluded.
The study will appear in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science. Nordgren co-authored the research with Joop van der Pligt and Frank van Harreveld of the University of Amsterdam.
Friday, September 11, 2009
An Orthodox Hymn For September 11th (9/11)?
Well, not really. It is actually an Orthodox hymn for Augustust 29th, which is the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. However, according to the Old Calendar August 29th lands on the New Calendar September 11th. This makes the hymn all the more interesting, especially when you consider that at the hour Muslim terrorists struck America (Mid-morning), Old Calendar Orthodox were chanting the following hymn.
This is taken from the 9th Ode of the Canon for the Feast, written by St. John of Damascus, and drawing on Psalm 44:
Draw Your bow, march forward and reign, O Son of the Mother of God, subduing the Ishmaelite people that wars against us, granting victories to our Orthodox Sovereign over barbarian enemies at the prayers of the one who gave You birth, O Word of God.
St. John was the first Christian to write against the "new" Islamic heresy in his book Against Heresies. He lived among them and worked for them in the city of Damascus before being tonsured a monk at St. Savas Monastery in Israel. And the Muslims (Ishmaelites, as he called them) were a much greater force and threat than they are now.
From what I understand, contemporary Old Calendarists have reworded this prayer to fit our times. Here is what they sing:
Draw Thy bow, and prosper and reign, O Son of the Mother of God, subduing the Muslems who wage war against us and granting victory to our Orthodox Hierarchs over all heresies, through the entreaties of Her Who gave birth to Thee, O Word of God.
Swine Flu in the Chalice?
Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Alexios on the H1N1 Virus
September 10, 2009
As we look forward to the blessings of New Ecclesiastical Year, I greet you with joy and love in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, with prayers and good wishes for a healthy and joyous year. As I was traveling this summer, both in our Metropolis and Greece, I heard some talk from our brothers and sisters that we should question the way that we receive the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, due to concerns about the H1N1 virus. They were concerned that this would transmit the virus to the Faithful and of course they have a point.
If we were receiving only bread and wine there would be some, though not a lot, of cause for concern. Aside from the scientific facts showing that there is no difference in rates of illness between people who receive Holy Communion and the general population, aside from the fact that there have always been infectious and communicable disease, aside from the fact that more people die in car wrecks every year than from any flu, in order to receive we must have faith. Indeed as human beings we are weak in faith.
Even the disciples, who lived with Christ on a daily basis were weak in faith. We see this in the Gospel of St. Matthew, after the feeding of the 5000 when the disciples were caught in a violent storm on the lake, and they see Jesus walking toward them: “And Peter answered Him and said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” So He said, “Come.” And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink he cried out, saying, “Lord, save me!” And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
When Peter trusted in Christ, he was able to walk on water, but when he became afraid, he began to sink. And again in Matthew 17, a father brings his child who is possessed by a demon to Jesus to be cured, which the disciples were unable to do: “Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”
In order to receive, we must have faith, but unfortunately sometimes our brothers and sisters with little faith put up obstacles to freely approaching the chalice. Indeed when we are receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord, there is no fear, because “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18). On the other hand, when we are afraid of anything: disease, accidents, misfortune, who do we ask for help?
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our Lord is here to bless us and help us, not to make us sick. With this kind of understanding, we can give the answer to ourselves. When we think about receiving the Body and Blood, we realize that there have been many diseases over the past 2000 years, most of them more serious and deadly than the H1N1 virus. However I believe that we should explain to the Faithful what there are receiving and why. After all, we clergy consume all the elements left after Holy Communion is offered, and according to my knowledge, I have never heard of a priest, deacon or bishop falling ill afterwards.
As a matter of fact, I had the personal experience, when I was younger and an Archdeacon in Patras, and almost every Saturday after the Divine Liturgy, we visited the nearby TB hospital to offer Holy Communion to those who were too ill to come to church. These poor people, before modern treatments and antibiotics, were extremely infectious. Yet neither I nor my spiritual father, Father Artemios or Father Christopher developed tuberculosis after consuming the Holy Gifts. Not only that, we never even got sick. This happened not merely once or twice but repeatedly over the years. Father Christopher is still living (now in his 70’s) and so am I. Father Artemios died years ago of heart disease, not TB.
This is the situation, my brothers, which we must face and be honest with those who are weak in faith, so we can reassure them and help them to be strengthened in their faith. The only reason to approach the chalice in fear, is fear of God, if we receive unworthily. Truly I give glory to God that we have His Church, where we can pray for one another, pray for all people who are suffering from cancer or other diseases or misfortunes.
As we pray for them, we should also pray for those of little faith, and as St. Paul tells us in Hebrews 4:16, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” As we begin a new Ecclesiastical Year, I give thanks and praise to Almighty God for all His abundant blessings, and to send you my prayers and best wishes for a peaceful, healthy and joyous New Year for you and your Parish family. I remain, Paternally yours with love in Christ,
+ALEXIOS
Metropolitan of Atlanta
Papoulakis: Saint Joachim of Vatopaidi (10)
Kioni, Ithaki...continued from Part 9
Olga Sophianou of Kioni recounts that a fellow villager of hers, an older woman named Garoupho, lived alone without any human consolation. Papoulakis felt sorry for her and would go regularly to visit her. A neighbor, however, began slandering her out of envy, saying that she was having a sinful relationship with the Saint. The woman heard these tales and became very upset, but she continued to welcome Papoulakis, without telling him anything, and also offering him food as always. The Saint received information by the grace of God, and told the old lady Garoupho, “Do not be sad. Mitsalou, who falsely accused us, will get ‘the carboni’ (i.e., bad pimple) inside the nose, and no one will be able to greet her besause it will stink”. And indeed it came to pass just as the Saint had said.
***
Olga Sophianou tells us that a certain woman in Kioni violated the fast days of the Church. One Friday, as she was cooking meat, the Saint passed by her house and asked if she was cooking something. Out of shame before Papoulakis, she lied, saying that she was cooking only vegetables. The holy man instructed her, “Open the pot with the food.” She opened it and found the meat full of worms. Thus the Saint taught her in a practical way not to violate the fast.
There were also numerous other miraculous events associated with the fast. The Saint’s fervent desire was for his example to be a warning for Christians not to disdain the fasts.
***
The Elder also vigorously urged the people to observe Sunday as a day of rest. Mrs. Paraskevi Vlasopoulou relates that Yiannis Karampoulos’s mother-in-law, from Vathy, was gathering wild greens on a Sunday. Papoulakis requested that she save a little boiled greens for him as well, and he would drop by for a meal. The woman readily saved him a portion. The Saint came to her house and asked her to bring him the food. The lady opened the pot with the greens in order to serve him his portion, but rather than greens, she found it full of worms.
Occurrences similar to this were common throughout the island. In this way the Saint wished to set forth the lesson for the Ithacans not to disregard Sunday as a day of rest, since it is a rule of the Church.
***
Voula Vlasopoulou of Ithaki attests that there was a poverty-stricken mother, Balatsourena, with three little children. One evening, she had absolutely nothing to give them to eat. What did she do to try to get the children to sleep while still hungry? She lit a small clay oven, like a baking pan, and placed a brick tile underneath it, to look as if it were a loaf of bread — a pitouli, as the Ithacans call it, which is a small pita. “Go to bed,” she told the children, “until the pitouli is ready to eat.” The children got into bed, looking forward with anguish to satisfying their hunger. Their patience was wearing thin, and every so often they would call out, “Mama, is the pitouli ready yet?” “Not yet,” replied the hapless mother, with a rent heart. Suddenly, without having been invited, Papoulakis entered the house and greeted her as always with great kindness and joy. “Good evening. I see here you’ve lit the oven.” “Oh, my dear Papoulakis; if you only knew what a state I’m in,” replied the stricken mother in tears. “My children haven’t eaten, and they want some bread. This evening I don’t have anything to give them, so to trick them into going to sleep hungry, I told them that I’m making them a pitouli, putting a brick tile in the oven as if it were a loaf ready to be baked.” “Open up the pan,” the Saint told her. She opened the pan, and, O wonder of wonders, the tile that had been placed underneath had been transformed into warm bread! “Call the children,” he told her, “and give them some bread; I want part of it, too.” Papoulakis took a portion of the hot bread and went to the village of Kanellata. He left it at a house there, placing it through the chicken hole in the door. The Saint always did such things, whenever he knew that someone was in need.
***
Sophia Lombardou from Anogi relates that one evening, a woman from Anogi was worried because her husband was late coming home. Papoulakis was passing through the area and saw the woman very upset. When she told him about her problem, the Saint immediately consoled her. “Your husband will come;” he assured her, “don’t be so worried and upset. He saw something on the way and was frightened. When he arrives, tell him that he has a bad streak from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, because he is a blasphemer and is very ill-tempered, and I’m trying to remove this from him.” Her husband finally returned home, explaining that he encountered a column of fire in front of him on the road that prevented him from continuing until he finally managed with great difficulty to get around it. His wife then told him, “Papoulakis told me that you had met some obstruction on the way; through his prayers you’ve arrive here unharmed. He instructed me to tell you that you must stop being blasphemous and ill-tempered; otherwise you can expect much evil to befall you.” Hearing these revelations of Papoulakis, he was overcome by fear and did not blaspheme again.
***
Ioanna Livani from Vathy tells us that one day Papoulakis went to the home of her step-daughter Spyraina, and gave her two oil lamps to keep in her trunk. After about fifteen days had passed, he went and asked her for them. Though she searched for them where she had put them, inexplicably she could not find them and became anxious and upset. Calming her down, Papoulakis asked if he could go and look for them himself. No sooner had he begun looking for the lamps in the trunk that he found them. As soon as Spyraina saw this miracle before her eyes, she began to cry out of awe for the Saint.
Mrs. Livani also relates that Spyraina went one morning to light the votive lamps in the Church of Saint Spyridon in Vrysi. On the way she met two military officers. They greeted her, but did not speak to her. Shortly thereafter, Papoulakis came by and, without her having mentioned anything to him, said, “The two officers that you met today while going to Saint Spyridon’s were the Archangels Michael and Gabriel.” Just a little beyond where Spyraina had seen the “officers”, were the ruins of a chapel dedicated to the Archangels.
***
Margarita Moraiti from Ithaki recounts that, one day, Papoulakis went to a home and found them cooking lentils. The holy man told the woman of the house, “Save some lentils for me as well, and I’ll come this evening to eat.” That evening, Papoulakis returned to her home, and they set out the lentils for him and gave him a spoon made of bone with which to eat them. Seeing the bone spoon, Papoulakis reacted. “I have never put a bone in my mouth; do you expect me to do so now?” With these words the Saint gave witness to his ascetic spirit, because of which he had never eaten meat. Abstaining from eating meat is a monastic tradition, and in particular is a part of the Athonite way of life.
***
The former local administrator of the Community of Stavros, Panos Papadopoulos, tells us of an occurrence that his grandmother described to him concerning his grandfather, Panos Papadopoulos. His grandfather had a boat with which he made a living as a merchant. Once, someone from Preveza gave him ten drachmas to give to Papoulakis. The old man decided it would be useful to take the ten drachmas and trade with them, and as soon as he collected the profit, he would give the money to Papoulakis. Arriving at Frikes (a harbor of northern Ithaki) on his return from Preveza, he encountered Papoulakis on the pier, who, by grace, had foreseen everything. Before the man had a chance to say anything, he told him, “Panos, don’t worry about not having the ten drachmas they gave you in Preveza to give me. As soon as you sell what you’ve brought, you can give them to me.”
***
Angeliki Kallinikou from Ithaki relates that her grandmother, Giorgoulla, had been married for six years without having children. One day she was sitting outside the door of her house, crying. At that moment, Papoulakis was passing by, and when he saw her crying, he asked her the reason for her tears. “My dear Papoulakis,” she replied, "I’ve been married for so many years and I’m not able to have children.” "You’ll have them, my Giorgoulla;” he responded, “you must simply open and tend to three chapels: one to Saint Constantine below Hani, one to Saint John over on the mountain at Spatharata, and one to the Life-Giving Spring over at Stellatata. Giorgoulla indeed tended these three chapels and soon bore children.
To be continued…Part 11
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Papoulakis: Saint Joachim of Vatopaidi (9)
...continued from Part 8
K. Koutsouvelis from Kioni recounted that a certain man from Anogi had been nurturing a bitter hatred for a fellow villager of his, for reasons of honor. Unable to free himself from this passion, he was thinking about taking the mans life and was already planning in his mind how to carrying it out. No one suspected his intentions, and perhaps even the intended victim had no idea of his disposition. One day he was informed that his enemy was in Stavros, and that during the night he would be returning to Anogi. He saw this as a suitable opportunity to wait in ambush in a hidden place, and the moment the man passed by, he would shoot him with his gun.
While blessed Papoulakis was praying for the unfortunate state of all humanity, he was informed by Divine Grace about this mans plan and immediately set off to meet and restrain him. Walking quietly and carefully, the Elder silently and suddenly approached the would-be murderer, who was poised with his finger on the trigger. Having disarmed him, he gave him a severe reprimand, reminding him of the consequences of murder in both the present and the future life. As soon as he brought him to his senses, he told him they were going home. He did not take him, however, to his own home, but to the home of his enemy, whom he had narrowly missed killing. At this meeting, with fatherly concern and true affection, the blessed peacemaking Elder brought about their reconciliation; afterwards, he instructed that a meal be prepared. Thus, through the miraculous intervention of Papoulakis, a lasting peace was restored between enemies whose differences would have been resolved with death.
***
Katerina C. Paizi and L. Ventouras from Vathy related that during the year 1848 a great famine struck Ithaki, particularly in the outlying regions of the island. They milled whatever they could find: legumes, nuts, wild broad beans, and whatever else seemed suitable to alleviate their hunger. Then, against all hope, a vessel from Galaxeidi docked at Ithaki bearing a cargo of maize corn. Papoulakis was eager to pay for it himself in order to share it out among the people. This intervention of the holy Elder was primarily intended to block the traders craving to buy the produce in order to ruthlessly exploit the people, especially the poor, in the black market. He then notified the people that each person should bring a container in order to receive a portion of the corn; this process continued for about a week. As soon as the distribution finished, the captain asked for his money, but unfortunately Papoulakis had not yet managed to collect it. Consequently, the captain pressed charges against the Elder with the police, who berated him severely, considering his actions as fraud. With deep humility, the pious Elder asked for a slight deferment, which was granted him. He sent letters to various friends of his and, as an Athonite, to the monastery of his repentance, as well as to the other Athonite abbots, seeking their help. He soon gathered the required amount and gave proof of his fatherly care and providence at the appropriate moment when the poor people needed protection. When he received the money, the ships captain asked forgiveness for his petulance, and at that same moment a strong earth tremor occurred.
***
D. Raftopoulos from Kioni related that in 1867, on the 7th of February, Papoulakis was a guest at the home of D. Raftopoulos in Kioni. That night, he rose from his sleep in an alarmed state. He woke the woman of the house and informed her that a severe trial, some great misfortune, was on its way. He prompted her to light a fire and to incense the house, and instructed that all should begin to pray. Everyone immediately complied with Papoulakis instruction and prayed as he was able. Around dawn, a major earthquake occurred on Ithaki and Kefallonia (Cephalonia), which continued to recur until July with great damage and destruction in the area.
***
Efstathios Karatzis (Trakalos) from Kioni described how Papoulakis saved three shipwrecked men with his boldness before God. He prophesied their rescue to their relatives, who had given them up for dead and were already holding memorial services for them. The blessed Elder prophesied that they were alive and on Malta, and that the British newspapers would be writing about their rescue, which indeed happened. A few days later, they returned to Ithaki alive and unharmed.
***
Dedomenikos of Vathy recounted that a man from Anogi had a strange habit that he maintained scrupulously, to the detriment of his soul. He kept it secret, however, never letting anyone learn of this activity of his. Having a resentful character, he kept a detailed record in a notebook of anyone who had ever wronged him according to his judgment in order to take revenge when the opportunity would present itself. But this did not escape the clairvoyant Elder. One day Papoulakis visited him at his home, and the man welcomed him with joy. The discreet Elder began counseling him about love and depicting for him the destruction that results from resentment and revenge. At certain points during his admonition, he revealed the mans evil intentions and mentioned the notebook he was keeping. Hearing these revelations, the fellow was shaken, because no one had known about these things. The Elder thus persuaded him to destroy the notebook, replacing it instead with love.
***
Georgios Paizis, a public secretary of Kioni, related that one of the final things that the ever-memorable Papoulakis achieved, with the help of Divine Grace, was a reconciliation with his own bitter and lifelong enemy, a certain G. Tsapralis. Indifferent by character and caught up in the maze of his business ventures, the man did not like the blessed Elder and influenced the bishop of the area at that time, Gavriil (Gabriel), to exile Papoulakis to his monastery. His persecutors wife Eriphili, however, was a pious and faithful woman who esteemed the Elder. When the Elder was approaching his end, a multitude of people drew near him with tears to receive his blessing and to assist him with whatever they could. The Elder declined all their offers, saying that he was awaiting death and that there was nothing more that he needed. To everyone he was continuously bestowing blessing and prayers. As soon as Eriphili, the wife of the merchant Tsapralis, hastened with devotion to take his blessing, he spoke to her about kindness and, at the same time, asked what was happening with the boat of their nephew Kravaris. The woman responded, "The ship has been lost, Elder; moreover, we believe that he himself went down with it, which has left all of us in deep grief." "No, my daughter", Papoulakis told her, "the ship is safe and will soon arrive in the harbor, but I will then no longer be in this life. At that hour you will be taking me for my burial." Then the people asked him what they could bring him, and he replied with a winsome smile, "If I had an apple, I would eat it."
Everyone was wondering where an apple could be found at such a time of the year during February. Bear in mind that at that time they were not able to store fruit as they do today. Mrs. Eriphili remembered that, more than a year before, she had saved nine apples in a drawer, but doubted whether one of them would still be in good condition. She set off for home and told her husband about this and about the prediction regarding the ship. This callous and implacable detractor of Papoulakis then said to his wife, "If you find a good apple then I'll believe that he's a holy man, and Ill pay him homage." Mrs. Eriphili indeed opened her cabinet and found all the apples spoiled that she had saved except for one, which was as red and juicy as if it had just been picked from the tree. With great joy she showed it to her husband, and the two of them set off to see Papoulakis. With a trembling hand the Elder took the apple and said with compunction, "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God" (Lk. 18:27). When he saw his lifelong persecutor appear in the doorway, he said with a joyful voice, "Welcome, Captain Georgis".
Filled with emotion, his former enemy was transformed into a devout admirer and contritely asked forgiveness for all his behavior. The clairvoyant Elder had prayed intently to this end; thus he received with fatherly affection his former detractor as a guileless sheep that had returned to the fold of repentance. He considered this accomplishment of Divine Grace to be the final triumph of his lifelong spiritual effort toward the salvation of his neighbor.
After farewells and devout reverences of many faithful who sensed the Elders impending passing, he bestowed his final admonitions and surrendered his spirit into the hands of God. During the funeral procession with his holy remains, the ship of Nicholas Kravaris arrived in the harbor, just as the Elder had predicted.
***
Margarita Moraiti related that once her aunts mother, Charikleias Priovolou, was traveling down by foot from Lefki, carrying her sick little child in a crib on her head, in order to take him to the doctor in Ithaki. On the way she met Papoulakis, who asked her where she was going. "I'm taking the child to the doctor, my dear Papoulakis, because hes very sick." Papoulakis made the sign of the Cross over him and said, "Your child doesn't have anything wrong with him", and indeed he became completely well.
She continued to welcome Papoulakis without mentioning anything about it to him, and as usual would always prepare a meal for him. The situation was revealed to Papoulakis, by the Grace of God, and he told Garoupho, "Dont let this bother you; and Mitsalou who is slandering us will find the karponi [a bad pimple] in her nose, and no one will be able to greet and kiss her because of the stench". And in fact it happened just as the Saint said it would.
***
Stamatoula Griva from Perahori relates that once when the elderly Mrs. Linardena was cooking greens, Papoulakis asked that she save some for him. The elderly woman readily agreed to fulfill the Elders wish, but she told him with embarrassment that she had no oil. "Take a look and see"; Papoulakis told her, "perhaps there is some left in the jar." Though she responded that she had emptied out the vessel and washed it, the holy man once again prompted her to go and take another look, trusting in God. When she did in fact take another look and found the vessel full of oil, she marveled at the mans boldness before God. Papoulakis instructed her not to reveal this to anyone until after his death.
To be continued…Part 10
The Emptiness of Buddhism
Over the past few days a few articles in the news on Buddhist-style meditation caught my attention which show a growing trend in America.
The first was titled "In the Arizona Desert, Buddhists Will Embark on a Three-Year Silent Retreat". Prolonged silence, they explain, is the only way to reach the deep level of inner awareness required to bring true happiness to the world. However it is not only silence that they are subjecting themselves to, but the attainment of thoughtlessness to escape suffering. Imagine having thoughtlessness as your goal in life? Talk about escapism that denies the realities of life! But then again, for Buddhists life is an illusion so there is no real sense of "reality". As the article explaines, for Buddhists "Life and death had no intrinsic meaning. Instead, reality depended on perception."
The second article was titled "Massachusetts Meditation Center Draws Overstressed Young Adults". This article may seem more mild in its approach, since it seems to only be about young adults of the cyber-generation seeking relief of the stress in their life through meditation. But in essence it is exactly like the first article above, as it says: "Keeping even the most basic forms of communication, like speaking and writing, to a minimum, they meditated in silence, practicing vipassana, or insight meditation, an ancient Buddhist technique that involves focusing one’s attention on the present, on the breath, mind, and body." The goal is the same - to eliminate thoughts through techniques that will essentially help you to escape perceived reality for a reality imperceptable that is found deep within oneself.
To be thoughtless through meditation may help someone appear to escape suffering and stress, but it denies human reason and higher values to the point where you risk even losing your humanity - let alone deny the existence of God outside of oneself. Many like to compare Buddhism with Christianity or with the Orthodox practice of Hesychasm, but the two are so polar opposite that one would have to go to great lengths to make such comparisons appear non-contradictory. But then again, the law of non-contradiction does not appear in this type of Eastern philosophy because if it did it would make it totally unreasonable.
I also read a very interesting and fascinating account of a man who lives nearby me in Brookline who put years into practicing Zen Buddhism. His experience is a complete exposure of the dangers and falsehoods inherent in Buddhism and the utter contradiction it has with Christianity. Though its sort of long, I encourage you to read his testimony titled "Zen and the Art of Not Knowing God".
In the book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, the blessed Fr. Seraphim of Platina exposes the dangers of this "New Spirituality" which invaded America in the 20th century and merely rehashed these old world Asian philosophies. He spoke from experience, having himself turned away from Buddhist and Taoist philosophy towards the pastures and living waters of Orthodox Christianity. He writes and warns:
Other examples of the new Eastern cults in the West could be multiplied; each year finds new ones, or new transformations of old ones. In addition to the overtly religious cults, the last decade especially has seen an increase of secular "consciousness cults," as one popular newsmagazine calls them (U.S. News and World Report, Feb. 16, 1976, p. 40). These "mindtherapy" groups include the "Erhard Seminars Training" established in 1971, "Rolfing," "Silva Mind Control," and various forms of "encounter" and "biofeedback," all of which offer a "release of tensions" and a "tapping of the hidden capabilities" of man, expressed in a more or less plausible 20th-century "scientific" jargon. One is reminded also of other "consciousness" movements that have become less fashionable today, from "Christian Science" to "Science of Mind" to "Scientology."
All these movements are incompatible with Christianity. Orthodox Christians must be told absolutely to stay away from them.
Why do we speak so categorically?
1. These movements have no foundation in Christian tradition or practice, but are purely the product of Eastern pagan religions or of modern spiritism, more or less diluted and often presented as "non-religious." They not only teach wrongly, not in accordance with Christian doctrine, about spiritual life; they also lead one, whether through pagan religious experiences or psychic experiments, into a wrong spiritual path whose end is spiritual and psychic disaster, and ultimately the loss of one's soul eternally.
2. Specifically, the experience of "spiritual quietness" which is given by various kinds of meditation, whether without specific religious content (as is claimed by "TM," some forms of Yoga and Zen, and the secular cults) or with pagan religious content (as in Hare Krishna, the "Divine Light Mission," "31-10," etc.), is an entrance to the "cosmic" spiritual realm where the deeper side of the human personality enters into contact with actual spiritual beings. These beings, in man's fallen state, are first of all the demons or fallen spirits who are closest to man. Zen Buddhist meditators themselves, despite all their cautions about spiritual "experiences," describe their encounters with these spirits (mixed with human fantasies), all the while emphasizing that they are not "clinging" to them.
3. The "initiation" into experiences of the psychic realm which the "consciousness cults" provide involves one in something beyond the conscious control of the human will; thus, once having been "initiated," it is often a very difficult thing to untangle oneself from undesirable psychic experiences. In this way, the "new religious consciousness" becomes an enemy of Christianity that is much more powerful and dangerous than any of the heresies of the past. When experience is emphasized above doctrine, the normal Christian safeguards which protect one against the attacks of fallen spirits are removed or neutralized, and the passiveness and "openness" which characterize the new cults literally open one up to be used by demons. Studies of the experiences of many of the "consciousness cults" show that there is a regular progression in them from experiences which at first are "good" or "neutral" to experiences which become strange and frightening and in the end clearly demonic. Even the purely physical side of psychic disciplines like Yoga are dangerous, because they are derived from and dispose one towards the psychic attitudes and experiences which are the original purpose of Yoga practice.
The seductive power of the "new religious consciousness" is so great today that it can take possession of one even while he believes that he is remaining a Christian. This is true not only of those who indulge in the superficial syncretisms or combinations of Christianity and Eastern religions which have been mentioned above; it is true also of an increasing number of people who regard themselves as fervent Christians. The profound ignorance of true Christian spiritual experience in our times is producing a false Christian "spirituality" whose nature is closely kin to the "new religious consciousness.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Panagia Plataniotissa: Sacred Shrines Which Honor the Nativity of the Theotokos (2)
The love Greeks have for the Panagia, and in return the love the Panagia has for the Greeks, is manifested through the numerous churches and monasteries dedicated to her throughout Greece. Out of 8660 parishes in Greece, 1900 are dedicated to the Theotokos; and of the 490 monasteries of Greece, 170 honor her as their protectress. And one of the most beautiful and astonishing shrines of the Panagia is found in a small village of Kalavryta known as Plataniotissa.
The history of this shrine goes back to the year 840 during the dark days of iconoclasm. It was at this time that the most famous shrine of Kalavryta, the Monastery of Mega Spelaion (Great Cave), was torched. This Monastery was built in a very large cave five centuries earlier which in apostolic times served as a church in which the Apostle Luke celebrated the Divine Liturgy and according to tradition sculpted the miraculous image of the most pure Virgin known as Mega Speliotissa. During the torching of the Monastery, its beloved icon and its treasures were preserved.
As the church of the Monastery was being rebuilt, the abbot of Mega Spelaion took the sacred icon and went to Patras and Aigio to preach the Orthodox faith. When the church was rebuilt, he planned to return and restore the icon in its temple.
That same year, as the monks from Mega Spelaion Monastery were returning from their sojourn in Patras, they spent the night by the bank of the river in the village of Klapatsouna (as it was called back then). It was on this spot in the fourth century that the founders of the Monastery of Mega Spelaion, Saints Symeon and Theodore, beheld in a vision the three Apostles who in their lifetimes preached and established churches in that area of Achaia - Sts. Paul, Andrew and Luke. This is where these Apostles instructed Sts. Symeon and Theodore to find a shepherd girl named Efrosyne who would lead them to the site of the ancient church and sacred icon. Thus while resting in this same spot, the monks decided to hide the Mega Speliotissa icon in the hollow of a plane tree to protect it from the iconoclasts.
In the morning the monks arose to find a miraculous wonder. The spot where they had left the icon there was found an imprint of the image in the hollow of the hard surface of the plane tree, and this identical image was bathed in light. This remarkable phenomenon of the imprint is preserved to this day and a chapel now resides in the hollow of the tree.
The chapel can be found on the way from Kalavrita to Aigio via Pteri, at around 30km from Kalavrita. In a beautiful green location with abundant spring waters flowing around, the small chapel of Panagia Plataniotissa (All Holy Virgin of the Plane Tree) is tucked inside the hollow of a large plane tree. Its an amazing and unique natural phenomenon which was created when three plane trees sprung out close to each other and over the course of time they united. These three plane trees which have been united as one are considered by the faithful as being an image of the Holy Trinity, while the four plane trees which surround them symbolize the four Gospels.
This historical plane tree measures 25m in height, its base circumference is 16m, and around its middle it measures 12.65m. The hollow can fit approximately twenty people. The sacred imprint of the icon of the Virgin Mary is depicted on the tree’s bark 3m above the ground. An altar area with iconostasion is set up for the service of the Divine Liturgy. On the southeastern wall of the tree is the only window which together with the door bring in sunlight. The iconography within the chapel was done in 1740, and although has amateur characteristics, it encourages a sense of piety and faith among visitors.
Many miracles are done here for the faithful by the grace of the Panagia. Within the hollow are gifts of metalic images which bear testimony to the miraculous powers of the imprinted image. It is also said that on August 23rd each year, which commemorates both the apodoseis of the Dormition feast as well as the day on which the Monastery of Mega Spelaion was founded, a luminous sphere of light descends from the area of the Monastery and comes to envelope the plane tree. This phenomenon causes many to sleep outdoors by the Plataniotissa Chapel, so that they might catch a glimpse of the holy light.
The feast day of the Plataniotissa Chapel is officially celebrated on September 8th each year, to honor the Nativity of the Theotokos. Hundreds gather from throughout Greece to participate in the festivities.
Κοντάκιον τῆς Πλατανιωτίσσης.
Ἦχος πλ. δ´. Τῇ Ὑπερμάχῳ.
Ἡ τῶν Πλατάνων ἀπειρόκαλη μονάζουσα,
ὡς τῶν θηρίων ὠμοιώθη ἡ Βασίλισσα,
ἐν κρύπτῃ δένδρων διεβίωσεν ὡς τοῦ τέλους.
Ἀπηρνήθη τὰ τοῦ θρόνου δικαιώματα
καὶ ἐνεδύθη τοῦ χειμῶνος τὴν λευκότητα.
Αὐτῇ καὶ ἡμεῖς κραυγάζομεν·
χαῖρε Παναγία Πλατανιώτισσα.
The imprinted image of Megalo Spelaiotissa
Read Part One here...Read Part Three here.
New Atheists vs. Framing Atheists: ID Perspective
Fraticide: New Atheists vs. Framing Atheists
Michael Egnor
August 27, 2009
Discovery News
As of late there has been a lot of spittle passed between two camps in the Darwin-sphere. Things are getting really nasty, as so often happens among atheist factions.
On one side are the new atheists: Coyne, Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, Myers.
On the other side are the … well for want of a better word — the "framing" atheists: Ruse, Mooney, Kirshenbaum, Nisbet, Scott.
With the exception of a few theist Darwinians (an oxymoron, I know) like Ken Miller, the motivation of the combatants seems to be the same: how to best advance an atheist-Darwinian understanding of man and nature. The factions differ on tactics.
The new atheists advocate militancy. They believe:
1) The scientific method is the proper tool for acquiring all knowledge. (Which is self-contradictory, because this positivist assertion is itself a philosophical, not a scientific, inference.)
2) Science, properly understood, proves atheism true (which is, of course, nonsense. The obvious and inescapable inference to formal and final causation in nature — the governance of nature — implies the primacy of a Mind that transcends the natural world).
3) Religion is a scourge on mankind (actually, men have been always and everywhere disposed to evil. The most radical evil known to man has been atheism in power — cf. the Reign of Terror, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, etc…).
4) Totalitarian methods, such as denial of positions of leadership based on religious beliefs (e.g. Francis Collins) and expulsion of skeptics (e.g. Ben Stein's Expelled), are necessary to advance atheism, particularly in science.
The framing atheists advocate tactical savvy. They believe:
1) The scientific method cannot be applied to non-scientific domains of inquiry.
2) Atheism and Darwinism are true for philosophical reasons, but science is best conducted without explicit reference to metaphysics.
3) The impact of religion on mankind is mixed, and it is imperative to preserve the good (Christian ethics) and exclude the bad (creationism).
4) Totalitarian methods, which are inherent to atheism-in-practice, should be eschewed, for tactical as well as (perhaps) moral reasons.
It’ll be interesting to see how the struggle between the new atheists and the framing atheists works itself out. I have no doubt that the new atheist approach is of considerable help to the ID movement. New atheism is an amalgam of all that is odious about atheism: self-aggrandizing arrogance, ignorance of even the rudiments of philosophy or theology or history, and the inexorable recourse to censorship, professional destruction, and other totalitarian methods. The only way in which the new atheists make the theist job harder in this debate is that the new atheists are so radically explicit that they’re difficult to satirize.
Framing atheists are much more difficult to deal with. They are less likely to be practicing scientists, but they are much savvier about the effective advancement of their ideology. The only way that atheism can advance is if it is implicit in cultural change, not explicit. That is why Darwinism has been atheism’s most powerful engine, bar none. The assertion that there is no God and therefore no teleology in nature is, to thoughtful men, transparent nonsense; it can only be advanced by cloaking it in ‘science’ — ill-defined concepts such as ‘evolution’ serve nicely, and have been remarkably effective.
Framing atheists understand this. Philosopher Michael Ruse is a likeable fellow, but his muddled thinking on the Intelligent Design-Darwinism debate is no more correct or even coherent than that of his feral new atheist interlocutors. But Ruse does have the sense to see that Darwinism fails when it is marketed as a totalitarian religion, and that the only way to advance Darwinian atheism and materialism in our culture is to be less than explicit about its (quite obvious) characteristics and implications. Chris Mooney, Sheril Kirshenbaum, Matt Nisbet, and Eugenie Scott understand the marketing tactics needed to advance the atheist world-view as well. I suspect that their critique of the new atheists has little to do with principle; if new atheism were clearly successful in advancing its agenda, the framers would be quietly enjoying atheism’s growing ideological hegemony, and would raise no objections at all to its ugly tactics. But the framers see the iceberg approaching, and they realize that atheism will fail if it is explicit and tries to advance using the totalitarian methods inherent to it.
New atheists' candor has forced framing atheists to do salvage work. But what framing atheists need to ask themselves is this: is atheism worth saving? Perhaps the foundation of existence is a Mind, and not mere matter.
Perhaps teleology in nature is real.
Michael Egnor
August 27, 2009
Discovery News
As of late there has been a lot of spittle passed between two camps in the Darwin-sphere. Things are getting really nasty, as so often happens among atheist factions.
On one side are the new atheists: Coyne, Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, Myers.
On the other side are the … well for want of a better word — the "framing" atheists: Ruse, Mooney, Kirshenbaum, Nisbet, Scott.
With the exception of a few theist Darwinians (an oxymoron, I know) like Ken Miller, the motivation of the combatants seems to be the same: how to best advance an atheist-Darwinian understanding of man and nature. The factions differ on tactics.
The new atheists advocate militancy. They believe:
1) The scientific method is the proper tool for acquiring all knowledge. (Which is self-contradictory, because this positivist assertion is itself a philosophical, not a scientific, inference.)
2) Science, properly understood, proves atheism true (which is, of course, nonsense. The obvious and inescapable inference to formal and final causation in nature — the governance of nature — implies the primacy of a Mind that transcends the natural world).
3) Religion is a scourge on mankind (actually, men have been always and everywhere disposed to evil. The most radical evil known to man has been atheism in power — cf. the Reign of Terror, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, etc…).
4) Totalitarian methods, such as denial of positions of leadership based on religious beliefs (e.g. Francis Collins) and expulsion of skeptics (e.g. Ben Stein's Expelled), are necessary to advance atheism, particularly in science.
The framing atheists advocate tactical savvy. They believe:
1) The scientific method cannot be applied to non-scientific domains of inquiry.
2) Atheism and Darwinism are true for philosophical reasons, but science is best conducted without explicit reference to metaphysics.
3) The impact of religion on mankind is mixed, and it is imperative to preserve the good (Christian ethics) and exclude the bad (creationism).
4) Totalitarian methods, which are inherent to atheism-in-practice, should be eschewed, for tactical as well as (perhaps) moral reasons.
It’ll be interesting to see how the struggle between the new atheists and the framing atheists works itself out. I have no doubt that the new atheist approach is of considerable help to the ID movement. New atheism is an amalgam of all that is odious about atheism: self-aggrandizing arrogance, ignorance of even the rudiments of philosophy or theology or history, and the inexorable recourse to censorship, professional destruction, and other totalitarian methods. The only way in which the new atheists make the theist job harder in this debate is that the new atheists are so radically explicit that they’re difficult to satirize.
Framing atheists are much more difficult to deal with. They are less likely to be practicing scientists, but they are much savvier about the effective advancement of their ideology. The only way that atheism can advance is if it is implicit in cultural change, not explicit. That is why Darwinism has been atheism’s most powerful engine, bar none. The assertion that there is no God and therefore no teleology in nature is, to thoughtful men, transparent nonsense; it can only be advanced by cloaking it in ‘science’ — ill-defined concepts such as ‘evolution’ serve nicely, and have been remarkably effective.
Framing atheists understand this. Philosopher Michael Ruse is a likeable fellow, but his muddled thinking on the Intelligent Design-Darwinism debate is no more correct or even coherent than that of his feral new atheist interlocutors. But Ruse does have the sense to see that Darwinism fails when it is marketed as a totalitarian religion, and that the only way to advance Darwinian atheism and materialism in our culture is to be less than explicit about its (quite obvious) characteristics and implications. Chris Mooney, Sheril Kirshenbaum, Matt Nisbet, and Eugenie Scott understand the marketing tactics needed to advance the atheist world-view as well. I suspect that their critique of the new atheists has little to do with principle; if new atheism were clearly successful in advancing its agenda, the framers would be quietly enjoying atheism’s growing ideological hegemony, and would raise no objections at all to its ugly tactics. But the framers see the iceberg approaching, and they realize that atheism will fail if it is explicit and tries to advance using the totalitarian methods inherent to it.
New atheists' candor has forced framing atheists to do salvage work. But what framing atheists need to ask themselves is this: is atheism worth saving? Perhaps the foundation of existence is a Mind, and not mere matter.
Perhaps teleology in nature is real.
Blood of St. Januarius Won't Be Kissed This Year Because of Swine Flu
St. Januarius the Hieromartyr (Feast Day - April 21); icon is from St. Nicholas Monastery, Ft. Myers, Florida, with an embedded relic of the Saint.[I should note that though St. Januarius (Gannaro) is an Orthodox Saint celebrated on April 21st, it is important to keep in mind that this "miracle" is post-schism (first reported in 1389) and more likely to have a natural explanation or even be a Papal hoax of the time as it has been replicated and explained (and we as Orthodox know that Papal authorities were not above formulating hoaxes!). In nearby Ravello the same thing happens supposedly with the blood of St. Panteleimon. In fact, because St. Panteleimon issued blood mixed with milk after his beheading, the vial in Ravello has blood mixed with milk (which makes this whole phenomenon seem more like a hoax). Interestingly after Vatican II the Catholic Church almost totally removed St. Januarius from the list of saints (because of little historical evidence supporting his story), but popular reactions against this compelled them to keep him there. If it is a hoax I don't believe it is perpetual, but maybe something was added to the vial initially to make it look like a miracle. Keep in mind that in the neighborhood of Naples they also claimed to have the blood of St. John the Baptist, St. Stephen the Protomartyr, St. Patricia, Nicholas of Talentino, Aloysius Gonzaga, and others. There were also reports of the liquefication of the breast milk of the Virgin mary as well as the fat of Thomas Aquinas. In Naples they also possess the relics of St. Januarius. - J.S.]
H1N1 Flu Stops Italians From Kissing Saint's Blood
Naples, Italy
Reuters
08 September 2009
Fear of H1N1 flu will stop devout Neapolitans from performing the time-honoured ritual of kissing the blood of their patron Saint Gennaro when the city's annual festival begins later this month.
The decision to forbid kissing of the glass phial containing the Saint's blood was taken reluctantly by ecclesiastical and city authorities Monday, and has brought protests from local politicians.
The phial will be put on display in the city's cathedral for a week from September 19 and the faithful will be allowed to touch it only with their foreheads.
Marco Di Lello, national co-ordinator of the Socialist Party, said the ban would "fuel the psychosis (over flu) which risks becoming unstoppable," and appealed to the archbishop of Naples to try to have the ban revoked.
Last week, a 51-year-old man became Italy's first fatal victim of the H1N1 flu virus, popularly known as swine flu, when he died in a Naples hospital.
In one of Italy's best-known festivals, Saint Gennaro's dried blood is said to liquefy twice a year, 17 centuries after his death. Some Neapolitans fear disaster may strike the city if the "miracle" does not occur.
Legend has it that when Gennaro was beheaded by pagan Romans in 305 A.D., a Neapolitan woman soaked up his blood with a sponge and preserved it in a glass phial.
The substance usually turns to liquid on September 19, the saint's feast day, and on the first Saturday in May. The "miracle" was first recorded in 1389, more than 1,000 years after Gennaro's martyrdom.
More scientifically minded sceptics say the phenomenon is due to chemicals present in the phial whose viscosity changes when it is stirred or moved.
Italy has not been among the nations hardest hit by the H1N1 flu virus, which has spread to at least 177 countries and caused at least 2,800 deaths, the World Health Organisation says.
Truth or Hoax: Ossuary of James Going to Trial
The Burial Box of Jesus' Brother: Fraud?
By Matthew Kalman
TIME
Jerusalem
Saturday, Sep. 05, 2009
The world of biblical archaeology was stirred in 2002 by the unveiling of a limestone burial box with the Aramaic inscription Yaakov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua ("James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus"). Allegedly dating to an era contemporaneous with Christ, the names were a tantalizing collation of potentially great significance: James was indeed the name of a New Testament personage known as the brother of Jesus, both ostensibly the sons of Joseph the carpenter, husband of Mary. If its dates were genuine, the burial box — or ossuary — could well be circumstantial evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, a tenet supported only by gospels and scripture written, at the earliest, a generation after his crucifixion and, of course, by the faith of hundreds of millions through 2,000 years.
Experts, however, declared the ossuary a modern-day forgery. It was seized by Israeli police and its owner, Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan, was arrested and charged with counterfeiting the ossuary and dozens of other items. Golan and co-defendant Robert Deutsch were put on trial in the Jerusalem District Court in 2005. Deutsch is accused of forging other valuables, though not the ossuary. Both men deny all charges.
Their trial is still continuing. Many of the world's top archaeological experts have testified as both prosecution and defense witnesses in proceedings that already run to more than 9,000 pages. And while the original charges against the ossuary appear to have been popularly accepted as conventional wisdom, they seem to be headed for trouble in the courtroom where the fine reading of law comes into play. Judge Aharon Farkash, who has a degree in archaeology, has wondered aloud in court how he can determine the authenticity of the items if the professors cannot agree among themselves.
The director of the Israel Antiquities Authority will soon take the witness stand for the first time since he declared, in December 2004, that the ossuary and other items seized in a two-year investigation were the "tip of the iceberg" of an international conspiracy that placed countless fakes in collections and museums around the world. He promised more arrests. But, while there is much evidence to sift through as the case stands, no other fake items have been seized, no-one else has been arrested, and Judge Farkash has hinted strongly that the prosecution case is foundering.
Next week, defense attorneys will take on one technical aspect, presenting evidence suggesting that scientists testifying for the prosecution have disproved their own findings against the ossuary. The scientific evidence against Golan is largely based on measurements of the oxygen isotopic composition (in technical terms, d18O — Delta 18 Oxygen) of the thin crust — or patina — covering the ossuary inscription.
Scientists are unsure exactly how the patina is formed but most agree it is composed of deposits of solid calcium carbonate that come by way of rain or groundwater. It can contain particles added by wind and perhaps biological. Additionally, depending on the levels of acidity, it may also involve a chemical reaction with the surface of the object. Some scientists say the process is similar to the way stalagmites grow in caves; others disagree.
Testifying for the prosecution, Miryam Bar-Matthews and Avner Ayalon from the Geological Survey of Israel recorded isotopic values as low as -10.2 permil (parts per thousand) in patina found within the inscription on the ossuary. (It is believed that the lower the number permil, the wetter the season was when it was created.) "The patina could not have been created in the Judean Hills or the surrounding area in a natural way," Bar-Matthews told the court in October 2007. With the exception of one letter in the word Yeshua ("Jesus"), she said, "the patina in the other letters is not natural."
Bar-Matthews and Ayalon based on their research on stalagmites in a cave near Jerusalem, where isotopic data showed rainfall and surface temperatures over many centuries, they concluded that the climate in the past 2,000 years could not have produced the patina on the ossuary. As they wrote with Professor Yuval Goren — another prosecution witness and professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University — in the Journal of Archeological Science in 2004, "the patina covering the letters was artificially prepared, most probably with hot water, and deposited onto the underlying letters." The article states: "There is no evidence for the existence of water with such low d18O values in the area during this time span. The range of rain and groundwater d18O values in the Judean Mountains region during the last 3,000 years could not have been lower than approx -6 permil." Pressed by defense counsel, Bar-Matthews declared that an isotopic value lower than -6.5 permil for the ossuary was "impossible."
However, a subsequent paper by Bar-Matthews and Ayalon with their American colleagues Ian Orland and John Valley studied samples from a stalagmite that apparently grew from about 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. And that showed isotopes as low as -8.5 permil, with annual rainfall in the Roman era reaching double the amounts the scientists had previously calculated. The article, published in the 2009 issue of Quaternary Research, was submitted for publication on October 11, 2007, before Bar-Matthews and Ayalon gave evidence at the ossuary trial.
The defense expects to use these esoteric contradictions against the prosecution when the trial resumes on Sunday. Defense expert Prof Joel Kronfeld of the Department of Geophysics at Tel Aviv University says the new data shatters the prosecution case. "I think this is amazing — it blows my mind," Kronfeld told TIME. "The findings in this study stand in complete contradiction to the assumptions presented by Ayalon and Bar-Matthews, and shed new light on the theory they presented to the court. They not only undercut their own arguments for determining that the patina on several items was not natural but rather quite the opposite. These data can support the authenticity of the items."
Bar-Matthews, however, argues the data from her later study are "irrelevant" to the ossuary trial. She and her colleagues say that the very low values representing wet seasons were "noise" that should not be taken in isolation since patina takes many years to form. Patina's isotopic value would represent an average figure, not just the low winter results. "It's like comparing tomatoes and gloves," Bar-Matthews told TIME. "There is no scenario where we can get light isotopic values below -6 permil also in Jerusalem under natural conditions."
The defense is likely to point out that the tests on the ossuary carried out by Bar-Matthews and Ayalon also found traces of patina in at least two other letters of the inscription with isotopes of -4.65 and -5.82 permil — well within the original range they suggested. Bar-Matthews and Ayalon discounted these results, saying the results had been corrupted either from the limestone of the box or from a nearby crack that had been recently repaired.
The trouble with this kind evidence is, of course, that the formation of patina isn't yet explainable in science everyone can agree on. The patina on one letter could be the result of one particularly wet winter that happened to leave its evidence on the ossuary — but perhaps not in a stalagmite in a cave. Or vice versa. "The analogy between the formation of cave deposits and the formation of patina on archeological objects is imprecise and more work is needed," says Professor Aldo Shemesh, an isotope expert at the Weizmann Institute who was also called as a defense expert. In the end, using this kind of evicence is a numbers game — figuring on averages of statistics over which all the experts disagree. Says Shemesh: "Scientific debates should be discussed and resolved in peer-reviewed literature and scientific conferences, not in court."
In his court, Judge Farkash will have a trial-full more of other evidence to figure what the "facts" are in this case, including examples of other half-finished alletedly ancient artifacts. So, even if the science of patinas leads the court nowhere, the pious may still in the end have to rely on their faith for the certainty of things unseen.
By Matthew Kalman
TIME
Jerusalem
Saturday, Sep. 05, 2009
The world of biblical archaeology was stirred in 2002 by the unveiling of a limestone burial box with the Aramaic inscription Yaakov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua ("James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus"). Allegedly dating to an era contemporaneous with Christ, the names were a tantalizing collation of potentially great significance: James was indeed the name of a New Testament personage known as the brother of Jesus, both ostensibly the sons of Joseph the carpenter, husband of Mary. If its dates were genuine, the burial box — or ossuary — could well be circumstantial evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, a tenet supported only by gospels and scripture written, at the earliest, a generation after his crucifixion and, of course, by the faith of hundreds of millions through 2,000 years.
Experts, however, declared the ossuary a modern-day forgery. It was seized by Israeli police and its owner, Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan, was arrested and charged with counterfeiting the ossuary and dozens of other items. Golan and co-defendant Robert Deutsch were put on trial in the Jerusalem District Court in 2005. Deutsch is accused of forging other valuables, though not the ossuary. Both men deny all charges.
Their trial is still continuing. Many of the world's top archaeological experts have testified as both prosecution and defense witnesses in proceedings that already run to more than 9,000 pages. And while the original charges against the ossuary appear to have been popularly accepted as conventional wisdom, they seem to be headed for trouble in the courtroom where the fine reading of law comes into play. Judge Aharon Farkash, who has a degree in archaeology, has wondered aloud in court how he can determine the authenticity of the items if the professors cannot agree among themselves.
The director of the Israel Antiquities Authority will soon take the witness stand for the first time since he declared, in December 2004, that the ossuary and other items seized in a two-year investigation were the "tip of the iceberg" of an international conspiracy that placed countless fakes in collections and museums around the world. He promised more arrests. But, while there is much evidence to sift through as the case stands, no other fake items have been seized, no-one else has been arrested, and Judge Farkash has hinted strongly that the prosecution case is foundering.
Next week, defense attorneys will take on one technical aspect, presenting evidence suggesting that scientists testifying for the prosecution have disproved their own findings against the ossuary. The scientific evidence against Golan is largely based on measurements of the oxygen isotopic composition (in technical terms, d18O — Delta 18 Oxygen) of the thin crust — or patina — covering the ossuary inscription.
Scientists are unsure exactly how the patina is formed but most agree it is composed of deposits of solid calcium carbonate that come by way of rain or groundwater. It can contain particles added by wind and perhaps biological. Additionally, depending on the levels of acidity, it may also involve a chemical reaction with the surface of the object. Some scientists say the process is similar to the way stalagmites grow in caves; others disagree.
Testifying for the prosecution, Miryam Bar-Matthews and Avner Ayalon from the Geological Survey of Israel recorded isotopic values as low as -10.2 permil (parts per thousand) in patina found within the inscription on the ossuary. (It is believed that the lower the number permil, the wetter the season was when it was created.) "The patina could not have been created in the Judean Hills or the surrounding area in a natural way," Bar-Matthews told the court in October 2007. With the exception of one letter in the word Yeshua ("Jesus"), she said, "the patina in the other letters is not natural."
Bar-Matthews and Ayalon based on their research on stalagmites in a cave near Jerusalem, where isotopic data showed rainfall and surface temperatures over many centuries, they concluded that the climate in the past 2,000 years could not have produced the patina on the ossuary. As they wrote with Professor Yuval Goren — another prosecution witness and professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University — in the Journal of Archeological Science in 2004, "the patina covering the letters was artificially prepared, most probably with hot water, and deposited onto the underlying letters." The article states: "There is no evidence for the existence of water with such low d18O values in the area during this time span. The range of rain and groundwater d18O values in the Judean Mountains region during the last 3,000 years could not have been lower than approx -6 permil." Pressed by defense counsel, Bar-Matthews declared that an isotopic value lower than -6.5 permil for the ossuary was "impossible."
However, a subsequent paper by Bar-Matthews and Ayalon with their American colleagues Ian Orland and John Valley studied samples from a stalagmite that apparently grew from about 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. And that showed isotopes as low as -8.5 permil, with annual rainfall in the Roman era reaching double the amounts the scientists had previously calculated. The article, published in the 2009 issue of Quaternary Research, was submitted for publication on October 11, 2007, before Bar-Matthews and Ayalon gave evidence at the ossuary trial.
The defense expects to use these esoteric contradictions against the prosecution when the trial resumes on Sunday. Defense expert Prof Joel Kronfeld of the Department of Geophysics at Tel Aviv University says the new data shatters the prosecution case. "I think this is amazing — it blows my mind," Kronfeld told TIME. "The findings in this study stand in complete contradiction to the assumptions presented by Ayalon and Bar-Matthews, and shed new light on the theory they presented to the court. They not only undercut their own arguments for determining that the patina on several items was not natural but rather quite the opposite. These data can support the authenticity of the items."
Bar-Matthews, however, argues the data from her later study are "irrelevant" to the ossuary trial. She and her colleagues say that the very low values representing wet seasons were "noise" that should not be taken in isolation since patina takes many years to form. Patina's isotopic value would represent an average figure, not just the low winter results. "It's like comparing tomatoes and gloves," Bar-Matthews told TIME. "There is no scenario where we can get light isotopic values below -6 permil also in Jerusalem under natural conditions."
The defense is likely to point out that the tests on the ossuary carried out by Bar-Matthews and Ayalon also found traces of patina in at least two other letters of the inscription with isotopes of -4.65 and -5.82 permil — well within the original range they suggested. Bar-Matthews and Ayalon discounted these results, saying the results had been corrupted either from the limestone of the box or from a nearby crack that had been recently repaired.
The trouble with this kind evidence is, of course, that the formation of patina isn't yet explainable in science everyone can agree on. The patina on one letter could be the result of one particularly wet winter that happened to leave its evidence on the ossuary — but perhaps not in a stalagmite in a cave. Or vice versa. "The analogy between the formation of cave deposits and the formation of patina on archeological objects is imprecise and more work is needed," says Professor Aldo Shemesh, an isotope expert at the Weizmann Institute who was also called as a defense expert. In the end, using this kind of evicence is a numbers game — figuring on averages of statistics over which all the experts disagree. Says Shemesh: "Scientific debates should be discussed and resolved in peer-reviewed literature and scientific conferences, not in court."
In his court, Judge Farkash will have a trial-full more of other evidence to figure what the "facts" are in this case, including examples of other half-finished alletedly ancient artifacts. So, even if the science of patinas leads the court nowhere, the pious may still in the end have to rely on their faith for the certainty of things unseen.
Ochrid Tragedy Blamed on Madonna by Bulgarian Bishop
Bulgaria Bishop: God's Wrath over Madonna Concert Caused Ochrid Tragedy
September 6, 2009
Novinite.com
The Plovdiv Metropolitan, Nikolai, served Sunday a liturgy for the 15 Bulgarians who drowned Saturday in Lake Ochrid in Macedonia.
The 15 were on the tour boat "Ilinden" in their way to the St. Naum Monastery, when it went underwater. All passengers on the ship were Bulgarians, 40 survived the accident.
The Council of Ministers declared Monday, September 7, a National Day of Mourning, and canceled all Sunday events dedicated to the 124th anniversary of the unification of the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia. The official celebration is traditionally held in the city of Plovdiv because the unification was declared there in 1885.
The only events that took place all over Bulgaria Sunday were the services for those who died in Lake Ochrid the previous day.
Over 200 people gathered Sunday morning at the Plovdiv Cathedral. According to its sexton, the cathedral had never before seen such day of mourning. Bulgaria's President Georgi Parvanov, and the Speaker of the Parliament, Tsetska Tsacheva, attended the memorial service for the victims.
During the mass, the Plovdiv Metropolitan, Nikolai, hinted that God had punished Bulgarians over their many sins including celebrating and partying too much on August 29 (the day of the concert of pop diva Madonna in Sofia) instead of mourning for St. John the Baptist.
The Eastern Orthodox believe that John was the last of the Old Testament prophets, thus serving as a bridge between that period of revelation and the New Covenant. They also teach that, following his death, John descended into Hades and there once more preached that Jesus the Messiah was coming, so he was the Forerunner of Christ in death as he had been in life.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, August 29 is the day of the beheading of St. John the Forerunner.
A solemn laying of the wreath at the "Unification Monument" with military honors, but without fireworks, will still be held in Plovdiv Sunday evening. Tsetska Tsacheva and the Plovdiv Mayor, Slavcho Atanasov, will attend the ceremony.
Bulgarian Church 'Blames' Madonna Concert for Boat Deaths
September 9, 2009
The Telegraph (UK)
By Matthew Day
A senior figure in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has suggested that a wrathful God, angry with Bulgarians attending a Madonna concert, may have had a hand in a recent boating tragedy that claimed the lives of 15 of his countrymen.
Nikolai, the metropolitan of Bulgaria's second biggest city, Plovdiv, linked the disaster, which occurred on Lake Ochrid in Macedonia on September 5, to the behaviour of Bulgarians who attended the concert.
"The catastrophe in Macedonia in which 15 Bulgarian citizens died was a sign from heaven," said the Metropolitan in a special memorial liturgy for the victims.
Nikolai stressed that the day of the Madonna concert, August 29, had coincided with a holy day commemorating the beheading of John the Baptist, and therefore was not a day for enjoyment.
"The Orthodox Church had called for people not to enjoy themselves on the day marking the execution of John," he added. "We should not allow the young to have fun on a day that should be dedicated to spiritual reflection."
Bulgaria's clergy had led vocal opposition to the American's singer concert once it became known that she would perform on August 29.
The Metropolitan's comments come as the latest controversy to dog Madonna's tour of Europe. She faced similar opposition in Poland from conservative Catholics, opposed to a concert that also happened to fall on a holy day, and in Bucharest she was booed after speaking out on behalf of gipsy rights.
Blame It All on Madonna
Maria Guineva
September 7, 2009
Novinite.com
The tendency to blame others for all miseries is a well known Bulgarian character trait. The bad things that happen to us are never our own fault, always somebody else's. Ill-meaning enemies, bad faith, spells and curse had been casting a shadow over Bulgaria and Bulgarians for centuries.
Thank God, we now have one more scapegoat for the tragedies that seem to follow us - MADONNA!
The Bulgarian Church, which had lost the respect of atheists and most believers, had not been known for its criticism. The local clergy never said a harsh word about the Communist regime during its 45 years of power; in more recent days they kept quiet about the scandals surrounding the so-called Triple Coalition. Well, maybe not... They uttered some outrage once. About Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code."
US pop diva Madonna, however, seems to have turned into the target of their hidden deep inside, and for ages, righteous anger. They voiced it even before her concert in Sofia with demands to cancel it over her disrespectful attitude towards the Christian faith and over the August 29 date, when the Orthodox Church marks the beheading of St. John the Baptist.
Then the tragedy happened. 15 Bulgarian tourists drowned in Lake Ochrid in Macedonia, just a week after the concert, when the 85-year-old tour boat "Ilinden" sunk in the waters on its way to the St. Naum Monastery. All passengers were Bulgarian; 40 survived.
In the tragedy's aftermath, as usual, many tried to grab the spotlight. The Bulgarian Church, in the face of the Plovdiv Metropolitan, Nikolai, did not miss the perfect opportunity to shine either. During a liturgy for the departed, served at the Plovdiv Cathedral the day after the tragedy, and on a glorious (for Bulgaria) historic date, the Unification, he hinted God punished Bulgarians over many sins including celebrating and partying too much on August 29 instead of mourning St. John the Baptist. And just for everyone to make sure what he meant, he confirmed before the TV news channel RE:TV that he was, indeed, targeting Madonna.
Anyone, who has seen the faces of those who were in the group that went to Ochrid or read that they scraped BGN 150 for the trip, knows that those people did not attend the Madonna concert, and no concert at all for that matter. And what should the ones who went to see her, their families, friends and relatives, expect to happen to them after such finger pointing? What will be God's Wrath for them then?
Poor Madonna got blamed for many things: the Ochrid fatalities, bringing traffic in Sofia to a gridlock, destroying the pitch of the National "Vasil Levski" Stadium just before the crucial World Cup qualifier against Montenegro (good thing our football team won, otherwise, only God knows what Madonna would have been accused of...). And, yes, the tickets were too expensive - global financial crisis might be her fault as well...
Bulgaria's Finance Minister, Simeon Djankov, has a better idea of the cause of the accident: "Poverty breeds tragedy," he said Monday. How very true! It is, however, also true, that accidents happen and will happen. More so in poor countries, but in some very powerful ones too. The very recent June accident in the Washington DC metro that killed 9 and injured 70 comes to mind. The cause - computer failure and obsolete breaks.
In most accidents, the likely causes seem to be attributed to human error and faulty equipment with poor countries, of course, being more prone to both.
Another unthinkable water tragedy, again in the US, occurred on March 6, 2004, at the time when I happened to be visiting Baltimore: during a sudden storm, the Lady D water taxi capsized in Baltimore's Inner Harbor with 25 on board. Five of them died. The investigation listed the following causes: the weather forecast radar understated the storm and the boat did not have the required stability to carry the load of passengers it took that day.
Five years later, the Maryland authorities gave a thorough account of what has been done: 1. The National Weather Service improved weather radar technology; 2. The Coast Guard now recommends lower limits for the number of people allowed on boats and requires testing passenger vessels for stability regularly instead of only upon launch.
So, better equipment and more control to eliminate killer trains, killer buses, killer boats, and National Days of Mourning - now that's a novel idea! Blame it on Madonna instead.
I am not a Madonna fan, have never been, and did not attend the concert. The truth of the matter is, however, that the event, on top of being a splendid show, was very well organized, just flawless. When I asked two friends of mine about their impressions, one very young, the other in his late fifties, from different educational backgrounds, social and financial status, what both told me, struck me: "For the first time I felt Bulgaria is no longer a poor, oriental country. We made it. We are in the West now. Communism is over!"
I am sure many in Bulgaria think that this is more fun and joy than what Bulgarians should be allowed to experience. But somehow I don't believe God will want to punish us for celebrating the end of Communism...
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Panagia Katsimikados: Sacred Shrines Which Honor the Nativity of the Theotokos (1)
Icon depicting the discovery of the miraculous icon of Panagia Katsimikados[In Greece today there are 232 churches and monasteries which honor the Nativity of the Theotokos and celebrate their feasts on September 8th. In this series I will give a brief history of a select few over the next few days until the apodoseis of the feast. - J.S.]
Panagia Katsimikados
In the mountains of the district of Kyparissia of Messinia in the region of Pelopponessos lies the Monastery known as Katsimikados (Κατσιμικάδος). It received its name from a miracle which happened there in the year 1000 AD.
A shepherd was tending to his goats (κατσίκες) on the spot where the monastery is today (it did not exist then). This shepherd noticed that one of his small female goats (κατσικάδα in the regional dialect) would leave the others and when it returned its beard was wet even though there was no source of water anywhere near the area. Out of curiosity one day the shepherd followed this goat to see what source of water it had discovered. Finally he noticed his goat go into a bush and soon emerged with a wet beard. Overjoyed the shepherd ran and told the villagers that a well was discovered in the area. Together with the villagers the shepherd helped remove the bush to uncover the well, only to discover an icon which depicted the Nativity of the Theotokos (sources do not tell us if it was found in the water or not). The shepherd then proclaimed: "It is the Panagia and we are the goats" ("η Παναγία είναι της κατσικάδας της εμής"). Because of this the miraculous icon came to be known as Panagia Katsimikados.
We do not know when the monastery was founded exactly, but upon the discovery of the icon a church was built for it and eventually monastics came to inhabit the area. We know the Venetians destroyed it in 1230. In May of 1825 the Egyptian-Turk Imbraem II destroyed it again by fire while 44 monastics escaped to the mountains with its treasures; 43 of which were massacred. In 1837 it was rebuilt from the stones of the area on top of the previous foundation, and 43 years after that its first monk inhabited it once again. In 1923 its 3 monks passed away (one in 1922). After a number of years 3 nuns came to inhabit the monastery and since then it is a female convent.
Entrance
Garden
The interior of the church.
The interior of the church.
The spot where the miraculous icon was found, and today has an oil lamp which burns before the icon night and day.
The beautiful view from the monastery.Read Part Two here.
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