The Miraculous Icon of the Panagia Gorgoepikoos ("She Who Is Quick to Hear")

Panagia Gorgoepikoos (Feast Day - October 1)

To the right of the entrance to the trapeza (refectory) of the Monastery of Dochiariou on Mount Athos there is a special place of veneration dedicated to the miraculous icon of the Theotokos Gorgoepikoos. The monastery’s tradition suggests that the icon was written during the eleventh century, in the time of St. Neophytus (a founder of the monastery). Across from this lies the church dedicated to the one depicted in the icon.

In 1664 the then head of the trapeza, Monk Neilos (Nilus), was passing by the icon as usual with a lit torch to get to the trapeza. Suddenly he heard a voice say: "Do not pass by here again with a torch and smoke up my icon."

Neilos heard the voice but had no idea from where it came, so he continued about his business. After a few days at around the same time he heard the voice the first time, again he heard a voice saying as he passed with his torch: "Unmonastic monastic, how long will you irreverently and unhonorably smoke up my image?" Upon hearing this, immediately he was blinded.

It was then that Monk Neilos understood that both voices were of the Theotokos, and because of his disobedience he was correctly disciplined (the Theotokos is considered the supreme Abbess of all the monastics on the Holy Mountain). He made his way to a stasidi (monastic arm chair) across from the icon and began to implore the Theotokos for his sight to be returned. When the brethren heard what had happened, they placed a lamp before the icon, and censed it each night.

At the appropriate time the Theotokos forgave and healed him, saying: "Behold, I am granting you your sight, but see that you do not pass by here again with a lit torch. I am the Abbess of this Monastery, the Theotokos Gorgoepikoos, for quickly do I hear those who call upon my name." Therefore, it is by the Theotokos herself that the name of this icon was confirmed to be Gorgoepikoos, which means "quick to hear".

The Most Holy Theotokos then fulfilled and continues to fulfill Her promise of quick help and consolation for all those who come to Her with faith.

In Russia, copies of the wonderworking Athonite image “She who is Quick to Hear” were always venerated with great love and fervent prayer. Many of them were glorified by miracles. In particular, there were cases of healing from the plague and from demonic possession.

In 1938, the Dochiariou Monastery presented a copy of the wonderworking Icon of the Mother of God “Quick to Hear” to the Russian Spiritual Mission at Jerusalem.

It should be noted that prior to the miracle above regarding Monk Neilos, the names of the Panagia's icon at Dochiariou in 1563 were Vrefokratousa (Infant-bearer), Fovera Prostasia (Fearful Protection) and Gorgoepikoos (Quick to Hear). Yet when the Panagia revealed her name a century later there was a different spelling to the last that is hard to portray in English but looks like this in Greek - it went from Γοργοεπήκοος to Γοργοϋπήκοος (in English the "e" is a long "e" sound). What this means is that not only is the Theotokos "Quick to Hear", but she is also showing another attribute of herself by calling herself "Quick to Obey". In this way she was teaching Monk Neilos the value of obedience, and how she is the example par excellence of the great virtue of obedience. It was because Monk Neilos did not obey the command of the Panagia that he was blinded, yet after he was disciplined for his disobedience the Panagia obeyed his request and healed him. Thus, she who is "Quick to Hear" is also "Quick to Obey".

Miracle

Numerous miracles of all sorts are attributed to Panagia Gorgoepikoos, for the icon reminds believers that the Holy Virgin is quick to come to the aid of those who call upon her with faith.

One of the many miracles comes from a testimony of a Greek woman whose husband in the summer of 1987 was healed of an acute myocardial infarction. She writes:

His condition was very serious, but it became even worse when he suffered a pulmonary edema. On Sunday afternoon Dr. Papoutsakis at the General State Hospital Nicea informed me that was husband was dying.

In my hands I was holding an icon of Panagia Gorgoepikoos. I approached by husband - who was just about ready to die - and I gave him the icon to embrace; it was my only hope. I went out to the hallway and prayed for Her to work Her miracle, for him...for the kids...for me.

Ten minutes did not pass when I fearfully saw the doctor come out of the intensive care unit. He approached me confused and said, "A miracle happened". "I was sure of it" I responded with tears and he explained to me the unexpected development.

I thank the Panagia for her infinite benevolence.

Thekla Periorellis,
Piraeus, Athens

To listen to the Supplication (Paraklisis) Service to Panagia Gorgoepikoos in Greek, listen here (It is the one titled: ΠΑΡΑΚΛΗΤΙΚΟΣ ΚΑΝΩΝ ΣΤΗΝ ΠΑΝΑΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΓΟΡΓΟΫΠΗΚΟΟ ΤΗΣ Ι. Μ. ΔΟΧΕΙΑΡΙΟΥ)

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What is Orthodoxy?

According to Saint Anastasios the Sinaite, one of the earliest Fathers of the Church, “Orthodoxy is a true conception about God and creation.” Orthodoxy, i.e. right belief, is the truth itself. According to the confession of Christ Himself (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”), He is the truth incarnate. We can find and can know the truth only in the person of Christ; therefore we can be saved only in Christ.

According to the aforesaid, Orthodoxy – Truth – is identified with Christ, Who is the Eternal Truth. And due to the fact that God the Trinity is the source of truth, His mode of existence is also truth, the fundamental and eternal Orthodoxy, which men have been called to follow in their own lives.

After man’s fall, he lost God’s Grace, i.e. he fell from communion with God, the Truth. The descendants of the first Adam, in order to restore communion with God, must come into communion with the new Adam, i.e. Christ. Man’s salvation is possible only in Christ.

Orthodoxy is the holy tradition of our Church, the truth about God, man, and the world that was delivered to us by God Incarnate Himself. Orthodoxy is the right faith and right worship of God. Orthodoxy is the pure Christianity, the real Church established and preserved by Christ for the salvation of mankind.

But what is the truth that Christ offered us? And where does this truth remain unadulterated, pure, and unconfused?

The answer is found in the Holy Bible, where the Church itself is called “the pillar and ground of the truth” (I Tim. 3.15).

Man comes to truth, i.e. to Christ (incarnate Orthodoxy) only in His body, the Church. Man’s redemption, his return to and union with God and his final salvation take place only in the Church. The Church was founded in the world because only in it can man find again his real existence and communion with God and the rest of the world. Man thus finds in the Church the meaning of life, his destiny, and moreover real communion with other men and the rest of creation. According to the apostle Paul, the Church is “His body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1.23).

The salvation that Christ granted to us through His Crucifixion and Resurrection, is continued in the Church. That is why Blessed Augustine called the Church “Christ extended into the ages”. That means that the Church is Christ, Who, even after His Resurrection and Ascension, continues saving the world through the Holy Spirit. Humanity continuously finds God in the body of Christ, in the Church. “That is why we cannot separate Christ from the Church. There can be no Church without Christ and there can be no Christ outside the Church, i.e. there can be no truth and consequently no salvation. The truth that exists outside the body of Christ, the Church, is like gold dust in the mud. It is nothing else than sporadic beams of divine presence within the condition of fallen man and his inability to rise and be saved”[1].

Christ as entire truth – Orthodoxy – leads us to our salvation through His Church. Therefore, the Church is the foundation of the truth. If one wants to know Christ authentically, in His catholicity and fullness, one must necessarily resort to the Church. “Outside the Church, even in the so-called “Christian” heresies, the inability to find the whole Christ excludes the possibility of salvation”.[2] The utterance, therefore, of Saint Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, that “outside the Church there is no salvation,” is not an exaggeration. “Without the Church we cannot know Christ. Likewise, without the Church we cannot understand the Holy Scriptures, that is her Bible, her own possession and tradition. But it is also true that, in order to know Christ in the Church, the Church existing here and now must express the true Christ in His fullness. Otherwise the true Christ remains unknown and inaccessible and man remains outside salvation, which is the exact condition found in the various heresies. Only in the true Church does man authentically meet Christ and is saved”.[3]

The Church, according to one of the Holy Fathers, is “the gathering of the Orthodox people.” It is impossible to think of the Church without Orthodoxy; and within this framework we can understand the Church as tradition, which is a divine process and dynamic movement of God in history. The Romanian theologian Dimitri Staniloae says that, “Orthodoxy is a living condition, the ceaseless life of the Church.”

“The Church always considered it her highest responsibility and obligation to maintain, in the Holy Spirit, the apostolic faith unadulterated and unfalsified. If the Church had not remained faithful to the truth of her existence, she could not have remained faithful to herself and retained her identity. The contents and the substance of the Church is Orthodoxy.”[4]

This responsibility of the Church to maintain the truth through tradition is not something abstract. The Church takes care that each of her children remains in the truth, in “orthodoxy” and “orthopraxis” (right-faith and right-works).

“Every Christian within the Church must not only simply believe, but believe in one God; not only believe in a supreme and invisible power, but in God the Trinity, Who revealed Himself in Christ. Likewise, he must not simply love, but love his God by loving his fellow man. The Church is obliged to maintain this orthodoxy of faith and life and to communicate it to the world through her mission and witness.”[5]

Having the above in mind, we can easily understand why the Church rejected all those who tried to falsify or refused to accept the truth of the Church, those who tried to add to or omit something from the Truth, which is Christ Himself. The Church rejected them as heretics not because she lacked love for men, but, on the contrary, because of excessive love for them, for those outside the Church, far off from the truth, there is no salvation. The Church cannot compromise or sacrifice the truth and the Orthodox faith, because she will lose her identity and catholicity. “The Christian of every age must accept everything that Christ revealed and that His body (the Church) delivers. He must accept the whole truth and not a “minimum” of it. The Catholicity and Orthodoxy of the Church are preserved only in the fullness and wholeness of faith. The Church is Catholic inasmuch as it is Orthodox, because only then does she preserve the fullness of the truth in Christ.”[6]

Nowadays, of course, we are used to simplifying things and to being indifferent to the Truth of the Church. Being superficial and frivolous, we give attention to outer forms and we claim that it is enough if there is a common acceptance of a basic faith, and everything more is useless. Doctrines and Canons are made by men and they must be put aside “for love’s sake”.

“Doctrines, however, as rules of faith do not destroy the unity of the Truth. They create the boundaries of Orthodoxy, of the Church, so that the Church, as Orthodoxy, can be distinguished from heresy…. For the Church, the foundation of faith is one: the fullness of truth in Christ.”[7]

For the Church, therefore, one thing is needful: to retain the truth unadulterated, as she received it. For this purpose the Church mobilized all her powers to fight against heresy, which was her most threatening enemy. The persecutions never threatened the Church’s unity or maintenance of the truth. On the contrary, they sometimes helped her gather her powers. However, heresy many times caused her trouble. For heresy, which is nothing but removal from the truth, threatens the Church’s own hypostasis and existence, it threatens the Truth, by threatening to sever the Truth and to divide Christ. But a Christ Who is not entire and undivided, Who is not the whole, “incarnate truth”, is not the Christ that saves. Heretics did not reject the whole truth, they did not refuse Christ, but they did not accept Him entire, but only a part of Him. Arius e.g., did not refuse Christ’s humanity but he refused His divinity. Others accepted His divinity and refused His humanity. But none of them accepted Christ entire and undivided.

“The truth of the Church is fullness, a unity that must always remain undivided and unsevered. Heresy, however, tries to subject the truth of the ecclesiastical tradition to the criteria of fallen man. For the heretic renders himself judge and criterion of the revealed truth. For this reason, most heretics of every era are rationalists. A heretic (who becomes a heretic because previously he has been affected by pride, which fills him with confidence in his own reason and thought) cuts himself off from the life-giving, Divine Grace and attempts to be saved by his own power, by his own self-made “truth”, not by the God-given Truth. Heresy unavoidably leads to a humanistic religiousness.”[8]

So the struggle of all the Holy Fathers against the different heresies aimed at retaining the truth completely – which is an indispensable presupposition for salvation – in order to keep every man in the Ark of the Church, which is the Body of Christ. We could say that this struggle is their greatest offering to the Church. That is why they never consented to co-exist with heretics in a “minimum” of faith and to be satisfied with holding a part of the truth, but they struggled to keep it whole and undivided, for only then could they stay within Truth and obtain their salvation. The method, nowadays, in which differences are not mentioned and common points are emphasized, was never accepted by the Fathers as a starting-point for theological disputes with heresies. On the contrary, they constituted Ecumenical Synods and they struggled not for a “minimum” of faith, not to find out what is common between them and the heretics, but rather to mark out what separates, what teachings of the heretics sever the truth and, consequently, the unity of faith. Otherwise, if the Church were indifferent to retaining the faith and the tradition, as she received them, pure and unadulterated, then it would not be the Church of Christ, His Body, but a human organization or a political ideology, striving for political or humanistic purposes, and not in anyway related to Christ, His sacrifice on the Cross, and to salvation.


FOOTNOTES

1) G. Metallinos. "What is Orthodoxy?”, Athens, 1980, p.19.
2) G. Metallinos. Ibid, p.19.
3) G. Metallinos. Ibid, p.19.
4) G. Metallinos. Ibid, p.19.
5) G. Metallinos. Ibid, p.20 – 21.
6) G. Metallinos. Ibid, p.21.
7) G. Metallinos. Ibid, p.21.
8) G. Metallinos. Ibid, p.23.


(From the book What is Orthodoxy? by Peter A. Botsis)

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The Enemy Within: An Interview with Elder Dionysios

[To listen to the audio of this interview, visit here.]

What is Enlightenment Magazine
Spring-Summer 2000
Interview by Craig Hamilton

Born in 1950 and raised in a small town in northern Greece, it was clear from early on that Father Dionysios would not find his home in the world. Coming from a religious family with forefathers in the priesthood, at the age of seventeen he left home to pursue his passion for the spirit at the historic cliff-top monastery of Great Meteoron in central Greece. It was here that he met his spiritual father, the widely revered elder, Archimandrite Aemilianos, and became tonsured into the life of renunciation. When several years later the Greek tourist industry had all but taken over the entire ancient Meteora complex, Elder Aemilianos and his band of young monks relocated to a remote monastery on Mt. Athos and began, along with a handful of other new brotherhoods, to reinvigorate the waning ancient monastic haven with their zeal for the holy life.

My first encounter with Archimandrite Dionysios came, perhaps ironically, via email. Ironic because, despite the decidedly modern means of his communication, upon receiving it, I felt as though I had been transported back in time a thousand years to an era when the art of writing epistles was a revered and studied form of spiritual discourse. "Mr. Hamilton, dear in the Lord," the letter began, "Rejoice in the Lord. It was a great honor to receive your email of 11 September, especially after the recommendation of our respected, common friend, in my case for a long time, the very wise Father Basil Pennington. Please forgive me, since from the day your email came until now I have been away . . . I will be in Greece, at the Sacred Monastery of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross . . . and will await you there to offer you hospitality for as long as you desire, where we can also discuss all the issues you mentioned to me in your letter." Having written the renowned Christian Orthodox elder to request both an interview for our magazine and advice on our upcoming pilgrimage to Mt. Athos, the legendary "Holy Mountain" at the heart of Orthodox monasticism, I was pleased to receive such a warm and generous response. After a long list of suggestions for my trip, the elder added a few more kind words of respect and appreciation, and concluded with the following: "My soul is in trembling for fear that you will not receive my answer in time."

I had read in the Orthodox texts of the profound humility that emanates from many of the holy elders—men whose life of deep, contemplative prayer and asceticism is said to have removed from them even the smallest seeds of self-concern. But somehow, for all my searching in the scriptures, I had never expected to receive an email quite like this. As I began to type my reply, I had the undeniable sense, even across the fiber-optic pipeline, that the man I had encountered was not an ordinary human being.

From the beginning of our research for this issue, the idea of speaking with an Orthodox elder about the ego had been an intriguing one. For although it is a tradition in which none of us could claim expertise, we were aware that when it comes to defining the enemy of the spiritual path, the Orthodox Christians are perhaps in a class by themselves. To this ancient mystical branch of Christianity, which split from the Catholic Church in 1054, the total purification of the human personality from egotism, selfishness and anything else that obstructs its capacity to reflect the light of God is and always has been the first and final aim of spiritual life. In sacred books with names like The Ladder of Divine Ascent and The Philokalia (literally "love of the beautiful and good"), Orthodox elders from as early as the third century write with passion and precision about the fullblooded "spiritual combat" the sincere aspirant must be willing to engage in if he or she is to have any hope of defeating the "demons" within that relentlessly attack with ever new and creative tactics. In one of countless such passages in The Philokalia, the fourth-century desert monk St. John Cassian writes, "[The ego] is difficult to fight against, because it has many forms and appears in all our activities . . . When it cannot seduce a man with extravagant clothes, it tries to tempt him by means of shabby ones. When it cannot flatter him with honor, it inflates him by causing him to endure what seems to be dishonor. When it cannot persuade him to feel proud of his display of eloquence, it entices him through silence into thinking he has achieved stillness. . . . In short, every task, every activity, gives this malicious demon a chance for battle."

While the word "ego" itself only appears in more contemporary translations and commentaries, throughout even the most ancient Orthodox texts, there are countless references to the hazards of self-love, self-esteem and the "most sinister of demons"—pride. Considered by Christians to be the sin that not only brought Lucifer, God's highest angel, tumbling to a fiery fate but that also led Adam and Eve to be exiled from paradise on earth, pride is referred to variously as "the mother of all woes" and "the first offspring of the devil." It is also universally regarded as the most destructive and powerful adversary on the spiritual path. As St. John Cassian writes, "Just as a deadly plague destroys not just one member of the body, but the whole of it, so pride corrupts the whole soul, not just part of it. . . . when the vice of pride has become master of our wretched soul, it acts like some harsh tyrant who has gained control of a great city, and destroys it completely, razing it to its foundations."

To combat the insidious ego so determined to undermine our spiritual progress from within, the monks and nuns of Christian Orthodoxy follow a strict regime of spiritual discipline, including silent contemplative prayer, spiritual study, group worship—and often extreme acts of asceticism. In the belief that a life of ongoing self-deprivation and suffering is ideal, these black-robed celibate renunciates regularly forgo food, drink and sleep for long periods in order to purify themselves of "worldly passions" and come closer to God.

In the Orthodox calendar, we would learn, half the days of the year are days of fasting! And upon reading a description of the rigorous daily monastic schedule still widely followed in orthodox monasteries, I was dumfounded to learn that the monks' routine of solitary prayer, work and worship, which begins at midnight, often doesn't end until ten or eleven the next evening. As I kept searching the schedule trying to figure out when they slept, I was informed by one father that it is, in fact, not uncommon for monks to consistently sleep only one or two hours per night.

And then there are the real ascetics. . . .

In cold, barren caves high on the slopes of Mt. Athos (a vast, rugged peninsula dedicated entirely to monasticism), hermits spend decades in solitary prayer, often subsisting on only "a little dry bread and water." In this ancient eremetic tradition, dating back to the first Desert Fathers who in the third century abandoned the world to live the solitary life, ascetic practices are at times taken to extremes of self-mortification rivaling the most austere yogis of India. In the course of our research, we read tales of contemporary monks who consider regular self-flagellation with a "passion stick" to be an effective means of subduing temptation, and others who spent years standing or kneeling in prayer on a high rock outcropping until they became crippled. And while reading story upon story of often brutal ascetic labors at times left me wondering whether the line between self-denial and self-torture might have occasionally gotten blurred, I nonetheless couldn't help but be both humbled and inspired by the lengths to which these men were willing to go in their pursuit of life's highest aim.

For as we would be told again and again, the asceticism practiced by Orthodox Christians is not asceticism for its own sake but asceticism in pursuit of a very specific, divine end—the attainment of which has come to be known as "deification." In contrast to Western Christianity, which under the doctrine of original sin tends to emphasize humanity's inherent frailty and imperfection, Orthodox teachings maintain that it is not only possible—but essential—for human beings to become perfectly transformed, radiant expressions of the Divine. Citing the words and example of Jesus Christ who said, "Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect," Orthodox monastics aspire to purify themselves of any trace of ego and in so doing become an immaculate vessel for the glory and workings of God in this world. For proof that this attainment is possible—an attainment considered to be the singular purpose of human life and the very lifeblood of all Orthodox aspiration—the Orthodox point always to one place: their two-thousand-year legacy of saints, a lineage of holy men and women unbroken since the time of the apostles.

Indeed, in our own exploration of Orthodox mysticism for this issue, what had captured our collective imagination most powerfully was the conviction among so many of those we spoke with that there are in fact men and women alive today of the same spiritual caliber as the "God-bearing" masters of old whose lives embellish the scriptures. It was our enthusiasm to speak with such an individual that had generated our far-ranging search for illumined Orthodox elders, a search that eventually led us to Archimandrite Dionysios.

Born and raised in a small town in northern Greece, it was clear from early on that Father Dionysios would not find his home in the world. Coming from a religious family with forefathers in the priesthood, at the age of seventeen he left home to pursue his passion for the spirit at the historic cliff-top monastery of Great Meteoron in central Greece. It was here that he met his spiritual father, the widely revered elder, Archimandrite Aemilianos, and became tonsured into the life of renunciation. When several years later the Greek tourist industry had all but taken over the entire ancient Meteora complex, Elder Aemilianos and his band of young monks relocated to a remote monastery on Mt. Athos and began, along with a handful of other new brotherhoods, to reinvigorate the waning ancient monastic haven with their zeal for the holy life.

Father Dionysios was a bright light from the beginning, known for his unwavering devotion to his elder and for his spirit of selfless giving, shared with all who came to visit their monastery perched high above the Aegean Sea. It was this spirit of generosity and passion for the monastic life that would before long bring invitations from Europe and America and eventually lead him away from the "mountain of silence" he called his home to help guide others along their way. Since leaving Mt. Athos, Archimandrite Dionysios has served at a number of different posts in Greece, Europe and America, eventually spending several years as Abbot of Holy Cross Monastery in Jerusalem. Having recently returned to Greece, where he was given an island on which he will soon build a monastery to house his core group of monks, he is also overseeing a newly founded convent outside Athens, where about forty young nuns have gathered from many different parts of the world. It was there that I had the good fortune to spend a weekend with this radiant elder last fall, discussing both the Orthodox teachings on the ego and the glory and freedom that await those who make it their life's endeavor to live beyond its confines.


WIE: What is the ego?

ARCHIMANDRITE DIONYSIOS: When Satan, who was the first and highest angel, looked away from God and turned his attention to himself, there we had the first seed of ego. He took his spiritual eyes from the view of the Holy Trinity, the view of the Lord, and he looked at himself and started to think about himself. And he said, "I want to put my throne in the highest place, and to be like Him." That moment started the history, the reality and the existence of ego—which is not in fact a reality, but the refusal of reality. Ego is the flower that comes out from the death of love. When we kill love, the result is the ego.

WIE: What is the character of the ego? How does it manifest within a human being?

AD: When we don't trust. Ego is born when we don't trust others. When we're afraid of others, when we need guns against others, then we need to have an ego because we are in the wrong way of life. We think only of ourselves, and we see only our ego. But when we see each other, when we trust each other, there is no need for ego, no reason for ego, no possibility for ego.

WIE: So in the way you're speaking about it then, ego is the insistence on our separation, our independence?

AD: Yes, on our solitude. Our need to be alone, to have our own way of thinking that satisfies us and preserves our personality in the wrong way.

WIE: Putting ourselves first and foremost?

AD: Yes. And Christ said, "The last is the first." Because when you want to be the last and you choose the last seat, only then may you call the others friends of yours.

WIE: The ego, this sense of self-importance you've been speaking about, is often described in The Philokalia and other writings of the Christian mystics as the primary enemy with which the spiritual aspirant must wrestle in their quest for union with God. Why is the ego considered to be such a formidable adversary on the path?

AD: It is such a powerful enemy because it is the enemy within us. We are enemies to ourselves, like Adam and Eve in paradise. Of course, the snake talked to Eve. But she could have avoided him. The snake said to her, "The Lord lied to you," but if she would have trusted the Lord, she would not have started to talk to the snake. And Adam, too, lost his communication with the Lord and stayed with his ego. And the two egos worked together, Adam and Eve.

The real enemy is the ego. It is the enemy because it is against love. When I look at myself, I don't love others. When I want to occupy for myself what is yours, I become the killer of my brother, like Cain killed Abel. When I want to satisfy myself, this satisfaction is gained through sacrificing the freedom of the other. Then my ego becomes my lord, my god, and there is no stronger temptation than this. Because to us, this ego may seem like a diamond. It has a shine like gold. But whatever is shining is not gold. The ego is just like a fire without light, a fire without warmth, a fire without life. It seems that it has many sides and many possibilities—but what is this possibility? What is ego? Only the means by which I protect myself as if I were in a battle, as if every other person is my enemy, and the only thing I care about is winning the victory.

WIE: It has been said by some of the greatest spiritual luminaries that when one takes up the spiritual path in earnest, one often comes face-to-face with the ego in a way that one never could have imagined previously. In describing their encounters with the ego, many saints have characterized it as an almost diabolical force within that does not want the spiritual life, that does not want God, but that wants to do everything it can to obstruct our illumination, to undermine our firm resolve to stay on the path.

AD: Saint Paul writes beautifully about this event, this struggle inside the human heart. He says, "There is another law inside me telling me to refuse the will of God, to do things against Him, to refuse the grace. It tries to keep me in my past, in my old life, to take me far away from the Lord, to prevent me from following the Lord." This is why I said that the biggest problem in mankind is in each person, not outside of him. For this we need spiritual fathers. For this we need spiritual doctors. We need surgery; we need an operation; we need something to be cut in our heart.

We don't understand that this enemy that we have inside us is not our self; it's not our personality. It's only a temptation. This is the seed of the problem of the ego. We unite our personality, which is a priceless event, with our faults. We confuse our personality with our sin; we marry these two things, and we have a wrong impression of what we are. We don't know what we are, and we need someone to show us who we are; we need someone to open our eyes so that we can at least see our darkness.

There's a mystic, the greatest of the mystics, Saint Gregory Palamas. For thirty years, he was praying only this prayer: "Enlighten my darkness. Enlighten my darkness." He did not name the Lord because he did not feel worthy to name him. He did not address it to anyone, but he said this prayer day and night, more than he was breathing. Because all he knew in himself was his darkness. And he was talking to someone—to whom else?—to Christ, who said, "I am the Light." But he said only, "Enlighten my darkness."

WIE: Show me my faults?

AD: Or come to my darkness and burn it. Make fire in it and make light in it. The greatest thing we can do in our lives is to discover that by ourselves we are nothing. We are darkness. We are dust.

WIE: The ego is often characterized in the spiritual literature as a cunning and opportunistic adversary, capable of turning any situation to its advantage in its attempt to obstruct our spiritual progress. What do you feel is the most important quality within the individual that can help us to win the fight against the clever and ever-changing ego?

Dionysios: Repentance. Recognizing our mistakes and our sins, this is the highest thing that we can do. And not to recognize our sins in order to succeed at something else, but just to see the truth about ourselves. Saint Isaac, the great mystic of the Church, says that one who accepts, who understands, who recognizes his sin in front of the Lord, in reality, he is the highest. He is greater than one who has gained all the world, who feeds all the people, who makes miracles, who resurrects the dead. This man, the first one, is bigger because he can never fall down. He has a stability, a level, a place where he can talk to the Lord. He has a place where he can invite the Lord with his tears, with his repentance, with the understanding that he has done wrong. And straightaway he becomes clear. The light comes from him. He becomes a spiritual doctor, a teacher or father, because he’s not afraid to recognize sins. It is not a problem for him to say, “Excuse me, it was my fault.” This is the key to escape from all the drops of the devil.

WIE: Would it be accurate to characterize this quality you’re describing—this willingness to face oneself honestly—as humility?

Dionysios: Not humility. Humility is the result. It would be better to say “wisdom.” We press ourselves to be humble. But to recognize my faults—what does that have to do with humility? I have to be humble in order to recognize my faults? No. I have to see them. It’s an emergency. It’s my way to exist for the next second. How can I exist with my faults for one second? In front of whom? In front of myself—how can I be with my faults, with my sins? I have to say, “I did it!”

Dostoyevsky expresses this so beautifully in Crime and Punishment. The main character, Raskolnikov, kills someone, and almost immediately he understands what he did. He doesn’t recognize it by himself, but with the help of the strict hard words of a prostitute, Sonya, who says to him, “Look what you did.” She guides him to go into the middle of the plaza, in front of all the people, to say what he did. And he does it. He confesses. He says that otherwise he could not exist, that he would have to commit more and more and more crimes. And he accepts the sentence of the court to go for at least twenty years to the hardest prison. And he goes, and there he feels the medicine of his heart. And he takes this medicine. We have problems in life because we don’t want to accept or recognize our sins. And this is the key. What else do we have to offer to each other? Gold, money, lust, food? Long life? No. Only to recognize our sins and straightaway we have a new world.

WIE: You seem to be speaking about a kind of deep conscience that stirs when we face ourselves.

Dionysios: It’s love. Love is more than conscience. Conscience is something that says to you, “You do this, you do this, you do this.” It’s like we’re under our own personal court. But love is something much more. Love makes us ready to pay for the sins of others. It’s a much higher step. Not only to recognize our sins but also to be able to pay for sins for which we are not responsible, as Christ did. This is love.

WIE: The writings of the Christian fathers speak of the goal of the spiritual journey as a transfiguration of the human being into an entirely different order of human existence—one in which the ego is killed and we are, in a sense, reborn. What does it mean for the ego to die? And in what sense are we reborn?

Dionysios: The Lord calls us to transform. He wants to give us our reality, our real self, which we have lost. And in spiritual life, especially in the monastic life, this ego really can transform, just as when the disciples, having followed Christ to the top of Mount Tabor, witnessed his body transformed into light. Many fathers used to explain that the transfiguration didn’t actually happen to the body of Christ but to the eyes of his students. Because at that moment, their eyes transformed and they could see what Christ had always been—shining, full of light. Through their humility, through following Christ, they were brought to the top of this mountain to enjoy this reality. And every one of us can receive this blessing. Our nature can be transformed.

This transfiguration is our real progress, our real growth. It’s not a matter of using our spiritual life in Christ to become better, to become more clever, to know more things, to have more friends, to influence others, to have authority and power, to have money, good health, a good name, and a good face. It’s only a matter of what’s inside our heart. The important thing is that in daily practice there cannot be any seed of ego in the field of our heart. Because when temptation comes, it can destroy the quality of life and of the relationships between people. The Lord taught us to be awake all the time and to pray to him, to say, “Protect us and don’t let us enter into temptation.” Through this protection from temptation, we can come to see very clearly into our hearts. And by following the simplest, normal life, we can purify ourselves, our spirit and our mind. It’s very easy after that for the Holy Spirit to come. It’s like in the Eucharist, we are ready all together in the church with the bread and the wine. We pray, and the Holy Spirit comes and makes the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ. In the same way, we can purify ourselves, and the Holy Spirit comes and transforms us in all the ways we have read about in books and brings us many more experiences that all the books of the world cannot contain.

WIE: In the Orthodox tradition there has been a long-standing lineage of illumined spiritual fathers, great individuals who have demonstrated with their own lives the possibility of destroying the ego and discovering a new life in God. What are the marks of one who has won the spiritual battle? How does the expression of the personality change in one who has truly gone beyond the ego?

Dionysios: He’s ready for everything always. He never is or says or feels that he’s tired. He has joy. He’s always ready to give. He exists only for others. He’s ready to serve everybody. He does not judge anybody, including the deepest sinner. He’s there as a child, but as a child of a king. Who can touch the son of a king? Who can touch a newborn lion knowing that the mother lion is nearby? Being this way, you’re like a small lamb among the wolves, but you’re not afraid. You’re there offering, receiving everybody, loving, serving, praying for everybody and being ready to die in each moment, and in that, you’re totally and completely free. All these are fruits of love because we become the source of love. So is a man without ego. This is the transformation. It’s like we are a wild old tree and we need something to come into us and transform this tree into a good fruitful tree. A man without ego is a man with God, is a man with the Holy Spirit.

When you are ready to die for everybody in each moment, when you love, when you respect, when you prostrate to the other, it’s like you prepare him to be ready for an operation; but it’s not that you judge the other or feel that he needs something from you. When you are perfect before Him—and we can be perfect; in fact, we have to be perfect; it’s the principal need—then right away people need it, know it, understand it. Very quickly everybody comes to take a seat in front of such a person, in front of a spiritual son or a spiritual father.

WIE: Is it also your experience that a spiritual father who has truly gone beyond the ego not only inspires people to reach for their highest potential but also presents the ultimate challenge to the ego of those who come to see him?

Dionysios: Absolutely. In fact, in the presence of such a person, the devil comes out straightaway. And you can see very clearly how the devil makes people crazy or angry or disrespectful when you haven’t even said anything. Just because you are there, they explode. And you can see terrible things in people where otherwise you would see only kind people with ties and gold jewelry. When someone appears who embodies the Spirit of God, there you can see what you could see when Jesus was walking in the streets. The devils who were in the people said, “Whoa, who are you? You came here to put us in trouble.” Some were scandalized by him, others were thinking about how to kill him, and still others were thinking things against him. He was speaking not to what they said but to what they were thinking. And the same Holy Spirit exists in the spiritual fathers, and it can also create this kind of confrontation. This happens because the other person understands that he cannot play with this man. He cannot hide from this man.

WIE: In Christian writings, the enemy of the spiritual path is often referred to in dramatic terms as Satan, Lucifer, the devil. Is Satan simply a metaphor for the human ego? Or is it something independent of us?

Dionysios: Satan is the teacher. And the ego is the means by which we fulfill his theory. Living from our ego is like burning incense to him. When he smells it, he comes. It is familiar to him; it’s his relative, his tongue, his dialect. He likes it. So he comes, and then he starts to open company with our ego. Then he starts to be related to us.

WIE: So would you say that Satan exists in this sense as an impersonal force of evil that operates within each of us as the ego? Or would it be more accurate to say that the ego is already there in us and Satan is the voice of temptation to which the ego listens?

Dionysios: The second. He doesn’t have the authority to work through our ego. We’re free all the time to decide.

WIE: There are many spiritual authorities in the modern West who are attempting to bring the ideas of Western psychology to bear on the spiritual path. In fact, it is now commonly held that in order to withstand the difficulties of the spiritual path, one has to first develop a strong ego, a strong sense of self. One statement that has become almost a credo in many spiritual circles is: “You have to become somebody before you can be nobody.” What do you think of this idea?

Dionysios: That’s like saying, “We first have to be the head of the Mafia and then we can become president.” Or, “I will first work together with the devil; I shall make common company with him so that he will give me whatever I need, but because I am more clever than he is, I will then use my power for good.”

It’s good to send children out to study, to learn to sing, to learn athletics, to be well educated, to have an economic basis from which to start their life. But how often do we see that the dreams of all the rich men and their children are broken? The Bible says that “if the builders are working very hard to build a tower that the Lord does not bless, they have worked for nothing.”

This ego is the modern god of the twentieth century and the twenty-first century. And the idea you referred to in your question is the modern religion. But we know this temptation. Ego means, “I don’t believe in the existence of the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit does not exist.” But this is a lie. The Holy Spirit guides the world and blessed are they who want it, who see it, who breathe in it, who move in it, who inspire through it, who love it, who are uniting with it.

WIE: There are also many spiritual authorities today who insist that the ego is an inherent and irreversible fact of our humanity and that any attempt to give up the ego, to transcend our lower nature in pursuit of perfection, is itself an expression of the greatest hubris. Jungian psychologist Marion Woodman goes so far as to say that the very notion of perfection “rapes the soul.” How would you respond to those who assert that we are, by nature, flawed and incapable of reaching perfection?

Dionysios: Christ said, “Be perfect. Become perfect. And when you will be and you will do everything perfectly, saying within yourself and believing that you are miserable, terrible lost sinners, servants, there you will find humility and glory.” It’s possible to be perfect because He is perfect, because He received our nature. So if He did this, we can do it; we can be with Him. It’s possible to be perfect because of this gift. And it’s possible to not be perfect because we have the authority to refuse the gift, to refuse the love. And when we refuse it, then we need theology, then we need philosophy, then we need to create new books and new theories that say that the ego cannot be transcended.

It is possible to be free of the ego. It has to be. It’s necessary. It’s only because people don’t know of this possibility, don’t want this possibility, and don’t permit this possibility to exist that they need to create all these ideas. But they know that they are speaking lies. This is the craziest thing we can hear. What doctor says to a sick man, “Look, sickness is a part of our nature. We have to be with it. So we don’t have to cut our nails. We don’t need to wash our face, because we shall be dead tomorrow anyway”? What kind of teaching is this? Yes, it is possible to be free of the ego, but it’s a mystery.

WIE: The ascetic practices of Orthodoxy place a strong emphasis on the need to suppress our instinctual drives. Impulses like lust, hunger, thirst, and even the desire for sleep are often held at bay for long periods in extreme acts of renunciation. What is the role of ascetic practice in attaining freedom from the ego?

Dionysios: Asceticism is a means to get where we want to go. It is a railway on which the train can run. Many people feel that asceticism means following a set of rules, but it’s not a law that is imposed on us. In football, for example, it’s not that the rules of the game are hard, but that they help the game to come out perfectly. And so it is with ascetic life. The special periods and rules of fasting, vigil, and prayer serve as mystical ways or means. We follow these mystery ways, these divine commitments, these divine orders. And outside of the general rules, there are also personal rules that are given in the communication between spiritual father and son, special vocations for each individual. We see saints who spend much time in the caves or in the forest or in the desert. And they don’t go there with plans to come back; when they go there, they go forever. And the Lord guides them then.

When Christ went to the desert after his baptism, he went to face the devil. He didn’t think in his mind, “After forty days I will return.” He just went there. He came out of the Jordan River, baptized by Saint John the Baptist, and he went to the desert. From one point of view, he lost time being alone there. He didn’t go to his people to give them food, to bless them, to guide them, to give the Holy Spirit to them. No. He went to the desert. And he said to the devil, “My friend, look, until now you were playing with the people. You started with Eve in paradise, and now you are finishing with me. I am here alone. I’m not eating. I’m not drinking. And the cold in my bones in the night in the desert is terrible. I suffer. But I don’t play games. I’m here. Alone. And you come to me and you tell me to turn stones into bread. You tell me to prostrate to you. You? To give you the authority of my people? Go now. We have seen each other. I know who you are and you know who I am.” And in that moment the devil gave up everything.

So the ascetic life is necessary. To be ready in each moment to die, in front of everybody for everything—this is the desert, this is the ascetic life. And it brings the Holy Spirit. And if we go, the Lord will guide us.

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Where Did ‘We’ Go?

Obama portrayed as a Marxist Saint

Where Did ‘We’ Go?

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 29, 2009
New York Times

I hate to write about this, but I have actually been to this play before and it is really disturbing.

I was in Israel interviewing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated in 1995. We had a beer in his office. He needed one. I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords. They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all.

And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, “God will be on your side” — and so he did.

Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.” The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin.

Even if you are not worried that someone might draw from these vitriolic attacks a license to try to hurt the president, you have to be worried about what is happening to American politics more broadly.

Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word “we” with a straight face. There is no more “we” in American politics at a time when “we” have these huge problems — the deficit, the recession, health care, climate change and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that “we” can only manage, let alone fix, if there is a collective “we” at work.

Sometimes I wonder whether George H.W. Bush, president “41,” will be remembered as our last “legitimate” president. The right impeached Bill Clinton and hounded him from Day 1 with the bogus Whitewater “scandal.” George W. Bush was elected under a cloud because of the Florida voting mess, and his critics on the left never let him forget it.

And Mr. Obama is now having his legitimacy attacked by a concerted campaign from the right fringe. They are using everything from smears that he is a closet “socialist” to calling him a “liar” in the middle of a joint session of Congress to fabricating doubts about his birth in America and whether he is even a citizen. And these attacks are not just coming from the fringe. Now they come from Lou Dobbs on CNN and from members of the House of Representatives.

Again, hack away at the man’s policies and even his character all you want. I know politics is a tough business. But if we destroy the legitimacy of another president to lead or to pull the country together for what most Americans want most right now — nation-building at home — we are in serious trouble. We can’t go 24 years without a legitimate president — not without being swamped by the problems that we will end up postponing because we can’t address them rationally.

The American political system was, as the saying goes, “designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots.” But a cocktail of political and technological trends have converged in the last decade that are making it possible for the idiots of all political stripes to overwhelm and paralyze the genius of our system.

Those factors are: the wild excess of money in politics; the gerrymandering of political districts, making them permanently Republican or Democratic and erasing the political middle; a 24/7 cable news cycle that makes all politics a daily battle of tactics that overwhelm strategic thinking; and a blogosphere that at its best enriches our debates, adding new checks on the establishment, and at its worst coarsens our debates to a whole new level, giving a new power to anonymous slanderers to send lies around the world. Finally, on top of it all, we now have a permanent presidential campaign that encourages all partisanship, all the time among our leading politicians.

I would argue that together these changes add up to a difference of degree that is a difference in kind — a different kind of American political scene that makes me wonder whether we can seriously discuss serious issues any longer and make decisions on the basis of the national interest.

We can’t change this overnight, but what we can change, and must change, is people crossing the line between criticizing the president and tacitly encouraging the unthinkable and the unforgivable.

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Religious Right Should End 'Demonization' Of Political Opponents

Religious Right Should End 'Demonization' Of Political Opponents, Seek 'Common Ground,' Opinion Piece Says

September 30, 2009
Medical News Today

Since the early 1970s, there has been a "disappearance of an approach to public life in which stark differences could be debated without adversaries slipping into the demonization of one another," David Gushee -- distinguished professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights -- writes in a USA Today opinion piece. According to Gushee, a "number of factors have contributed to a national slide from civility to demonization in the past 40 years," but the "1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision and the ensuing religious mobilization into political combat ... have made the greatest difference." He writes that demonization is "viewing those we disagree with as if they are the embodiment of evil" and "involves a profound loss of perspective on the humanity of our opponents."

Roe "drew the battle lines of our current culture wars" and "became the centerpiece for religious-right organizing," Gushee continues. "Not immediately, but within a few years after Roe, abortion policy became viewed not just as another difficult arena where differences could be debated in good faith, but instead as a life-or-death struggle between good and evil," he writes, adding, "Pro-lifers called abortion-rights supporters 'pro-death.' Pro-choicers called those who reviled Roe 'anti-choice.' You get the point."

According to Gushee, "This response and counter-response to Roe have distorted our culture by creating the habit of demonization in American public life." Although this attitude extends to "everything from gay rights to immigration to energy policy," it "remains most obvious whenever anything related to abortion is under consideration -- as with health care reform, in which abortion has played a supporting role in the debate despite the efforts of most Democratic leaders to keep the legislation abortion-neutral," according to Gushee. He writes that although he is "an evangelical Christian who thinks Roe is bad law," he is "also drawn toward any effort to find common ground, whether on abortion reduction strategies or on other issues." He adds, "For this, I have been demonized."

Gushee continues, "I dare to think that it's still not too late to be the kind of nation in which differences are debated honestly, the votes are cast, the decisions are made and we move forward together as one people." He concludes, "I would like to see Christians contribute to that kind of society, rather than to the demonization that undermines it at its foundations" (Gushee, USA Today, 9/28).

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The Story of a Turk Who "Fell In Love" With Hagia Sophia

Göksel Gülensoy directing

By A. Fotopoulou
ANA-MPA

"Still you are at the beginning of the road…and you are there, with all your grandeur. You exist…for me you are the light…I will be by your side. I will try to understand you more and to hear you. I will not stop laboring on your behalf. I will live in the enjoyment to know you and discover more about you, retaining all the enthusiasm of the first encounter. I thank you.”

These are the words which a Turkish director Göksel Gülensoy wrote, not for a woman, but for the most brilliant monument of Byzantium - the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople. The legends and theories about Hagia Sophia drove Gülensoy to become involved with the monument.

“I desired to see the things which were hidden, not the things above the earth which everyone sees, but to see those things which are below and are yet to be discovered. I wanted if possible to learn whether the legends and theories which I read in the books are true regarding Hagia Sophia’s underground. I began very slowly to “discover” the monument and the fruit of this effort was my first documentary Hagia Sophia which had as its theme the monument itself and the legends associated with it. My work had as much an effect in Turkey as it did to those on the outside, and the recognition of my love was my award that I received," he said in an interview with ANA-MPA.

This same film was awarded in 1994 with the second award for Best Documentary at the Ankara Film Festival and in 1995 with the Best Documentary Award at the Tampere Film Festival. It was also honored with an Honorable Mention at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 1996.

“But my passionate love for Hagia Sophia was born in 1998. I knew that it would be a relationship that would last many years. First, it was necessary for me to see it with my own eyes, to come to recognize it and most significantly to discover it. And this is what I did. In 2000 I finished my second documentary with the title Hagia Sophia and the Cisterns. The cisterns are underground structures which were used in more ancient times for storing water. With the passage of time my love was being transformed into a passion which has overtaken me now for eleven years” added Gülensoy.


Beginning with the theories which sought to link Hagia Sophia’s underground structures with the neighboring Royal Cisterns and with the complex of the Great Palace, the Hippodrome, and even with the Princes' Islands, the Turkish director wished to explore the “depths” of the monument.

“I made a new start. But this time it was necessary to delve into the “depths”, to learn and to bring these things to the surface about which knowledge was lacking. The floor of the main church is mainly tiles, half of which covered the cisterns and the other half tunnels of water. I received a permit from the Ministry of Culture and I started the exploration to see what is in these tunnels under the tiles. I confirmed that the church did not connect with either the Royal Cisterns or with the Great Palace, nor with the Princes' Islands. In the writings of a Russian pilgrim from the Thirteenth Century I had read that in the courtyard of Hagia Sophia Saint Antigonos was buried, who was a youth. Within the tunnels a skeleton of a child was found which possibly belongs to this Saint. However, it is necessary for the archaeologists and other specialists to investigate. They also located in "rooms" in which there were buried priests. In the cisterns canteens were found which dated to 1917 and possibly belonged to British soldiers who maybe were attempting to acquire some holy water. I encountered such beauties they blinded me. I saw things which even kings did not see; I heard the voice of history and became its witness. I was not able to be arrogant before such beauty. I desired to share it with everyone who also marvels at Hagia Sophia. I wanted everyone to see its unfamiliar aspects which are hidden below the earth. For this reason I rushed to document everything I saw with cameras," Gülensoy continued.

All the fruit of this search will become his third documentary that is dedicated to the monument and is titled In the Depths of Hagia Sophia. The documentary has as its assistors and advisors professors of Byzantine archeology from the University of Constantinople, İhsan Tunay and Haluk Çetinkaya.

"Eleven years of work was needed for this documentary to come into existence, which now is in the editing phase and requires about 40,000 euros for completion. There are no sponsors and there is no financing coming from any source. At this moments I have at my disposal 65,000 euros for things pertaining to the film and it was necessary to work outside of Turkey to collect this amount. I know that when the work is completed many will envy me, because I saw unknown aspects of the monument. So be it, let them envy me. Hagia Sophia will always be my great love and I will do other documentaries about it. My next project I will do a documentary about the Christian priests buried at Hagia Sophia” concluded the Turkish director.


(For more on this exciting discovery, visit my previous post here.)

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Questions to Ponder From the Bible

THE LORD GOD called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?" … Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?"

Genesis 3:9,13

THEN THE LORD SAID to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" He said, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?"

Genesis 4:9

THE ISRAELITES QUARRELED and tested the Lord, saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"

Exodus 17:7

MY GOD, MY GOD, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

Psalm 22:1

IS THERE NO BALM in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?

Jeremiah 8:22

WHERE CAN I GO from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

Psalm 139:7

WHEN I LOOK at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Psalm 8:3-4

TO WHOM then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?

Isaiah 40:25-26

WITH WHAT shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? … He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:6,8

JESUS … asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" … He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?"

Mark 8:27,29

THEN SOMEONE CAME to him and said, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?"

Matthew 19:16

FOR WHAT will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?

Mark 8:36-37

WHAT then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? … How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Romans 6:1-3

WHO WILL SEPARATE US from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Romans 8:35

All selections from the NRSV.

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Connecting Andy Warhol With His Byzantine Roots

Double-Header of Andy Warhol Exhibitions Opening this Fall in Athens

ATHENS- Potnia Thiron Gallery and Haunch of Venison will present a double-header of Warhol exhibitions in Athens this autumn. Opening simultaneously, Warhol/Icon: The Creation of Image at the Byzantine and Christian Museum and Warhol: Screen Tests at Potnia Thiron Gallery, will explore Warhol’s obsession with fame through his work as a painter and filmmaker of ‘icons’. The emphasis across both exhibitions will be on the relationship between his Byzantine religious beliefs, Slavic background and devotion to his mystical mother, and his apparently unfettered celebration of an American celebrity culture. On view 7 October through 10 January, 2010.

Warhol/Icon: the Creation of Image

Set against the backdrop of the world’s greatest collection of Byzantine icons, Warhol/Icon: The Creation of Image brings together a selection of the works which helped Warhol reinvent portraiture in the second half of the twentieth century. Curated by the distinguished Warhol scholar Paul Moorhouse, the exhibition probes the enduring significance and value of the icon, connecting historic sacred antecedents with Warhol’s modern icons: images of the famous created in a celebrity-obsessed secular era.

Common to the historic and modern concepts of an icon, the idea of worship is central. Warhol’s work endorses, dissects – and employs – those processes by which a real person’s identity becomes progressively obscured by their glamorized, iconic representation in the mass-media. Seen in the context of the Byzantine and Christian Museum’s historic icons, Warhol’s modern ‘icons’ are presented as the outcome of a complex metamorphosis in which the real has been transformed into a complex but glorious abstraction.

Highlights of the exhibition include a poignant medley of paintings of the bereaving Jackie Kennedy, and several exceptional images of Marilyn Monroe, Mao and Warhol himself. Each of these figures are idealized to the point where their ‘image’ transcends their private, personal identity.

Warhol: Screen Tests

The exhibition at Potnia Thiron, a few hundred meters from the museum, will present the largest ever assembly of Warhol’s classic Screen Tests. The gallery will screen 100 of the short film portraits in a fascinating counter-point to the Warhol/Icon exhibition. While in his paintings, his declared ambition ‘to make everybody look great’ is perceived unequivocally, the Screen Tests suggest a more ambiguous position.

From 1964-66, 189 individuals came to his Manhattan studio (the silver painted loft known as ‘the Factory’) to sit for portraits; the sittings involved each participant remaining immobile for around three minutes while being filmed. There was no sound, no action, no narrative and no script. Each film was a record of the sitter’s response to the situation Warhol had created.


The range of sitters is diverse – including early Warhol superstar ‘Baby’ Jane Holzer, actor Dennis Hopper, filmmaker and Warhol’s chief assistant Gerard Malanga, actress and socialite Edie Sedgwick, singer Lou Reed and artist Salvador Dali. As with the paintings, the films are underpinned by themes of sequence, repetition and series, but whereas the portraits on canvas focus on the transformation of a media-derived image, the films engage with changes produced by the sitter over time. Projected at a slightly slower speed than the three minutes they took to record, the films reveal the sitter with a dispassionate but ruthless objectivity. Rather than making ‘everybody look great’, the Screen Tests promote an entirely different quality – not fame, but humanity at its most vulnerable.

This pair of exhibitions, which are supported by the Warhol family, the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Andy Warhol Museum, present the twentieth century’s quintessential artist in a new light. Warhol/Icon: The Creation of Image and Warhol: Screen Tests provide an unprecedented and unrepeatable illumination of Warhol’s Byzantine sensibility and his interest in the religious roots of celebrity adulation.

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Joy Behar Lashes Out On Ukrainian Orthodox Priest Over Elton John's Right to Gay Adoption

[It seems like the only way Americans know how to argue these days is by committing one logical fallacy after another and basing everything solely on emotional argumentation. And people eat this stuff up. I'll list here some fallacies I see in the way Joy Behar argues for Elton John's right to adopt a child and you can try and spot them in her Commentary: Ad hominem, Naturalistic fallacy, Appeal to ridicule, Burden of proof, Judgmental language, Psychologist's fallacy, Cherry picking, Argumentum ad populum, Appeal to emotion, Appeal to motive, Appeal to wealth, Poisoning the well, and the one that stands out the most is her Appeal to novelty. There are more, but enough said. - J.S.]

Commentary: Let Elton John and his Partner Adopt

by Joy Behar

September 29, 2009

NEW YORK (CNN) -- On a recent tour of a Ukrainian orphanage, Elton John and his partner met Lev, a 14-month old HIV-positive boy.

They immediately fell in love with the child, but their possible bid to adopt the adorable tiny dancer was rejected by Yuriy Pavlenko, Ukraine's Family, Youth and Sports Minister.

Mr. Pavlenko, here are some tips about family, youth and sports. Family doesn't mean a huddle of orphans sharing a few soiled mattresses, it's not youth if you die of AIDS before you reach kindergarten, and wrestling over dinner scraps is not a sport.

But that could be Lev's fate now, because the Ukrainian government said Elton and his beau David Furnish are too old to adopt the boy. It sounds like the real reason is they're too gay.

John and Furnish tied the knot in 2005, becoming one of Britain's first gay civil unions, but Ukraine doesn't recognize gay unions.

Ukrainian Orthodox Church spokesman Father Georgy Gulyaev called Elton John a sinner and said, "thank God it's impossible under Ukrainian law for [him] to adopt a child." Apparently in the Ukraine, God's No. 1 priority is preventing gay couples from giving sick kids a better life. God would never want something like that to happen.

Father Gulyaev said homosexuality "represents the dead end of human development." That's odd, I thought the dead end of human development was represented by 14th century thinking like his. This guy's head is stuck in the Dark Ages. He hasn't even progressed to the Middle Ages yet.

Some conservative religious leaders like to harp about the "damage" to families done by gay marriage, as if traditional marriage is so perfect. Since many of them have taken vows of celibacy, they've never witnessed firsthand the damage dinner with the in-laws can cause (one of the few advantages of the celibate life, I guess).

There are even a few married Bible-thumpers spending their time trying to keep sex out of our lives -- yet they talk about sex more than anyone! Sex is usually the first and only factor they consider when judging -- I mean, when "dispensing enlightenment upon" -- others. Watch Joy Behar speak about adoption »

Sure, Elton John may be gay, but he's also a renowned musician, a celebrated humanitarian, and has been knighted by the Queen of England. In fact, for some people he is the Queen of England.

Plus, there's no downside to gay adoption. In the United States, organizations like the National Adoption Center, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics all agree that having homosexual parents does not negatively affect children.

But you know what does negatively affect children? Growing up with no parents. So now 14-month-old Lev is stuck in some depressing orphanage that makes Guantanamo Bay look like the presidential suite at the Waldorf.

He'll likely end up in foster homes and -- if he lives long enough -- maybe he can turn into a bitter, vodka-swilling drunk. All because the Ukrainian government won't let him be adopted by two loving gay parents who are fabulously rich and want to give him a home with the best healthcare available, dressed in Versace jammies and cashmere Huggies. Not to mention all the play dates with Brangelina's kids.

Let's hope Sir Elton finds a different, more tolerant country willing to let him be a poor child's loving father.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Joy Behar.

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Confession - Confessor - Confessing

By Monk Moses of the Holy Mountain

Confession is a God-given commandment, and it is one of the Mysteries of our Church. Confession is not a formal, habitual ("to be on the safe side", or, "in view of upcoming feast-days"), forced and unprepared act, springing from an isolated duty or obligation and for psychological relief only. Confession should always be combined with repentance. A Holy Mountain Elder used to say: "Many confess, but few repent!" (Elder Aemilianos of the Simonopetra Monastery, Holy Mountain).

Repentance is a freely-willed, internally cultivated process of contrition and sorrow for having distanced ourselves from God through sin. True repentance has nothing to do with intolerable pain, excessive sorrow and relentless guilty feelings. That would not be sincere repentance, but a secret egotism, a feeling of our "ego" being trampled on; an anger that is directed at our self, which then wreaks revenge because it is exposing itself and is put to shame - a thing that it cannot tolerate. Repentance means a change in our thoughts, our mentality; it is an about-face; it is a grafting of morality and an abhorrence of sin. Repentance also means a love of virtue, benevolence, and a desire, a willingness and a strong disposition to be re-joined to Christ through the Grace of the almighty Holy Spirit. Repentance begins in the depths of the heart, but it culminates necessarily in the Mystery of divine and sacred Confession.

During confession, one confesses sincerely and humbly before the confessor, as though in the presence of Christ. No scientist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, sociologist, philosopher or theologian can replace the confessor. No icon - not even the most miracle-working one - can provide what the confessor's stole (epitachelion) can: the absolution of sins. The confessor takes the person under his care; he adopts him and ensures he is reborn spiritually, which is why he is called a "spiritual father".


Normally, spiritual paternity is lifelong, sacred and powerful - even more powerful than a family bond. Spiritual birth is a painful process. The confessor must keep track of the confessing soul, with a fear of God (as one who is "accountable to God"), with understanding, humility and love, and guide him with discretion in the ever-upward course of his in-Christ life.

The confessor-priest has been given a special blessing by his bishop for the undertaking of his confessional opus. However, the gift of "binding and unbinding" sins is initially acquired through his ordination as presbyter, when he is rendered a successor to the Apostles. Thus, validity and canonicity in Apostolic succession, through bishops, is of central and great importance. Like all the other Holy Mysteries of our Church, the Mystery of Confession is performed (and it bestows Grace on the faithful), not in conjunction with the skill, the scientism, the literacy, the eloquence, the energy and the artfulness of the priest - not even with his virtue and holiness - but through the canonicity (validity) of his priesthood and through the "Master of Ceremonies" - the Holy Spirit. The possible sins of the priest do not obstruct divine Grace during the Mysteries. Woe to us, if we were to doubt (on account of the unworthiness of the priest) that the bread and the wine actually become the Body and the Blood of Christ during the Divine Liturgy! This of course does not mean that the priest should not have to constantly concern himself with his own "cleanliness". Thus, there is no such thing as "good" or "bad" confessors. Each and every confessor provides the exact same absolution.

However, we do have the right to choose our confessor; and of course we have the right to turn to the one who truly makes us feel at ease with him, spiritually. To constantly change our confessor however, is not a very sober decision; this kind of tendency does not reveal spiritual maturity. But confessors should, respectively, not fret excessively -or even create problems- when a spiritual child of theirs happens to depart from them. This may mean that they were morbidly attached to each other (sentimentally to the person, and not to Christ nor to the Church). They may also regard that departure as an insult; one that is demeaning to them and makes them think there is no one better than them, or, it may give them a feeling that the other "belongs" to them exclusively and they can therefore dominate them and in fact even behave forcibly towards them, as if they are repressed and confined subordinates. We did mention that the confessor is a spiritual father, and that spiritual fatherhood and spiritual childbirth entails labour. Thus, it is only natural for the confessor to feel sorrow upon the departure of his spiritual child. However, it is preferable for him to pray for his child's spiritual progress and its union to the Church, even despite its disengagement from him. He must wish for, and not against that child.

The confessor's opus is not just the superficial hearing of a person's sins and the reciting of the prayer of absolution afterwards. Nor is it restricted to the hour of confession. Like a good father, the confessor continuously cares for his child; he listens to it and observes it carefully, he counsels it appropriately, he guides it along the lines of the Gospel, he highlights its talents, he does not place unnecessary burdens on it, he imposes canons with leniency only when he must, he consoles it when it is disheartened, weighed down, resentful, exhausted, and he heals it accordingly, without ever discouraging it, but constantly pursuing the struggle for the eradication of its passions and the harvesting of virtues; constantly shaping its eternal soul to be Christ-like.


This ever-developing paternal and filial relationship between confessor and spiritual child eventually culminates in a feeling of comfort, trust, respect, sanctity and elation. When confessing, one opens his heart to the confessor and discloses the innermost, the basest and most unclean - in fact, all of his - secrets, his most intimate actions and detrimental desires, even those that he would not want to confess to himself, nor tell his next-of-kin or his closest friend. For this reason, the confessor must have an absolute respect for the unlimited trust that is being shown to him by the person confessing. This trust most assuredly builds up with time, but also by the fact that the confessor is strictly bound (in fact to the death) by the divine and sacred Canons of the Church, to the confidentiality that confession entails.

In Orthodox confession there are of course no general instructions, because the spiritual guidance that each unique soul requires is entirely personalized. Each person is unprecedented, with a particular psychosynthesis, a different character, differing potentials and abilities, limitations, tendencies, tolerances, knowledge, needs and dispositions. With the Grace of God and with divine enlightenment, the confessor must discern all these characteristics, in order to decide what he can utilize best, so that the person confessing will be helped in the best possible manner. At times, leniency will be required, while at other times, austerity. The same thing does not apply to each and every person. Nor should the confessor ALWAYS be strict, just for the sake of being called strict and respected as such; and he should likewise not ALWAYS be excessively lenient, in order to become the preferred choice and be regarded as a "spiritual father of many". What is required of him is a fear of God, discernment, honesty, humility, deliberation, understanding and prayer.

"Economy" (Oikonomia: to make allowances for something, exceptionally) is not demanded of the person confessing, nor is it proper for the confessor to make it a rule. "Economy" must remain an exception. "Economy" must also be a temporary measure (Archmandrite George Gregoriates). When the reasons for implementing it no longer exist, it must naturally be retracted. The same sin can be confronted in numerous ways.

A canon is not always necessary. A canon is not intended as a form of punishment. It is educative by nature. A canon is not imposed for the sake of appeasing an offended God and an atonement of the sinner in the face of Divine Justice; that is an entirely heretical teaching. A canon is usually implemented during an immature confession, with the intent to arouse awareness and a consciousness of the magnitude of one's sin. According to Orthodox teaching, "sin" is not so much the transgression of a law, as it is a lack of love towards God. "Love, and do whatever you want", the blessed Augustine used to say...

A canon is implemented for the purpose of completing one's repentance in view of confession, which is why Fr. Athanasios of Meteora rightly says: "Just as the confessor is not permitted to make public the sins being confessed to him, so must the person confessing not make public the particular canon that the confessor has imposed in his specific case, as it is the resultant of many parameters."

A confessor acts as the provider of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. During the hour of the Mystery of Confession, he does not function as a psychologist and scientist. He functions as a priest, as an experienced doctor, as a caring father. When listening to the sins of the person confessing, he prays to God to give him enlightenment, to advise him what the best "medication" for cure will be, and to gauge the degree and the quality of that confession. The confessor does not place himself opposite a confessing person with curiosity, suspicion, envy, excessive austerity, power and arrogance; but equally not with indifference, thoughtlessly, carelessly and wearily. The humility, love and attention of the confessor will greatly help the person confessing. The confessor should not ask too many, too unnecessary and too indiscreet questions. He must especially interrupt any detailed descriptions of various sins (especially the carnal ones) and even the disclosure of names, to safeguard himself even more. But the person confessing should also not feel afraid, or hesitate and feel embarrassed; he should feel respect, trust, honour and show reverence to the confessor. This feeling of sanctity, mutual respect and trust must be mainly nurtured, inspired and developed by the confessor.


Our holy mother the Orthodox Church is the Body of the Resurrected Christ; She is a vast infirmary, for the healing of frail, sinning faithful from the traumas, the wounds and the illnesses of sin; from pathogenic demons and from the venomous demonic traps and the influences of demonically-driven passions.

Our Church is not a branch office of the Ministry of Social Services, nor does She compete against the various societies for social welfare - without this meaning that She does not acknowledge this significant and well-meaning opus, or that She Herself does not offer such services bounteously, admirably and wondrously; it is because the Church is mainly a provider of a meaning to life, of redemption and salvation of the faithful "for the sake of whom Christ died", through their participation in the Mysteries of the Church. "The priest's stole is a planing instrument" - as the Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain used to say - "that planes and straightens out a person; it is a therapeutic scalpel that excises passions, and not a trowel for workaholics, or a symbol of power. It is a servant's apron intended for ministering to people, for providing therapy and salvation."

God uses the priest for the forgiveness of His creature. It is plainly stated in the absolution blessing: "May God forgive you - through me the sinner - everything, both in the present age and in the future one, and may He render you blameless, before His awesome Seat of Judgment; having no longer any worry for the crimes that have been confessed, may you go forth in peace." Sins that have not been confessed will continue to burden a person, even in the life to come. Confessed sins should not be re-confessed; it would be as though one doesn't believe in the grace of the Mystery. God is of course aware of them, but it is for the sake of absolution, humbling and therapy that they need to be outwardly confessed. As for the occasional penance (canon) imposed for sins, one must realize that it does not negate the Church's love for the person, but that it is simply an educative imposition, for a better awareness of one's offenses.

According to Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, "Confession is a willed, verbal revealing of one's evil deeds and words and thoughts; solemn, accusatory, direct, without shame, decisive, to be executed before a legitimate spiritual father." This God-bearing Saint has succinctly, fully and meaningfully clarified that confession must be willed, free, effortless, without the confessor straining to extract the person's confession. It should be with solemnity, in other words, with an awareness of the sorrow that he caused God with his sin, and not with sentimental, hypocritical, fainthearted tears.

Genuine "solemnity" implies an inner collapsing, remorse, a hatred towards sin, a love of virtue, and a feeling of gratitude to the Gift-Giver God. "Accusatory" implies a responsible confession, without attempts of justification, subterfuge, chicanery, irresponsibility and scapegoating; with sincere self-reproach and genuine self-humiliation that carries the so-called "happy-sorrow" and the "joyous bereavement" defined by the Church. "Direct" implies a confession with all sincerity, directness and precision, valour and courage, severity and bravery. It often happens that during the hour of confession, one avoids admitting his defeat, his fall and his weakness and by means of eloquent and long-winded descriptions attempts to deflect his share of responsibility, with twists and turns and half-truths - or even by accusing others - all for the sake of preserving (even at that hour) a prim and proper ego. A confession "without shame" implies a portrayal of our true, deplorable self. Shame is a good thing to have, prior to sin and not afterwards, and in the presence of the confessor. The shame felt during confession they say will free us from the sin during the Ultimate Judgment, given that whatever the confessor absolves will not be judged again. A "direct" confession implies that it should be clean, specific, sincere, and accompanied by the decision that the faithful will never repeat the sins he has confessed to. Furthermore, confession should be continuous, so that the "willingly recurring" passions (according to Saint John of the Ladder) are not strengthened, but rather, are cured sooner. Thus, old sins will not be entirely blotted out from memory, there will be a regular self-monitoring, self-observation, self-awareness and self-reproach; Divine Grace will not abandon; demonic entrapment will be averted much more easily, and reminiscence of Death will not seem as horrid and terrible.


Another thing that is all too frequently observed - and we admit this with deep pain and abundant love - is that sermons are not always as Orthodox as they should be; in other words, they only manage to sound like just another commentary on an unimportant news item, thus transforming the sacred pulpit into yet another television "frame" where we can air our own opinion on daily events and occurrences. The Orthodox sermon however is by nature mainly ecclesiological, Christological, salvatory, hagiological and beneficial to the soul. The sermon on repentance as delivered by the Prophets, the holy Baptist, the Saviour Christ and all the Saints remains forever opportune and a necessity. A basic prerequisite for partaking in the Holy Mysteries and for an upward spiritual course is a purity of heart; a purity that is rid of miscellaneous sins; the spirit of avarice and blissfulness inspired by today's hyper-consumerist society; the spirit of God-despised pride in a world of narcissism, individualism, non-humility, non-philanthropy, arrogance and the bizarre; the demonic spirit of mischievous thoughts, fantasies and imaginations and unclean and obscure suspicions and envy.

Purity of heart has become a rare ornament - in brotherly and conjugal relations, in obligations towards colleagues, in friendships, in conversations, in thoughts, in desires, in pastoral callings. The so-called Mass Media have lapsed and become mere sources of contamination. Forgotten are neptic awareness, ascetic sobriety, traditional frugality, simplicity and gallantry. This has led to a polluting of the soul's rationalizing ability, an arousal of its desirous aspect towards avarice, while its willpower has become severely blunted, thus drawing a weakened person towards evil, without any impediments or limitations.

Nowadays prevail self-justification, excuses for our passions, beautification of sin, and its reinforcement through modern psychological supports. The admission of mistakes is regarded as belittlement, weakness and generally improper. The constant justification of our self, and the meticulous transferal of responsibilities elsewhere have created a human being that is confused, divided, disturbed, worn-out, miserable and self-absorbed, taunted by the devil, and captured in his dark messes.

There is a prevalence of foolish rationalism nowadays, which observes evangelical virtues and conciliar canons according to its liking, preference and convenience, on important issues such as fasting, abstinence, childbearing, morality, modesty, honesty and precision.

In view of all the above - none of which I believe has been exaggerated - it is our belief that the opus of a confessor is not an easy one. Ordinary coercion to repent and the cultivating of humility are nowadays inadequate; the fold requires catechesis, re-evangelizing, spiritual training, as well as a spiritual about-face, in order to acquire powerful antibodies. Resistance, reaction and the confronting of the powerful current of de-sanctification, of secularization, of demoting heroism, of eudemonism and of amassing wealth are imperative. The young generation is in need of special attention, instruction and love, given that their upbringing has not proven to be of any help in their becoming aware of the meaning and the purpose of life, or of the void and the indecorousness, the lawlessness and the darkness of sin.

Another serious problem - even for our Christians - is the often over-zealous quest for a labour-less, toil-free and grief-free life. We are in search of Cyreneans to carry our crosses. We refuse to lift up our own personal cross. We have no idea of the depth and breadth of our own cross. We bow in reverence before the Cross in church, we cross ourselves, but we do not embrace our personal cross. In the long run, we would like a non-crucified Christianity. But there cannot be an Easter Sunday without a Good Friday.


We honour martyrs and saints, but we ourselves do not want to suffer any hardships, any postponements, any difficulties. Fasting is too difficult a task to accomplish; we feel resentful during an illness; we cannot tolerate any harsh words, not even when we are to blame, therefore how could we possibly tolerate injustice, slander, persecution and exile, the way our saints did? It is an indisputable fact that the contemporary, secular spirit of convenience, leisure and excessive consumerism has greatly affected the measure of spiritual living. Generally speaking, we demand a non-ascetic Christianity. Orthodoxy however has the ascetic Gospel as its basis.

One other serious problem of our time is man's morbid and undue reliance on logic, intellect, knowledge, and personal judgment - we are referring to the over-fed and ultimately tiring rationalization. Neptic Orthodox theology teaches us to consider our Nous a tool, and to lower it, into the Heart. Our Church does not cultivate and produce intellectuals. To us, rationalization is not a philosophical mentality, but a clearly sin-oriented life view - a form of atheism - since it goes contrary to the commandment of placing our faith, hope, love and trust in God. A rationalist judges everything using the filter of his own mind and only with his finite mind, with himself and his sovereign ego as the epicentre, and does not place any trust in divine Providence, divine Grace and divine Assistance in his life. By often regarding himself as infallible, a rationalist does not allow God to intervene in his life and therefore judge him. That way, he is convinced that he is not in need of confession. Saint Symeon the New Theologian says however that, for one to believe he has not fallen into any sins is the greatest of falls and fallacies, and the greatest sin of all. Certain newer theologians speak of "missing the target" and not of "sinning", in their desire to blunt the natural protesting of one's conscience. The self-sufficiency displayed by certain churchgoers and fasting Christians can at times be hiding a latent pharisaic stance, i.e., that "they are not like the others" and therefore are not in need of confession.


According to the Holy Fathers of our Church, the greatest of evils is Pride; it is the mother of all passions, according to Saint John of the Ladder. It is the mother of many offspring, the first ones being vainglory and self-vindication. Pride is a form of denial of God; it is an invention of wicked demons, the result of too much flattery and praise, which in turn results in a debilitation and exhaustion of man, God-despised censure, anger, rage, hypocrisy, the lack of compassion, misanthropy, and blasphemy. Pride is a passion that is formidable, difficult, powerful and hard to cure. Pride is also strong in many ways, and with many faces. It manifests itself as vainglory, boastfulness, conceit, arrogance, presumptuousness, swell-headedness, insolence, self-importance, megalomania, ambition, self-love, vanity, avarice, flesh-loving, a love for leadership, accusations and arguments. Also as smugness, favouritism, insolence, disrespect, outspokenness, insensitivity, contradiction, obstinacy, disobedience, sarcasm, stubbornness, disregard, indignity, perfectionism and hypersensitivity. Finally, pride can lead to impenitence.

The tongue often becomes the instrument of pride, through unchecked, long-winded, useless talking; gossiping, silliness; vain , insincere, indiscreet, two-tongued, diplomatic, pretended and mocking conversations.

Out of the seven deadly sins many other passions spring forth. Having mentioned the offspring of Pride, we then have Avarice, which gives birth to the love of money, greed, stinginess, lack of charity, hardheartedness, fraud, usury, injustice, deceitfulness, simony, bribery, gambling. Fornication manifests itself in myriads of ways, for example, envy - with its underhanded and evil spite, insatiable gluttony, anger, as well as suspect negligence and lack of care.

Special attention should also be paid to many un-Orthodox elements in family life, which we believe should be examined carefully by confessors and the persons involved. The avoidance of childbearing, the idolizing of one's children (when regarded as the extension of the parents' ego), overprotecting them, or constantly watching their moves and savagely oppressing them. Marriage is an arena for exercising humility, mutual leeway and mutual respect, and not the parallel journey of two egotisms despite a lifelong coupling and coexistence. The devil dances for joy whenever there is no forgiveness in human weaknesses and in everyday mistakes. Parents will help their children significantly, not with excessive courtesy outside the home, but with their peaceful, sober and loving example in the home, on a daily basis. The participation of the children together with the parents in the Mystery of Confession will fortify them with divine Grace in an experiential life in Christ. When parents ask for forgiveness with sincerity, they simultaneously teach their children humility, which destroys all demonic plots. In a household where love, harmony, understanding, humility and peace bloom, there the blessings of God will be bounteous and the home becomes a castle that is impervious to the malice of the world around. The upbringing of children with the element of forgiveness creates a healthy family hearth, which will inspire them and strengthen them for their own futures.


One other huge matter that constitutes an obstacle for repentance and confession is self-vindication, which plagues many people of the Church also. Its basis is, as we mentioned earlier, demonic Pride. A classic example is the Pharisee of the Gospel parable. The self-vindicating person has apparently positive elements, which he will over-praise and for which he would like to be honoured and praised. He is happy to be flattered and to demean and humiliate others. He has excessive self-esteem, he vindicates himself to excess and believes that God is necessarily obliged to reward him. In the long run, he is a poor wretch, who, in his wretched state makes others wretched. He is possessed by nervousness and agitation and he is demanding, thus imprisoning himself; these are tendencies that will not allow him to open the door to divine mercy, through his repentance.

An offspring of Pride is censure, which is unfortunately also a habit of many Christians, who tend to concern themselves more with others than themselves. This is a phenomenon of our time and of a society that pushes people into a continuous observation of others, and not of the self. Modern man's myriad occupations and activities do not want him to ever remain alone to study, to contemplate, to pray, to attain self-awareness, self-critique, self-control and to be reminded of death.

The so-called Mass Media are incessantly preoccupied with scandal-seeking, persistently and at length, with human passions, with sins, with others' misdemeanors. These kinds of things provoke, impress, and, even if they do not scandalize, they nevertheless burden the soul and the mind with filth and ugliness and they actually reassure us, by making us believe that "we are better" than those advertised. Thus, a person becomes accustomed to the mediocrity, the tepidity and the transience of superficial day-to-day life, never comparing himself to saints and heroes. This is how censure prevails in our time - by giving man the impression that he is justly imposing a kind of cleansing, by mud-slinging at others, albeit contaminating himself by generating malice, hatred, hostility, resentfulness, envy and frigidity. Saint Maximus the Confessor in fact states that the one who constantly scrutinizes other's sins, or judges his brothers based on a suspicion only, has not even begun to repent, nor has he begun any research into discovering his own sins.


Many and various things can be said; but in the end, only one thing is opportune, significant and outstanding: our salvation, which we do not attend to forever. Salvation is not attained, except only through sincere repentance and clean confession. Repentance not only opens the celestial Paradise, but also the terrestrial one, with the foretasting -albeit partial- of the ineffable joy of the endless reign of the heavens and of wonderful peace, in the present time. Those who uphold the practice of confession can be the truly and genuinely happy people; pacifist and peace-bearing; heralds of repentance, of resurrection, of transformation, freedom, grace, and with the blessing of God in their souls and their lives. "God's bounteous Grace turns the wolf into a lamb", says Saint John Chrysostom. No sin can surpass God's love. There is not one sinner who cannot become a saint, if he desires to. It has been proven, by the innumerable names that are recorded in the Book of Saints.

The confessor listens to confessions and absolves those confessing, under his blessed stole. He cannot however confess himself and place the stole over his own head to obtain forgiveness in the same manner. He must necessarily kneel underneath another stole to confess and be absolved. That is the way the spiritual law functions; that is the way God's Wisdom and Mercy have ordained. We cannot confess others, but not submit ourselves to confession; to not practice what we preach; to talk about repentance, but not to repent; to talk about confession, but not confess ourselves regularly. None of us can dethrone himself, and none can absolve himself. The unadvised, the disobedient, the unconfessed are a serious problem for the Church.

Dear brothers and sisters, the confessor's stole can be a miraculous scalpel for the removal of malignant tumors; it can raise the dead, renew and transform the indecorous world, and bring joy to earth and heaven. Our Church has entrusted this grand ministry, this sacred service, to our priests and not to the angels, so that we might be able to approach them with ease and without fear, as fellow-sufferers and corporeal counterparts.

All the above have been deposited with sincerity and not at all pretentiously, by a co-sinner, who did not aspire to play the teacher, but a co-struggling, co-student, together with you. It was merely his desire to remind you with simple and inartistic words the Tradition of our holy mother, the Church, on the ever-opportune matter of divinely-spun and divinely-blessed Repentance and the divinely-delivered and God-favoured, blessed Mystery of Confession.


(Taken from REPENTANCE AND CONFESSION, by Monk Moses of the Holy Mountain, "Orthodoxi Kypseli" Publications, Thessaloniki. Translated by ORTHODOX OUTLET for DOGMATIC ENQUIRIES.)

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