St. James the Ascetic: Who Murdered Yet Did Not Despair

St. James the Ascetic (Feast Day - January 28)

Our venerable father James the Ascetic (also known as Jacob or Iakovos the Ascetic or the Righteous), a fourth century saint, left all worldly things to settle for fifteen years in a cave near a village called Porphyrianos (now Haifa) in Palestine. There he led an ascetic's life. Zealous in prayer and the mortification of the flesh, God granted him the gift to work miracles.

Never leaving his cave, he received many visitors, including many Samaritans among whom he lead to the Christian faith. Once there was a prostitute who, moved by certain jealous Samaritans, came to see the saint dressed as a nun. She incited him to sin by pretending to be suffering from an ache in her bosom which needed a rubbing. He consented to her wishes, but in order to resist carnal temptation, he kept his left hand all the while plunged in a fire at his side. Seeing this, the woman repented of her shameful behavior, entered a convent, and made rapid progress in the virtues.

The many miracles James wrought, and the fame spreading rapidly, drawing visitors to his hermitage, made him desire peace and quiet. He thus moved forty miles away to a riverside cave. It eventually came to the point where he began to think he had been established in the virtues, and this made him fall into pride. This is just what the Devil was waiting for to go on the attack.

At this time, a distraught nobleman who had a daughter possessed by demons offered her to the saint for healing. The saint prayed and immediately freed her from the demon. The girl's father, though, was afraid that the demon would disturb her again, and so he left her and her young brother in a nearby cave to the ascetic of many years. Unfortunately, James was overcome by desire and he violated the girl. He then became afraid that his abhorrent sin would be revealed, so he killed the woman and her brother and threw their dead bodies in the nearby river. Thus, he despaired completely of his salvation and made haste to return to the world. But on his way he met a holy elder who exhorted him to have confidence in the mercy of God.

Leaving the elder, James went on his way and came upon an old, desolate tomb. He went inside, moved the bones to a corner, and began to send up humble prayer to God. With his heart warmed by tears of repentance, the holy ascetic spent ten years in this dark tomb, unknown to mankind and venturing forth only at night to feed on some of the plants that grew nearby.

Some time later, when the land suffered from drought and lack of rain, God ordered the bishop of the city that unless James who was shut in the grave prayed, the dry spell would not end. Then the bishop together with all the people went to the saint, begged and finally convinced him to pray for them. As soon as he prayed there came a heavy rain. From this sign the saint received good hope about the forgiveness of his sin, for God "desires not the death of the sinner but that he should turn from his way and live" (Ezek. 33:11). The days passed and he added tears to his tears so that he advanced continuously in humility. In this way he commended his soul into the hands of God in peace at the age of seventy-five.

A church was later built on the site of the tomb where he found the grace of repentance.

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J.D. Salinger and the Jesus Prayer

One of my favorite American novelists of the 20th century, J.D. Salinger, died yesterday here in New England (Cornish, NH). He is most famous for one of my all-time favorites, The Catcher In The Rye, which gave us one of the great icons of teenage angst in the 1950's. Less known is a book he wrote a few years later and published after he retired into seclusion in Cornish, which is titled Franny and Zooey. Franny and Zooey is a book many credit with first introducing them to both the Jesus Prayer and the Russian tale The Way of a Pilgrim, which is essentially an introduction to The Philokalia. It is a modern American tale that explores the path from existential depression to spiritual illumination, and in this way serves as a conclusion (or remedy) to The Catcher In The Rye, whose main character's teenage existential angst lands him in a mental hospital (which could be why it has been so loved by the insane of our time such as Mark David Chapman, for whom Holden Caulfield was a hero, and John Hinckely Jr). Franny and Zooey is not an Orthodox book, as it more corresponds to a Zen Buddhist form of philosophy, but it does have some worthwhile moments. Its significance for English speaking Orthodox is that it may be the first time the method of the Jesus Prayer and the book The Way of a Pilgrim was exposed to millions throughout the world.

Below is an excerpt in which Franny explains the method of the Jesus Prayer:

"... if you keep saying that prayer over and over again, you only have to just do it with your lips at first - then eventually what happens, the prayer becomes self- active. Something happens after a while. I don't know what but something happens, the words get synchronized with the person's heart-beats, and then you're actually praying without ceasing. The prayer has one aim, and one aim only. To endow the person who says it with Christ -Consciousness."

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Russia May Restrict Destructive Cults

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St. Isaac the Syrian on the Harm of Foolish Zeal

A ZEALOUS MAN never achieves peace of mind. But he who is a stranger to peace is a stranger to joy. If, as it is said, peace of mind is perfect health, and zeal is opposed to peace, then the man who has a wrong zeal is ill with a grievous disease. Though you presume, a man, to send forth your zeal against the infirmities of other men, you have expelled the health of your own soul; be assiduous, rather, in labouring for your own soul’s health.

If you wish to heal the infirm, know that the sick are in greater need of loving care than of rebuke. Therefore, although you do not help others, you expend labour to bring grievous illness upon yourself.

Zeal is not reckoned among men to be a form of wisdom, but as one of the illnesses of the soul, namely narrow-mindedness and deep ignorance.

The beginning of divine wisdom is clemency and gentleness, which arise from greatness of soul and the bearing of the infirmities of men. For, he says, ‘Let the strong bear the infirmities of the weak’, and ‘Restore him that has fallen in the spirit of meekness.’ The Apostle numbers peace and patience among the fruits of the Spirit.

Homily 51

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The Absence of Envy Among the Saints

by St. Nicholas Velimirovich

The absence of envy among the saints is a startling and wonderful phenomenon. Not only did the saints not allow envy to seize their hearts but, with all their might, labored to uplift their companions and to diminish themselves. On one occasion when St. Hilarion of Palestine visited St. Anthony in Egypt, St. Anthony exclaimed: "Welcome Venus, the morning star!" To that St. Hilarion replied: "Greetings and health be to you, the shining pillar who sustains the universe!" When they praised St. Macarius as a monk, the saint replied: "Brethren, forgive me, I am not a monk but, I have seen monks!" When some people told St. Sisoes that he attained the same level of perfection as St. Anthony, Sisoes replied: "If only I had but a single thought as does Anthony, I would be all aflame."

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King David's Tomb Renovated

Renovating David's Tomb

King David's Tomb complex and Last Supper Room on Mount Zion are important religious, historical sites, which draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Despite this, site was neglected for many years, but has recently been restored.

Shachar Poni
01.25.10
Israel Antiquities Authority

Ever since the Six Day War, a number of bodies have been active at the site of King David's Tomb in Jerusalem – the Diaspora Yeshiva is in charge of most of the structures around the main building, the Ministry of Religious Services manages the room of Zion – the tomb and the entrance rooms, and the Interior Ministry maintains the Last Supper Room and the adjacent rooms.

Smaller bodies such as the Sephardic Yeshiva and private citizens and associations, as well as Christian bodies including Vatican representatives in Israel, also show interest in the site.

The complex fell under many different rulers throughout the years, including the Christians, Muslims and Ottomans. The site was captured by the Palmach's Harel Brigade in the War of Independence, and became an important base on the front line that cut the city in two until the Six Day War.

Archaeological bodies (now known as the Israel Antiquities Authority) began operating at the site immediately after the establishment of the State of Israel, as a solution to the problem of damage caused to the antiquities.

The authority would mainly carry out specific archaeological works for infrastructure purposes, but did not aim to carry out overall renovations or maintenance.

In 2007, the authority learned that the Diaspora Yeshiva was performing construction works south of the tomb's courtyard, which could have led to the collapse of the structure's southern wing.

Construction was halted, and the yeshiva was ordered to submit blueprints offering a solution to the problem before resuming construction. This move was the first step in creating a pattern of planning and coordination to maintain the site together with the Antiquities Authority.

The two-story complex contains a series of small rooms arranged around an open courtyard.

Works being carried out on the walls of the structures were also halted. Work was only resumed after the property holders submitted the required blueprints. The works were performed by a contractor with experience in preservation and infrastructure, who renovated and installed toilets in the rooms. The rooms are now used as guest rooms.

Following the success of these two projects, the Jerusalem Development Authority decided to merge the development and preservation of the complex with the government's Old City project.

This enabled the complex to be viewed as a single unit for the first time, both with regards to the study of the site from a historical and archaeological aspect, and with regards to the physical and practical aspect of maintaining and preserving the site.

Pilot plans were then drawn up for the renovation and preservation of the compound's main courtyard, including the corridor at the northern entrance.

Before the project was launched, the 1,290 square foot courtyard was in a dire condition – poor infrastructure under the flooring, lack of an upper drainage system, poor electric and telephone infrastructure, improvised stone benches and more.

The site was completely renovated. Reinforcements were placed, the walls were cleaned painted and plastered, banisters were installed, the site was made accessible for the handicapped, stone benches were built, and more.

Further renovation, which was not included in the original pilot, was done ahead of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI last year, initiated by the Jerusalem Development Authority. These works focused on the large hall east of the main courtyard and the public toilet that was installed near the hall several years ago.

Comprehensive work was also carried out on the Last Supper Room ahead of the pope's visit. Due to drainage problems on the roof of the structure, rainwater seeped into the building and the interior plaster began to peal. Lacking proper maintenance, some of the engraved texts on the walls disappeared, and the pillars in the area were covered with layers of dirt. Therefore, a great chunk of the work was dedicated to sealing off the northwestern part of the structure's roof.

The Jerusalem Development Authority also plans to reinstall signposts all over the complex to make getting around easier.

After the completion of the pilot works, plans were launched to preserve and restore the rest of the areas in the complex, including the room of Zion, the tomb and the rooms leading up to David's Tomb, the walkway and the room east of the walkway used as a space to light candles in. Plans to renovate the hall toilets and roof are also in motion.

King David Compund in 1880

One of the rooms before renovation

Room after renovation

Hall before renovation

Hall after renovation

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Mathematician Says Darwinism Doesn't Add Up

A Mathematician Looks at Darwin’s Theory and Discovers It Doesn’t Add Up

Anika Smith
January 26, 2010
Evolution News and Views

SEATTLE – "Darwin’s attempt to explain the origins of all the magnificent species in the living world in terms of the struggle for survival is easily the dumbest idea ever taken seriously by science," writes Dr. Granville Sewell in his new book In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design published by Discovery Institute Press.

What do you get when you add together the big bang, the fine-tuning of the laws of physics and the evolution of life? Definitely not a materialistic theory of origins, answers Sewell, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas El Paso.

In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Sewell concludes that while there is much in the history of life that seems to suggest natural causes, there is little evidence to support Charles Darwin’s idea that natural selection of random variations can explain major evolutionary advances.

In the book, he explains why evolution is a fundamentally different and much more difficult problem than others solved by science and why increasing numbers of scientists are now recognizing what has long been obvious to the layman: there is no explanation possible without design. This book summarizes many of the traditional arguments for intelligent design and presents some powerful and unique arguments as well.

“In The Beginning provides delightful and wide-ranging commentary on the origins debate and intelligent design,” says biophysicist Dr. Cornelius Hunter. “Sewell provides much needed clarity on topics that are too often misunderstood, like his discussion of the commonly confused problem of entropy, which is a must read.”

Granville Sewell is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas El Paso. He completed his PhD in Mathematics at Purdue University in 1972 and has worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Purdue University, the University of Texas Center for High Performance Computing (Austin), and Texas A&M University. He also spent one semester teaching at Universidad Nacional de Tucuman in Argentina on a Fullbright grant. Dr. Sewell has written three books on numerical analysis and is the author of a widely-used finite element computer program.

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Saint Ephraim the Syrian

St. Ephraim the Syrian (Feast Day - January 28)

Saint Ephraim the Syrian, the great poet saint of the Syriac Church, was born in c. A.D. 306 in Nisibis of Mesopotamia (northwest of Mosul, Iraq). While some late sources claim that his father was a heathen priest who worshiped an idol called Abnil, his own writings affirm that he was raised in a Christian family. He writes: "I was born in the way of truth: though my boyhood understood not the greatness of the benefit, I knew it when trial came" (Adv. Haereses, XXVI). Again more explicitly, if we may trust a Confession which is extant only in Greek: "I had been early taught about Christ by my parents; they who begat me after the flesh had trained me in the fear of the Lord... My parents were confessors before the judge: yea, I am the kindred of martyrs."

He was ordained deacon in c. A.D. 338, some say by Saint Basil the Great whom Sozomen said "was a great admirer of Ephraim and was astonished at his erudition," and served the Bishop of Nisibis, Mor Ya`qub (St. James), who participated in the Synod of Nicaea (AD 325) as one of the 318 Holy Fathers. He lived as a solitary and apparently never entered into priesthood. After the cession of Nisibis to Persia in AD 363, Ephraim withdrew into the Roman Empire and settled at Edessa where he composed the hymns that survive to this day. Though in the ecclesiastical hirearchy he was just a deacon, he is remembered as a great doctor of the universal Church.

Ephraim wrote exclusively in Syriac, the Edessene dialect of Aramaic, but his works were translated into Armenian and Greek, and via the latter into Latin and Slavonic. Many works in these languages attributed to him are, however, not genuine. Of the multitude of sermons, commentaries, and hymns that Saint Ephraim wrote, many were translated into Greek in his own lifetime. Sozomen says that Ephraim "Surpassed the most approved writers of Greece," observing that the Greek writings, when translated into other tongues, lose most of their original beauty, but Ephraim's works "are no less admired when read in Greek than when read in Syriac" (Eccl. Hist., Book 111, 16). Much of Ephraim's exegetical, dogmatic and ascetic works are in verse form. He wrote several polemical works refuting the heresies of Marcion, Bardaisan, Mani, the Arians and the Anomoeans. He wrote widely regarded biblical commentaries on Genesis and the Diatesseron. His writings extensively employ typology and symbolism. Over 500 genuine hymns survive, of great beauty and insight. His poetry is in two genres: madrãshe (hymns) and memre (verse homilies). After his death, the hymns were arranged into hymn cycles, the most famous of which are those On Faith (including the five 'On the Pearl'), On Paradise and On Nisibis (the second half of which is on the 'Descent of Christ into Hell'). His liturgical poetry had a great influence on Syriac and Greek hymnography. Saint Ephraim was the first to make the poetic expression of hymnody and song a vehicle of Orthodox theological teachings, constituting it an integral part of the Church's worship; he may rightly be called the first and greatest hymnographer of the Church, who set the pattern for those who followed him, especially Saint Romanos the Melodist. Orthodox churches honor him as 'the Harp of the Holy Spirit'. Jerome says that his writings were read in some churches after the reading of the Scriptures, and adds that once he read a Greek translation of one of Ephraim's works, "and recognized, even in translation, the incisive power of his lofty genius" (De vir. ill., ch. CXV).

Shortly before the end of his life, a famine broke out in Edessa, and Saint Ephraim left his cell to rebuke the rich for not sharing their goods with the poor. The rich answered that they knew no one to whom they could entrust their goods. Ephraim asked them, "What do you think of me?" When they confessed their reverence for him, he offered to distribute their alms, to which they agreed. He himself cared with his own hands for many of the sick from the famine, and so crowned his life with mercy and love for neighbor.

St. Ephraim departed to his heavenly abode on 9th of June, A.D. 373, according to others, 379.


Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone
With the rivers of your tears, you have made the barren desert fertile. Through sighs of sorrow from deep within you, your labors have borne fruit a hundred-fold. By your miracles you have become a light, shining upon the world. O Ephraim, our Holy Father, pray to Christ our God, to save our souls.

Kontakion in the Second Tone
At all times didst thou foresee the hour of reckoning, and pricked in thy heart, thou ever didst lament with tears; and, O righteous Ephraim, thou wast a mighty teacher in works and deeds. Hence, O Father for all the world, thou didst rouse the slothful unto change of heart.

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St. Ephraim on the Enemy of our Salvation

Knowing, then, brethren, [the Enemy’s] weakness,
let us attend to ourselves, imitating the Fathers.

If we walk in the way that they walked in,
we shall find in it that the Lord Jesus
has become for us guide and fellow-worker.

When then Enemy sees that Christ, the true Light,
is with us, he will not dare
to look at us at all, for the light that is in us
blinds his eyes. So, as I said before,
brethren, lovers of Christ, let us be determined
to purify our hearts, so as to draw upon us
the grace of the Spirit for our assistance;
and no longer does the evil one have power against us.

But we idiots give him power
by distancing ourselves from God
by setting aside his holy commandments.

Finding us stripped naked of grace, the Enemy
guides us himself into his own way.

Therefore I implore you, and beg you always:
Let us flee the evil one; let us keep away from him;
let us untie the bonds with which he has bound us
by our own choice. Let us take refuge in Christ,
bearing the good and light yoke
of his compassion, so that, walking
in the good way of Christ’s commandments,
we may reach the city which God has prepared
for those who love him. To him belong honour
and majesty, to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit, now and for ever,
and to the ages of ages. Amen.

Source

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The Testament of Saint Ephraim the Syrian

I Ephraim am dying and writing my Testament,
To be a witness for the pupils who come after me:
Be constantly praying, day and night;
As a ploughman who ploughs again and again,
Whose work is admirable.
Do not be like the lazy ones in whose fields thorns grow.
Be constantly praying, for he who adores prayer
Will find help in both worlds.

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Rood of Grace: The Mechanical Crucifix Hoax of the 16th Century

[Below is an account of the Rood of Grace, which was housed in the Cistercian Abbey of Boxley in England. It was a place which supposedly contained a crucifix with an image of Jesus that moved its eyes, its lips, its body, and caused great wonder among the pious. Eventually certain Reformers exposed the hoax when they discovered it was operated by the monks through a mechanism it was connected with. I post this to show one example of the depravity of the Catholic Church at this time and why so many turned from the Papacy and its superstitions, feeling justified to become Protestants. - J.S.]

Boxley is best known through its celebrated Rood of Grace, a cross with an image supposed to be miraculously gifted with movement and speech.

More than a century before the dissolution, the abbey is spoken of as "called the abbey of the Holy Cross of Grace." Archbishop Warham, writing to Wolsey in connexion with claims against the abbey, says that it was much sought after by visitors to the Rood from all parts of the realm, and so he would be sorry to put it under an interdict. He calls it "so holy a place where so many miracles be showed." But the image proved to be a gross imposture.

Geoffrey Chamber, employed in defacing the monastery and plucking it down, wrote to Cromwell on 7 February, 1538, that he found in it certain engines and old wire, with old rotten sticks in the back, which caused the eyes to move and stir in the head thereof, "like unto a lively thing," and also, "the nether lip likewise to move as though it should speak, which was not a little strange to him and others present." He examined the abbot and old monks, who declared themselves ignorant of it; and considering that the people of Kent had in time past a great devotion to the image and used continual pilgrimages there, he conveyed it to Maidstone that day, a market day, and showed it to the people, "who had the matter in wondrous detestation and hatred so that if the monastery had to be defaced again they would pluck it down or burn it."

The image was afterwards taken to London and exhibited during a sermon by the bishop of Rochester at St. Paul's Cross, arid then cut to pieces and burnt. The news of the exposure appears to have been widely spread, and probably nothing was more damaging to the case for the monasteries.

Source


Many churches in Britain were dedicated to the Holy Rood or Cross. One at Edinburgh became the nucleus of the palace of the Scottish kings. Holyrood Day was one of much sacred observance all through the middle ages. The same feeling led to a custom of framing, between the nave and choir of churches, what was called a rood-screen or rood-loft, presenting centrally a large crucifix, with images of the Holy Virgin and St. John on each side. A winding stair led up to it, and the epistle and gospel were often read from it. Some of these screens still remain, models of architectural beauty; but numbers were destroyed with reckless fanaticism at the Reformation, the people not distinguishing between the objects which had caused what they deemed idolatry and the beautifully carved work which was free from such a charge.

One of the most famous of these roods or crucifixes was that at the abbey of Boxley, in Kent, which was entitled the Rood of Grace. The legend is, that an English carpenter, having been taken prisoner in the French wars, and wishing to employ his leisure as well as obtain his ransom, made a very skilful piece of workmanship of wood, wire, paste, and paper, in the form of a cross of exquisite proportion, on which hung the figure of our Saviour, which, by means of springs, could bow down, lift itself up, shake its hands and feet, nod the head, roll its eyes, and smile or frown. The carpenter, getting permission to return and sell his work, put it on a horse, and drove it before him; but stopping near Rochester at an alehouse for refreshment, the animal passed on, and missing the straight road, galloped south to Boxley, and being driven by some 'divine furie', never stopped until it reached the church-door, when it kicked so loudly with its heels, that the monks ran out to see the wonder. No sooner was the door opened, than the horse rushed in, and stood still by a pillar. The monks were proceeding to unload, when the owner appeared, and claimed his property; but in vain did he try to lead the horse from the sanctuary; it seemed nailed to the spot. He next attempted to remove the rood, but was equally unsuccessful; so that in the end, through sheer weariness and the entreaties of the monks to have the image left with them, he consented to sell it to them for a piece of money.

The accounts transmitted to us by the Reformers — although to be taken as one-sided — leave us little room to doubt that, in the corrupt age preceding the great change in the sixteenth century, many deceptive practices had come to be connected with the images on the rood-galleries.

"If you were to benefit by the Rood of Grace, the first visit to be paid was to one of the priests, who would hear your confession and give you shrift, in return for a piece of money. You must next do honour to another image of St. Rumwald or Grunnbald, a little picture of a boy-saint, which, by means of a pin of wood put through a pillar behind, made certain contortions, by which the monks could tell whether all sins had been atoned for in the previous confession. Those who stretched their purse-strings, and made liberal offerings, gained St. Rumwald to their side, and were pronounced to he living a pure life. If the poor pilgrim had done all this with sufficient honour to himself and the saints, he was prepared to go to the holy rood and gain plenary absolution."

At the dissolution of the abbeys, Cromwell and his associates laid their ruthless hands on Boxley; and Nicholas Partridge, suspecting some cheat in the Rood of Grace, made an examination, and soon discovered the spring which turned the mechanism. It was taken to Maidstone, and there exposed to the people; from thence to London, where the king and his court laughed at the object they had once deemed holy; and, finally, it was brought before an immense multitude at St. Paul's Cross, by Hilsey, bishop of Rochester, on Sunday, the 24th of February 1538, when it was broken to pieces and buried, the bishop preaching a sermon on the subject.

Source

Read the letter of Geoffrey Chamber which exposes the hoax here.

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Interest, Usury, Capitalism

By the Rev. Hierotheos Vlachos,
Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Saint Vlassios

Deification of money, hedonism and easy living are the things that prevail in the age we are living in.

The utilization and exploitation of money came to be developed within Protestant circles, within a morality that presumed money to be God’s blessing and the rich as those blessed by God. This topic has been expounded in detail by Max Weber in his widely-known classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In it, he maintains that Capitalism, the rationalized utilization of money and life, are the result of all the principles that were developed by the various Protestant groups in Europe.

Specifically on the worth of money, Max Weber quotes the guidelines given by Benjamin Franklin, which we find in his books, Necessary Hints To Those That Would Be Rich and Advice to a Young Tradesman. In these books, Franklin advises:

"Remember that TIME is Money…Remember that CREDIT is Money…Remember that Money is of a prolific generating nature. Money can beget Money, and its Offspring can beget more, and so on... Remember this saying, that 'the good paymaster is lord of another man's purse'. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the Money his friends can spare...."

This is the basic principle of the financial market that is nowadays undergoing a crisis.

Max Weber comments that man is governed by his thirst to acquire money - an acquisition that is expressed as a life objective. When asking himself why people must make money, Max Weber comments on the advice given to Benjamin Franklin by his strict Calvinist father and his reference to the Book of Proverbs: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings.” (Prov. 22:29). According to Weber, “The acquisition of money within the contemporary financial order is – if done legitimately – the result and the expression of virtue and progress in a profession, and this virtue and progress are – as can be easily surmised – the true alpha and omega of Franklin’s morality.”

This mentality of modern-day man is clearly capitalistic. It is observed in the West and it has influenced many, all over the planet. This is what contemporary, foreign theologians have observed, who have analyzed the respective teachings of the Holy Fathers of the Church.

* * *

Professor of the Pacific Lutheran University of Tacoma, Mrs.Brenda Ihssen, wrote two essays in which she analyzed this matter. The first is titled Usury, Hellenic Patrology and Overall Social Teaching, in which she touches on topics such as: “What do the patristic authors say about social morality?”, “Who are considered usurers?”, “What are the significant questions that should be posed that the researcher should be aware of when approaching a patristic, social-moral text?”, “Under what prerequisites or up to what point can patristic sources be regarded as contributing towards the overall social teaching?”. Within these central chapters we can we find many subdivisions, such as “The Prohibition of Usury in the Bible”, “the usurer as a threat to the community (mean, wild beast, liar, even murderer)”, “the spiritual indigence of the usurer”, usurers as “members of the community”, “if there are exceptions to lending”. She furthermore responds to three basic questions, such as:

“Do the texts of the Hellenic Fathers have any bearing on reality?”

“Are they interested in the texts having a bearing?”

“Is the presence of Hellenic-Roman matters incontestable?”

Her second essay is titled Basil and Gregory’s Sermons on Usury: Credit Where Credit Is Due. In it, she examines their motives for preoccupying themselves with the matter of usury; the influences they were subjected to by philosophers; the use of the Holy Bible with regard to the demand for interest, to usury as a form of stealing, to the turmoil caused by usury; to the images that are used to describe the usurer, and to the celestial “interest”.

At this point, I would like to present Brenda Ihssen’s Introduction, the Conclusion to her first study, and a basic excerpt from the central theme. And I regard this to be a good thing, inasmuch as she was born, raised and teaches in a University in America, where the exploitation of money is a science on its own.

In her Introduction, she writes:

“It is an undeniable ascertainment that the discussion of the moral repercussions of interest and usury no longer provokes the interest of the average citizen. Interest is not regarded as a problem, but a natural element of life. ‘We are happy to pay 4%, as long as we can buy the holiday pillows that the specialists insist we are in need of’. Unfortunately, millions of people on the planet are suffering at the hands of others, who are happy to keep them in poverty, through exorbitant and exhaustive compound interest.

"In my class, students wonder where the problem is if someone borrows money and pays it back with interest, if they are adults and are aware of what they are doing. It is my conviction that the problem lies in the fact that the 21st century holds grievous poverty, hunger, homelessness and deaths, for both debtors and their families. A further issue is the salvation of the usurer, whose acts cut him off from the sight of God.

"In antiquity, interest on loans was condemned in Jewish society, whereas it was considered a normal part of transactions in the Hellenic and Roman system (although it had not become fully accepted in the Hellenic system). Thus, although condemned by Plato (who considered it a “vulgar” thing), interest was regarded as fair compensation for the time and the risk that was undertaken by the lender. Inasmuch as the lender was unable to use the money he had loaned, interest is seen as a form of 'gratitude' for the time required for its return. 'Risk' meant that the lender may never see his money again, consequently, the larger the risk, the larger the compound interest would be.

"Nevertheless, for Hellenic Patrology, time and risk did not count. Any guarantee whatsoever against money loaned was regarded as dishonesty; any percentage above the principal loaned constituted usury. Even a one percent desire for profit placed one’s salvation in jeopardy.”

In a certain point of her text she mentions what bearing the Church Fathers’ teaching against usury had on reality. She writes:

“The excerpts that show our theologians as addressing acquaintances in their own community lead us to the conclusion that they are referring to a problem closely linked to the reality around them.

"As far as our age is concerned, I have to admit that they continue to have a bearing on reality, for the following reason: because each community continues to contain people who are willing to profit at anothers expense. Consequently, I believe that we can learn what these authors had to say about the results of greed within a community. Their writings also comprise a reflection of the ascetic ideal of theologians, for whom the chief importance of the text was the extraction of a moral meaning for implementation in current situations.

"Finally, all these theologians believe that money – whether someone possesses it or not, or whether someone loans it or not – constitutes an obstacle for one’s effective relationship with God" (page 5).

In her Conclusion, she writes:

“The virtue of offering is a continuous course that never reaches perfection. According to our theologians, he who gives instead of lending is distancing the obstacles that sin created; obstacles that do not allow people to have wholesome and maintainable relations between each other. True love desires to share whatever is its own, while true greed desires only whatever is to its own advantage. Usury represents the exact opposite of love, and in fact with a benevolent façade. A self-serving Christian can assert that he has a right to lend money with interest – even with an exorbitant compound interest – firstly because it is legal, and secondly because a Christian is freed of the law. This is the same logic that the Apostle Paul had encountered in Corinth, where his response was 'everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial'.

"To summarize, the Hellenic Fathers regarded usury as something that is not moral, cannot be justified and is not beneficial. Contemporary authors maintain that the matter of usury is dead in our age, given that everyone lends and borrows with interest, without giving it a thought. I hope they are mistaken. Universal poverty is such that the matter of usury is significant to all those who contemplate on contemporary financial catastrophes that are brought about by unfair loan practices. Capitalism has subjugated human health and dignity to financial ends for far too long. As a topic, usury does not provoke discussions; poverty provokes them. We need to be deeply concerned about the evil that interest on loans inflicts on people, on families, on communities, on countries and – if our theologians are correct – even on the salvation of each and every one of us” (page 8).

* * *

We are living in an age where loaning – the official and legal one through banks – prevails and is somehow also regarded as moral. Many seek loans to acquire a house, to put their children through school, to afford a vacation, etc. In certain cases, like acquiring a house, one can say that loans are beneficial. In these cases, a fair society can be of help to those in need – without of course causing damage to those who aren’t. The science of political economics can balance out things, so that banks will benefit with measure, legitimately, but at the same time, those in need can be helped to solve the problems in their life without losing their freedom. If this is put into effect in a legal and fair manner, then it can function along the principle of brotherly love.

However, when lending is linked to hedonism, easy living, bliss, the quest for wealth, etc., then it cannot be acceptable. We need to address the issue and the passions that it cultivates, along with the overall mentality that it develops when our mind is fixed only on money and possessions and is not allowed to attend to other, more important matters.

We must stigmatize and cauterize usurers who exploit the anguish of their fellow-man and who remain unemotional in the presence of their misfortune.

The characterizations of the Fathers for these people are extremely weighty ones. In such cases, those who have money should practice philanthropy and provide interest-free loans to those who are in need of money for coping with the hardships of their life. Furthermore, according to contemporary reality, the hoarding of money in banks is considered a necessity and interest is something fair and legitimate. No one can deny such a logical possibility, especially for householders. However the crucial matter is that when bank savings are seen in the context of the passion of acquisition and avarice, and more so when charity and philanthropy are withheld and man’s hopes now hinge on money, and his faith in God’s Providence is cast out, then this cannot be justified by ecclesiastical morality.

Generally speaking, we should not increase our “needs”. We should not strive to live opulently; that way, we will not be forced to borrow money, because that is the way we will lose our freedom. A frugal life is a respectable life. Besides, “poor” is not the one who does not possess money, but mainly the one who generates the need for many “needs” and is obliged to borrow from banks and from people, and as a result, lose his freedom. The Holy Metropolis is frequently visited by people who have lost their fortunes and their homes on account of such loans.

The ascetic lifestyle, which also involves avoiding luxury and bliss, can benefit us in the present area also, so that we can preserve our spiritual freedom and our non-dependence on situations that literally subjugate us. In a capitalist society where everyone lives with the dream of money and reality shows, which is also what the various lotteries aspire to, we have a duty to live ascetically and to labour honestly and thus adhere to the word of the Gospel. And our mind should always be turned in the direction of the pre-fallen life of Man and to the eschatological life; in other words, in the words of Saint Gregory the Theologian, "to look not towards the pursuant division, but to the initial isonomy-equality".

Source

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Contemporary Miracles of St. John Chrysostom

Between November 10-19 in 2007 the skull of St. John Chrysostom was brought from Vatopaidi Monastery on Mount Athos to Cyprus to be venerated by the faithful. When the pious faithful came to venerate his relics in the church, it was noticed by all that an aromatic scent came from the relic like a wave filling the church, and the incorrupt flesh was warm as if alive. People with all sorts of diseases and disorders came seeking healing, and many did not leave disappointed.

Two miracles in particular were reported at that time throughout the world. One such report can be found here.

The following comes from the website Full of Grace and Truth which has translated some of these miracles:

A) Healing of a woman with a right foot break. After the vespers on Saturday November 10th, the woman rushed from the Church and banged her foot, which was later found to be broken near the ankle. In the hospital where she was transferred, her foot was placed in a cast and she was ordered to keep it immobile and to use crutches to get around only where necessary. She was in great pain when she returned being supported to the Church for the Saint's feast to venerate the Skull. After venerating the pains left, the break in her foot healed, and she left her crutches and removed the cast.

B) The healing of a ten-year-old of hemiplagia. Following a head injury, a ten-year-old student from Archangelo was left with hemiplagia, numbness and paralysis of his whole left side. For a period of at least two weeks before the Skull arriving in Cyprus, he was being cared for in the General Hospital of Leukosia. After venerating the precious Skull, according to his own and his family's confession, his condition, to the surprise of everyone, disappeared. This event and the previous one, were carried by the media.


C) Disappearance of a large tumor in the neck and the healing of a man with neurological problems, problems with the vertebrae and dyskinesia. There was a couple in which the woman had a large tumor on her neck, and her husband suffered from the aforementioned sicknesses. With great effort they entered the line to venerate. One instant the husband thought that two fingers were pushing his lower back. The pains became stronger and their agony more apparent as they wondered whether they would be able to venerate. When it was their turn to venerate, with wonder they noted that from the wife the tumor disappeared, and the husband was left totally healthy.

D) Healing of a man with back dyskinesia. According his own confession, he had a most severe problem, which was localized in his back, and during the veneration of the Skull and after intense vibrations he felt when he bent over to venerate, his problems disappeared.

E) The healing of a child ready to die from Sri Lanka. Formerly a Buddist, a woman later embraced Orthodoxy in Cyprus and was baptized. With fervent faith she prayed at the Skull of the Saint and when she venerated it, she prayed for her niece in Sri Lanka that was near death. After this she received a call from her homeland, which she made known as there was no reason to keep silent, that the child escaped from danger. She, knowing what had taken place, attributed this to the wonderworking power of the Saint, and informed her family of this in Sri Lanka. The result of this was an intense anxiety of that family and those around about what was the true faith and their position in the search for truth.

Finally, the greatest wonder, greater than these and other healings, were the resurrections of the souls of people, the soul and spiritual healing, the turn towards repentance and correction of life. A wonder, which the eye can't behold and the hear is unable to hear. It is felt however in the heart of every man and is experienced in the depth of his existence.

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Translation of the Relics of St. John Chrysostom

Translation From Comana to Constantinople of the Honored Relics of Our Father Among the Saints John Chrysostom (Feast Day - January 27)

by St. Dimitri of Rostov

More than thirty years after John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople, reposed in the town of Comana, the Most Holy Proclus (the saint's disciple and successor as archbishop) was presiding over the annual service in honor of the great universal teacher. In his homily, delivered in the cathedral of the Imperial City, Proclus extolled the Lord's favorite, saying, "Only if another John were to appear could John fittingly be praised! When the faithful recall his labors, struggles, and discourses, their thirst is slaked, as though by a mighty river overflowing its banks. From John shine rays of God's grace in which one man clearly discerns the sun of the Godhead, another beholds the cleansing of Orthodoxy from heresy, another perceives the deceptiveness of idolatry, another distinguishes truth from error, another is confirmed in faith and virtue, and another observes gleaming heavenly crowns. Oh, hierarch whose memory is like a fragrant breeze! Oh, namesake of grace, whose deeds were truly divine! Oh, golden mouth declaring the word of God! Oh, tongue which spoke of mysteries loftier than the heavens! Oh, teacher proclaiming the gospel more loudly than thunder! Verily like unto John the Forerunner, the preacher of repentance, was this John. One was a herald, the other a trumpet. One was unshakeable, the other invincible. One was a virgin, the other a champion of purity. One baptized in the wilderness, the other lowered his nets in cities. One denounced adultery, the other reproved the avaricious. One was cast into prison, the other was exiled. One was beheaded, the other desired beheading for the truth. Many were John Chrysostom's struggles on earth, many are his crowns in heaven. He now cries out with the Apostle Paul, 'I am a sweet savour of Christ, having cleansed the whole world of the stench of error. In Ephesus I expunged the delusion of Midas, in Phrygia I rendered childless the mother of false gods, in Caesarea I did away with the houses of ill fame, in Syria I abolished the assemblies of the godless, and in Persia I sowed the seed of the word of God. Everywhere I have planted the Orthodox faith. By my teaching I have disseminated the knowledge of God throughout the earth; by my books I have spread the nets of salvation far and wide. With John the Theologian I theologized concerning the Word of the Father; with Peter I laid the foundation of an Orthodox confession; with the fishermen I cast the net of piety into the world.' O John, your life was truly sorrowful, but your death is precious, your sepulcher glorious, and your reward great!"

Their hearts afire with love for Saint John Chrysostom, the people could not wait for Saint Proclus to complete the eulogy, but with a single voice cried to the Patriarch to bring his predecessor's remains from Comana to the Imperial City. The shouts continued for so long that the Most Holy Proclus abandoned all thought of concluding the encomium. Straightway after the dismissal he went to the Emperor Theodosius, son of Arcadius and grandson of Theodosius the Great, and begged him to permit the translation of the honored relics of the holy Chrysostom, saying, "Return, O Emperor, him who by Holy Baptism gave birth to you in the gospel, and who received you in the temple as the Elder Symeon did the Lord. The Church cries to you, 'My beauty has faded, my lips are sealed, my splendor is dimmed! A wild boar has scattered the sheep under the care of Chrysostom's shepherds, and carnivorous beasts have devoured the spiritual offspring of him who served as my tongue. Moved by envy, the foes of my servant have defiled the holy places of his see. As in a forest of trees, with axes they cut down the saint and took him away from me, silencing him in the grave. The heretics said, We will stop the mouth that contradicted us at every turn; we will discredit his arguments, for no longer does anyone dare object to our teachings. How long, Your Majesty, will the foe belittle me, on account of what was done to Chrysostom? Return to me him who clearly reflected my Bridegroom Christ. Return your spiritual father to me, your mother. Do not emulate her who bore you in the flesh: her heart was merciless and her will inclined to evil. Rather, follow holiness of spirit, without which no man shall see the Lord. Eudoxia is no more, but the Church abides forever. I am your eternal mother. Return Chrysostom and make me rejoice, and you will have me as your mediatrix before God. Gain Chrysostom as your intercessor, and prove yourself to be a son of righteousness, made steadfast by the prayers of your father.' "

Proclus won the Emperor's consent, and a large delegation of high-ranking noblemen were sent to Comana with a silver coffer to translate Saint Chrysostom's holy relics. Arriving at the town, they presented to the local Bishop and his flock an imperial decree requiring the surrender of the great spiritual treasure. The townsfolk lamented bitterly, not wishing to relinquish the sacred remains, but did not dare resist Theodosius' command. When, however, the Emperor's men attempted to remove the relics from the grave, they became heavier than a massive rock, and despite all efforts, could not be drawn up. Supposing that the saint wish to remain there, the nobles sent a letter to Theodosius explaining what had happened. After taking counsel with the Most Holy Patriarch Proclus and other godly men, the Emperor realized his mistake in having ordered the transferal without prayer. He decided to write a letter to Saint John as though he were alive, begging forgiveness for his audacity and beseeching him to comfort the flock by returning to his see. The text of the letter, written in the ruler's own hand, was as follows:

"Theodosius the Emperor to my spiritual father Saint John Chrysostom, the teacher of the whole world: Most honored father, considering thy precious body to be lifeless, like the bodies of other dead men, I commanded that it be brought here immediately; but on account of mine unworthiness, matters did not turn out as I had intended. Therefore, I am sending to thee, as to one truly alive, this letter, which I myself have penned, asking with faith that thou fulfill my request and thy people's. Bury mine impudent offense in the abyss of thy wisdom, and forgive me, the penitent, O thou who teachest all men repentance. Return to thy devoted children, bringing us joy. I do not order thee to come, but humbly entreat thee, lest I be put to shame a second time. O most honored father, come of thine own will, that we may lovingly greet thee."

The ruler gave the letter to couriers with instructions that it be placed on Saint John's chest and an All-night Vigil be celebrated. After the service, the nobles easily removed from the tomb the precious relics, which were much lighter than before, and joyfully placed them in the coffer. Covering the grave was a scarf which was taken by a homeless beggar who slept outside churches and whose leg had withered after it was bitten by a snake. When the beggar wrapped the cloth around his shrivelled leg, it became as strong as the other, and he leaped about, praising God.

With candles in hand, the people assembled to venerate the relics one last time, and weeping and lamenting, escorted them as they were taken away. At the docks in Chalcedon the Emperor's men were met by Theodosius, the Senate, the Patriarch and his clergy, and an innumerable multitude of people in boats. The coffer was put on an imperial galley. While the flotilla was returning to Constantinople, God commanded a tempest to arise, and all the vessels were scattered, except the one carrying the honored relics. Although its rudder was lost, the ship sailed directly to the opposite shore, guided not by a human hand, but by the power of God. It reached land at the vineyard of the widow whose defense had cost the holy Chrysostom much grief and resulted in his banishment; thus, even after his death the saint confirmed his zeal for righteousness and denounced injustice. As the galley approached the beach, the sea grew calm, and soon all the boats landed without having sustained the least damage. The relics were unloaded, and the entire population of the Imperial City came out to meet them, chanting hymns, holding candles, and burning incense. First the sacred corpse was taken to the Church of the Holy Apostle Thomas, then to the Church of Holy Peace. The Emperor and Patriarch opened the coffer and found the remains of the blessed one completely incorrupt, unspoiled as a cluster of beautiful, ripe grapes, and emitting a wondrous fragrance. Theodosius removed his purple robe, spread it over the relics, lay his head on the saint's breast, and with tears in his eyes, groaned, "Holy father, forgive the sin committed against thee, and suffer me not to be punished for my mother's hatred and envy. Although the son of thy persecutress, I have done thee no evil. Forgive her offense, that I may escape blame for my kinship with her. I cast the imperial dignity at thy feet and lie helpless, awaiting thine intercession. Pardon the reckless violence of her who wronged thee, for she hath repented of her sin and asketh forgiveness through my lips, saying, 'Remember, father, thine instructive discourses against rancour, and consign my malice to oblivion. I wish to rise from my fall, so extend a helping hand. Thou didst say, If anyone hath slipped, let him rise and be saved. I cannot bear thy displeasure: even my tomb quaketh, giving my bones no rest. I fear consignment to Christ's left hand at the Dread Judgment and tremble, knowing that everlasting punishment awaiteth me. By thy teachings thou hast saved many: let me not remain alone without salvation. Reject me not who crieth unto thee, but avenge thyself on mine enemy the devil, who instructed me to sin against thee as Eve against God. Be not wroth with me, O compassionate one! In thy lifetime thou didst not remember evils done thee; do not remember them now that thou dwellest in heaven. I transgressed against thee in the temporal realm; do thou have mercy on me beyond the grave. My glory hath passed away and is useless to me; wherefore, I beg thy help, O father, for thou abidest in divine light. Before I am condemned at Christ's tribunal, forgive me, who am bereft of any answer for myself.'"

As he spoke these words on behalf of his mother, the Emperor drenched the relics with tears and kissed them reverently. The Most Holy Proclus also kissed the saint tenderly, crying, "Rejoice, O Christ-loving teacher most sweet! I am thy child, nurtured on thy spiritual milk. As I am also thy successor, my sheep are thine. They are still nourished by the pasturage thou hast provided and will follow no shepherd other than thee. Reveal thy presence and speak to us!"

The crowd pressed forward to touch the honored coffer and kept vigil through the night. In the morning the saint's remains were placed on the Emperor's chariot and taken with much ceremony to the great Church of the Holy Apostles. When the reliquary was placed on the bishop's throne, the people exclaimed as with a single voice, "Mount thy cathedra, O father!" Patriarch Proclus and others who were worthy saw Saint John move his lips and heard him pronounce the archpastoral blessing, "Peace be unto all!"

During the celebration of the holy Liturgy, many sick folk were miraculously healed through the relics, and the grave of the Empress Eudoxia ceased quaking. Afterwards, the clergy deposited the saint's body beneath the table of preparation in the sanctuary of the cathedral, glorifying Christ God, Who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is praised unto the ages. Amen.

Apolytikion in the Plagal of the Fourth Tone
The grace of your words illuminated the universe like a shining beacon. It amassed treasures of munificence in the world. It demonstrated the greatness of humility, teaching us by your own words; therefore, O Father John Chrysostom, intercede to Christ the Logos for the salvation of our souls.

Kontakion in the First Tone
The holy and august Church is mystically gladdened today on the translation of thy holy relics. And though she had kept them hid in concealment like precious gold, by thine intercessions she unceasingly granteth, unto them that praise thee, the divine grace of healing, O Father John Chrysostom.

Concerning the recent return of the relics of St. John Chrysostom to Constantinople from the Vatican, see here.

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Fasting Is Great, But Love Is Greater

by St. Nikolai Velimirovich

Fasting is a great thing but love is even greater. If by fasting demons are cast out, passions tamed, the body pacified, the spirit composed, then, by love, God takes up abode in man. The Lord Himself emphasized fasting as necessary but stressed love as the main commandment.

In the first half of the last century, Jeladin Bey ruled in Ochrid, a renegade from the Sultan and an independent ruler. At that time, the Church was governed by Metropolitan Kalinikos. Even though of different faiths, Jeladin Bey and Kalinikos were very good friends and often visited one another. It happened that Jeladin Bey condemned twenty-five Christians to be hanged. They were scheduled to be hanged on Great and Holy Friday [Good Friday]. The Metropolitan, totally disturbed because of this incident, went to Jeladin Bey and began to implore him to be more lenient with the punishment. While they were conversing, the time for lunch arrived and the Bey invited the Metropolitan to dine. Lamb was prepared for lunch. The Metropolitan excused himself, saying that because of fasting he could not remain for lunch, and he prepared to leave. Bey was sorry and said to the Metropolitan: "Choose; either you will dine with me and free twenty-five men from the gallows, or you will not dine and allow them to be hanged." The Metropolitan crossed himself and sat down to eat and Jeladin freed the condemned from the punishment of death.

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Pope John Paul II Was A Self-Flagellator

[I havn't read the book describing this, but I do find it interesting that the media has jumped on the claims that Pope John Paul II was a self-flagellator who often slept on the ground. In the Catholic Church, self-flagellation is done to imitate the sufferings of Christ and has been highly criticized by Orthodox for whom asceticism is a means to calm the passions rather than to create pain. The creation of pain to imitate the sufferings of Christ is very dangerous for the spiritual life and can be a form of delusion (rather than a reason for sainthood as the Catholic Church claims). Archbishop Lazar Puhalo accurately analyzes this, saying: "During the Middle Ages, and particularly following the Black Plague, self-flagellation became popular among monks and nuns in Western Europe. Indeed, flagellation was the source of many of the 'spiritual ecstasies' claimed by Western saints. This is reasonable since flagellation is a form of masturbation. It very quickly becomes a form of sexual addiction. There are many contemporary accounts of the ecstasies aroused by flagellation, especially among nuns. Often, monks would flagellate themselves into a trance and, wounded and bleeding, begin to proclaim revelations they thought they had received from God." - J.S.]

Pope John Paul II Whipped Himself For God

January 27, 2010
The London Times

The late Pope John Paul II, who has been put on the fast track to sainthood by the Vatican, regularly whipped himself as an act of penance to feel closer to God, it was reported on Wednesday.

A new book also says the pontiff signed a secret document saying that he would step down if he became incurably ill, The Times of London said.

"Why a Saint?" by Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the Vatican "postulator" in charge of the canonization process, says the Polish-born Pope performed self-flagellation as a bishop in Krakow and continued to do so in the Vatican after being elected Pope in 1978.

"In his wardrobe, among his vestments, there hung on a clothes hanger a special belt for trousers which he used as a whip," Monsignor Oder says.

He said self-flagellation was "an instrument of Christian perfection" emulating the sufferings of Jesus Christ.

He added that in Poland the former Bishop Karol Wojtyla often slept on the bare floor to practice self-denial and asceticism, often disturbing his bed in the morning to pretend he had slept in it and so avoid drawing attention to his act of penitence.

The new book also confirms that in 1989 John Paul, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, prepared a document stating that he would resign, "in the case of infirmity which is presumed incurable, long-lasting and which impedes me from sufficiently carrying out the functions of my apostolic ministry".

Popes are normally elected for life.

John Paul forgave Mehmet Ali Agca, his would-be assassin, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital moments after he was shot on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter's Square, the book further reveals.

Pope Benedict put John Paul on the fast track for sainthood shortly after his death in April 2005 death by waiving the customary five-year waiting period before the beatification and canonization process can begin.

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A Text Elder Porphyrios Loved

Elder Porphyrios persistently taught that our love for our fellow man should be such that we look upon them as we look upon ourselves.

At one time he had asked one of his spiritual children to photocopy the following section of St. Symeon the New Theologian, which was handed out to his visitors:

We should look upon all the faithful as one person and consider that Christ is in each one of them.

We should have such love for them that we are ready to sacrifice our very lives for them.

For it is incumbent upon us neither to say, nor think of any person as evil, but we must look upon everyone as good. If you see a brother afflicted with a passion, do not hate him.

Hate the passion that makes war upon him. And if you see him being terrorized by the habits and desires of previous sins, have compassion on him. Maybe you too will be afflicted by temptation, since you are also made from matter that easily turns from good to evil. Love towards your brother prepares you to love God even more. The secret, therefore, of love towards God is love towards your brother.

For if you don't love your brother whom you can see, how is it possible to love God, Whom you do not see?

"For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God Whom he has not seen" (1 Jn. 4:20).

____________


AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE ELDER

My brothers and sisters,

This is the Elder speaking to you. My children, do not misunderstand me. I cannot speak with you, but be assured that by the grace of God, my humble self sees each one of you who comes to greet me and prays noetically for your problems. I wish you many years and good repentance. Whoever is in a rush and cannot wait, let them leave and God’s grace will help them with whatever they are hoping for. I am not always well enough to receive people. Even the nuns here cannot be of service as long as I am not well.

[The above announcement was posted at the request of Elder Porphyrios on the outer door of the Convent "The Transfiguration of the Savior" at the beginning of 1990.]

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Elder Philotheos on the Schismatic Old Calendarists

From: Letter 8 - September 23, 1975

...Let's also see about the Old Calendarists from the self-titled "Genuine Orthodox Christians."

The genuine Orthodox Christian is the Christian who has steadfast Faith and fervor towards God; love from all his heart and soul towards God and neighbor; humility and meekness, truth and sincerity. When our Lord Jesus Christ sent the disciples into the world He told them to preach the Gospel. He didn't tell them to preach the Old Calendar.

He told them, "He who believes and is baptized will be saved," that is, the one believing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and not the one baptized in the Old Calendar. The beloved virgin and eagle of theology, St. John the Evangelist said:

"God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him” (Jn. 4:8).

He did not say the Old Calendar is God and the one abiding in the Old Calendar abides in God.

Our Lord Jesus Christ--perfect God and perfect man--said, "Learn from Me for I am meek and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls"(Mt. 11:29). He didn't say learn from Me for I am an Old Calendarist--as some Old Calendarists say that Christ was an Old Calendarist out of their excessive zeal.

O Lord, deliver us from such a foolish mindset.

He said, "Learn from Me For I am meek and humble in heart and you have to become this way in order to find rest in your souls." He didn't say become Old Calendarists.

And so, the Old Calendarists falsely boast and claim that they are ‘genuine Orthodox’.

They are genuine CACODOX because they don't have Faith in God, they have faith in the Old Calendar.

St. Paul the Apostle - the mouth of Christ — says: "Without faith it is impossible to be saved."

The Old Calendarists say, "Without the Old Calendar, it is impossible to be saved.”

The Lord orders us to love not only our loved ones but also our enemies.

The Old Calendarists and the adherents of the Old Calendarists hate and curse each other...

They should neither be called genuine Orthodox, nor Christian nor logical people because even unbelievers, the impious and the last rank of people...are shy and timid inside the Church and don't dare to quarrel. In the Church of the Annunciation in Halkidi, the bold presumptuous Bishops, Presbyters, etc, of the self-titled ‘Genuine Orthodox' raised their hands and hit their brothers. They ought to repent and be self-deposed because if they don't cease their priestly functions, the 27th Apostolic Canon deposes them [Note: The canon states: "If a Bishop, Presbyter, or Deacon shall strike any of the faithful who have done wrong, with the intention of frightening them, we command that he be deposed. For our Lord has by no means taught us to do so, but, on the contrary, when He was smitten He smote not. When He was reviled He reviled not, when He suffered He threatened not"].

The Orthodox Church accepts that all the Saints were sanctified and saved through faith, love, humility, the observance of God's commandments and good works. However, the more fanatic of the O1d Calendarist zealots and super zealots unfortunately accept (the belief) that without the Old Calendar, there is NO salvation. But some of them preach and write that if any Christian has many sins and he is plunged in sins up to his neck, if he only keeps the Old Calendar, he will be saved!...

In all the Mysteries, the priests supplicate the Holy Spirit to descend and perform the Sacrament. But to the repentant one confessing, the priest says:

"The Grace of the All-Holy Spirit has loosened and forgiven you in this present age and the age to come."

The fanatical zealots and super zealots of the Old Calendarists - worshippers of the Old Calendar - believe and say that the New Calendar Sacraments are invalid and the Holy Spirit doesn't descend because the Old Calendar is absent. There is no greater deception, impiety, and insanity than this. The Great Theologian St. Gregory says: "The Holy Spirit doesn't always ordain, but He operates through all."

The Divine St. John Chrysostom says that the Sacraments are performed even by the unworthy; the Holy Spirit sanctifies and performs them not for the unworthiness of the Liturgist, but for the sanctification of the faithful and the communion which the faithful receive with God through the Mysteries.

As such, all the Holy Fathers agree with this opinion of the three greatest luminaries of the world; Ss. Basil, Gregory and Chrysostom. Only the fanatic zealots and super zealot Old Calendarists and the Abbess of the Monastery of the Ascension in Kazani don't agree. And wanting to show that they are superior and wiser than the Holy Fathers, they think and preach that the communicants of Holy Communion in the New Calendarist Churches eat bread, wine, chaff and grass...

O foolish Old Calendarists. Who bewitched you?

Who taught you to think and believe that the Old Calendar is of equal strength with the All-Holy Spirit or even higher? And who taught you to believe and think that when the New Calendarists supplicate God to send the Holy Spirit and sanctify their Sacraments the Old Calendar doesn't permit it to descend because they are New Calendarists and it is only allowed to descend for the accurate keepers of the Old Calendar--the fanatic zealots and super zealots?

When the Holy Fathers gave us the Old Calendar, they told us:

"We give you the Julian Calendar, upon the basis of which we regulate to always celebrate the Feast of Pascha in conformity, peace and harmony on the same day so that some don't celebrate earlier and others celebrate later and thus become quarrelsome, disputers and divided."

They didn't tell us that whoever keeps the Old Calendar is saved and upon this hangs all the Law and Prophets. This is the teaching of the very wicked devil.

The All-Sneaky One - just as he trampled upon Adam and Eve in Paradise - trampled upon you to self-title yourselves as ‘Genuine Orthodox’. And as heedless ones, you received his counsel and not God's counsel which He gave to His disciples and all of the Faithful:

"When you do everything, namely, when you keep My law, commandments and orders, say that you are useless servants, we have done what was our duty to do" (Luke 17:10). He didn't order us to say that we are ‘Genuine Orthodox’.

By receiving the Hater-of-Good's counsel and being self-titled "Genuine Orthodox" and by rejecting our Lord Jesus Christ's counsel, who ordered: "When you do everything to say you are useless servants” - you reject humility.

God, Who resists the proud and gives grace to the humble, the Holy Spirit, Who rests in the hearts of the meek, has left from your hearts; He took off.

Rather, you chased Him off/drove Him out, preferring the spirit of pride which taught you anger and internal agitation; but the heart of the agitated is the throne of the devil. It taught you not to have love but rather to have hate, to insult and to smite. And you wildly beat each other even inside the Holy Church. It taught you to think and preach that the Holy Spirit which the New Calendarist Archpriest and priest invoke...doesn't descend because they're not Old Calendarists.

Thus, you also think that from the Apostolic times until the year 325--when the 318 God-bearing Fathers gave us the Old Calendar--the Holy Spirit did not come down for the Christians because they didn't have the Old Calendars! Consequently [Note: according to their theory] they ate bread, drank wine in the Sacrament of Holy Communion and remained unbaptized!...

My spiritual child...from the above, it's obvious that both the New Calendarists and the Old Calendarists are found to be transgressors of the Apostolic and Patristic Traditions; more so the Old Calendarists as they scorn the most Apostoloic and Patristic Traditions and especially love for which the St. Paul the Apostle says: "If anyone doesn't love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. O Lord come!” (1 Cor. 16:22) and, "Though I speak with tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burners but have not love, I profit nothing” (l Cor.13:1-3).

By not having love, the Old Calendarists are neither benefited nor have good. They boasted and self-titled themselves as ‘Genuine Orthodox’. But by not having love, they are genuine cacodox. The absence of love and humility...blinded their spiritual eyes and they don't see.

Closing the present paternal epistle, I pray that our All-Good God and Heavenly Father safeguards you from the numerous and manifold snares of the crafty devil. St. Anthony the Great saw these snares spread out upon all the earth. Groaning, he said: "How is it possible for someone to escape them?" And he heard a voice, "Humility." As a spiritual father, I counsel you to pray ceaselessly and beg God to give you humility and love. And when you beg Him with faith and devoutness, then He Who orders us to ask will give to you. And when God gives you humility and love, then He will dwell in you, He will shatter the devil's snares and He will save you.

Your doubts about the calendar issue are undone/solved by the teachings of the Bible, the wise and Holy Fathers of our Church as well as prudence and discretion. The New Calendar was introduced into the Church lawlessly, and it broke the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church into two - the O1d Calendarists and the New Calendarists.

The Old Calendarists fell into many great delusions in order to keep the Old Calendar, greater and worse delusions than the New Calendarists. They abolished the first and great commandment of love; introduced new dogmas; introduced the calendars in worship, and dogmatized that the Holy Spirit without the Old Calendar doesn't sanctify the Sacraments of the New Calendarists, etc.

Consequently, the delusions of the Old Calendarists are greater in number and worse than the deceptions of the New Calendarists.

With paternal love and heartfelt prayers,
Archimandrite Philotheos Zervakos

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Dostoevsky's Spiritual Therapy

by David Starr

I. Introduction: His Life and Project

Fyodor Mihailovich Dostoevsky was not my mother’s idea of a great Christian writer. He wrote fiction, though he recognized that fact as a problem: In The Brothers Karamazov he has the attorneys at Dmitri’s murder trial discredit each other’s cases as novels. Could there be a truthful novel? In The Adolescent a nice tutor from Moscow advises young Arkady that a Russian novel needs more romance and nobility than his story — the novel ironically ending with these comments. Dostoevsky did not mean to write fiction as ordinarily conceived. What did he intend? I think he wrote investigations of the soul, hypothetical analyses of the sickness and healing of the human spirit, with himself as primary experimental subject. In one of his darkest tales, Notes from the Underground, his protagonist, in an utterly humiliating moment, observes, “I think it was a mistake to begin writing ... At least I’ve felt ashamed all the while I’ve been writing this story: so it’s no longer literature, but corrective punishment.”[1] Dostoevsky intends to strip the soul bare, to know himself at all cost.

His writings do not flinch at disgraceful behavior and shocking events. We find cruelty, gambling, murder, adultery, lies, plots, child abuse and neglect, suicide, drunken riots — constant scandal: A besotted would-be theologian in Crime and Punishment lets his devout adolescent daughter become a prostitute to support the sick and suffering family he neglects. The Idiot deals with a truly good prince who loves a beautiful woman wounded by childhood exploitation; the tale ends tragically, as good will is devastated by destructive passion. In The Devils we find a strangely attractive yet malicious man who has intentionally done great harm to a child; this man seduces political idealists into a murder plot to unite them through mutual guilt. Thirty eight years before Lenin, Dostoevsky’s revolutionaries discuss the liquidation of a hundred million Russians in a “fight for the common cause," as a "new religion takes the place of the old one.”[2] In The Brothers Karamazov a dissolute father and son are sexual rivals; parricide results. Whatever things are “true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report... virtue [and] praise…”[3] are not his obvious themes.

Dostoevsky wrote of scandal. Is such writing a scandal? Sigmund Freud thought so. He condemns Dostoevsky’s personal life as morally deficient, his religious and political beliefs as “retrograde,” and the content of his novels as criminal.[4] He says:

"The temptation to reckon Dostoevsky among the criminals comes from his choice of material, which singles out from all others violent, murderous, and egoistic characters, which points to the existence of similar tendencies in his own soul, and also from certain facts of his life, like his passion for gambling, and perhaps the sexual abuse of a young girl."[5]

Why does Freud suppose that Dostoevsky’s ability to place himself in the mind of a criminal shows not compassion, but complicity or guilty experience? His analytic theory seems to require that Dostoevsky hated his father, feared castration, lusted after his mother and had other very specific vices, in order to explain his gambling, epileptic seizures,[6] competitiveness, and alternating sympathetic affection and harsh criticism of other writers.[7] I think it odd that Freud is offended by descriptions of cruelty and vice, while insisting that the ultimate causes of virtue itself and social order are incest, paternal hatred, collusion in violence and prehistoric parricide. Is it more scandalous to recognize such horrors as real, or to insist that they are the means whereby primal instinct created the civilized heritage of all humans? To halt abusive processes or heal their victims is not a scandal. If Freud is partially right about the mechanisms of evil, does he offer an effective antidote? I believe Dostoevsky does, and that there is more psychological truth in his novels than in Freud’s theory.

Metropolitan Antony Khrapovitsky[8] wrote: “Regeneration is what Dostoevsky wrote about in all his novels: repentance and regeneration, falling into sin and correction...”[9] Moved throughout his career by love for mankind and using his own suffering to find insight into everyman’s struggle with the violence of pride, lust, envy and hatred, Dostoevsky came to genuine understanding and a prescription for our sufferings. Concentrating on the psychology of repentance and the redemptive power of love, he devoted himself to untying the knot of human self-destruction; for not moral intentions, but the passions that thwart them are the problem. With constant reference to the Orthodox spiritual tradition, he wrote “on behalf of all and for all.” His early work admires Christ and seeks ideals in His example; he later articulates Orthodoxy itself as the truth underlying the best in his early work.

His debut, “Poor People,” is a study in compassion for the suffering of people worthy of love and respect in all their imperfection and limitations. “The Double,” written in the same year (1846), is an astute psychological study of the disintegration of a person. The idealism of the first story and the ironic edge of the second show their author’s very early commitment in equal measure to self-giving love and to the harsh discipline of truth, without which it cannot he realized. Social idealism led him into revolutionary politics in the late 1840’s; his death sentence was commuted to five years each of imprisonment and military service in Siberia. His philanthropic writing continued through the 1860’s: The prison novel, Notes from the Dead House, explores the strength and generosity of people imprisoned by or for their passions; it also honors the loving understanding of the Russian people for their captive brethren. Though crime has a philosophy which cannot he grasped from fixed points outside the criminals life;[10] the Orthodox heart recognizes it as suffering and criminals as patients. His experience was that charity for Christ’s sake could elicit resurrection of the spirit, whereas punishment hardened souls by its very severity.[11] Given a Gospel hook on the way to prison, he developed intense personal reverence for Christ by reading it, but only a decade later, did he begin to see the Gospel as an intelligible key to the mystery of self-induced suffering.

He bore the scars of a painful childhood and the grace of the Spirit of Christ from infancy. The effects of a pious mother and churchly rearing were countered by the harshness of an angry father. His mother died when her son was sixteen, and his father was murdered by his abused serfs before Fyodor’s 19th birthday.[12] Their son, susceptible to love and pained by abuse as any human being, responded with energy and intelligence that were a clear gift of God. In his published Diary, he attributed his spiritual rebirth to what he learned in prison and exile from plain Russian Christians. In the last year of his life he wrote:

"So don’t tell me that I do not know the people! I know them: it was because of them that I again received into my soul Christ Who had been revealed to me in my parents’ home and Whom I was about to lose when, on my own part, I transformed myself into a 'European liberal.'"[13]

I-us process of regeneration was a long, hard struggle with the habits and wounds of his life. As we often do, he added to his sufferings even as he sought to resolve them. In his early forties he analyzed human perversity in such studies as Notes from the Underground. But his own passionate obsessions -- with women, literary rivals, and gambling -- consumed most of his adult life until his fiftieth year, after the publication of Crime and Punishment and Idiot. His aspiration in these first two great novels anticipated full realization, yet the proud experiment of Raskolnikov in self-assertion and murder, the redemptive image of Sonya’s active love, and the generous humility of Prince Myshkin still articulated ideals rather than solutions. Despite real insight into human isolation and the wounds of shattered innocence, as of 1869 Dostoevsky was unable to resolve the issues that challenged him; Raskolnikov’s repentance is not fully realized, and Myshkin’s self-sacrifice is pathetically ineffectual.

His crisis began in 1867, while composing The Idiot, and was resolved four years later while struggling with The Devils. His fifties, culminating in The Brothers Karamazov, show his artistic achievement reaching its fulfillment, even as he was resolving the painful issues of his life. He married his beloved Anna Grigorievna in 1867 and gained final victory over addictive gambling through prayer in 1871. He had tried several times to quit, most excruciatingly in the spring of 1868, as Anna, pregnant and then with the sickly infant Sofia, pawned jewelry while he repeatedly lost everything — to her grief and his humiliation. These losses were eclipsed by the death of Sofia in May. Three years later, with another infant in arms a third child on the way, Fyodor for the last time gambled, again catastrophically, and determined to stop. But this time prayer, the love of Anna and the children, and God’s grace made the resolve effectual. He wrote:

"Anya, my guardian angel! A great thing has been accomplished in me, a vile fantasy that has tormented me for almost ten years has vanished! For ten years… since my brother’s death... I kept dreaming of winning, I dreamed seriously, passionately! Now all that is finished. This was ABSOLUTELY the last time! Will you believe, Anya, that my hands are untied now; I had been bound by gambling."[14]

The words proved true. The biographer Frank notes that Freud, who devoted many pages to Dostoevsky’s addiction, had nothing to say about his still more remarkable recovery.[15] The decade from then until his death saw the completion and publication of The Devils, and of The Adolescent and The Brothers Karamazov — on family, death, regeneration and spiritual life.

II. Dostoevsky’s Diagnosis: Scandal

Let us look at the writings of the 70’s to see what Dostoevsky had learned of the human condition and its malady. For him learning was not dogmatic, but empirical, focused on the nature, origin and remedy of his own self-undoing. I have asked if his writings, by revealing scandal and its stratagems, were scandals. Officially, yes. A chapter of The Devils was found too shocking to print and censored; Stavrogin describes his depravity to a saintly Bishop Tikhon without real repentance: what torments him is the suicide of a young girl whom he has raped — using gratitude and fear to draw her into a destructive act, as humiliating to her as it was empty for him. He intentionally provoked her suicide by manipulative violation and cold contempt for her pain and indignation. His motive was not lust but pride and curiosity — to learn how it felt and to challenge God. His victim’s last recorded words, “I killed God,”[16] express his intent. Tikhon, however, assures him that no crime is greater than to "offend one of these little ones,” yet that the crime may be forgiven if he learns what he has done and can repent of it.[17] Even his life can be redeemed. How can it be?

But first, why is such a deed the worst one can do to another person? Let me quote the Gospel cited by Tikhon.[18] The disciples ask who is to have first rank in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus sets a small child in their midst, and says:

"Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whosover shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me. But whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it would be better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence comes! ... Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven."[19]

“Offense” and “offend” do not mean “what upsets” or “make angry,” as they seem to now; one might translate the Greek skandalon and skandalizo as “cause of sin” and “cause to sin.” Originally a skandalon is a stumbling block, and to scandalize is to cause another to fall. Our Lord is saying that children who by nature are disposed to faith are tripped into unbelief by older people who create obstacles for them, to the horror of their guardian angels and the sorrow of God. This is how the mystery of sin and death is passed on to each generation of fallen humanity. This passage is cited in all three of Dostoevsky’s last novels; to untie a knot, he studies how it was tied.

The Devils deals with a revolutionary conspiracy led by Pyotr Verhovensky and Nikolai Stavrogin. Pyotr is the neglected son of a literary pretender and aesthete, Stepan Trofimovich; Stavrogin is the princely son of Stepan’s patroness. Stepan was the boy’s tutor, subjected him to abusive intimacy and probably molested him.[20] A gifted man of sinister charm, Stavrogin is drawn with deep understanding. Though free and responsible for his acts, he began in a suffering which his crimes repeat. He mixes exalted rhetoric with cruel intimidation, threats, guilt, and blackmail, to win adherents to a “common cause” for which he is willing to sacrifice 100,000,000 lives, though he does not fully believe in it. Are his abstract love of humanity and utter contempt for human life rooted in his own abandonment and betrayal? His eloquent speech is very convincing, even to very substantial followers, and in causes which he himself has abandoned. His cynicism is a central mystery in the novel. Another is that Stepan Verhovensky, whose love of beauty Dostoevsky feels, whose opinions he once held, can repent in a death scene as pathetic as it is hopeful.

The Adolescent is the coming-of-age story of a youth born of the unblessed union of a fickle aristocrat and a peasant woman. His father leaves him to the mercies of a cruel boarding school headmaster and sporadic visits from his loving mother. The peasant to whom the Arkady’s mother is nominally wed has made his broken marriage an occasion to wander Russia on perpetual religious pilgrimage. The young narrator offers one of his stories “at random,” because it is “memorable.”[21] A brutally selfish merchant has ruined a poor man, evicted his widow and orphans, and indirectly caused the death of all but one of them; enraged at the surviving boy for a minor accident, he has him whipped nearly to death. To assuage his guilt he forcibly adopts the boy and subjects him by intimidation to brutal “benevolence,” isolating him from his mother and forcing him to slave away at a parody of education. The terrified boy accidentally breaks an expensive lamp and runs off in panic; cornered at the ferry-dock by a swift river, he jumps in terror and drowns.

Horrified that he has made the boy commit the unforgivable sin of suicide, the merchant cites Matthew 18 to a monastic confessor, to prove he is damned and destined to die in his sins. Correcting him as impertinent, the monk says, “It’s had if a man loses his measure – he’s a lost man. And you’ve become conceited.” He explains:

"…Even the angels of God are not perfect, but the only perfect and sinless one is Jesus Christ our God, whom the angels also serve. You didn’t want the death of that child, you were merely unreasonable."

Reminding him that he has done many things as bad or worse, the monk asks why he is so frightened of a child before whom he is “not even so guilty.” He says, “He appears to me in dreams,” and the conversation ends. After many attempts at repentance and restitution to the boy’s spirit, his mother, and God, in time God grants our merchant the gift of tears. He and the boy’s mother, whom he has wed, finally love each other tenderly, but he must seek salvation in pilgrimage and prayer. The tale ends: “And we hear that he performs his deeds of wandering and patience even to this day, and sends news to his dear wife every year....”

Before dying Makar reminds the former master who took his wife that he has promised to marry her; he accepts blame for the sin of “condoning the weakness” and insists before the children of the union that “marriage covers everything.” He tells the son who bears his name to be zealous to death for the Church, but: “Whatever good you intend to do, do it for God, and not for the sake of envy.”[22] The interpretation in word, deed and image of Matthew 18 is significant: In a context of abused innocence and violated conscience we hear and see how “a new man” can he called up in oneself, and how patient love can help. Arkady, who has survived brutality and neglect with love for the father whom he dare not trust, is given courage to hope for righteousness and to seek it for himself. Unlike the dead boy, he may live to forgive and help with his father’s transformation. The mention of envy is crucial, since most “stumbling” emulates the successful senior model in struggle for mastery, vindication and advantage. The gift of tears signifies both repentance and gratitude; it shows at once grief for the life one has led and recognition of the gift of freedom to relinquish the self born of scandal, trusting in the generosity of God.

The Brothers Karamazov is the novel where Dostoevsky details the process just sketched. It is the story of a wicked father, three legitimate sons and a child of rape. Of the three, the eldest is worst treated and engages in multi-level rivalry with his father. Neglected since his mother’s death in early childhood, raised by servants, educated at the expense of relatives and home from the army, Dmitri is consumed with his quest to acquire all that his father has deprived him of and more. Ivan and Alexei, born of another mother and similarly neglected, have made other lives: Ivan is an intellectual, Alexei a novice in a monastery. Ivan is angry with God for the suffering of innocent children; why should the innocent be made to pay for the sins of their victimizers? In effect he turns Christ’s condemnation of child abuse against God, holding Him responsible for managing the world by sacrificing the innocent to his grand plan. Whatever the result, Ivan finds the price excessive. Could a decent person accept life in an otherwise good world, knowing it to be at the expense of tortured, neglected innocents? Has anyone the right to forgive those who victimize children — even if God is the ultimate sponsor of all the abuse?

Alexei invokes Christ, who can “forgive all and for all, because He himself gave his innocent blood for all and for everything.”[23] Ivan’s condemnation of God’s world is that of a judge who acknowledges neither that he himself has suffered in the process, nor that he may have added to the suffering of others — as he has. How can he separate himself not only from the process to which he has contributed, but also from the ranks of those who have suffered from it? The false objectivity to which he pretends disowns his own suffering, as though he were above the process, like a sort of god. Alexei says Christ can forgive, because He has suffered innocently and intentionally, on behalf of every abuser and for all the abused. Christ is understood to be not only an innocent victim of offense, but also God incarnate.[24] This God is not outside the process; he is involved not as a perpetrator, but as a sufferer of abuse.

Ivan’s reply is a set piece - the Grand Inquisitor prose-poem. Dostoevsky has been greatly praised — not least by Sigmund Freud[25] -- for this radical critique of the Church, though Alexei sees it as praising Christ, not reviling Him. Christ appears in Seville amongst burning heretics during the Inquisition of the mid-sixteenth century.[26] The Grand Inquisitor demands that He leave or be burned as a heretic, claiming He has given the Church the keys to the kingdom and has no right to interfere with the administration of His legacy. Ivan sets Christ against the Church, claiming through his inquisitor that He mercilessly requires of mankind integrity in the face of uncertainty, faith in the absence of knowledge, and love without reciprocation. He treats us as freely able to act as he does, without condition and regardless of circumstances. The Church, on the other hand, is more understanding; with finite requirements and concrete rewards for obedience it replaces Christ’s inhumane demands with a real kingdom, protecting man from the horrors of freedom and civic chaos. Without the practical certainties of indulgences, dispensations and inquisitions, men would have to be gods like Christ to meet the demands of perfection in an imperfect world. They would he defenseless against those who exploit freedom for violence and terror. Thus the Church had to become a state, endure the guilt of duplicity, and pretend to serve the Christ it betrayed; if He were to return, it would also have to treat him exactly as the Sanhedrin did, for the greater good of mankind.

The dilemma is that if the beauty of Christ’s perfection is not humanly possible, the moral stature of the Church, necessary as it is to peace and order, is a hollow sham. Man must then be ruled through a mystified political order in which Christ’s teachings are equivocated and used to the worldly ends He eschewed. Ivan presupposes a Roman Catholic model of ecclesiastical polity which Alexei says most Catholics would reject; only a few of the worst, he says, would accept the idea of the Church as a political conspiracy to correct the errors of Christ with the very things He rejected when Satan offered them to Him in the wilderness: miracle, mystery, and authority.[27] How does this tale respond to Alexei’s invocation of Christ as the Lover of Mankind who can forgive all because He has willingly shed His innocent blood on behalf of all and for all?

If you assume Christ is not God, that God is impotent, or that man is not a free spiritual being made in God’s image, then of course the Church is unrealistic and ineffectual; or if capable of any earthly good, it must be such a conspiracy as that represented in Ivan’s poem. In fact the Grand Inquisitor is the social engineer who on earth exactly corresponds to the child-victimizing god of the previous chapter, permitting some evil where necessary for the overall benefit of his constituency. By setting Christ against the Church, Ivan takes Christ for a foolish idealist, unless he himself intended the loosing and binding power of the keys he used as the Inquisitor uses it. In that case he would he a dissembler and the original Grand Inquisitor. Alexei says the tale unintentionally praises Christ, because He believes that man is free, created in the image of God, able to participate in the life of Christ, and that the inquisitor’s accusation is false. The many who with Freud take the passage as an incisive critique of God and the Church do so because they make Ivan’s assumptions: If there is no God, the Church must he either an ineffectual lie, or a vile conspiracy. Since there is evidence for both, they see the passage as a brilliant expose.[28]

Another voice in the novel alludes directly to the 18th chapter of Matthew; Alexei’s spiritual father and guide, the Elder Zosima, says, "Love children especially, for they, too, are sinless, like angels, and live to bring us tenderness and the purification of our hearts and as a sort of example for us. Woe to him who offends a child.”[29] He with Jesus presents children to his disciples as examples of humility and fitness for the kingdom of heaven. Saying they believe in him and presenting them as images of the greatest in the kingdom, Christ means what Zosima says.[30] Zosima, with horror at the effects of drunken or abusive parents, said, “I have even seen ten-year-old children in the factories: frail, sickly, stooped and already depraved.”[31] Children, innocent from birth, are frightfully vulnerable.

Let me belabor this a little, since opinions differ: Latin theologians since the fifth century have held that we are born guilty of Adam’s sin and to some extent disabled for good. Augustine says that we are not only born guilty, but inherently committed to rebellion and enmity with God; thus we cannot even repent without Divine intervention.[32] Since we are unable to cooperate with our salvation, God must decide unilaterally who will he saved. Official Catholicism is more moderate; it holds that though born guilty and unable to avoid sin, we are free to cultivate virtue and repent as reason dictates.[33] Earliest tradition and Orthodoxy, however, hold that we are mortal and spiritually weakened by ancestral sin, yet born innocent and by God’s grace free to seek goodness. St. Ambrose, says:

"[Boys] do not know how to act deceitfully and artfully. Do not condemn these children, of whom the Lord says: “Except ye be converted and become as this child, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” So also the Lord Himself, Who is the Power of God, as a Boy, when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He was struck, struck not back. Set then thy mind on this — like a child never to keep an injury in mind, never to show malice...."[34]

St. John Chrysostom sums up the consensus of Tradition:

"And the child which He set in the midst I suppose to have been a very young child indeed, free from all these [evil] passions. For such a child is free from pride and the mad desire of glory, and envy, and contentiousness; and all such passions, and having many virtues, simplicity, humility, unworldliness, prides itself upon none of them; which is a twofold severity of goodness; to have these things and not to be puffed up by them."[35]

The Church Fathers generally agree that we arrive pure from the hand of God, but are born into a perilous world of traps and temptations set by the Evil One through earlier victims already habituated to offense. As St. Paul expresses it in the Epistle to the Hebrews:

"Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also himself took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death... and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."[36]

Zosima notes that exploitation isolates, and a world of total isolation is the natural tendency of politics, even in its most cooperative, communist form.[37] Each of us falls and suffers for his own sin, but the solidarity of human nature gives us great influence on one another, for ill as well as good; though sin is individually voluntary, human life is essentially social.[38]

Christ is emphatic about the danger of offense (scandal) because it, not genetics, is the prime vector of the contagion of sin from one generation to another. The greatest guilt we can generate is that of inducting a new, pure generation into a world of scandal; it is the work of Satan himself, as we can see by considering Eve’s Fall. St. John of Damascus in the Nativity Matins shows her seduction to be a clever abuse of God’s image implanted in us. He says:

"Christ our Defender, Thou hast put to shame the adversary of man, using as a shield Thine ineffable Incarnation. Taking man’s form, Thou hast bestowed upon him the joy of becoming godlike: for it was in hope of this that of old we tell from on high into the dark depths of the earth."[39]

Christ vindicates Eve’s desire to be godlike; having created her in His image, He answers the Slanderer by showing God to be gracious and Eve the victim of deception. He who said, “Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,”[40] could not be telling the truth about the God Who had made Adam and Eve in his image, animating them with his own breath and the impetus to become like him.[41] All His prohibitions and instructions were to that end. We can see in this archetypal account the structure of all subsequent scandal: Satan has fallen through opposing God and now envies man’s position in the divine favor. Hating man, he implants his own attitude in man, using the natural desire implanted in Adam and Eve, with the suggestion that God begrudges man the very good He has already granted him. Eve, perhaps less than a day old, is childlike in innocence and disposed to trust; these very things are used against her. Envy is the motive, naturally good the bait; false imputation of the tempter’s own motive to God is the trap, and the mirror-play of image and likeness the means whereby evil moves innocence to mistrust and misapprehend the good: “For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity; but through the Devil’s envy came death into the world: and they that hold to his side find it.”[42]

III. Co-suffering Love

The mystery revealed in Christ is that we can voluntarily take responsibility for one another and effect the good of others by joining Christ's sufferings in redemptive action. St. Paul says that to know Christ and the power of His resurrection means sharing in the communion (koinonia) of his sufferings.[43] To the Corinthians he says, “...As ye are partakers (koinonoi) of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation.”[44] Zosima has in mind this sharing in the sufferings of Christ when he urges the brethren to love each man fearlessly “…also in his sin, for this likeness of God’s love is the height of love on earth.”[45] This love must be active, unconditional, and ready to suffer, he says:

"…[D]o not say, ‘Sin is strong ... and we are lonely and powerless....’ There is one salvation for you: Take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it really is so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all."[46]

These sayings are hard to grasp and harder to accept for people acculturated to individualism. To suppose we have no responsibility for others separates us, denies our common nature, mutual suffering, and responsibility to God for each other. It is hard to see how we are responsible for corruption in national politics, our neighbor’s had habits, or epidemics in Africa, even if we have been negligent, compromised, passed up chances to do good, and done intentional harm. How much harder is it to see how Christ, who knew no sin, could be “made sin for us?”[47] How could the sufferings of Christ make us righteous, or we share His suffering on behalf of others? This last question is close to the one raised by Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor: If Jesus did accomplish a heroic, saving act for mankind by virtue of His human perfection and, as the Church teaches, His divinity, is it realistic or just cruel to think weak, flawed mortals could do the same thing? The greater the act, the more the thought of it overwhelms. The Grand Inquisitor thought integrity in the face of suffering and temptation was a worthy challenge for a few, but excessive for most men. Yet Jesus says, “Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.”[48]

Zosima challenges the humanist critics of the Gospel, “And the scoffers will themselves be asked, ‘If ours is a dream, then when will you raise up your edifice and make a just order for yourselves without Christ?”[49] St. Paul describes the mystery of co-suffering:

"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the Church, of which I became a minister according to the divine office which was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to His saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."[50]

His point is not that Christ’s work is incomplete, but that it continues, and He has not left His people to do these things alone. As He says in the Gospel of John, the mystery of perfection is one of mutual indwelling, in which the image of the Holy Trinity is realized in man. Our unity of being and manyness of persons are realized in love, through God entering our nature:

"The glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are One, I in them and Thou in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me and hast loved them even as Thou hast loved Me."[51]

Without these assumptions it is not possible to make sense of much in our text.

If the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection were simply an economic-juridical transfer of Christ’s merits to us, or elements of an edifying myth, the Inquisitor’s accusation would he true; for in neither case could we live the life commanded by Christ and described by St. Paul. Fr. Zosima speaks of the Russian monks as preparing the salvation of Russia and the world, because they have kept “the image of Christ fair and undistorted, in the purity of God’s truth, from the time of the ancient fathers, apostles and martyrs,” awaiting the moment to reveal it to those who have lost or distorted it. “The star will shine forth from the East,”[52] he says. The image of Christ is not a concept or a doctrine; it is the life of Christ continually enacted and transmitted in the Church, in undistorted Apostolic continuity of doctrine, practice and Spirit — not a mere succession of ceremonial touches. Such contact is necessary, but not sufficient. Redemptive responsibility for the sins of the world is not possible in our isolated, private selves, but only as bearers of Christ and His Cross. He accepted the consequences of sin, assuming mortal flesh and entering the fallen world. We can do no less, if we have received His nature.

The novel bears this principle out abundantly in the life of its “future hero,” Alexei, most especially in his interaction with children. I have summarized Ivan’s indictment of God’s world for its misuse of children, and noted his despair at the possibility of living up to Christ’s example of perfect freedom from worldly passion. Alexei, on the other hand, accepts Zosima’s teaching and example of loving suffering with people. Just before the conversation with Ivan, Alexei had run into a group of schoolboys in a stone-throwing fight with another small boy; befriending the whole group he approached the angry child, Ilyusha, who apparently initiated the incident. The boy, whom he approached sympathetically, hit him and broke down in tears when asked why. Only later does Alexei discover that Ilyusha’s poor, disgraced father was publicly beaten by his brother Dmitri, and that the boy’s schoolmates had been teasing him about this father. We learn still later that the teasing followed an important event: Ilyusha’s friend and senior schoolmate, Kolya, had just broken with him for a nasty trick which Ilyusha had played at the suggestion of Alexei’s sinister illegitimate brother, Smerdyakov. The trick was to get a dog to eat a piece of bread with a pin in it, and watch the excitement — a despicable act, which Smerdyakov had persuaded him would be fun to watch. Instead, it caused great pain in the dog, which ran away and was supposed dead.

No wonder the boy was upset: Tricked into a trick for which he felt mortal guilt and shame, he had lost a dog he loved, been rejected by his best friend, seen his father disgraced, and then been stoned by former comrades — to say nothing of his having an insane mother, sick sister, and dire poverty. Alexei shortly after the biting incident learned of the beating given Ilyusha’s father by Dmitri and began trying to patch things up, getting his brother to apologize, and finding help for the destitute, sick family. He established a friendship with the family and got the other boys to mend their relations with the now-ailing Ilyusha; but as the novel goes on, Ilyusha’s illness becomes a chronic, wasting disorder from which he is to die. When Alexei finally locates Kolya, the older boy who had not been in the stone throwing group, and enlists him to help cheer up the dying Ilyusha, Kolya turns out to have saved the dog and changed its name to Perezvon. Kolya has taught him many tricks to cheer up llyusha, when Kolya thinks his friend has learned his lesson. Thus before the death of Ilyusha there is a reconciliation with all his friends, genuine repentance from the boys who have committed or suffered offense, and a surprise resurrection of the dog, now named in Church Slavonic for a solemnly triumphant peal of church-bells.

Alexei’s involvement with the boys has done much to save the dignity, love, self-respect and future well-being of most of the children and some of the adults in this subplot. The dark shadow on it all is the sinister Smerdyakov, who will turn out to have murdered his reputed father and master. Persuaded by Ivan, whose intellect he admires in a lackey’s way, that there is neither a God nor an immortal soul, and an enlightened person must follow his inclinations courageously in defiance of any and all moral considerations, Smerdyakov holds that “All things are permitted.” Though always morbid, this fellow of the lowest social status once had an interest in religion. One wonders where the darkness began. Fyodor Paviovich had in effect disowned all his sons. Yet one of them is the loving and lovable Alexei. Would Smerdyakov have been teaching animal abuse to relatively innocent children, much less killing old sensualists, if Ivan hadn’t been teaching nihilistic ethics? Would Ivan have had such views without his father’s depressing behavior? If Dmitri hadn’t been disowned, cheated and taunted by his father, would he have been heating up seedy collection agents? If Ilyusha’s father had been a stronger, better man, would the boy have been so vulnerable to family shame and his own guilt? One only knows that such trains of abuse have to end. If people are free, they can and must find the grace to stop the spiral of scandalous offense, beginning with the intelligence to see how.

Dostoevsky reveals scandal in order to heal it. Our Lord said of persecution, “For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.”[53] The passion of Christ is the scandal of scandals, and the Grand Inquisitor is Dostoevsky’s revelation of the spirit of scandal — the lie that Christ must be co-opted or killed again, crushing the hope of the ages and the possibility of redemption. The general form of scandal as the passing on of offense and accusation is richly revealed in Fyodor Pavlovich, Ivan, Dmitri, Ilyusha and Smerdyakov. All, once innocent, became victims or targets for that very reason; their freedom was enlisted in its own downfall. Even Fyodor Pavlovich is not excluded; though we do not know the details of his original corruption, Zosima tells him to stop lying to himself and taking and giving offense:

"Above all do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does discern any truth and falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures,... and... complete bestiality."[54]

Even Fyodor Pavlovich is afforded the respect of a free man who might regain his senses: “You’ve known for a long time what you must do; you have sense enough: do not give yourself up to drunkenness and verbal incontinence, do not give yourself up to sensuality, ... above all ...do not lie.”[55] Zosima sees a core of truth even in the father of most of the lies in the novel. Dostoevsky says as much at the end of the first chapter; having described a bit of Fyodor’s scandalous behavior together with a report of residual conscience, the narrator interjects, “Both versions may very well be true ... In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.”[56]

In the midst of the Grand Inquisitor chapter Dostoevsky reminds us that human intelligence is inalienably free; the inquisitor accuses Christ of fatal and culpable error in desiring the love of man:

"Instead of the firm ancient law, man had henceforth to decide for himself, with a free heart, what is good and what is evil, having only your image before him as a guide - but did it not occur to you that he would eventually reject and dispute even your image and your truth if he was oppressed by so terrible a burden as freedom of choice?"[57]

The Inquisitor tries to appeal to Mosaic law as though it were man’s original support, yet despite himself refers unmistakably to St. Irenaeus of Lyon’s famous saying:

"The ancient law of human freedom is clear: since God made him free from the start, having his own power, as also his own soul, to obey God’s prescription voluntarily and not coerced by God."[58]

The Inquisitor testifies against himself of the created image of Christ the Logos in us, for even in Ivan and his father the image of Christ is inalienable, as long as they are human.

Dostoevsky weaves the Gospel of John into “The Wedding at Cana” chapter, to show pointedly that his Christ is not a “Christ figure” illustrating a general principle, but the incarnate Word Himself; Alexei’s virtue is not merely his personal achievement, but that of Christ. The chapter in a sense portrays Alexei’s conversion; for even he has not escaped the process of scandal. His beloved Zosima has fallen asleep in the Lord, and his body smells prematurely of corruption; envious monks are taking malicious pleasure in the supposed expression of divine disfavor. Alexei paraphrases Ivan, “I do not rebel against my God, I simply ‘do not accept His world.’”[59] Alexei wants to get away from the monastery and heads for the very place where his father and brother have sought solace — Grushenka’s house. A monastic novice in search of sausage, vodka and a beautiful woman is very close to rebellion. Saved by the compassion of a better woman than he hoped to find, he returns to the monastery unscathed, to pray for — or to — his elder, and does so late at night, in the cell where Fr. Paissy is reading the Gospel According to John over the body.

What follows is a visionary conversation between an exhausted young man praying, the Gospel read by the monk, and a dream of great significance: Alyosha is at a wedding feast where the Savior and his Mother are giving joy to the poor guests; for he came not only to die, but to share and brighten the life of man. Zosima invites Alyosha to the feast and directs him to Christ. Alyosha is afraid. His elder says:

"Do not be afraid of Him. Awful is His greatness before us, terrible is His loftiness, yet He is boundlessly merciful, He became like us out of love, and He is rejoicing with us, transforming water into wine, that the joy of the guests may not end. He is waiting for new guests ... now and unto ages of ages. See, they are bringing in new wine."[60]

Alyosha’s heart burns, as the water of his created being is transformed into supernatural wine by the divine Spirit, and rising, he accepts the invitation. He goes outside, where the mystery of the earth touched and merged with the mystery of the stars under the shining dome of heaven. He fell weeping to the ground, loving the earth and all upon it, longing to forgive and be forgiven by and for everyone, and sensing that others were also asking for him. It was as if the threads of all those innumerable worlds of God all came together in his soul, and it was trembling all over, touching other worlds. The narrator describes:

"But with each moment he felt clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as the heavenly vault descended into his soul. Some sort of idea, as it were, was coming to reign in his mind — now for the whole of his life and unto ages of ages. He fell to the earth a weak youth and rose up a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life, and he knew it and felt it suddenly in that very moment of his ecstasy. ‘Someone visited my soul in that hour,’ he would say afterwards with firm belief in his words...”[61]

We have the word that such things happen from a man who prayed, struggled, and in his fiftieth year was freed of addiction to live a life of insight, resolve and unity with the saints. For Dostoevsky’s characters, preachments and plot lines are not mere wishful thinking, but the experimental records of a life constantly and voluntarily tested by Christ’s Truth through conscientious struggle and agonizing honesty.

IV. Concluding Observations

At the end of the book Alyosha consolidates the surviving boys in prayer and loving memory of Ilyusha, reminding them of the good they have done in caring for him, of the good of his response, and especially of the great good Ilyusha did in bringing them together in love. Assuring them of the certainty that he and they will rise again, he leads them hand in hand to the funeral dinner. What Dostoevsky did with his gift was much the same, though he did it for a nation, binding them together in the memory of Pushkin and the resolve to remember Holy Russia to the glory of God and for the good of mankind. It was done by the power of the same Christ, and the truth of his novels lies in that he used them to bring to light the evil of scandal with tender compassion for his suffering characters, but most especially for all who suffer the same things and need redeeming divine compassion, given in Christ and through Him by all who in solidarity with Him embody his love.

We noted near the beginning that Joseph Frank found it remarkable that Freud, having devoted a substantial article to arguing that Dostoevsky’s vices and particularly his gambling were results of perverse passions induced by childhood trauma, never mentions the recovery from gambling addiction. Though Freud saw the deficient fathers and parricides in his novels as evidence of his thesis,[62] the very novel in progress at the time of Dostoevsky’s deliverance from addiction was Devils, in which a pathetic father, Stepan, found repentance; and a spiritual father, Tikhon, reveals to Stavrogin that he must find his own repentance for his terrible sin against the young girl who committed suicide. Dostoevsky was just finishing the first part of the novel, when he left the gambling tables for the last time. I believe his final effectual repentance caused or was affected by realizing his responsibility for his life and forgiving his father. In The Adolescent the father of Arkady’s flesh is incipiently reformed by illness, and by novel’s end it is possible he may shoulder responsibility to marry Arkady’s mother. We have no certainty Versilov will keep his promise, but we have spiritually authoritative testimony that it is possible. Tikhon, Makar and Zosima in these last great novels attest to a spiritual presence on earth and within the characters’ lives of the Heavenly Father bearing the love of Christ and assisting in the transformation of the novels’ protagonists.

Freud did not think such a spiritual cure realistic, but Dostoevsky proves that it is possible. We have mentioned the words of Father Zosima to Father Fyodor: "Stop lying, most especially to yourself, for that destroys receptivity to truth, which yields contempt, from which inability to love must follow." On Zosima’s account to adhere to truth can yield respect, love and forgiveness. The same realization freed Dostoevsky’s from gambling and made his love for Anna and his children effectual. Did it also enable him to forgive his father? In Crime and Punishment and The Idiot the protagonists’ fathers are simply missing, but in Devils, The Adolescent, and Brothers Karamazov we have poor excuses for fathers who are either repentant or capable of repentance. Dostoevsky had been such a father, and in 1871 finally ceased to resemble his most pathetic characters in this respect. He repented and it seems at the same time learned how to forgive fathers. If Freud is right about any of the elements of his pathology, then its cure must indicate a reversal or removal of the cause.

Even Fyodor Pavlovich has a vestigial soul, and we learn to see him through the forgiving eyes of Alyosha and in the authoritative light of Zosima’s admonitions. We understand Dmitri’s anger and Ivan’s contempt and even find Smerdyakov’s pathetic hatred understandable. Even Dmitri and Ivan finally begin to lose their destructive passions. Is this realistic? It may not be common, but it is real, and Dostoevsky is our witness. There may be a particle of truth in Freud’s aeteological speculation, but there is surely no room in his psychoanalytic theory for Dostoevsky’s kind of therapy; for its basis is excluded from Freud’s supposed causal nexus. Without freedom, how can there be healing? Though Freud knows that the patient must actively participate in his cure, human activity is never distinguished from passion. Freud confines himself to the passions and assigns agency only to physical instinct and its manifestations, yet the mystery Freud recognizes in the creative process of Dostoevsky’s art must refer itself to a greater Mystery, as Dostoevsky finally understood.

He says of Pushkin, that his poetic genius was at most assisted by external stimuli, “...calling forth in him what lay hidden in the depth of his soul, the organic unity of the internal wholeness of which encompassed all the principles of his creative work.”[63] The source of this wholeness is Christ, in whose image we were created, and by whose Incarnation that image is renewed among us and, especially those enlightened by the Gospel and the mystery of the Church.[64] Man without Christ subverts his nature, pretending to be god and making man — gods of or for himself — i.e., persons or the state. Christ the God-man corrects this, enabling men to become god-bearers in the Spirit of loving union with each other, in Him.[65] Such sources of literary activity surely apply to Dostoevsky himself at least as much as Pushkin, of whom he spoke them in the 1880 address and in its defense later the same year — even more, since Dostoevsky’s spiritual struggle seems more evident.

That he understood himself far better than Freud did is attested by the fact that he was cured of gambling and many other ills not by himself, as Frank implies, but by Christ, as Dostoevsky himself understood through repentance and regeneration.[66] That he knew human nature deeply appears in his ability to recognize, as few moderns do, that the generic physiological and socio—economic causes that limit us interact with and are affected by the personal will. Such freedom is not incompatible with causality, since environmental causes affect us differently as we voluntarily change how we relate to them. In the image of the Holy Trinity, man is one in being while existing in distinctly embodied persons, and because human being is prior in the order of creation to other causes, we need not choose between individual moralism and amoral passivity before material causes. Dostoevsky articulates why he subscribes to neither:

"…[T]he people are aware... that they themselves are guilty in common with every criminal. Still, blaming themselves, they do not prove thereby that they believe in 'environment'; on the contrary they believe that environment is wholly dependent on ... their uninterrupted repentance and self-betterment. Energy, work and struggle — these are the things which reform environment. By work and struggle alone, independence and the sentiment of self-respect are being achieved... That is what the Russian people, by a strong feeling, are tacitly conceiving in their concealed idea of the misfortune of the criminal."[67]

He learned from the Orthodox people that co-suffering love is the Way of the God-man. Having embraced the word of Christ and taken His yoke upon them, by His Spirit men have access to His energy. Dostoevsky, having found that access, found empirical theology, and that Truth gave him freedom.

If anyone understood Dostoevsky better than he understood himself, it may have been the authentic healer of souls from whom he sought help after the death of his son Alexei. It seems fitting to give the last word to a real elder who knew him, and on whom he in part modeled his Elder Zosima. Starets Amvrosy of Optina commented after his visit to his hermitage near Kaluga in 1878, “This is a man who repents.”[68]

David Starr is a professor at St. John’s College

Endnotes:
1) Notes from the Underground, trans Pevear and Volkhonsky (Vintage, 1993), Part II, Apropos of the Wet Snow, p. 129.

2) Demons, Pevear/Volkhonsky translation (New York: Knopf-Everyrnan, 1994-2000), p. 408.

3) Philippians 4:8, KJV.

4) Freud, Sigmund, “Dostoevsky and Parricide,” in Stavrogin’s Confession, translated by Virginia Woolf and S. S. Koteliansky (New York: Lear Publishers, 1947), p. 88. Of his personal life, he says, “... penitence becomes a technique to enable murder to be done...a characteristic Russian trait.” Of his faith and patriotism, “[He] threw away the chance of becoming a teacher and liberator of humanity; instead, he appointed himself its jailer.”

5) Freud, p.89.

6) The psychosomatic account of Dostoevsky’s epilepsy is now much contested and very uncertain.

7) See Freud, note 1, and pp. 91-114 for the full account.

8) Noted Russian theologian of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and founder of the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile in the early days of the Soviet terror.

9) Khrapovitsky, Bl. Met.. Antony of Kiev, Dostoevsky‘s Concept of Spiritual Rebirth, trans. L. Koehler (Synaxis Press: Dewdney, B.C., 1980), p. 11.

10) Zapiski iz Mertvago Doma, trans. as Notes from the House of the Dead by David McDuff (London: Penguin, 1985), Part I, Chapter I, p. 36.

11) Ibid, e.g., pp. 80, 145.

12) There is some debate about this in the biographical literature, but still I think general agreement that the death was neither by natural causes nor by accident.

13) The Diary of a Writer, trans. B. Brasol (New York: Braziller, 1954), August, 1880, Chapter III., p. 984.

14) Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865—1871 (Princeton: 1995), pp. 426-427.

15) Ibid.

16) Devils, p. 698.

17) Devils, “Stavrogin’s Confession,” 3; cf. Matthew 18.

18) The text of Matthew 18 is repeatedly cited in Dostoevsky’s works and becomes a major theme in his last novels.

19) Matthew 18:1-10.

20) Devils, pp. 40-41: When the child was eleven, his tutor used to awaken him at night; the ironic narrator says, “When the friends wept, throwing themselves into their mutual embraces at night, it was not always over some little domestic anecdotes. Stepan Trofirnovich managed to touch the deepest strings in his friend’s heart and to call forth in him the first, still uncertain.., sacred anguish, which the chosen soul, having once tasted and known it, will never exchange for any cheap satisfaction.” He adds that it was good — none too soon — that “the youngling and his mentor were parted by the child’s departure for boarding school."

21) Podrostok, trans, by Pevear; Volokhonsky as The Adolescent (New York: Everyrnan, 2003), III.3.iii-iv., pp 368, ff.

22) Ibid., Part III, Chapter Four, sect. ii.

23) See The Brothers Karamazov, Part II, Book v, Chapter 4, “Rebellion.”

24) Ibid. (pp. 246 - 248, ff.) of the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation, (Everyman’s Library, 1992).

25) Freud, p. 87; cf. p. 103-104.

26) Ibid., “The Grand Inquisitor,” pp. 254-260.

27) Ibid.; cf. Luke 4:1-13.

28) Of course they beg the question of the existence of God and support atheism by the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

29) Ibid., III. vi. 3., f., “Of Prayer, Love, and Touching other Worlds.” (p. 319)

30) “Otrocha” like the original Greek paidion is diminutive, and “maliy” in the Slavonic Gospel like micros in Greek means “small”.

31) Ibid., III. vi. 3. f., “Some Words about Masters and Servants.” (p.315)

32) See, e.g., Augustine, Enichiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, § 25-27; cf. Retractions, 1:8-9.

33) Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I . ii .Q. 82.4 and Q. 85. 2. "The natural good of practical reason, Justice, is equally and innately lost in all men, but not wholly lost; so all are born guilty and morally impaired, but not completely bereft of rationality and choice."

34) St. Ambrose of Milan, Three Books on the Duties of the Clergy, I. xxi. 93. (Roberts, Alexander and Donaldson, James, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series: Volume X.).

35) St. John Chrysostom, Homily LVIII on The Gospel of Matthew, §3 Roberts and Donaldson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Volume X).

36) Hebrews 2:14-15.

37) Brothers Karamazov, III. vi. 3. f. (p. 318); cf.

38) Homily LIX on the Gospel of Matthew, § 1-4.

39) The Festal Menaion, translated by Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware, 1969, Faber and Faber, London, p. 279.

40) Genesis 3:4-5.

41) Genesis 1:26-27.

42) Wisdom of Solomon 2:24: "pthono de diabolou thanatos esielthen eis ton kosmon, peirazousin de auton oi tes ekeinou meridos ontes".

43) Philippians 3:10: "yper emon amartian epoiesen, ma eneis genometha dikaiosune theou en auto".

44) II Corinthians 1:7

45) Brothers Karamazov, III .vi .3. g (p. 318-319)

46) Ibid., III.vi..3. f (p. 20)

47) 2 Cor 5:21: "yper enion amartian epoiesen, ma emeis genometha dikaiosune theou en auto".

48) Matthew 5:48.

49) Brothers Karamazov, III. vi. 3. f. (p.3l6).

50) Colossians 1:21-27.

51) John 17:22-23.

52) Brothers Karamazov, III. vi.3. e. (p. 313).

53) Matthew 10:26-27.

54) Brothers Karamazov, I. ii. 2. ( p. 44).

55) loc. cit.

56) Brothers Karamazov, I. LI (p. 9).

57) Brothers Karamazov, II. v. 5. (p. 255).

58) Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus haereses IV.37. I (Rouet de Journel, Enchiridion Patristicon’ [Freiburg: Herder, 1951 §244)

59) Brothers Karamazov, III. vii. 2. (p. 341).

60) Ibid., III. vii. 3. (p. 361-362)

61) Ibid., p. 362-363.

62) Freud, p. 95-107.

63) Diary, p. 977

64) Ibid., p. 980: “I perceive this in our history, in our gifted men, in the creative genius of Pushkin. Let our land be poor, but this destitute land ‘Christ, in a serf’s garb, has traversed, to and fro with blessing.’ Why shouldn’t we embrace His ultimate Word? Wasn’t He Himself born in a manger?”

65) Ibid., p. 1005.

66) The letter quoted from Frank above (note 11) actually begins with the profession that his repentance is genuine because it is part of a regenerative spiritual process; i.e., a gift of Divine grace. See Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, Princeton, 1971, p.

67) Diary, p. 15.

68) Chetvertikov, Sergius, Elder Ambrose of Optina, Kaluga, 1912; English trans. Platina, CA, 1997), p. 213. I add this with thanks, at the suggestion of Fr. Panteleimon of Holy Cross Hermitage.

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