A Song About the "Jesus Prayer"

Song about the Jesus Prayer, titled "The Prayer", sung by Fr. Ephraim (formerly Gerasimos) of The Holy Monastery of Saint Nektarios in Roscoe, NY. Pictures are from the Holy Monasteries of Megisti Lavra, Philotheou, and Karakallou of Mt. Athos, and from Meteora.


Here is another video with the same song, though more clear.


Lyrics:

Έφυγα απ το Φαραώ της Αιγύπτου τη σκλαβιά
μ αρχηγό το Μωυσή ν΄ ανεβώ ως το Σινά .

Στο Σινά να ανεβώ ω! πολύ το επιθυμώ,
στην Αγία κορυφή και να λέω την ευχή

Η ανάβασις σκληρή, Θεέ μου δος μου υπομονή,
καρτερία, αντοχή, ν αποκτήσω την ευχή

Πρώτα η υπακοή, η Γραφή, η προσοχή
κι η αγία σιωπή δυναμώνουν την ευχή
.
Την ευχή για να τη λες πρέπει από το μυαλό
να πετάξεις μακριά κάθε πράγμα κοσμικό

Στην αρχή την ευχή να τη λες προφορικά
κι έπειτα από καιρό θα σου γίνει νοερά

Και στα λόγια της ευχής να ναι όλη η προσοχή,
γιατί όταν φανταστείς κίνδυνος να πλανηθείς

Τον πειράζοντα πολύ ερεθίζει η ευχή
και γι αυτό μην πτοηθείς όταν σου επιτεθεί

Κι απ τα λόγια της ευχής βγαίνουνε καρποί γλυκείς.
Ω! τι μέλι είν' αυτό δεν μπορείς να φανταστείς

Η ευχή πώς ενεργεί μην ζητάς να σου το πω,
δεν μπορώ να εκφραστώ είναι Θείο μυστικό

όταν δεις την ευχή μέσα σου να ενεργεί
φρούρησέ τηνε καλά με ταπείνωση πολλή

Γέροντά μου σεβαστέ, Μωυσή μου νοητέ
έλα δος μου μια ευχή ν αποκτήσω την ευχή

Κι η Μητέρα του Χριστού, Ηγουμένη Μυστική,
ευλογεί τους Χριστιανούς και τους δίδει την ευχή

Στο Σινά να ανεβώ ώ! Πολύ το επιθυμώ,
στην Αγία Κορυφή και να λέω την ευχή.

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Archbishop Irenaios of Crete Clarifies his Encyclical

The following video is a reply by Archbishop Irenaios of Crete following the various criticisms and responses to his encyclical regarding the use by clergy in his Archdiocese of the social networking site "Facebook".

Because the lecture is in Greek, the reader can refer to other sources I posted in the comments section here of my response to this issue.

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On the Translation of Liturgical Texts (Part 3 of 4)

...continued from Part Two

Third. Usually those that call for linguistic reforms fall into the big mistake to consider man as only possessing logic, and they seek to subordinate everything under logic. "Let the texts be translated so that we can understand them. So that we could understand what we say and what is going on." And they think that with logical processing (thinking) they will solve the internal problems that bother them. To be exact, man's existence does not consist of one side, and especially of the arbitrary function of logic. Man also has internal intuition, the nous, the heart, and many times he conceives essential things and interprets someone or something without using logic. For example, from the first moment, a judge can perceive with his natural intuition the innocence or the guiltiness of the person that is accused. Even more, this happens to the Church, when man partakes of divine grace, which is when he "suffers for the divine". It is known through the gifts of insight (diooratiko) and foresight (prooratiko) and of all the gifts (charismata) that are gifts of the Holy Spirit, which we also see in the lives of the saints.

Thus, it is possible to find in worship famous philologists who understand everything being said, or theologians that understand the entire evolution of divine worship, but these also do not understand, or rather, do not experience the worship services like a "charismatic" man experiences it, or a little child, or an illiterate person among the blessed faithful.

Let me provide an example. The apostolic blessing which is given during the Divine Liturgy by the priest to the people: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you", if it is translated into the modern demotic (Greek) language so that it could be understood better, will read more like this: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you". [Trans. Note: The translation in English is the same, though in Greek it is more "understandable" in demotic Greek.] However, who can understand logically what is the "grace of Christ", or what is the "love of God the Father", or what is the "communion of the Holy Spirit", or what is the mystery of the Holy Trinity, or what does it mean for the grace of the Holy Trinity to be with us? How can we "understand" the Holy Trinity when we are internally disorganized and externally isolated? This demands the transformation of our nature, the development of our internal senses, and the essential experience of God. It is definitely not a case of logical processing.

In the patristic tradition there is clearly a distinction between the nous (the mind of the heart) and dianoia (intellect or logic). When the nous is subordinated to dianoia, the passions, and the environment, then we have the death of the soul, and thus, man is unable to understand anything in the Divine Liturgy. In contrast, when the nous is freed from the tyranny of dianoia, the passions and the environment become graced, then it experiences God. The knowledge of God and of divine things is related inseparably with the experience of God. And the experience of God is achieved when the nous is purified, and is unceasingly thinking of God. Then it even graces dianoia, which becomes subordinated to the nous and expresses its experiences. Thus, the issue of understanding divine worship is foremost an issue of purifying the heart, the transformation of man, and the discovery of personhood (prosopon). It is an issue of man's rebirth, which takes place when he is transformed from an individual person into a real person (prosopon). And we know well from the teachings of the Fathers that a person is reborn from above. As a real person, in worship he comes into communion with God, men and the saints. When he is a real member of the Body of Christ, then he lives in the communion of angels and men, heavenly and earthly, living and fallen asleep.

Continued...Part Four

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A Second Resurrection at the Monastery of St. Nikodemos in Goumenissa

Amidst great joy and celebration in the hearts of the monks and faithful of Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite Monastery in Goumenissa, a feast was celebrated to honor the return of Saint Nikodemos' holy relic after it was stolen a month prior.

The relic was returned in a miraculous manner at the Saint's prompting, and was placed once again in it's home in the Katholikon of the Monastery.

The pictures below are from the Festal Great Vespers on Saturday evening 17 April 2010.

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A Syrian Style Easter

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Archbishop of Crete on Social Networking and Clergy

Archbishop of Crete: "Do Not Use Facebook For the Good of the Church"

April 21, 2010
Romfea.gr

Archbishop Irenaios of Crete in his 18th encyclical to the clergy of the Holy Archdiocese of Crete, addressed the dangers of the internet and technology.

The Archbishop said: "Progress and technology are galloping in our times. Technology is a gift of God, but also a liability and threat in how and how often to responsibly use it."

The Archbishop especially referred to "Facebook" saying: "I am especially referring to the issue of the internet and the so-called 'Facebook'".

Continuing he said: "I personally do not know about this issue but I do recognize its dangers - the evil and the scandals which could possibly come to the Church, the Archdiocese and to all who use it without discernment."

In closing, the Archbishop added: "I propose, ask and command, to not use this method for the reasons above, and those who have used it, I ask that you distance youselves and not use it anymore, for your own good and the good of the Church."

It should be noted that this encyclical is written by the Archbishop of Crete and is addressed only to the clergy of the Archdiocese of Crete.

A clergyman of the Archdiocese of Crete has commented: "Does the Archbishop understand that dozens of Metropolitans have an account on Facebook? Are they too at risk?"

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The Translation of Liturgical Texts In Russia

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin Opposed the Translation of Liturgical Texts into Modern Colloquial Language

6 April 2010
Interfax

Fr Vsevolod Chaplin, the chairman of the Synodal Division for Church and Public Relations, thinks that the translation of liturgical texts from Church Slavonic into modern Russian is inappropriate.

“I don’t think that we need to translate the language of worship, which was formed in ancient Russia, into the language of music videos or SMS-messages”, he said on Thursday at a press conference in Moscow.

Fr Vsevolod went on to say that most people don’t experience distress because of the use of Church Slavonic in worship. “If someone really wants to understand the services and they put all of their heart into it, then, after three or four weeks of regular attendance at worship, they begin to understand it all”, he said.

“The Church does speak in different ‘languages’. There are also Orthodox blogs and Orthodox music videos. However, the liturgical texts are a special case. Even if you translate them into modern Russian, it would not be easy to understand them. They are high philosophy, understandable only to those who are enlightened by the teachings of Orthodoxy”.

At the same time, Fr Vsevolod thinks that the texts themselves educate us; they teach us what we need to pray for. “After all, we do not always know what to pray for. We pray about money, our careers, or our family’s welfare. Maybe, that’s bad for us”, he said.

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The Rapture – Indisputable Christian Heresy

By Fr. Anthony M. Coniaris

As I was driving one day I encountered a bumper sticker admonishing me:

“WARNING! In the event of Rapture, this car will be driverless.”

The strange belief in the Rapture teaches that some day (sooner rather than later), without warning, born-again Christians will begin to float up from the freeway, abandoned vehicles careening wildly. There will be airliners in the sky suddenly with no one at the controls! Presumably, God is removing these favored ones from earth to spare them the tribulation of the Anti-Christ which the rest of us will have to endure.

Unfortunately the Rapture has been promoted widely by the Left Behind series of books that have sold over 70 million copies.

The Rapture represents a radical misinterpretation of Scripture. I remember watching “Sixty Minutes” a year ago and was appalled to hear the announcer say that “the Rapture is an unmistakenly Christian doctrine”. It is not!

It is a serious distortion of Scripture.

It is astonishing that a belief so contrary to Scripture and the tradition of the Church could be propagated by so-called “Christians”.

According to the Bible and according to the belief not only of Orthodox Christians but also of the Roman Catholic and most Protestant mainline churches, the true Rapture will not be secret; it will be the great and very visible Second Coming of Jesus at the end of the world. That is the one and only “Rapture”. It will not be a separate, secret event but one that "every eye shall see" (1 Thess. 4:16-17).

The word rapture is not found in Scripture but hearkens to 1 Thess. 4:17 where St. Paul says that when the Lord comes again “we who are alive…shall be caught up…in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”


This “being caught up…in the clouds” — arpagisometha in Greek - is translated by some as “raptured”. The word itself is not found in Orthodox theology.

The notion of a rapture in which Christ comes unseen to take believers away secretly, and only later comes back again for everyone else publicly—this whole teaching is quite novel. It was almost unheard of until John Nelson Darby formulated it in the 1800s as part of a new approach to the Bible, sometimes called “dispensationalism”.

The purpose of the “Rapture” is to protect the elect from the tribulations of the end times. Yet Jesus said nothing about sparing anyone from tribulation. In fact, He said, “In the world you have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

Nowhere did Jesus ever say that He would return secretly to rapture the elect. Rather, He promised to be with His elect in all tribulations.

“Lo, I am with you always. I will never leave you or forsake you.” He even had something good to say about being persecuted: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10).

Those who espouse the Rapture claim that Matthew 24:40-41 refers clearly to the rapture of the just, “Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”

The entire passage, however, refers to Christ’s second coming where He will judge the living and the dead and separate the just from the unjust.

Darby taught as dogma that when the Scriptures reveal that the Lord will reign on earth for a thousand years (Rev. 20:4), this figure is to be taken literally, rather than as a symbol for eternity as we believe. The Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 condemned as heresy this teaching which is called Chialiasmos (millenianism or 1000 years).

In fact, the Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787 A.D.) in which the essential truths of the Christian faith were defined never mention a rapture. Yet Evangelical Christians and Pentecostals keep using obscure passages of the Book of Revelation which purport to give a detailed timetable of what will happen at the end of the world, despite the fact that Jesus Himself warned that no man knows either the day or the hour when the Son of Man shall return.

A major problem with the Rapture is that it ends up teaching not two but three comings of Jesus — first His birth in Bethlehem; second, His secret coming to snatch away (rapture) the “born-again”; and third, His coming at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead and to reign in glory. Yet only two not three comings of Christ are mentioned in the Bible. We have the clearest definition of this in the Nicene Creed when we confess that “the Lord Jesus Christ…will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. His Kingdom will have no end…. I expect the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the ages to come.”

There is no mention of a “Rapture”.


As already stated, most Christians, Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Protestants do not believe in the Rapture. In fact, one Protestant pastor, John L. Gray, summarized magnificently what we Orthodox and most other Christians believe about the Rapture when he wrote these remarkable words:

"Though many believe and teach this 'Pre-Tribulation Rapture' theory, they erroneously do so, because neither Jesus, Paul, Peter, John, nor any of the other writers of the Bible taught this. Nor did the early Church Fathers, nor any others for many hundreds of years…. Did you know that NONE of this was ever taught prior to 1812, and that all forms of Pre-Tribulation Rapture teaching were developed since that date? …. If I were to preach something, or believe something, supposedly from the Bible, but cannot find that ANYONE ELSE before 1812 ever believed it or taught it, I would seriously question that it is based on the Bible."

Thus the Rapture is foreign to the Bible and to the living tradition of the Church. It is what we call a heresy, a false teaching. False teachings, such as this, happen when people — like John Darby — believe that they have the right to interpret the Scriptures individually apart from the Living Body of Christ — the Church — where the Spirit of Truth abides and leads us to all truth.

I can think of no better words to conclude than those of Jesus when He speaks of the one and only “Rapture”, the Second Coming:

“Be on guard. Be alert! You do not know when that time will come…keep watch…if He comes suddenly, do not let Him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: Watch!” (Mark 13:32-37).

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The Theft of Yoga

[The article below, written by the Co-founder of the Hindu American Foundation, openly confesses the relationship between Hinduism and Yoga exercises, contrary to popular belief that Yoga is "just exercise". The majority of the time it is not merely exercise, but a spiritual exercise contrary to Orthodox spirituality which has its own exercises to lead one towards spiritual progress through physical discipline - fasting, prostrations and the avoidance of comforts. - J.S.]

April 18, 2010
The Washington Post
by Aseem Shukla
Co-founder, Hindu American Foundation

Nearly 20 million people in the United States gather together routinely, fold their hands and utter the Hindu greeting of Namaste -- the Divine in me bows to the same Divine in you. Then they close their eyes and focus their minds with chants of "Om," the Hindu representation of the first and eternal vibration of creation. Arrayed in linear patterns, they stretch, bend, contort and control their respirations as a mentor calls out names of Hindu divinity linked to various postures: Natarajaasana (Lord Shiva) or Hanumanasana (Lord Hanuman) among many others. They chant their assigned "mantra of the month," taken as they are from lines directly from the Vedas, Hinduism's holiest scripture. Welcome to the practice of yoga in today's western world.

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, agnostics and atheists they may be, but they partake in the spiritual heritage of a faith tradition with a vigor often unmatched by even among the two-and-a half-million Hindu Americans here. The Yoga Journal found that the industry generates more than $6 billion each year and continues on an incredible trajectory of popularity. It would seem that yoga's mother tradition, Hinduism, would be shining in the brilliant glow of dedicated disciples seeking more from the very font of their passion.

Yet the reality is very different. Hinduism in common parlance is identified more with holy cows than Gomukhasana, the notoriously arduous twisting posture; with millions of warring gods rather than the unity of divinity of Hindu tradition--that God may manifest and be worshiped in infinite ways; as a tradition of colorful and harrowing wandering ascetics more than the spiritual inspiration of Patanjali, the second century BCE commentator and composer of the Yoga Sutras, that form the philosophical basis of Yoga practice today.

Why is yoga severed in America's collective consciousness from Hinduism? Yoga, meditation, ayurvedic natural healing, self-realization--they are today's syntax for New Age, Eastern, mystical, even Buddhist, but nary an appreciation of their Hindu origins. It is not surprising, then, that Hindu schoolchildren complain that Hinduism is conflated only with caste, cows, exoticism and polytheism--the salutary contributions and philosophical underpinnings lost and ignored. The severance of yoga from Hinduism disenfranchises millions of Hindu Americans from their spiritual heritage and a legacy in which they can take pride.

Hinduism, as a faith tradition, stands at this pass a victim of overt intellectual property theft, absence of trademark protections and the facile complicity of generations of Hindu yogis, gurus, swamis and others that offered up a religion's spiritual wealth at the altar of crass commercialism. The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, under whose tutelage the Beatles steadied their mind and made sense of their insane fame, packaged the wonders of meditation as Transcendental Meditation (TM) just as an entrepreneur from here in Minneapolis applied the principles of Ayurveda to drive a commercial enterprise he coined as Aveda. TM and Aveda are trademarked brands--a protection not available to the originator of their brand--Hinduism itself. And certainly these masters benefited millions with their contributions, but in agreeing to ditch Hinduism as the source, they left these gifts orphaned and unanchored.

The Los Angeles Times last week chronicled this steady disembodying of yoga from Hinduism. "Christ is my guru. Yoga is a spiritual discipline much like prayer, meditation and fasting [and] no one religion can claim ownership," says a vocal proponent of "Christian themed" yoga practices. Some Jews practice Torah yoga, Kabbalah yoga and aleph bet yoga, and even some Muslims are joining the act. They are appropriating the collective wisdom of millenia of yogis without a whisper of acknowledgment of yoga's spiritual roots.

Not surprisingly, the most popular yoga journals and magazines are also in the act. Once yoga was no longer intertwined with its Hindu roots, it became up for grabs and easy to sell. These journals abundantly refer to yoga as "ancient Indian," "Eastern" or "Sanskritic," but seem to assiduously avoid the term "Hindu" out of fear, we can only assume, that ascribing honestly the origins of their passion would spell disaster for what has become a lucrative commercial enterprise. The American Yoga Association, on its Web site, completes this delinking of yoga from Hinduism thusly:

"The common belief that Yoga derives from Hinduism is a misconception. Yoga actually predates Hinduism by many centuries...The techniques of Yoga have been adopted by Hinduism as well as by other world religions."

So Hinduism, the religion that has no known origins or beginnings is now younger than yoga? What a ludicrous contention when the Yoga Sutras weren't even composed until the 2nd Century BCE. These deniers seem to posit that Hinduism appropriated yoga so other religions may as well too! Hindus can only sadly shake their heads, as by this measure, soon we will read as to how karma, dharma and reincarnation--the very foundations of Hindu philosophy--are only ancient precepts that early Hindus of some era made their own.

The Hindu American Foundation (Disclosure: I sit on the Foundation's Board) released a position paper on this issue earlier this year. The brief condemns yoga's appropriation, but also argues that yoga today is wholly misunderstood. Yoga is identified today only with Hatha Yoga, the aspect of yoga focused on postures and breathing techniques. But this is only one part of the practice of Raja Yoga that is actually an eightfold path designed to lead the practitioner to moksha, or salvation. Indeed, yogis believe that to focus on the physicality of yoga without the spirituality is utterly rudimentary and deficient. Sure, practicing postures alone with a focus on breathing techniques will quiet the mind, tone the body, increase flexibility--even help children with Attention Deficit Disorder--but will miss the mark on holistic healing and wellness.

All of this is not to contend, of course, that yoga is only for Hindus. Yoga is Hinduism's gift to humanity to follow, practice and experience. No one can ever be asked to leave their own religion or reject their own theologies or to convert to a pluralistic tradition such as Hinduism. Yoga asks only that one follow the path of yoga for it will necessarily lead one to become a better Hindu, Christian, Jew or Muslim. Yoga, like its Hindu origins, does not offer ways to believe in God; it offer ways to know God.

But be forewarned. Yogis say that the dedicated practice of yoga will subdue the restless mind, lessen one's cravings for the mundane material world and put one on the path of self-realization--that each individual is a spark of the Divine. Expect conflicts if you are sold on the exclusivist claims of Abrahamic faiths--that their God awaits the arrival of only His chosen few at heaven's gate--since yoga shows its own path to spiritual enlightenment to all seekers regardless of affiliation.
Hindus must take back yoga and reclaim the intellectual property of their spiritual heritage--not sell out for the expediency of winning more clients for the yoga studio down the street.

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Russia Society Dominated by ‘Baptized Godless,’ Mitrofanov Says

Paul Goble
April 19, 2010
Georgian Daily

Vienna, April 19 – At the end of the Soviet period, many Russians believed that theirs was an “Orthodox” people which simply lacked churches, but now, a leading Orthodox educator says, they recognize that this was an illusion and that Russian society consists of “baptized godless” people who have numerous “magical and pagan prejudices.”

Still worse, Father Georgy Mitrofanov of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy tells “Ogonyek” this week, they are increasingly forced to admit that the new generation of priests is incapable of changing that situation for the better. Indeed, they may be making the situation even worse.

Ever fewer young men are training for the priesthood, he continues, the result of the country’s demographic problems and the decline of popular interest in the Orthodox Church. There is no longer any competition for places in seminaries, and “the social and educational level of those enrolled leaves much to be desired.”

That is especially true, Mitrofanov says, in the 37 new seminaries which have opened in Russia’s provinces since 1991. Only five or six of these correspond in any respect to the standards of the St. Petersburg or Moscow seminaries, and in the capitals, the size of classes is half what it was ten years ago.

Much of what is wrong now, he argues, began at the end of Soviet times when the state ceased to be involved in this process and handed over complete power to the hierarchy. The hierarchs “received the chance” as a result to approve “all who wanted” to become priests, as long as another priest recommended them.

Today, that has led to a situation in which “only a little more than a third of priests [in the Russian Orthodox Church] have a seminary or academic education, and a large part has made do in general without any theological training.” That has led to “a catastrophic decline” in the level of the priesthood, but the Patriarchate has not done anything about it.

Indeed, Mitrofanov says, “the clergy of the post-Soviet period is now not only more numerous but qualitatively it is frequently worse than that of the Soviet period.” Because the Soviet system destroyed so many priests, there are not the sons of priests anymore who often helped maintain the system.

The new priests who entered church life in the 1990s and since, Mitrofanov continues, “brought with them a specific conglomerate of ideas” which gives one a headache just to think about. A “significant part” of these priests are “disorganized” and confused young people who “dream of acquiring [in the church] their accustomed totalitarian ideology and organization.”

Their minds are full of “mystical literal and totalitarian anti-human politicized ideology” and having become priests, they quickly project this on their flocks, encouraging “the search for enemies” like “Jewish Masons, ecumenists, Protestants, and the like” as if “all problems of church life were somehow connected with external ‘dark’ forces.”

Believe it or not, Mitrofanov says, those values are very different than the ones which animated their Soviet-era predecessors. The priests in earlier times had to pass through a much more difficult school, including obligatory theological training, and face many more obstacles from the regime. Those who did so were often among the most committed.

“The final decision as to whether an individual could attend seminary was taken by a special figure from the organs, the plenipotentiary of the Council of Religious Affairs of the USSR Council of Ministers.” He placed as many obstacles as he could on the path of future priests, especially those from urban areas.

At the end of the Soviet period, “more than half” of the Orthodox churches in the USSR were in Western Ukraine, and Soviet officials ensured that the largest portion of new entrants to the seminars came from rural areas in that part of the country, places where religion still had an active role among the population.

And priests in Soviet times could not count on big incomes. But now, at least some of them are able to use the churches as a business to such an extent that “certain girls specifically seek to marry future priests: there is money, and a certain status in society, and even assumptions about definite moral qualities” of those who enter that profession.

In large measure, Mitrofanov says, this reflects the drive in the church to rebuild churches, something that attracts to the church not former Soviet people but “people who are still Soviet now.” And he adds, communists deceived everyone about everything, but “they did create a new type of man, a poor envious individual who believed the main values are material.”

“For the present-day generation of priests, the church at least in part is not the body of Christ and not a community of people united by Christ but above all a church in which it is possible to actively be involved in business relations with commercial people and build a profitable system of ritual services.”

Such people, Mitrofanov concludes, are not able “to talk with people including the intelligentsia on their level,” they lack the live experience” and knowledge to be “the bearers of the highest Orthodox culture.” Only if that is changed, he suggests, will Orthodoxy be able to fill “the greatest commandment – go and teach all peoples.”

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On the Translation of Liturgical Texts (Part 2 of 4)

...continued from Part One

Second. The reformers of the liturgical language claim that among the people of today, there are great linguistic difficulties for them to approach the liturgical life. They cannot understand it, and thus, it must be expressed in a more contemporary form. Without denying this need, we have to observe that all of us, even theologians, totally forget that the language of the Church, and especially of Her worship, of which Her expression consists, and in which takes place the mystical and real meeting of man with God, is mostly a symbolic language. Symbols predominate the entire theology and life of the Church. All the liturgical arts use this symbolic language, and in this way, they speak to the faithful Christian.

Orthodox iconography expresses something very deep. It does not care much for the surface of things. It provides us with the witness of the deified life. It surpasses the senses. The aim of iconography is to lead the Christian to the deadening of the external bodily senses, or rather to the transformation of them; to the development of the internal senses and man's deification. Leonid Ouspensky writes: "For the Orthodox Church, the icon is a language that expresses Her dogmas and Her commands so well, just like the word. It is a theology which is expressed in shapes and colors that the eye can see. It is like a mirror that reflects the spiritual life of the Church. In it, someone can understand the dogmatic struggles of every period."[4] The same happens with all the liturgical arts, the music, the architecture, etc.

Furthermore, in worship we clearly find the language of symbols - the use of incense, the lighting of the candle, the burning of the oil lamp in front of the icon of the saint, the kissing of the icon, the Cross, etc. - all have something internal and mystical, but also real. For example, with the kissing of the icon we receive the grace of God in accordance with our spiritual condition, and even our eyes are blessed with the view of the depicted saint. We see these and feel them clearly in worship, which we want to "understand" with the translation of it in the contemporary language. The Small Entrance, the Great Entrance, the Cross, the candles in front of the Gospel, the blessing of the priest and the way in which it takes place, etc., all these tell us and give us something different, which goes beyond what our senses feel and what our logic understands.

If someone reads the writings of the Fathers, he will clearly see the explanation of the Divine Liturgy. For example, Nicholas Cabasilas explains in the beginning of his Explanation of the Divine Liturgy the use of the representation of the life of Christ in the Divine Liturgy. The chanting and everything that is being done "bless us in two ways":

"The first way is that from which we benefit from the same prayers, the psalms and the readings. This is because our prayers lead us towards God and bring about the remission of our sins... The other way in which we are being blessed from these and from everything that takes place in the sacred rite is this, in that we see in them Christ being manifested with His works and Passion for our sake... All the things that take place in the celebration of the Gifts refer to the economy of the Savior, so its vision, being before our eyes, will bless our souls, and in that way, we become worthy to welcome the Holy Gifts. Because, as this economy resurrected the world when it took place, in the same way when it is seen, it makes the soul of those who see it better and holier... This is why vision (theoria) is necessary according to the order of the ritual, to give us these feelings, so that we cannot think only with the mind, but also, in a way to see with our eyes the great poverty of the rich... For this reason this symbolism was invented, so that, on the one hand, it would not declare only with words the events of the economy, but to bring these events in front of our eyes, and also, to be seen in the whole process of the liturgy; thus, with this, to easily influence our souls, and to bring in us not only simple vision, but also passion."[5]

As we can see here, according to Nicholas Cabasilas, man is being blessed in the Divine Liturgy even with the vision of the things that are performed.

Moreover, in his Mystagogy, Saint Maximus the Confessor makes an eschatological explanation of the parts of the Divine Liturgy. Here are some examples in which we clearly see that with the things that are performed in the Divine Liturgy we experience the future life.

The divine reading of the Holy Gospel "generally implies the coming end of the world".

Also, "the procession of the Holy and Venerable Mysteries, is the beginning and the prologue of the new teaching which will take place in heaven, in relation with the economy of God for us, and the revelation of the mystery of our salvation which is hidden in the depths of the divine mystery."

"And the spiritual kiss, which is addressed to all of us, is a model and prescription for the peace and like-mindedness among all of us, and the logical identity which will take place at the time of the revelation of the future indescribable goods, which consists of the expectation of faith and love. Because of this revelation, the worthy become familiar with the Logos of God."

"Also, the confession of the divine creed of faith, which is done by all of us, denotes the mystical thanksgiving, which we will all do in the other life, for the wonderful words and ways of the omniscient and divine Providence of God for us."

"And the triple calling of the 'Holy' on behalf of all the faithful, which is contained in the holy hymnology, shows our union and equality of honor with the bodiless and spiritual powers, which will be manifested in the future."[6]

We insisted in this section to see that in divine worship, and especially in the Divine Liturgy, symbolic language mostly prevails. Of course it must be said that the symbolic explanation does not abolish the reality, but it expresses it in the best way.

Earlier we emphasized that in the Divine Liturgy we are blessed from the things that take place and from the use of symbols. Let us expand here this issue in order to understand it better.

The sign of the Holy Cross does not constitute simply a remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ at Golgotha, but it is an experience of the grace of Christ. Thus, when the priest blesses us with the Cross, or with the sign of the Cross, we receive divine grace. Saint Gregory Palamas teaches on this: "Not only the word and mystery of the Cross, but also the type is divine and venerable, being a divine and revered seal which blesses and completes the generation of people from God, giving them mystical and supernatural goods, which remove curses, destroy death and corruption, giving blessings and eternal life, and is a wood of salvation, a royal scepter, and a divine trophy against visible and invisible enemies. The Cross of the Lord is for everyone, revealing the economy of the incarnation, and in it is the whole mystery."[7]

Also, the icon in the Orthodox Church is not a simple remembrance of the saint that is depicted, but it is the expression of the true presence of the saint in the place of worship. As Panagiotis Nellas writes: "The reading of the life of a saint is done to really and truly bring among us the saint with his whole life and his struggles, and on the other hand, this is why the relics of the saint are processed and placed in the church reliquary, or if there are no relics, his icon, and the faithful anoint themselves with the oil lamp of the icon or the relics of the saint."[8]

Moreover, even the symbol in the revelation of God to the Prophets, which is different from the previous, "illumines the nature of the one who is symbolized". Saint Gregory Palamas writes: "On the one hand, the natural symbol is always associated with its own nature, for it has a natural being."[9] This is one of the basic points of disagreement between Saint Gregory and Barlaam the Philosopher. By examining things in a rational way, Barlaam underestimated the revelation of God through theoria (divine vision), and he overestimated logic and philosophy (he said theoria is lower than logic); this is why he did not accept the real meaning of the symbol.

All this is said to show that the translation of the liturgical texts will never help man to have an essential participation in worship, if he does not previously learn to perceive and to experience the language of symbols.

Similarly, Professor George Mantzarides points out the following:

"The Divine Liturgy unfolds symbolically and is offered with sensible symbols. And man participates in the worship when he participates in these sensible symbols of the Divine Liturgy, where the whole world is recapitulated. In this way, the whole world even become simultaneously a symbol. And the person that participates in the Liturgy discovers, through the sensible symbols of the Divine Liturgy, the real symbolic meaning of the world. When the sensible ceases to be symbolic, then the Liturgy will also cease to be divine....

"But the language makes up one part of the wider symbolic system of the Divine Liturgy. Thus, for example, besides the language, we have all these different teleturgical acts, the way we recite, the music, the art, the architecture. All these make up the language of the Divine Liturgy with the wider meaning of the word. This is why the effort that wants to make the Divine Liturgy more understandable to the people of our generation cannot be limited to the translation of its texts, but it should also be extended to the translation of all the symbolic meanings in which the Divine Liturgy is connected, and which make up its language in a wider sense....

"Today, in order for us to truly participate in the Liturgy, it is not enough to have a Liturgy in our language. Even more, it is not enough to have a translation of the traditional Liturgy in the modern language, because in this case, besides the inadequacy, we will also have the false feeling of fullness."[10]

We usually consider the translation of the liturgical texts as the easiest solution. Indeed, it is the easiest solution, in which, because of its easiness, it cannot offer anything to contemporary man, who, as all contemporary art proves, has learned to live and express himself symbolically. When someone reads contemporary texts, he will be able to appreciate this. Contemporary poets and novel writers use simple words, and in this way they "satisfy" logic. But their analysis and their full understanding demands a different knowledge and different approaches.

We believe that the Church, with her intensive effort, ought not simply to translate or to interpret literally the texts, but to reveal the symbolic language, which will help contemporary man to really participate in the worship of God.

Continued...Part Three.

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Miracles of the Right Hand of St. John the Baptist

The right hand of Saint John the Baptist and Forerunner is found at Dionysiou Monastery on Mount Athos.

Miracle 1:

Let’s talk about some events which took place on the island of Poros, and refer to the dangers which those who were at sea have avoided from the day of their departure. In order to avoid talking about these things ourselves, let us present the account given by the Abbot Stephanos, who refers to the reasons for this sea voyage and to some historical facts. (These accounts are found in Codex 627 of Dionysiou Monastery, 1733-1833). He writes:

Kassandra has fallen. Everyone has been taken captive by the Hagarenes (Turks) who have even been threatening to capture Mount Athos. When the monks saw the Turks advancing, they took up their holy relics and left towards Romeiko. I also left among them, with my holy relics. Taking those of the monks who wanted to leave, we deserted the monastery on the 23rd of February 1821. That night, there was a storm and high seas, nevertheless, we embarked and let the waves take us wherever they wanted. During the night we arrived at Amouliani and anchored. All the ships belonging to the kleftes also anchored there, but God did not give them permission to touch us.

We got up in the morning, the weather was better. We sailed towards the monastery again, so that we could take some of the things which we had left behind together with the other seven monks. However, a boat from Psara hunted us down; they fired four shots with their guns but we managed to escape towards the port of Sikia and they couldn’t reach us.

While at sea, we met with a lot of dangerous people, who had the same faith as us, but the Lord freed us from all evil. Finally we reached the island of Poros. There, our Christian brothers helped us, despite the presence of some evil people who wanted at first to harm us. Saint John, however, protected us. One such person, a marauder, who wanted us to hand over some silver to decorate his guns, threatened to visit us during the night and do us a lot of harm. Therefore, seeing that I had no choice, I gave him a silver lantern, weighing 80 ounces, and left it to Saint John to judge.

A few days later, the poor guy who got the silver died from dysentery. Then I related everything to his brother, who was a very good man. He was saddened and said to me: “St John certainly killed him”. Then, he ran to his brother’s house; he was looking to verify the matter and when he found all the silver he brought it straight back to us, crying bitterly all the way.

Another one, who was the first captain in Poros, took the oars from our boat and we bowed to his own wishes, and while he was on his boat on the way towards Piada, he had a fight with others. When they shot at each other, one bullet went through one of our oars and hit him on the thigh. Afterwards, he returned to Poros and gave the oars back to us. He even carried out twice a blessing of the waters in front of St John’s holy relic, but he was not cured. He later died even though his wound was not fatal.

All these have been made known to everyone and the whole world. What happened next? Those villains, who intended to come during the night and steal all our belongings later, became our protectors. Even the Greek parliament sent a boat and a letter to the provosts of the island to send us on our way to Corinth, which was free from the Turks at the time, but the people of Poros would in no way let us go. This was a miracle performed by Saint John because had we gone, we would have surely lost the treasures of the monastery, since Corinth's castle fell once again to the Turks after a little while. The people of Poros did this good deed to us and Saint John benefited them a lot in return. From these I will tell you one:

For seven years they had been suffering from the presence of locusts and they have been losing all they had. Not only the locusts would not leave even a single green leaf but they would eat away even the peels from the lemon trees. As soon as a procession was launched with the relic of the holy right hand of Saint John leading the way, all the locusts disappeared and the people were consoled because they had started reaping the fruits of their efforts. Indicatively, those days we never needed a doctor, because of the presence of Saint John. They had so benefited from all the miracles that were happening that they wanted us to live at the Monastery of Zoodohou Pigis [Life-Giving Spring]. We did, and we no longer had any material needs. Until the Turks torched Psara from one end to the other and we got scared and left for the Eptanisa, [specifically] the island of Zakinthos. There, the Christians welcomed us and we lived peacefully for four years, truly contented.

When the governor, John Kapodistrias, arrived in Greece, we left Zakinthos and returned to Greece, to the island of Skopelos, at our metochion of Phaneromeni, where we stayed for one and a half years. Then, we eventually returned to our own holy monastery with our entire collection of holy relics. Glory be to the Lord, to His Holy Mother our benefactor, and to our protector Saint John, for everything. We returned to our monastery on the 5th of June 1830. I beg the readers to pray for me, the humble abbot Stephanos, so that my soul finds mercy in the Lord, because of your holy prayers. Amen.


Miracle 2:

Another miracle performed by the holy right hand of Saint John on Monday, the 16th of May 1961, during the Divine Liturgy in honor of the Holy Spirit [day after Pentecost]. Hieromonk Paul described to me the miracle performed by the right hand of Saint John:

“Did you realize what has happened to me during the Liturgy, Father Lazaros?”

“What? Please explain to me better”.

“Of course you must have heard how difficult it was for me to chant because my throat was closed up as a result of the long standing laryngitis”.

“Yes, I did realize this. I was even asking myself how you were going to offer the prayers during the Liturgy, especially today when there is a sillitourgo [assistant liturgist]”.

“Listen then. When the priests gathered in the church to take “kairo” [clerical preparation before the Divine Liturgy], seeing that I was in such a state, I asked the abbot to bless me with the Saint’s holy hand and to cross me with it. The abbot agreed and crossed me on the head with the hand and offered the specific prayer. I also venerated the hand, praying with fervor and adoration to the saint to cure me from this illness so that I could offer glory to the Lord, chant the proper hymns and read the Gospel clearly and loudly as I should on such a holy day. This is what I more or less said to the saint. And lo and behold! The great Saint rushed to give me a fast and wonderful response! I immediately felt the presence of Grace, my throat softened up, my voice could now be heard, and in complete comfort, I gave the responses and I read the Gospel. I then offered sincere and heartfelt thanks from the bottom of my heart to our glorious protector, our Lord’s Baptist, with whose intervention we hope to have a blessed end to our lives, and be received in the Kingdom. Let it be done, father! Let it be done!”

Source: Λαζάρου Μοναχού Διονυσιάτου, Διονυσιάτικες Διηγήσεις, Έκδοσις Ιεράς Μονής Αγίου Διονυσίου Αγίου Όρους, β’ έκδοσις, 1988 (Monk Lazaros of Dionysiou, Stories of Dionysiou, Second Edition, Holy Monastery of Saint Dionysios, Holy Mount Athos).

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An Ant Superhighway

"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man." - Proverbs 6:6-11

“There are four things which are little upon the earth but they are exceeding wise: The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.” - Proverbs 30:24-28

We have to remember that it is God Himself that considers the ants as wise. And in their being wise, they no longer need any ruler, or leader, for them to enjoy a sophisticated way of life.

Do you know that the ants’ dwelling place is even air-conditioned? They are storing food for the entire duration of the rainy season. They have their own knowledge in agriculture. They collect organic matters, which serve as their food during the lengthy rainy season.

Do you know that the ants that we see everyday are mostly female? They live in a colony that is made up of more than one million members, workers, and soldiers that are all females. The male ants die after the queen ant fertilizes. The queen ant’s only duty is to lay about 50,000 to 100,000 eggs a day.

According to studies conducted by zoologists, there about 12 million to 14 million kinds of ants in our planet. And like humans, they are found in almost all habitable places, except in mountains that are covered with ice, and in the polar region. Based on studies, the ants have unusual physical features. Their head is made of a special sensor that easily identifies chemical and visual signs. In addition, they have about half a million nerve cells in their brain. They have a keen vision and a sensitive hair that responds to anything attached to it. Their teeth are as sharp as a carving tool. They have strong muscles that allow their six legs to move. When needed, they are able to secrete liquid from their special glands that warn their companions in case of an impeding danger. Out of their poison glands, they are able to discharge formic acid and other poisons, which they use against their enemies. Their antenna functions as their nose and fingers.

Within 24 hours, they are able to build their houses. And this lasts for more than a month, and this is where their queen lay eggs. There is another colony of ants, which is called “army ants,” that build their houses neither on the ground nor on trees. Their bodies linked together serve as a shelter for their queen. About 200,000 to 750,000 ants link their bodies together in order to cover the queen and her young. But when morning comes, the separate. Other ants, however, live underground.

According to reports, the ants are able to dig about 40 tons of soil in order to build their gigantic home. A colony of ants can maintain 150 houses, and they are able to patrol 1,600 square metes. The territory of ants is one of the biggest in the world of insects. The soldier ants stay only on the sides of their house in order to guard it from attacks of enemies. Should enemies come, they send a signal that could be smelled by their comrades so that they could be given reinforcement. They surround their enemies and spit on them formic acid. And when they are killed, they bring them to their camp to be eaten.

Do you know that ants are able to communicate and send messages to their colleagues by means of a liquid called “pheromone”? This is the reason why when an ant discovers food deposits, it could easily call on its companions who would gather them.

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A Parable of the Elder Barlaam

A certain man had three friends. Two of them he loved sincerely, but with weariness, he avoided the third.

It so happened that the king summoned this man before him to render account and to repay his debt. He turned for help to his first friend who rejected him and departed. He then turned to his second friend but even he did not help him. With shame, he then turned to the third friend and he joyfully accompanied him before the king.

The interpretation is this: the first friend is wealth; the second friend is a relative; the third friend is the good works of men in this world. The king is God Who, through death, sends summons and seeks payment of debt. A dying man seeks help in his wealth, but it turns away and passes on immediately into the hands of another owner. He then turns to his relatives, but his relatives send him off alone and they remain. Then, he reminds himself of his good works, which he carried out with weariness and these immediately accompany him on the path in the presence of the King and Judge. He, who has ears to hear, let him hear.

The only companions of the soul to the other world are the works of man, be they good or be they bad. All of that which was dear and precious to man, leaves him and turns from him. Only his works, to the very last one, accompany him. He, who has a mind to understand, let him understand.

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Trials of Dating in College

by Laryssa Grinenko
April 2002

College…a chance to move on from our high school lives and experience new places, challenges, and people. It’s a transition to maturity that is anticipated by almost all high school students. When I moved up to school at UC Santa Barbara, how tough my classes were going to be was not the first thing on my mind: I couldn’t wait to go out to Isla Vista and meet all the hot boys.

For a while, it was fun; going out on the town every Friday and Saturday night (sometimes Wednesdays and Thursdays, too), meeting tons of people (most of whom won’t remember me later because they were so drunk), getting acquainted with my new surroundings. But after the first quarter, it became evident to me: walking up and down the streets of Del Playa on a weekend night is probably not going to be the best place for me to find a lasting, meaningful, healthy relationship.

I won’t deny it, I did meet tons of hot guys going to random house and fraternity parties. But despite their looks, their intentions all seemed to be to get me as drunk as possible so they could take advantage of me later. Granted, not all guys roaming the streets had this intention, but odds are, not many of the guys out on Friday and Saturday nights are looking for a serious relationship. This started to bother me. How am I going to be married by age 23 if I can’t find the guy I’m going to marry soon? I thought to myself.

After about 3 weeks of being away at school, another naivete of mine started to rear its ugly head. In college, guys are not just content with a completely platonic relationship. If you are in a relationship, sex is expected. Not just vaginal sex, but other forms of stimulation are expected. This was something I was definitely NOT okay with. I don’t like to think of myself as a prude, but I was not exactly willing to hop in the sack with some guy just because we are dating and because we are in college. That is just stupid to me.

In the first couple weeks of school, I met a guy that I really enjoyed spending time with. Almost every night we hung out, did something around campus, or just sat and talked. From my perspective, I thought I was meeting a genuinely nice guy with whom maybe I could pursue a relationship with. However, he was thinking something different. One night, he invited me down to watch a movie with him, a seemingly innocent offer, so I accepted. While watching the movie, he started acting strangely and then asked if I wanted to turn on some music. Seeing as we were watching a movie, I was a little confused; but I told him if he wanted to, he was more than welcome to turn some on. I diverted my attention back to the movie. Then he laid down on the bed next to me and after a few moments proceeded to make some advances, ones that I, as an Orthodox Christian, did not want, nor did I see, coming. At that moment, I stopped him and asked him what he was doing. Apparently, by accepting his offer to come down and watch the movie with him, he thought I had agreed to hook up with him that night. Maybe I am just incredibly naïve, but I had never in my life assumed that when I am invited to watch a movie with a guy that there would be some sort of sexual activity going on. Still, as a male college student, he was not looking for a relationship, but just some girl to satisfy his needs.

Seeing as we were friends before this incident happened, I sat with him that night and talked to him about what just happened. Another problem with college guys is that most of them are pretty well educated, so they try to use their intelligence to their advantage. Before I knew it, this guy was trying to convince me that the reason I did not want to do anything with him was because I was insecure and that I did not have enough positive self-esteem to allow myself to have some fun. Needless to say, this upset me enormously. It irritated me that someone, trying to get someone to fool around with them, would try to capitalize on an insecurity that they sensed. Thankfully, I was quite secure with myself and did not fall for his pathetic attempt.

That night really made me mad. It was not so much that he tried to make unwanted advances — that is something that you learn to deal with in college. What really bothered me was that because I was adamant in not having sex with him, I was therefore pinned as insecure and low in self-esteem, when the opposite is true. Standing up for what I believe to someone who I really like and wanted to grow closer to was a hard thing to do. Unfortunately, because I stood up for myself, whatever relationship we had, or were to have, stopped and now we barely ever talk except for an occasional “hi” as we pass each other in the halls of our dorm. For a while, I wasn’t sure if I had made the right decision.

Maybe I should look at his point of view some more; after all, it is college, a time to experiment, right? Then I caught myself. This is exactly what the Devil wants me to think. He implants doubts in my head, little thoughts that question all that I’ve believed my entire life, and leaves them in my head for me to dwell on. After driving myself crazy, I rolled over in my bed and saw my little red Orthodox Prayer Book lying on the refrigerator next to me. All I had to do was open it up and read the incredible first words — “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” How could I have even doubted my faith for a second? God has given me so much and has not led me astray; why should I not trust his guidance now?

It is hard for me to believe that what I went through is something that no other Orthodox Christian college freshman goes through in his or her first couple months of school. Nevertheless, in colleges where the percentage of Orthodox Christians is smaller than the percentage of sexually active students, it’s nice to be able to go to church on Sunday and see that I’m surrounded by people who are going through the same things that I am.

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Guard Your Heart

by St. Nikolai Velimirovich

"Guard your heart!" These words were spoken in the past by experienced ascetics.

Father John of Kronstadt says the same thing in our days: "The heart is refined, spiritual and heavenly by nature; guard it. Do not overburden it, do not make it earthly; be temperate to the utmost in food and drink and, in general, in bodily pleasures. The heart is the temple of God. `If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person'" (1 Corinthians 3:17).

Spiritual experience in ancient times and spiritual experience in our time is identical, under the condition that the confession of faith is identical. Heavenly knowledge, to which the ascetics of old arrived, does not differ from the heavenly knowledge to which the ascetics of today arrive. For as Christ is the same today and tomorrow so it is the same with human nature.

What is important: the human heart is the same; his thirst, and his hunger, is the same; and nothing is able to satisfy him but the glory, power and riches of God.

About Christ In the Hearts of the Faithful

"And that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith" (Ephesians 3:17).

That person does not have Christ who only has Him on his tongue. Neither does that person have Christ who has Him only on paper. Neither does that person have Christ who has Him only on the wall. Neither does that person have Christ that has Him in the museum of the past. That person, in truth, has Christ who has Him in his heart. For Christ is Love and the throne of love is the heart.

If Christ is in your heart then, for you, He is God. If He is only on your tongue, or on paper or on a wall, or in the museum of the past and even though you call Him God, for you, He is but a toy. Beware then, O man, for no one can play around with God without punishment.

The heart apparently is a narrow organ, but God can dwell in it. When God dwells in it, then it is filled and overly filled and nothing else can position itself in it. If, however, the whole world were to settle in it, it remains empty without God.

Brethren, let Christ, the resurrected and living Lord, pour faith into your hearts and your hearts will be filled and overly filled. He cannot enter and dwell into your hearts except through your faith. If you do not possess faith, Christ will remain only on your tongue or on your paper or on your wall or in the museum of the past. What kind of benefit do you have from that? What kind of benefit do you have to hold life on your tongue and death in your heart? For, if you hold the world in your heart and Christ on your tongue, you hold death in your heart and life on your tongue. Water on the tongue of the thirsty does not help. Lower the living Christ into your heart and you will be permeated with the truth and you will sense unspeakable sweetness.

O resurrected Lord, cleanse our hearts from the deadly guests who dwell in it and You Yourself take up dwelling in it, that we may live and glorify You. Amen.

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Constantinople's Volcanic Twilight

by Lynn Teo Simarski
Aramco World
November/December 1996

By 1453, triple-walled Constantinople, one of the most coveted and magnificent cities in the world, had stood watch over the Bosporus for 2100 years. For the last 1100 of these, it had been the capital of the Byzantine Empire, crown of the Eastern Christian world and an international center of wealth, beauty, power and commerce. Constantinople was named in the fourth century for the reigning Roman emperor, Constantine the Great; in antiquity the city was known as Byzantium, and today it is called Istanbul.

Also by 1453, Constantinople had been besieged many times—by Persians, Avars, Arabs (twice), Bulgars, Russians (three times) and Pechenegs. During the Byzantine era, it had been conquered only once—in 1204, by soldiers of the Fourth Crusade. The city served as the capital of the Crusaders' short-lived Latin kingdom until it was recaptured by the Byzantines in 1261.

And by 1453, the Byzantine Empire had been shrinking steadily for some 400 years, due to both internal political strife and military pressure from rival powers of both East and West. The capital city had suffered along with the rest of the empire. By 1453, Constantinople's population, once a million strong, had shrunk to a mere tenth of that. Although its historic luster had been tarnished, Constantinople, the gateway to Europe, was nevertheless an alluring military objective for the Ottoman Turks as they consolidated their hold in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe.

The Muslim Turks had first crossed into Europe a century earlier, invited by a pretender to the Byzantine throne who needed Turkish troops to enforce his claim. A decade later, in 1354, the Ottomans established a permanent presence in Europe, taking advantage of a devastating earthquake in Thrace to cross the Hellespont, occupy the ruined city of Gallipoli and rebuild it into a garrison town. From there, the Turks spread out into other parts of Thrace. In 1377, their forces defeated a large Serbian army on the Maritsa River, paving the way for future victories in Macedonia, Serbia and Greece. The second most important city of the Byzantine Empire, Thessalonica, fell to the Ottomans in 1430.

Despite several military assaults on Constantinople itself, Ottoman efforts to wrest the capital from Byzantine control proved unsuccessful. According to an ancient belief popular with the inhabitants of the city, Constantinople would fall only when the moon gave a sign.

During the Byzantine capital's waning days, in May of 1453, the ancient myth appeared to come true. As the city lay besieged by the forces of Ottoman sultan Mehmet II, the moon went into a long and dark eclipse. Constantinople's Byzantine defenders were filled with paralyzing despair; outside the walls, Ottoman troops enjoyed cautious hope.

Constantinople's final days under Byzantine rule witnessed still other unusual, seemingly apocalyptic occurrences: abnormally violent weather, lurid sunsets and sunrises, and flickering lights visible in the night sky. All were metaphysically interpreted as portents of a great change in the world order.

Today, 500 fears later, an American astronomer has proposed that a volcanic eruption in the South Pacific—half a world away from Byzantium—may have been powerful enough to darken the skies over Constantinople and to produce the other curious phenomena that coincided with the city's historic change of power. Kevin Pang, formerly of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, points to the volcano Kuwae, which erupted in the New Hebrides, 1900 kilometers (1200 miles) east of Australia. Although the date of the blast is not certain, much evidence points to the year 1453.

When it erupted, Kuwae spewed out more than six times as much molten rock and ash as did the Philippines' Mount Pinatubo in 1991. When the eruption was over, Kuwae itself, once an island, was only a submarine crater 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) across.

Pang draws on calculations of astronomical orbits for part of his research, but he also reaches back into historical records to piece together how a variety of natural events, such as comet sightings or volcanic eruptions, may have affected the course of human history. His family heritage in China has enabled him to search provincial records in that country too.

The volcanic cloud from Kuwae, Pang hypothesizes, would have shrouded the earth thickly enough to darken the moon above Constantinople beyond the usual, dulled-copper appearance of a lunar eclipse. Similarly, the cloud of suspended particles could be responsible for the unseasonably cold weather, with rain and snow, and for the bizarre optical effects reported by various chroniclers, all of which are phenomena now known to be associated with volcanic eruptions. But Kuwae remains unique, says Pang, because it appears to have thrown its volcanic veil over one of the great turning points of world history.

By the lime Mehmet II's campaign to conquer Constantinople began, in the spring of 1453, the Ottomans had already reduced the ailing Byzantine Empire to fragments. Mehmet, barely 21, had succeeded his father Murat II as sultan just two years earlier. Intelligent and inquisitive, Mehmet had been an assiduous student of philosophy, science and the governmental arts. The Byzantines, however, underestimated the young sultan's talents and resolve. They failed to grasp the seriousness of his commitment, dating from the moment of his father's death, to capture Constantinople and make that city the crowning jewel of the expanding Ottoman Empire.

On April 6,1453, the Ottoman forces, under the command of Mehmet himself, set up camps outside the city's imposing triple defensive walls. Mehmet's army, which historians estimate numbered 80,000 men, vastly outnumbered the 7000 or so Greek, Venetian and Genoese troops under siege. When the Byzantine emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus refused the sultan's offer of a peaceful surrender, the Ottomans began bombarding the walls with their cannon. The Byzantines, who had no heavy guns, feverishly sought to repair the damage. For weeks the siege continued, its outcome all but assured. Although food grew scarce inside the walls, Constantinople's rulers continued to hope—in vain—for the arrival of ships from Europe bringing supplies and troops. The morale of the inhabitants declined, and there were increasing reports of people deserting the city under cover of darkness.

It was almost seven weeks into the siege, on May 22, when the lunar eclipse took place. A Venetian surgeon, Nicolò Barbaro, who was residing in the city at the time, recorded his impressions:

"At the first hour of the night, there appeared a wonderful sign in the sky, which was to tell Constantine the worthy, emperor of Constantinople, that his proud empire was to come to an end.... The moon rose, being at this time at the full...but it rose as if it were no more than a three-day moon, with only a little of it showing.... The moon stayed in this form for about four hours."

A few days later, more "signs" appeared. Just as the Byzantines were seeking divine favor with a religious procession through the city, a tremendous thunderstorm checked the supplicants' progress. Dangerous floods and pelting hail brought a quick end to the ceremony.

"Such was the unheard-of and unprecedented violence of that storm and hail [that it] certainly foreshadowed the imminent loss of all," wrote the Greek chronicler Kritovoulos of Imbros, "and...like a torrent of fiercest waters, it would carry away and annihilate everything."

The following day, a dense fog enveloped the city. Again, it was extraordinary weather for late spring in temperate Constantinople. Other chroniclers reported that observers both inside and outside the walls also witnessed a light like that of a fierce fire around the dome of Hagia Sophia, the imposing cathedral of Constantinople. Yet the building never burned. Phrantzes, a friend of the emperor and author of one of the major Byzantine accounts of the time, said that the light remained over the city for an entire night.

Accounts also tell that Mehmet had ordered his troops to light fires and torches before every tent in the Ottoman encampment. Of these illuminations, Barbaro recorded on May 26 that "the light from them was so strong that it seemed as if it were day." The fires were lit again on the two succeeding nights. Might the light from the camps have been fired by the Byzantines' imagination into something more?

According to historian Steven Runciman, "lights, too, could be seen from the walls, glimmering in the distant countryside where no lights should be.... The strange lights were never explained."

Although another historian, Edwin Pears, dismisses the unusual sightings as "evidence of the superstition of the age," he admits that "they have to be taken into account, inasmuch as they affected the spirit of both besiegers and besieged."

In late May, Mehmet's advisers debated whether or not to continue the long siege. Thirty years earlier, Constantinople had successfully resisted a siege by Murat II, and perhaps, they thought, this effort would fare no better.

At about 1:30 in the morning of May 29, Mehmet launched a series of massive assaults on the walls. After four hours of fierce but inconclusive fighting, the commander of the Byzantines' Genoese allies was wounded, the Kerkoporta gate was breached—or possibly left open—and the tide of battle turned. By mid-morning, Constantinople belonged to the Ottoman Turks.

The link between volcanism and unusual atmospheric phenomena has been known for some time, but even today it is not fully understood. In 1784, Benjamin Franklin was one of the first to attribute unseasonably cold weather in Europe, and a strange "dry fog," as he called it, to an eruption that had taken place in Iceland the previous year. In 1815, the explosion of Tambora in Indonesia—the largest eruption of modern times—brought on the famous "year without a summer," a climate that may have inspired both Lord Byron's morose poem "Darkness" and Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein.

But it was in 1883, when the Indonesian island of Krakatoa blew itself into the sky in the most notorious cataclysm of the 19th century, that researchers were first able to explain how a volcanic cloud could spread around the globe. They correctly attributed a hazy atmosphere, lurid sunsets and other optical effects to the eruption. Indeed, three months after Krakatoa, sunset afterglows were so brilliant and prolonged that fire companies in New York and Connecticut rushed out more than once to respond to what proved to be false alarms—an eerie parallel, Pang points out, to the flames and flickers recorded in Constantinople.

Today, Kuwae's underwater crater lies within the territory of the Republic of Vanuatu. For a long time, the explosion of the island had been known only in local legend. Now, geologists have calculated that Kuwae expelled between 32 and 39 cubic kilometers of molten rock—between 7.7 and 9.7 cubic miles of it—with a violence two million times that of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Only one other eruption in our era has surpassed Kuwae's in volume of output: Tambora blew 50 cubic kilometers of earth skyward in 1815. In contrast, even Krakatoa expelled a relatively modest 10 cubic kilometers in 1883; Mount Pinatubo belched out five in 1991 and Mount Saint Helens covered parts of the state of Washington with merely one-third of a cubic kilometer in 1980.

But it is not only the volume of expelled matter that might affect global climate. It is also how a volcano erupts that hastens or retards climatic effects. The more explosive a blast is—as opposed to what volcanologists call "effusive"—and the more prolonged it is, the more it can affect the atmosphere.

Just where a volcano is located—in which wind patterns—is also important. Global winds distribute clouds of material from tropical eruptions such as Kuwae, Krakatoa and Pinatubo widely into both northern and southern hemispheres, but material from eruptions at higher latitudes—such as Mount Saint Helens'—does not often drift as widely. And volcanic clouds with a high sulfur content are more likely to have climatic effects than their low-sulfur counterparts.

There is no longer any question that volcanic dust and other material—especially sulfur—can, under the right circumstances, block significant amounts of the sun's warmth from reaching the Earth. Some eruptions of the 19th and 20th centuries—not large on a geological scale—caused average temperatures at the Earth's surface to fall by 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Celsius (1/3°–1/2°F) worldwide over one to three years. Even such a small average drop can mean severe local temperature changes and, historically, such temperature downturns have had catastrophic effects on agriculture.

Pang has assembled strands of evidence from distant corners of the globe to support his thesis that Kuwae's eruption left "unmistakeable marks in world climate records." Many volcanic blasts have left their traces in—of all places—the polar ice sheets. Snow falling year after year near the poles sweeps volcanic fallout from the air and retains it as, over time, the snow is compressed into ice.

Today, the ice layers in core samples can be read like the pages of a book.

At the South Pole, glaciologists have found evidence in the ice cap for a large eruption in about 1450, give or take a few years. The breadth of the volcanic acid "spike" in this layer suggests that the eruption was likely to have affected the atmosphere for as long as three years. Another Antarctic ice core, called the Siple core, similarly displays a prominent acid peak beginning in 1453.

Evidence from the northern hemisphere's ice is less clear, although a core from the ice cap near Greenland shows a discernible, if relatively short, acid spike for 1453. The ice records thus do seem to point to a large eruption in the southern hemisphere which exerted a climatic effect on the northern hemisphere as well.

Pang has searched another archive of climate history, the annual growth rings of trees. Dendrochronologists—the term comes from the Greek words for "tree" and "time" and "knowledge"—know that thin annual rings speak of stress, as might be caused by cold weather, and that a season's accumulation of cells damaged by freezing creates what they call "frost rings." Drought has a similar effect, and such signs can be read not only in cores bored out of standing trees but also in wooden beams and other objects made of wood. At Windsor Castle, outside London, there is a portrait of Elizabeth Woodville—the mother of the young princes in the Tower—who lived from 1437 to 1492. It was painted on an oak panel from a tree cut down in the 1460's, and in that panel the tree rings for the years 1453 to 1455 are abnormally narrow.

Similarly, trees in France and Finland were stunted between 1453 and 1457, and even bristlecone pines in the western United States show frost damage for 1453. Agricultural evidence too seems to support Pang's case: Church records show that tithes of Swedish grain dropped to zero between 1453 and 1462. The German grape harvest was of poor quality from 1453 to 1456.

Cypress trees in China, too, grew narrow rings from 1453 to 1454. And according to Pang's own translations, the History of the Ming Dynasty records that "nonstop snow damaged the wheat crops" in central China in the spring of 1453, while heavy snow buried several provinces. "The Yellow Sea [between China and the Korean Peninsula]...was icebound more than 20 kilometers [13 miles] from shore. Tens of thousands of people and animals froze to death." South of the Yangtze River, an area with a mild climate like Florida's, "it snowed continuously for 40 days...and countless [people] died of cold and famine."

Kuwae's eruption seems to have taken place at about the right time to precipitate these meteorological calamities. In Vanuatu, oral tradition says that a tribal chief, Ti Tongoa Liseiriki, survived the eruption as a boy by hiding inside a drum. In later years, he led the resettlement of Tongoa, a small island near the vanished Kuwae. Archeological research has confirmed some aspects of the legend: Bones from the chief's grave, identified by the traditional boar's-tusk bracelets he wore, have been dated to approximately the same period, and radiocarbon dating of vegetation burned in the blast yields approximately synchronous dates.

Did the volcanic cataclysm of Kuwae really produce the portents that haunted the siege and capture of Constantinople halfway around the world?

"We know that volcanism can cause strange effects in the atmosphere, and that the volcano erupted around the same time that Constantinople fell," says Haraldur Sigurdsson, a volcanologist at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston. He finds the evidence intriguing, but he remains skeptical because it is circumstantial.

"You try to build a case from as many types of climatic records as possible," notes Peter Kuniholm, a dendrochronologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "Only when a number of separate lines of investigation agree on the same thing are we safe in positing a true climatic effect or change." Although Kuniholm's specialty is ancient trees in the Mediterranean region, he has so far sampled only Turkish trees that grew at too low an altitude to suffer possible volcanic effects. Trees growing at higher elevations, he says, are more likely to have recorded temperature changes.

Kuwae's role in the capture of Constantinople in 1453 has yet to be definitively proved. But if Pang is correct, the pro-Byzantine Georgian writer who lamented poetically that on the day Constantinople was taken, "the sun was darkened," may have been accurate in a way he could never have imagined.

Freelance science writer Lynn Teo Simarski, based in Alexandria, Virginia, has written about the climatic effects of volcanism for the American Geophysical Union, and is a frequent contributor to Aramco World.

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On the Translation of Liturgical Texts (Part 1 of 4)

[The following text was written in January of 1981 regarding the translation of liturgical texts from their original Greek to Modern Greek. The issue was a hot topic then, but even more so in recent weeks when the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece officially condemned the translating of liturgical texts into Modern Greek. For those outside Greece however, the following text illuminates the essential core behind this controversial issue encountered throughout the world and how one should form their views even in societies where translation becomes a necessity, with much care and sensitivity. - J.S.]

by Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlasios

Lately there has been much talk by both clergy and lay people about the translation of the liturgical texts, and we have examples of some people who are actually doing this work. Contemporary Greeks, being permeated with the passion to change everything, even enter into the place of worship with passion, claiming that it is difficult to truly participate in divine worship when we are obligated to hear the "incomprehensible" hymns that are chanted in the Church. They also claim that liturgical reform is necessary. Also, they add that one of the primary tasks of the Church is to take care of this part of ecclesiastical life.

This issue is very serious and sensitive. We do not believe that these few lines written here will cover it all, nor that the things that are written here are free of weaknesses, but we will try to present our thoughts clearly and succinctly.

We will not examine the issue from the view that the Greek language today is under cruel and "inhuman" pressure. Nor will we examine the case that most revolutionaries, who want our separation from the past, want to "destroy" our language because of this, separating life from tradition, thereby destroying it. For life is life because it is connected with tradition. As biological life is passed on from generation to generation, so also in a similar fashion the cultural life of people is passed from generation to generation. And if life is separated from the past, it becomes dead. We wanted without commentary to lay down the following thought: "From 1958 until today, they will try with three successive educational reforms (which are openly expressed for the interests of foreign embassies in Athens) to extremely reduce the so-called classical education, subordinating Education to the demands of technology."[1] We know well that language is one of the primary concerns of education reform.

We put aside these issues to emphasize some other points.

First. The Church brings about the transformation of space, time and the entire world. The transformation of the whole world takes place in the sacramental life of the Church by the energies of the All-Holy Spirit. The Church receives the whole world and transforms it. This is clearly seen in the case of man. Through the Mysteries [Sacraments], man escapes his irrationality, death and insipid non-existence, and he enters into life. He becomes a member of the Body of Christ and receives the gifts of the All-Holy Spirit. The whole person (spirit, body, nous, desire, will) is assumed by the Church and deified. Nicholas Cabasilas clearly says that man with Holy Baptism receives new birth; with Holy Chrismation movement; with the Divine Eucharist life; and with Noetic Prayer, as with the whole struggle of purification and asceticism, he puts Christ in his nous and will. In this way, he lives in Christ, which means restoration to true life. Specifically, in his book The Life In Christ, he writes: "This is the work of baptism: the remission of our sins, the reconciliation of man with God, the becoming of man like God, the opening of the eye of the soul, the tasting of the divine radiance, the universe speaking and preparing us for the future life." The work of the Mystery of Chrismation "transmits the energies of the Good Spirit; and the myrrh puts in him the Lord Jesus, who is the Savior of all people, the Hope of all good, and in our transformation with the Holy Spirit, brings us to the Father." With the Divine Eucharist, we acquire true life: "After the chrism, we come to the table, which is the ultimate purpose of life...from this we receive the resurrected Christ, and not only the gifts of the Spirit which we are entitled to receive, but the Benefactor Himself."[2] Thus, all our senses become the senses of the Body of Christ.

This transformation takes place in all creation, as well as in all the social institutions of man. In the Church, everything is transformed, is sanctified. Through the Holy Spirit, the wheat becomes the Body of Christ, and the wine becomes the Blood of Christ; the oil becomes Holy Oil; the myrrh becomes Holy Chrismation; the water becomes Holy Water, while the candle and the incense become Prayer.

Therefore, the Church's task is not to follow the changes in society nor to adjust Her preaching and pastoral activity, but to change and transform man, the world and life. Her ultimate criterion should not simply be to accommodate society and adjust Herself, because this is called Secularism, but it should be the transformation of people and life through the Holy Spirit. The Church must not be influenced by other factors (psychological, social, etc.), but with the Holy Spirit to receive the world and to offer it as a gift to God. The comment of Archimandrite Irenaios Deledemos is truly correct: "The Fathers did not conform to the condition of the world. They did not secularize the Church, but they themselves created new conditions for the encounter of Christianity with every era. Their work was creative and not an imitation of the work of the world. The Fathers determined the changes; they did not follow the changes that already took place outside the Church. On the contrary, there is talk today about adjusting to modern reality in exactly the same way as the world. Generally, a feeling of inadequacy prevails in such attempts, with a tendency to abolish whatever differences distinguish the Church from the world."[3]

On the issue of the translation of liturgical texts, we believe that very secular criteria prevail, and that the phenomenon of secularism is expressed. "We do not understand the texts. We need to translate them." We subordinate our whole tradition on instant, arbitrary, personal initiatives that might last for one generation, but later, succeeding generations, by doing other changes, will totally change tradition.

Continued...Part Two.

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