Oldest Illustrated Bible Discovered in Ethiopia

World's First Illustrated Christian Bible Discovered at Ethiopian Monastery

5th July 2010
Daily Mail

The world's earliest illustrated Christian book has been saved by a British charity which located it at a remote Ethiopian monastery.

The incredible Garima Gospels are named after a monk who arrived in the African country in the fifth century and is said to have copied them out in just one day.

Beautifully illustrated, the colours are still vivid and thanks to the Ethiopian Heritage Fund have been conserved.

Abba Garima arrived from Constantinople in 494 AD and legend has it that he was able to copy the gospels in a day because God delayed the sun from setting.

The incredible relic has been kept ever since in the Garima Monastery near Adwa in the north of the country, which is in the Tigray region at 7,000 feet.

Experts believe it is also the earliest example of book binding still attached to the original pages.

The survival of the Gospels is incredible considering the country has been under Muslim invasion, Italian invasion and a fire in the 1930s destroyed the monastery's church.

They were written on goat skin in the early Ethiopian language of Ge'ez.

There are two volumes which date from the same time, but the second is written in a different hand from the first. Both contain illustrations and the four Gospels.


Though the texts had been mentioned by the occasional traveller since the 1950s, it had been thought they dated from the 11th century at the earliest.

Carbon dating, however, gives a date between 330 and 650 - which tantalisingly overlaps the date Abba Garima arrived in the country.

So the first volume could be in his hand - even if he didn't complete the task in a day as the oral tradition states.

The charity Ethiopian Heritage Fund that was set up to help preserve the treasures in the country has made the stunning discovery.

It was also allowed incredibly rare access to the texts so experts could conserve them on site.

It is now hoped the Gospels will be put in a museum at the monastery where visitors will be able to view them.

Blair Priday from the Ethiopian Heritage Fund said: 'Ethiopia has been overlooked as a source of these fantastic things.

'Many of these old Christian relics can only be reached by hiking and climbing to remote monasteries as roads are limited in these mountainous regions.

'All the work on the texts was done in situ and everything is reversible, so if in future they can be taken away for further conservation we won't have hindered that.

'The pages had been crudely stitched together in a restoration in the 1960s and some of the pages wouldn't even turn. And they were falling to pieces.

'The Garima Gospels have been kept high and dry which has helped preserve them all these years and they are kept in the dark so the colours look fresh.

'This was the most astounding of all our projects and the Patriarch, the head of the Ethiopian Church, had to give his permission.

'Most of the experts did the work for nothing.

'We are currently undertaking other restoration programmes on wall paintings and religious texts.

'We believe that preserving Ethiopia's cultural heritage will help to increase visitor revenue and understanding of the extraordinary history of this country.'

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The Cell of the Precious Cross of Papa Tychon and Elder Paisios

The following photos were taken on June 30, 2010 by ΑΓΙΟΡΕΙΤΙΚΕΣ ΜΝΗΜΕΣ. The history of the abandoned Cell of the Precious Cross is tied up with the lives of Papa Tychon and Elder Paisios who lived there in asceticism.

Elder Paisios took Papa Tychon as his spiritual father and guide in 1968 in this cell. It was Papa Tychon who tonsured Elder Paisios and gave him the Great and Angelic Schema. Papa Tychon fell asleep in the Lord on September 10 (O.C.)/23 (N.C.), 1968 and Elder Paisios remained in the Cell of the Precious Cross until May of 1979, when he left for Panagouda.

Papa Tychon moved to Kapsala in 1924, which is at the southernmost tip of Mount Athos (above Kaliagra), to the Cell of the Precious Cross which belonged to Stavronikita Monastery to look after an ailing elder. When the elder died, Papa Tychon stayed there alone.

Many people flocked to Papa Tychon because of his holiness. Some asked him to be ordained, so that he could be a confessor. Papa Tychon submitted to their need, and was ordained.

There was no chapel connected to his cell. Papa Tychon did not have money, but trusted in God. He prayed, then went to Karyes. The administrator of a Russian skete by the name of Prophet Elijah Skete saw Papa Tychon and told him that a Christian in America had donated money for someone to build a chapel, and the administrator gave this to Papa Tychon.

Two monks who were builders built the chapel, which Papa Tychon dedicated to the Precious Cross. This was done both because the elder held the Cross in great veneration and because the day would be a fasting day and would not require him to hold a special feast.

Papa Tychon lived alone and in utter poverty, but felt himself to live with the angels, saints, the Mother of God and Christ. The floor of his cell was made with planks, but due to a lack of cleaning, over the years mud that the Elder brought in, combined with hairs from his beard, formed an effective plaster.

On May 26, 1977 Elder Paisios wrote the life of Papa Tychon, in Papa Tychon's cell.

See also: The Last Days of Elder Tychon the Athonite: A Blessed Repose

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Faith Healing in the USA

Kara Neumann died from diabetes after her parents tried to cure her with prayer.

The Sydney Morning Herald
July 5, 2010

In March 2008, 11-year-old Kara Neumann lay on a mattress on the floor of her family’s home in Wisconsin while parents and friends around her were praying.

Within minutes she had died from undiagnosed but treatable diabetes. Her parents had not sought medical assistance but had tried to save her through prayer.

Kara was a pulchritudinous girl and a great student. Her despairing aunt had rung the 911 emergency services but by the time the ambulance arrived, Kara’s curable disease had taken her life.

The aunt’s heroic and frantic pleas to intervene in her sister-in-law’s family were answered too late. The parents blamed themselves, not for “not having enough faith” and rather than call in a doctor were desperately calling more people to offer prayer over Kara’s rapidly expiring body.

How can they have been so stupid? Kara had not seen a doctor since the age of three. Her parents belong to an online church Unleavened Bread Ministries whose web page proclaims “Warning: These are America’s Last Days”. The page is in incomprehensible mixture of dire proclamations and uplifting anecdotes of faith healings. I tried to discern the underlying rationale of the faith but it is a diatribe even more opaque and illogical than this blog (amazing but true).

Her mother, Leilani, is quoted as saying, “I thought it was a spiritual attack. We stayed by her side non-stop and we prayed.” Leilani expects that Kara to be resurrected. I wish she was right. I know she isn’t.

The parents were later charged with second-degree reckless homicide and found guilty. The received an innovative six-month prison sentence where both parents are jailed for a different month once a year for six years so that the three remaining kids had the, perhaps dubious, blessing of having a parent at home.

What does the unbeliever make of this story? It speaks of the ineffable power of faith. However, it is also clearly evidence that can be adduced by atheists as vindication of our unbelief. But the overwhelming majority of believers would accuse me of proffering a straw man as no one in the mainstream of faith would be so gullible and stupid. Is it fair that we hang faith on the basis of a couple of idiots?

How marginal are such faith healers? Is this appalling act unrepresentative of belief? Jesus was a faith healer and this was one of the bases of his claims to divinity. And (generalisation alert!) this has led to Christianity, more so it would seem to me than many other religions, being seduced with the notion of faith healing (think Lourdes). Although it is also true to say that desperate people of all creeds seek out faith-based quack cures. So the question of whether one can judge faith on the basis of deaths such as Kara’s is moot.

Let me tell you another tale. In 1977 Rita Swan was a Christian Scientist whose 16-month-old son developed a fever. She relied on the teaching of her church to engage in prayer. The church did not believe in “materia medica” or medical intervention. Rita was too scared of the medical system to engage with it. After 10 horrific days, Mathew died, in agony, of meningitis. They left the church. This couple was not stupid. Her husband is a now maths professor. But faith overbore all.

Typically, when a belief is repudiated by real evidence, the believers faith can paradoxically become more entrenched. But this was not so with Rita Swan. She worked as an activist forming the organisation Children's Healthcare is a Legal Duty (CHILD) to study and stop child fatalities from religion-motivated medical neglect.

In an article she published in Paediatrics (Vol. 101, No 4 1998) she reviewed 172 child fatalities from faith-healing sects and discovered that some 158 had a greater than even chance of survival if medical care had not been withheld. Mathew’s death had not been in vain. But still the phenomenon of child death through faith is still manifest and manifold. Rita had the courage to admit her mistake and seek to rectify it in other people. She died in 2004 but was not an atheist. She became a Methodist. She often spoke about her work to atheistic organisations but in her own words was “a ho-hum Protestant”.

This brings us to the question I posed earlier. Are these grotesque examples of failures of faith evidence in the theodicy debate? Do they turn us inexorably to atheism? Or are these examples of destructive fundamentalism merely dismissed by most believers as horrible exceptions to the godly rule? It would seem to be the latter.

Even the saintly Rita Swan accepted that Christian Science decree against medical intervention was a load of bollocks but did not turn from faith. This must leave some godless wondering what we have to do to win over the world. Well, it will have to be something more sophisticated and more holistic than identifying the abuses of some believers. But having said that, our noble duty must be to identify religious child abuse and enforce the law with rigour. No child should be abandoned to the reckless beliefs of their parents for that is abuse.

What is your view? How do we seek out religiously inspired child abuse? Does this existence of this child abuse and infanticide damn all religions for all time? Or is the idea of faith so resilient that it can survive some idiotic religious practitioners?

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Baba Vanga & Rodica Gheorghe: "White Witches" in the Balkans

Witches and Miracle Healers Still Rule Roost in Superstitious Balkans

26 Jun 2010
Gabriel Ronay in Sofia
Herald Scotland

It might sound weird, but even in 2010 the brooding Balkan countries can’t shake their addiction to psychics, clairvoyants, soothsayers and assorted ‘white witches’, all of which are still doing a roaring trade, from Bulgaria to Translyvania.

Clairvoyants and soothsayers ply their ancient trade around hospitals in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, reassuring anxious relatives with visions of a rapid recovery for their loved ones. They market ‘miracle cures’ and love potions, and in newspaper columns advise lovelorn women on how to land a man.

Some claim to be able to read, from coffee grounds, the fates of their fearful customers, while others predict the future from the stars. Their clientele pay handsomely for every divined word. Old women from the countryside tout herbal cures for everything from frigidity to erectile dysfunction and cancer, and claim that their healing craft extends well beyond traditional medicine. Credulous Bulgarians are the world’s biggest spenders when it comes to the miracle cures market.

Every second Bulgarian who took part in a survey for the Sofia television channel BTV said they believed in supernatural powers, and especially feared a curse being put on them. Professor Ljubomir Halachev confirmed in the programme that “trust in psychic powers and second sight is widespread in Bulgaria”.

At the upmarket end of this booming business, savvy younger ‘practitioners’ use state-of-the-art tools – internet websites, blogs and chatrooms – to spread their psychic messages, and give their readings a techy edge. Soothsayers’ most sought-after services include the lifting of curses, countering havoc wreaked by an evil eye and turning bad luck to good.

The apparently unchallengeable claim by Bulgarian clairvoyants and psychics to paranormal powers rests on the world-renowned reputation of their late peer, the seer Baba Vanga.

Born Vangelia Pandeva Dimitrova in 1911, this blind clairvoyant and herbal healer is claimed to have predicted, before her death in 1996, a number of world events, including the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the death of Princess Diana, the break-up of the Soviet Union, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US – “two American brothers would fall under attacks by birds of steel” – and the sinking of the Russian nuclear cruise-missile submarine Kursk.

Then there was her ‘chilling’ prophecy of the date for the outbreak of the Third World War – December 2010. Enigmatically, she said this would be the result of “attempts on the lives of four leaders following a conflict in Hindustan”.

Of course, ‘Hindustan’, in the parlance of an illiterate Bulgarian village clairvoyant, could well have covered the entire Indian sub-continent. And, as the slayings of Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh among others bear witness, the sub-continent is no stranger to political assassinations.

Asked, when she was quite elderly, about her psychic sources, she became shrewdly vague. Her words were especially difficult to decipher because she had spent her entire life in the Rupite region of the Kozhuh Mountains, and spoke with a heavy local accent barely comprehensible to outsiders. Her television interviews were always supported by subtitles.

She spoke of “creatures invisible to people with ordinary sight”, who told her about the fate and future of many people.


In the good ‘white witch’ stakes, Romania has the edge on the rest of the Balkans – even on Bulgaria. While keeping their ancient craft traditional, Romanian white witches use websites, blogs, email messaging and chatrooms to reach their clientele.

To judge by the claims of her website, Rodica Gheorghe is the leading ‘white witch healer’ in the country. Her credentials are based on her family tradition of witchcraft. She is the daughter of the witch Mama Omida and granddaughter of the witch Sabina. Some joke that her family are well on their way to having enough for their own coven.

But in the competitive cut-throat witch business, nothing is lasting, and in Romania’s Transylvania province, ‘black witches’ have muscled in on the lucrative evil eye and funerary markets. Proven spells to keep a newly widowed man from remarrying, and thus depriving his children of their inheritance, are especially well paid for.

After any death in the village of Camarzana, a witch is called in to smear the udders of cows with garlic to prevent ‘revenants’ – vampires returning from the grave – stealing their milk.

As long as the ancient Balkan superstitions rule ordinary lives, witches, clairvoyants and miracle healers will do brisk business, with or without the internet.

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Jennifer Lopez Criticized Over Cyprus Gig

Greek Cypriots angry at invitation to attend the inauguration of a hotel in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus

5 July 2010
Helena Smith in Athens
Guardian.co.uk

Singer Jennifer Lopez may have given it little thought when she accepted a seemingly innocuous invitation to celebrate her 41st birthday in northern Cyprus.

The deal: a sun-soaked stay en famille at a $220m destination described as the "single biggest hotel project both sides of the island" in exchange for a one-off performance to celebrate its opening.

But on the Island of Love, where memories of war are never far removed, the star appears to have walked into a political minefield. Instead of eliciting hot anticipation, the visit has ignited the sort of controversy that no celebrity needs.

Cyprus was invaded in 1974 by Turkish troops in response to an attempted coup by the Greek junta in Athens, and has been divided between Greeks in the south and Turks in the north ever since. It remains one of the world's most intractable disputes, where almost every action is seen through a political lens.

A web campaign led by indignant Greek Cypriots to convince Lopez to change her mind has attracted thousands of signatories angry that she should even consider performing in territory that is not officially recognised by the United Nations.

"It is with dismay and shock that the people of Cyprus and especially the Greek Cypriot women in the Republic of Cyprus and elsewhere in the world heard the news that you intend to attend the inauguration of a hotel in the occupied by Turkey [sic] part of our native country," says a letter that forms the basis of the campaign.

The missive, carried on the Cyprus Action Network of America, argues that nearly four decades after the island was "barbarically invaded" it would be morally unconscionable for the artist to visit.

To add insult to injury, campaigners say the hotel in Kyrenia will open on 20 July, exactly 36 years since Turkish paratroopers were dropped onto the island's central plain.

"The Turks go to a great length to secure support from people like you in order to promote their political ambitions and objectives. Does your charitable work and status permit you to give credibility to Turkish rapists, thieves, invaders, occupiers of our stolen properties," the letter asks.

Despite the furore, the five-star Cratos Premium insists the event will go ahead, promising a "very special birthday party … full of surprises for Jennifer Lopez".

But opposition is mounting. An estimated 7,000 people have signed up to a Facebook campaign – and it shows no sign of letting up.

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Saint Athanasios of Athos and the Panagia Economissa

St. Athanasios of Athos and Panagia Economissa (Feast Day - July 5)

Athanasios was born in Trebizond of God-fearing parents. He became orphaned at an early age but, by the Providence of God, a commander took him under his care and brought him to Constantinople to be educated. Because of his meekness and humbleness, he was the favorite of his peers.

During the children's games, the children chose one to be an emperor, one a commander and Athanasios as abbot as though it was some kind of foretelling!

Having completed his education, Athanasios (who before tonsuring was called Abraham) withdrew into the desert of Maleinos near Athos, the Holy Mountain, where he lived the life of an ascetic as a disciple of the then renowned Michael Maleinos.

Desiring a more difficult life of mortification, Athanasios settled on Holy Mount Athos to live in silence (the life of a hesychast). But many who were desirous of a life of asceticism began to gather around him and, therefore, he was compelled to build his famous Lavra. In that, he was assisted by the Byzantine emperors: at first, Nikephorus Phocas, who himself thought to withdraw and to become a monk and, after him, John Tzimiskes.

Countless temptations befell Athanasios both from demons and from men but he, as a brave soldier of Christ, resisted and conquered all by his immeasurable meekness and continual prayer to the Living God.

Filled with the Grace of God, Athanasios was made worthy to see the All-holy Birth-giver of God who miraculously brought forth water from a rock and promised that she would also be the abbess [Economissa, the one in charge of the provisions of the monastery].

In work and in prayer, Athanasios surpassed his brethren and loved all with the love of a spiritual father and shepherd.

Death came to Athanasios unexpectedly. At one time, he with six other monks, climbed upon a newly built vestibule of the church to inspect the wall which was being constructed and the wall caved in on them and buried them. Thus, this great beacon of monasticism died in the year 980 A.D.

Many times following his death Athanasios appeared to his brethren either to comfort them or to reprimand them.

Reflection on the Miracle of the Panagia Economissa

By striking the rod, how did Moses bring forth water from the rock? How did God send down manna from heaven and feed the people of Israel in the wilderness? Thus ask all those who have a very weak conception of the might of the Omnipotent God. And still they are perplexed why such miracles do not take place again in order that all peoples may believe in God. But the Israelites, with their own eyes, witnessed countless miracles of God and still they did not believe. Meanwhile, God repeats the old great miracles wherever and whenever it is needed.

One time, when a famine ensued in the Lavra of Athanasios, all of the brethren dispersed wherever. Dejected, Athanasios began to move about and to seek out another place. A lady on the road asked him: "Where are you going?"

"Who are you?" Athanasios asked bewildered because he sees a woman on the Holy Mountain, where access to women is not permitted.

"I am she to whom you have dedicated your community. I am the Mother of your Lord."

Athanasios said: "I am afraid to trust you, for even demons can manifest themselves into angels of light. With what shall you prove to me the truthfulness of your words?"

Then the Holy Birth-giver of God said to him: "Strike your rod upon this rock and you will know who I am that speaks to you. Know that I am always remaining the Abbess - Economissa of your Lavra."

Athanasios then struck the rock with his rod. At that moment the rock shook and cracked as thunder and water gushed forth from the shattered rock. Frightened, Athanasios turned so as to prostrate before the Holy All-pure One but She had already vanished. He returned to his Lavra and even to his greater amazement, found all the barns (storehouses) overflowing with wheat.

Here, then, is a repetition of the great miracles by which the miracles of old are confirmed and by which the faithful are strengthened in the Faith.


HYMN OF PRAISE: TO THE HOLY BIRTH-GIVER OF GOD

On Mount Athos, a Lavra glows,
Wondrous monastery of Athanasios
One thousand years have slid by it
But the spirit and bread did not run out
It was neither lacking in spirit or bread
Nor the glowing vision of God's heaven.
Thus it was written in books of old:
About the Lavra, the Abbess - Economissa worries,
Mount Athos is her state,
The most fortified wall of Orthodoxy;
That mystical Abbess - Economissa
Is it not the All-pure Birth-giver of God?
The Lavra, She upholds and Iveron feeds,
And Hilandari protects and Rusikon defends,
Karakallou and Zographou, Simonpetra,
And Pantokratora, all She protects
Those fortifications, to Her citizens they belong
But peace and defense to all She is.


The Economissa (or Stewardess) Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos depicts the Mother of God seated on a throne, with Her Son on her left knee. St Athanasios of Mt Athos (July 5) stands on her right, holding a model of the Great Lavra. On her left is St Michael of Synnada (May 23). Two angels hold a crown above her head.

To this day, the Lavra does not have a steward. There is, however, a monk who serves as an assistant steward (“para-oikonomos”), to the Mother of God. The Economissa Icon rests on a throne in the narthex of the main church, and She remains the Stewardess of the Lavra. Pilgrims venerate the Icon, which shows in all 14 figures with a connection with the Monastery and its foundation, before entering the side chapel with the saint's tomb.

The spring of St Athanasios still flows with healing water.

Apolytikion in the Third Tone
The Angels' ranks were awed by thy life in the flesh, how, though corporeal, and clad with earthly clay, thou didst set forth with courage to invisible wars and wrestlings and didst boldly smite the hordes of the demons with mortal wounds. Wherefore, Christ rewarded thee with abundant gifts in return. Entreat Him that our souls find salvation, O most renowned Father Athanasios.

Kontakion in the Second Tone
The yoke of thy Christ, thou tookest on thyself with faith, while bearing thy cross upon thy shoulders as a true and unrivalled emulator of His dread Passion and sharer of His great glory, partaking of divine and unending joy, O Athanasios.


The Life, Reflection and Hymn are by St. Nikolai Velimirovich

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A Message To Orthodox In America

by St. Nikolai Velimirovich

Let us now turn our gaze from the East to the far West, i.e., to America.

About 150 years ago Orthodox people of every nationality began to come to this New World, first daring individuals, then small groups, until in our days they have reached, by immigration and by birth, a number equal at least to the number of Episcopalians in the United States.

The first settlers were very simple people, hard workers, farmers. They were just the kind of people who were authentic bearers of that threefold Christian ideal, i.e., of spiritual vision, of moral discipline and of competition in doing good. This was the backbone of their souls, inherited from their fathers in the old countries. They lived up to it as much as they could in this country under changed circumstances. And that was, and still is, their greatest contribution to building American civilization, along with their other contributions of sweat and blood—of sweat in mines and factories, and of blood on Americas battlefields.

They never got rich in this rich country, for they had to divide their modest earnings into three parts: one part for their subsistence and the education of their children, a second part they sent to their families in the old country, and the third they gave to church, school, insurance, and charities.

They built churches and called priests from the old country....They preserved their religious traditions. They cultivated the ancient virtues. They delighted in their national music and songs, in their national costumes and dramatic performances. Personally, I have a deep admiration for these old Orthodox generations in America, both for those who passed away in the Faith, and for those who are still living by their faith. They have been a spiritual and constructive component of the New Worlds humanity. I dare say that in their own way they have been heroic generations no less than other national groups, now blended into one great American nation. In their modesty these humble people never expected a poet to laud them or a historian to describe them.

Alas, the last of these old Orthodox generations is rapidly passing away. Their sons and grandsons, and their daughters and granddaughters are now coming to the field. And this new generation is American born. They speak good English but little or no Greek, Serbian, Russian, Rumanian, Syrian or Albanian. And no wonder: They attended American schools, many of them served in the US army, they have grown in conformity with the American standard of living, their hearts are not divided between two countries. They are naturally Americans, and they intend to remain American. Accordingly, they have some demands respecting the Church of their fathers.

They want English to replace national languages in church services. They desire to hear sermons in English. This is a legitimate desire. Our wise priests of every national Orthodox Church in this country are already preaching in both English and in their respective national tongue. They are in a difficult position at present, for they have on one hand to be considerate of the elderly (elderly generations of Moms and Pops) who do not understand English well, and on the other hand they are willing to respond to the desire and need of the younger generations. In this matter I think evolution is better than revolution, for the Church is the mother of both the old and the young.

The time may not be far off when there will be a united Orthodox Church in America, which will include all the present Eastern national Churches in this country, a Church with one central administrative authority. I see a tendency toward such an end in each of our now individual Churches. ... And when by Gods Providence the time is ripe for the accomplishment of such a unity, I dare not doubt that the venerable heads of all our Orthodox Churches in Europe, Asia, and Africa, always led by the Holy Spirit, will give their blessing for the organization of a new and autonomous sister Church in America.

And now let me make an appeal to all our American Orthodox youth.

America is your cradle and your earthly motherland. It is a wonderful Gods country, and you are expected to be wonderful Gods people in this country. Remember that our greatest contribution to America is of a spiritual and moral nature. And that is precisely what America needs today. That is what every Christian country today needs most of all—in boundless measure. For all nations, especially the Christians nowadays traveling as if in a wilderness of confusion created by senseless materialism and its blind daughter atheism. I offer this to what leading American men and women are saying: "The only hope for us and for the world is to return to religion." Again I say: "Our hope is in the Church." You ought to listen to these words, too, and to ponder them. We live in very tragic times, which are made more tragic by easy-going and self-indulgent people who have never read the story of Sodom, of Laish, or of Capernaum.

If I am correct in my observations, the greatest struggle of America these days is the struggle for the priority and superiority of spiritual and moral values over techniques and technological lordship: in other words, for predominance of the spiritual over the material, of goodness over cleverness. The Serbs often say of a clever man: "He is clever as the devil." They never say: "He is good as the devil."

America is constantly sounding the sympathetic watchwords: "dignity of man" and "liberty of men and nations." But the deepest meaning of these watchwords can be found in the sacred teaching of Him without Whom we can do nothing. That meaning is found most explicitly in the threefold program of our Orthodox Church: spiritual vision, moral discipline, and competition in doing good.

For the dignity of man—in other words, the superior value of man—has real and eternal meaning only if you know and acknowledge the Kingdom of Heaven as the true fatherland of all men, from which we originated and to which we are returning as children of one common Father, Who is in heaven. And freedom is most useful, joyful, and sacred if you exercise moral discipline over yourself and practice competition in doing good.

These are the fundamentals upon which you can build your individual and communal happiness. And you have received these fundamentals as a glorious heritage, never to part with. By practicing this spiritual heritage in your daily life, you will become an adornment to America. And through you all Americans will come to know and appreciate our ancient Church of the East and her spiritual heroes, whom we are praising today.

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We Hold Some Truths To Be Self Evident

by Stephen C. Meyer
July 4, 2010

When we celebrate our country’s independence on July 4th, the day may resonate with many Americans more powerfully than in other recent years. The nation’s political mood is increasingly, well, independent. Voters are fed up with incumbent politicians and reigning political parties.

This accounts for the unlikely bestselling books that keep shooting up out of what might seem like nowhere—previously obscure biographies of the Founders that pose fundamental questions about the role of our government and what direction the nation is headed. In a welcome development, Americans want to refresh their acquaintance with the sources of our rights as citizens.

Yet there is one source, more basic than any other, that so far has not received the attention it deserves. I refer to the idea that there is an intelligent creator who can be known by reason from nature, a key tenet underlying both the Declaration of Independence—and, curiously, the modern and controversial theory of intelligent design.

The birth of our republic was announced in the Declaration through the pen of Thomas Jefferson. He and the other Founders based their vision on a belief in an intrinsic human dignity, bestowed by virtue of our having been made according to the design and in the image of a purposeful creator.

As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” If we had received our rights only from the government, then the government could justifiably take them away.

Jefferson himself thought that there was scientific evidence for design in nature. In 1823, he insisted so in a letter to John Adams:

“I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition.”

Contemplating everything from the heavenly bodies down to the creaturely bodies of men and animals, he argued:

“It is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion.”

With such thoughts in mind, he wrote the Declaration, asserting the inalienable rights of human beings derived from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

Is Jefferson’s belief still credible in light of current science? The decades following Darwin’s publication of Origin of Species saw the rise of “social” Darwinism and eugenics, which suggested that the Jeffersonian principle of intrinsic dignity had been overturned.

Taken to heart, Darwin’s view of man does undermine the vision of the Founders. As evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson explained, Darwinism denies evidence of design and shows instead that man is the product of a “purposeless process that did not have him mind.” Fortunately, discoveries in modern biology have challenged this perspective and vindicated Jefferson’s thinking.

Since 1953, when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, biologists have increasingly come to recognize the importance of information to living cells. The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code, similar to a computer code. As Bill Gates has noted, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”

No theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information in DNA needed to build the first living cell on earth. Yet we know from repeated experience—the basis of all scientific reasoning—that information invariably arises from minds rather than from material processes.

Software programs come from programmers. Information—whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in radio signals—always comes from a designing intelligence. So the discovery of digital code in DNA points decisively back to an intelligent cause as the ultimate source of the information in living cells.

The growing evidence of design in life has stunning and gratifying implications for our understanding of America’s political history—and for our country’s future. On the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the evidence for “Nature’s God,” and thus for the reality of our rights, is stronger than ever.

What is Intelligent Design and What is it Challenging?

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The Schismatic Syro Russian Orthodox Catholic Church

`Holy Men' Blaze Curious Trail Across Country

By Meghan Barr
July 4, 2010
Associated Press

CANFIELD, Ohio — The monks seemed to come out of nowhere.

They arrived from Cleveland last fall — Archbishop Timothy and Father Anthony and the cleric in charge, Metropolitan Stephen. In their billowing black robes, they were looking for a new base for the Syro Russian Orthodox Catholic Church.

It was Archbishop Timothy who first drove past the Canfield Colonial Motel Condotel, a crime-ridden, no-tell motel on a desolate road dominated by hay bales and barns with sunken roofs.

"My first thought was: This would make an excellent monastery," says the archbishop, whose earthly name is Timothy Kjera. "The rooms in front are the perfect size for a monk's cell."

This would be a religious retreat center where "people can eat with the monks, pray with the monks," Kjera explains, shutting off his cell phone and its ringtone of Darth Vader's "Imperial March."

Folks in Canfield were delighted when they heard that the holy men wanted to take over a motel long frequented by prostitutes and drug dealers. There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Chamber of Commerce, and a cross was staked out front, above a reception desk redolent of cigar smoke.

This was no small thing. The little, dirty white building with the threadbare rooms was now the official headquarters for a church and seminary that have thousands of followers around the globe — or so the monks claim.

But these monks have credibility issues.

They have left a curious trail across the middle of the country — from Colorado, where their seminary was shut down for handing out mail-order diplomas, to Minnesota, where the church was accused of luring young Africans to the U.S. on the false promise of a religious education. The name of their church has changed numerous times along the way.

"They are hiding behind the guise of the church," says Sgt. Tad Jazdzewski of Duluth, Minn., who spent more than a year investigating them.

The clerics insist they have done nothing wrong. Here, they say, they spend most of their days praying, fixing up the re-christened Monastery Inn and manning the monastery gift shop.

"Do you think the Roman Catholic church writes down a list of all the things they've done wrong and hands it out to people?" Kjera says when confronted by allegations about the past. "I don't believe they do that. If anybody ever asks me directly about our past, I've always been forthcoming."

___

The Syro Russian Orthodox Catholic Church was born in 1978 when a Greek Orthodox priest who never attended a seminary broke off to start his own parish in Portage, Ind. That was Stephen Thomas — now Metropolitan Stephen, a man who has been in charge from the very beginning though he prefers to stay out of the spotlight.

He was defrocked by the Orthodox church in 1994. By that time, he was already running Notre Dame de Lafayette University in Aurora, Colo., a religious school offering degrees in subjects like "homeotherapeutics" and "psycho-visual therapy."

"I don't know how he got ordained," says Bishop Demetrios Kantzavelos, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago, who has a thick file on Thomas and his many churches. "I think he just fell through the cracks."

The history of those early years is spotty. The church would surface and disappear again, making its way across Indiana to the Rocky Mountains, then on to Minnesota and Ohio.

The names were elaborate:

The Mercy and Right Greek Catholic Church. St. Michael's Greek Orthodox Church. St. Mary the Theotokos Orthodox Catholic Church. The Mercian Orthodox Catholic Church. Saints Peter and Paul Anglican Catholic Church. The Michael American Orthodox Catholic Church.

None of them were recognized by any credible religious authority.

"I could go out tomorrow and declare myself archbishop of Manhattan, and dress up and rent out a space," says the Rev. Mark Arey of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America in New York City. "Would I be legitimate? No."

Notre Dame de Lafayette was repeatedly warned by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education that it could not award degrees in subjects other than religion. Instead, school officials told students that their "master of arts in peace and justice" and "bachelor of science in nutrimedicine" would be recognized by such venerable universities as Yale and Harvard, says John Karakoulakis, director of legislative affairs at the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

Of course, this was a school that once awarded a degree in "Christian counseling" to a golden retriever named Samantha who was enrolled in the school by its owner, a television news reporter.

"On paper it looked rather impressive," says Tony Dyl, Colorado's senior assistant attorney general. "At one point, they were purporting to award degrees from a college in the Philippines."

In 1994, the state revoked the school's authority to operate in Colorado, and Thomas transferred the university's assets to the Mercian Orthodox Catholic Church, Dyl says.

As they were closing down and moving to Minnesota, Thomas ordered several thousand dollars' worth of computer equipment and skipped town without paying for it, Dyl says.

Criminal records show Thomas pleaded no contest to larceny and conspiracy to commit larceny and was placed on four years' probation. By that time, the school had already moved on to Long Prairie, Minn., where Colorado officials say its former students were directed to send their money to a handful of U.S. post office boxes.

"I've seen them over the years change name, change location," says Kantzavelos. "They keep slipping."

In 1996, Thomas brought a new follower on board: a homeless man named Timothy Kjera, eventually known as Archbishop Timothy, a former Lutheran from the woods of northern Minnesota.

"He showed me that there was a better way to live," Kjera says.

Jazdzewski met the duo in 2001, when they were running yet another seminary, in Duluth, Minn. At that point, they identified themselves as priests, not monks. A woman had contacted police claiming she was duped out of $15,000 for a diploma from the school that turned out to be worthless.

"They would print the diplomas and the so-called coursework they had people doing," says the detective, who confiscated fake diplomas from the downtown church building. "But then when they were done, basically all they had was a worthless piece of paper."

During the investigation, Jazdzewski documented more than $40,000 in fraud alleged by five students. He made the rounds presenting his evidence to the Minnesota attorney general, the FBI, the city prosecutor.

"No one would really touch it because it was a church," he says.

And the church was tax exempt — has been since 1988, when the Internal Revenue Service approved the tax exemption of what was then called the Romano Byzantine Synod of the Orthodox Catholic Church. In 2007, the IRS updated its records to show the church is now known as the Syro Russian Orthodox Catholic Synod of Bishops. The paperwork claims it is a "religious charity," which means it is completely tax-exempt.

The IRS would not comment about the Syro Russian church or how it vets religious groups, but its website lists about a dozen factors used to define whether a church is legitimate, including whether it has religious leaders and if its members meet regularly for worship.

If fraud is suspected, the IRS can launch an audit. But that rarely happens.

"You could literally make up a religion this afternoon," says Marcus Owens, an attorney and former director of the exempt organizations division of the Internal Revenue Service. "As long as you believed it, and that was your system of beliefs, you would stand a good chance of getting tax-exempt status for your church."

In most states, including Ohio and Minnesota, religious groups do not have to file financial reports at all, says Helen Ng, a spokeswoman for the Charities Review Council, a nonprofit watchdog group.

"It's been a common tax scam for many years for a family, for example, to claim 'we're a church,'" says Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, an associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. "The church category, unfortunately, is one that can be abused."

___

In Minnesota, the monks established the Romano Byzantine College. And it was at this institution of higher learning that Joseph Kimotho says he spent three isolated months, living like a caged animal in a dimly lit basement.

Kimotho says he was fed a paltry diet of beans and rice and slept on the floor. The water was often shut off because nobody paid the utility bill. His days were spent sorting mail and printing scores of diplomas off a machine.

For this, he had left Nairobi.

"There was nothing," Kimotho remembers, his voice shaking. "You go to a school, you find administration, offices, everything. But this one, there was nothing."

He had discovered the college online and paid $2,000 for an application. Thinking he would return home with a theology degree, Kimotho applied for a religious worker visa and boarded a plane to Duluth.

Kjera met him at the airport and drove him to a small white church downtown. Then, Kimotho recalls, Kjera took possession of his passport and led him down to the basement, where another man had been living for nearly two years: Kwame Mwaga of Tanzania, who had also emigrated to the U.S. to earn an education.

The two men were tasked with handling the large volume of mail being ferried in and out of the house.

"They just print things, but they are fake," Kimotho says. "They print them day and night. It shows you how people can be bad and take other people's money for no reason."

Nearly four months after he arrived, Kimotho fled the church and sought help from a local Christian group, who helped him and Mwaga obtain an immigration lawyer in Minneapolis, Kimberly Hunter.

They were in deeper trouble than they realized: Kjera had called immigration officials to report that they had violated the terms of their visa. But after cooperating with authorities, both men successfully obtained a special U category visa, which protects people who have been victims of a crime.

Now 39 and living in Minneapolis, Kimotho recently graduated from the United Theological Seminary — officially accredited by The Association of Theological Schools in the U.S. and Canada — and plans to return to Kenya to teach.

He does not like to speak about that dark time in Minnesota.

"I would not want anyone to go through that," he says. "I thought I was going to die."

Kjera disputes Kimotho's version of events, and says the Kenyan was never told that he would be attending a school — it was more like an apprenticeship. Sure, he slept in the basement, but that was all part of his religious training, Kjera explains.

"It saddens me to think that he would say the things he did," Kjera says.

Minnesota police also investigated claims from Ittefaq Bhatti, another student from Pakistan. Bhatti fled the church and returned escorted by police officers in June 2007 to demand that the priests hand over his passport.

Less than a year later, Thomas and Kjera packed up their belongings and headed for Ohio.

___

In Cleveland, the monks' former monastery is an empty beige duplex in a dangerous neighborhood. Their landlord, Alex Badea, says he served the monks three days' notice when they failed to pay their rent in October. They finally paid, then stayed for two weeks and moved out without paying their final month's rent, he says.

After they had gone, Badea discovered the house had been stripped of copper wiring and the hot water tank was gone.

And so they landed at the Canfield Colonial Motel Condotel.

Shortly after the monks took over, a man and woman who rented a room for the night were arrested on charges of drug trafficking and prostitution. The Mahoning County sheriff's office says the monks have cooperated with efforts to keep crime out of the motel, even providing a list of guests' names.

But anonymous e-mails sent to city leaders have raised red flags. Disturbing rumors were flying around town about their past. Sheriff's Commander Lenny Sliwinski ran a background check on all three men and printed out a file that's 3 inches thick. He's still going through it.

And that's not the only investigation that is under way.

St. Mark Seminary and College, the school housed at the Monastery Inn, currently has about 10 students. But none of them study at the motel; Kjera said the college is really an "online correspondence" school. For $6,800, students can earn an undergraduate degree. For $9,000, they can earn a "Master of Divinity and Doctorates."

The person in charge, Kjera said, was a priest living in Hawaii. A few weeks later, he denied that the school was headquartered at the motel and claimed it was based in Alexandria, Va., registered with the "Commission on Education of the Commonwealth of Virginia." He did not provide an address.

But there is no such organization in Virginia, where state officials have never heard of the school. St. Mark is not accredited by the state, says Kirsten Nelson, spokeswoman for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

When contacted by The Associated Press, the Ohio Board of Regents — which oversees higher education in the state — said it, too, had never heard of the school. After reviewing the school's website, spokesman Rob Evans said the agency was forwarding that information to the Ohio Attorney General's office for investigation.

Kjera maintains that the church has been unfairly targeted by the media and has done nothing wrong. He has explanations for everything: Thomas shut down the school in Colorado voluntarily. They left Minnesota because of the economic recession, not because they were under scrutiny by law enforcement.

He is frustrated. He doesn't understand why people have to keep dredging up things that happened in the past. The only evil still lingering at the motel is its reputation, he says.

"Let's just say, for example, that I am a criminal," he says. "And I did something horrible in our past and I served many years in prison. But I have reformed."

There's a pleading note in his voice now.

"Does that mean, for the rest of my life, I should be treated like a criminal?"

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Saint Martha, the Mother of Saint Symeon Stylites the Younger

Saint Martha (Feast Day - July 4)

Martha was the mother of St. Symeon of the Wonderful Mountain (May 24). Dedicated with all her soul to the Faith, she did not think of marriage. When her parents betrothed her to a young man, Martha thought of leaving the home of her parents and to withdrew from the world. But, St. John the Baptist appeared to Martha and counseled her to fulfill the will of her parents and to enter into marriage, which she did. From this marital union, the glorious saint, Symeon of the Wonderful Mountain was born. She had the regular habit of rising at midnight for prayer. With great charity, she helped the needy and misfortunate, visited the poor, the orphaned and attended the sick. A year before her death she saw many angels with candles in their hands and, from them, learned the time of her death. Learning of this, Martha with even greater zeal dedicated herself to prayer and good works. She died peacefully in the year 551 A.D. and was buried in the proximity of her son, Symeon the Stylite. After her death, she appeared many times for the purpose of instructing mankind and for the sake of healing the sick. Recorded as her most significant appearance was the one to the abbot of Simeon's monastery. Following the burial of St. Martha, the abbot placed a votive candle on her grave with the understanding that it should never be extinguished. Then the abbot became ill and the saintly Martha appeared to him and said: "Why do you not burn a votive candle on my grave? Know that I am not in need of the light from your candle since I have been made worthy before God, the Eternal Heavenly Light, but it is needed for you. So when you burn a light on my grave, you entreat me to pray to the Lord for you." It is obvious from this that the goal of our veneration for the saints is to entreat them as those worthier than us to pray to God for us and for our salvation.

HYMN OF PRAISE: THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE OF GOD

In His Divine Providence, miraculous is the Lord,
To Andrew, the mute, He gave a clear voice
And the mute, His audible trumpet made
As one time Saul (Paul), the pillar of the Church.
In vain from marriage did holy Martha shun
To the will of God must bow down,
To marriage the Providence of God led Martha
That for God and the world, of a saint to give birth
Whoever himself gives to God, himself he gave to the Best,
And his will, he overcame by God's will
My child, without the Lord, do not plan anything,
That your plans without fruit do not be.
Of life, all the threads and all your desires
In the hands of the Creator Almighty stand.
His are the fields; His are the slopes,
His are the basic elements, the foundations and the threads.
His is the soul; His is the body,
And of everything and its attire, the spirit
In his field with His tools
Whose shall we fulfill, except His will.

- St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Prologue

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God Knows the Limits of our Endurance

by St. Nikolai Velimirovich

If your entire life passed smoothly and without worry, then weep for yourself. For the Gospel and the experience of the people, with one accord assert that no one has, without great suffering and pain, left behind any great and beneficial work on earth or was glorified in the heavens. If, however, your earthly sojourn is completely adorned with sweat and tears to attain justice and truth, rejoice and be exceedingly glad for truly great is your reward in the heavens. Do not ever succumb to the insane thought that God has abandoned you. God knows exactly how much one can endure and, according to that, measures the sufferings and pains of everyone. St. Nil Sorsky says: "When even men know how much weight a horse, or a donkey or a camel can carry and, according to that they are loading them according to their strength; when a potter knows how long to leave the clay in the kiln for it to be neither shattered nor over-baked, how could God not know how much temptation a soul can bear to make it ready and fitted for the Kingdom of Heaven?"

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Icons: Symbols of Sobriety in a Culture of Chaos

by Eric Simpson
June 23, 2010
The Huffington Post

When I converted from evangelical Christianity to the Orthodox Church in the early nineties, I not only learned to venerate and honor the saints, but also to honor matter itself. This was a new idea for me.

I hadn't been keen on venerating or honoring anyone or anything. The idea was that glory and worship belongs to God alone. Venerating saints, or kissing their images, would have been a betrayal of that principle, and a form of idolatry. But the fallacy breaks down quickly here, as any Orthodox convert for whom this has been an issue will tell you. In the first place, there is a difference between veneration and worship.

If we fail to make this distinction, then it seems rather odd for the writer of Proverbs, Paul, and others to admonish children to honor their mothers and fathers. Yet, I've never heard of anyone getting bent out of shape and decrying Mother's Day or Father's Day by claiming that honoring mom and dad is idolatrous. It's this kind of honor we are talking about, the kind that is also often given to prominent religious figures such as reformers like Calvin or Luther or historical figures like Wesley or Spurgeon or Finney. Contemporary evangelists such as Billy Graham, pastors of mega-churches, various respected writers, and Christian entertainers are often honored both privately and corporately without pause.

Yet, iconoclasm and the rejection of icons and the denial of the veneration of saints and of matter is a strong tendency in many religious traditions. Islam and a large number of Protestant communions are sometimes very zealous against using any kind of image in the context of liturgical or religious life. This is a serious mistake because it results in a harsh dichotomy between spiritual life and the material world, and leads to insobriety.

In religious life, insobriety is evident in popular movements that promote super-spiritual phenomena, born-again testimonies, and an extreme emphasis on charismatic gifts, appealing to the certainty of personal first-order experiences by themselves, which must be repeated to keep up the momentum, sometimes in new and questionable ways. Or, on the other hand, it is evident in intoxicating movements towards rationalism, scholasticism, and discursive information systems that appeal to the certainty of propositional truth claims, that then intensely trivialize the significance of an absolute claim for truth by dividing into tens of thousands of warring ideological and theological tribes.

Both extremes rest in intense subjectivity and abstraction, whether emotional or intellectual, and are cut off from the exterior world of the physical, the world of matter. Both foster self-generated certainties that are at the root of fundamentalist jihads, whether promulgated by certain fundamentalist Muslims or by demagogues such as Sarah Palin and cohorts, who sniff at intellectual nuance and at the poor, the sick, the prisoner and the hungry in the name of small-town values. The seriously dangerous doctrines of Calvinist Reconstructionists such as Gary North are rationales for the imposition of Old Testament law on society; adherents would stone to death homosexuals, women who have had abortions and rebellious children in the name of Jesus. All are examples of profound insobrieties that blow up into very distorted world-views.

Other movements, fads, fashions and popular cults prove the thesis as well: fascination with the occult, the undiscerning vacuity of the New Age with its own plethora of charismatic gurus and assorted con artists, obsession over the end of the world via the rapture or the Mayan calendar, veneration and obsession over the lives of celebrities, false meaning and surface identity found in conspiracy theories and alien abductions, an irrational emphasis on demonic possession, political ideology that shapes personal identity, obnoxious proselytism for atheism, and intense personal greed that places more value on money, status and career than on one's own children and family.

The most pervasive form of insobriety in American culture is consumerism. Focused on material security, one identifies with the assumption that things will make me happy, or that things will give life meaning, that to be entertained and to be rich and comfortable are valid personal goals. Yet, such an emphasis finally denigrates the very objects one seeks; ironically, consumerism denies and devalues the particular material substance over which it obsesses, and the obsession itself becomes a form of blind and empty worship.

The spectrum wherein this is the case is very broad, ranging from the devaluing of one's body and relationships with others through nearly ubiquitous pornography to the flippant abuse of illicit drugs to the cheapening of food by a clown's magical transformation of animals into "happy meals" and obliquely-shaped "nuggets". We ironically seek to have things for our own comfort, but we do not value the things we have. We do not honor the matter from which things are made. We throw possessions away almost as quickly as we acquire them. We value how they make us feel, or are supposed to make us feel, and when they do not meet our expectations, we go on to something else. We do not value things, and our intoxication with things ultimately leads to deforestation, toxic pollution and catastrophic oil spills -- results we detest because they threaten our insane, civilized way of life. This devolves inexorably into an actual worship of matter that is devoid of value, meaning or honor.

An icon is a sharp contrast to the pervasive Weltanschauung of consumerism here at the berth of the twenty-first century, and is a signpost that points to a way of sobriety where spirit, matter, emotion and intellect generate meaning and value. They do so because when one venerates an icon, she is not only showing reverence for the saint who is depicted there, one who has gone to great lengths to become like Christ. She is also honoring the material world itself, which has intrinsic value because it is made and redeemed by God, who uses matter for the salvation of the cosmos. As Saint John of Damascus writes:

"I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God."

And again, Saint John the Theologian writes in his epistle:

"Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world."

The integration of spirit and matter though iconography speaks to the hypostatic union of the "Word become flesh." Christ in his own person integrates and redeems the material world, eventually reuniting both spiritual and material realms and providing a vision of the totality of the human person who exists not in the spiritualized abstraction of subjectivity or in the materialist objectification of machinery, but in both spiritual and material realms at once. The elements of the material world -- the things we have and use, our bodies, and nature -- all have intrinsic value not only through creation (God calls all that he has created "good"), but in the incarnation, which is the foundation and substance of all authentic iconography.

I began to value matter for these reasons when I became Orthodox and learned to venerate icons such as the cross and the painted images of the saints. This reverence leads to truly honoring all life and to seeing the real value that exists in everything: the dignity of the poor and destitute, of the sick person who has no insurance or access to health care, of the homeless and dispossessed, of the prisoner, of the working poor, of the middle income family living month to month. I also see the equally tragic value of the truly affluent, who often live in a continuous climax of grasping, but who, like the rest of us, are never able to hold onto anything.

Although I haven't reached a pinnacle of purity of desire by any means, I have begun learning to appreciate the things I have before me and finally to recognize the intrinsic and inestimable value of all people and things, including the planet itself. This confers a serious responsibility. But it is a responsibility and ethos that I think embodies genuine sobriety. The use of icons is an affirmation of that relationship and responsibility to the world. The alternative is a distortion that implicitly denies the incarnation of Christ.

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The Life and Sayings of Saint Isaiah the Anchorite

St. Isaiah the Anchorite (Feast Day - July 3)

Regarding the life and teachings of Saint Isaiah the Anchorite, the following is told to us by Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite:

"Our Holy Father Isaiah the Anchorite lived in the year 370 AD, a contemporary of Abba Macarius the Great. Studying the divine Scriptures night and day, he drew from the founts of salvation abundant streams of spiritual wisdom and became the author of many and most beautiful words on various subjects of profit to the soul, so as to fill an entire book. From these we offer here this small discourse, for those who long to preserve their own nous. For this discourse teaches succinctly how we can repel the attacks of wicked thoughts so that our conscience does not accuse us, how to meditate [on Divine things], and how to preserve appropriately in imperturbability the three parts of the soul."

Saint Nikolai Velimirovich adds the following:

"Isaiah lived a life of asceticism in the Egyptian Scete during the fifth and sixth centuries. He is mentioned in the book of Saints Barsanuphius and John (Reply 249 and others) as a man possessing exceptional sanctity. He wrote many instructions for monks and anchorites. Of his works, very little remains and much was destroyed by the Muslims."

According to the editors of the English Philokalia, most modern historians consider him to have lived in Scetis and then moved to Palestine around 431, ‘eventually dying in great old age as a recluse near Gaza on 11 August 491 (according to others, in 489). Whichever date is preferred, it is evident that the author reflects the spirituality of the Desert Fathers of Egypt and Palestine during the fourth and fifth centuries’ (p. 21).

Below are some of the counsels of wisdom from Saint Isaiah himself:

- The mind, before it awakens from the sleep of slothfulness, resides with the demons.

- The crown of all good works consists in this: that a man place all his hope in God; that he finds recourse in Him once and for all with his heart and strength; that he be filled with compassion for all and weep before God, imploring His help and mercy.

- The sign that a sin is forgiven is that the sin does not generate any activity in your heart and that you have forgotten it to such a degree that in conversation about a similar sin you do not feel any inclination toward that sin but rather consider it something totally foreign to you. That is the sign that you are completely pardoned.

- Watch with all your strength that you do not speak one thing with your mouth and have something else in your heart.

- The crown of good works is love; the crown of passions is the justification of one's sins.

- Shut all the gates of your soul, that is the senses, so as to not be lured astray. When the nous sees that it is not dominated by anything, it prepares itself for immortality, gathering its senses together and forming them into one body.

- If your nous is freed from all hope in things visible, this is a sign that sin has died in you. If your nous is freed, the breach between it and God is eliminated.

- The first virtue is detachment, that is, death in relation to every person or thing. This produces desire for God, and this in turn gives rise to the anger that is in accordance with nature, and that flares up against all the tricks of the enemy. Then the fear of God will establish itself within us, and through this fear love will be made manifest.

- Attend to your self, lest something destructive divorce you from the love of God, and dwell in your heart. And do not become listless, saying, “How shall I guard her (the heart), since I am a sinful person?” For when a person puts aside one’s sins and turns around to God, that person’s repentance rebirths one and makes all things new.

- Holy Scripture speaks everywhere about the guarding of the heart, in both the Old and the New Testaments. David says in the Psalms: ‘O sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart?’ (Ps. 4:2. LXX), and again: ‘Their heart is vain’ (Ps. 5:9. LXX); and of those who think futile thoughts, he says: ‘For he has said in his heart, I shall not be moved’ (Ps. 10:6), and: ‘He has said in his heart, God has forgotten’ (Ps. 10:11).

A monk should consider the purpose of each text in Scripture, to whom it speaks and on what occasions. He should persevere continually in the ascetic struggle and be on his guard against the provocations of the enemy. Like a pilot steering a boat through the waves, he should hold to his course, guided by grace. Keeping his attention fixed within himself, he should commune with God in stillness, guarding his thoughts from distraction and his intellect from curiosity.

Apolytikion in the First Tone
A dweller of the desert and an angel in the flesh, and as a wonder-worker thou hast shone forth O God-bearing father Isaiah. By fasting, vigilance and prayer, heavenly gifts thou hast received. Whereby you heal all the poor in health and the souls of them that make haste to thee in faith. Glory to Him who hath given thee strength. Glory to Him who hath crowned thee. Glory to Him who made possible through thee healing for all.

Apolytikion in Plagal of the Fourth Tone
With the river of thy tears thou hast made the barren desert fertile, and with the sighs of sorrow from thy heart thou hast made thy labours to bear a hundredfold. With the glory of thy miracles thou hast become a light to the inhabited earth. O Isaiah our holy father, pray to Christ our God for the salvation of our souls.

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Prayer and Good Works Benefit The Dead

St. Nikolai Velimirovich

Love is all-powerful. It can, among other things, ease the judgment of the souls of deceased sinners. The Orthodox Church confirms this resolutely and continues to offer prayers and performs corporal works of mercy for the deceased.

Abundantly rich in every spiritual experience, the Church knows that prayers and works of mercy for the deceased helps those in the other world. Before her death, St. Athanasia the Abbess (April 12) made the sisterhood promise that for forty days after her death they would prepare a table for the poor and needy. The sisterhood carried out her command for only ten days and then ceased. The saint then appeared in the company of two angels and said to the sisters: "Why have you transgressed my commandment? Know, that through works of mercy and the prayers of the priest for the souls of the deceased in the course of forty days, invokes God's mercy. If the souls of the departed are sinful they, through this, receive forgiveness of sins from God and if they are not sinful then the corporal works of mercy performed for them serve to the salvation of the benefactor himself."

Naturally, works of mercy and prayer are thought of here in connection with great love toward the departed souls. Such works of mercy and prayer, in truth, do help.

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Panagia Galaktotrophousa (Milk-Giver) of Hilandari Monastery

The "Milk-Giver" Icon of the Mother of God was originally located at the Lavra of St Sava the Sanctified near Jerusalem. Before his death, the holy founder of the Lavra foretold that a royal pilgrim having the same name as himself would visit the Lavra. St Sava told the brethren to give the wonderworking icon to that pilgrim as a blessing.

In the thirteenth century, St Sava of Serbia visited the Lavra. As he approached the reliquary of St Sava the Sanctified, the saint's staff fell at his feet. The brethren asked the visitor his name, and he told them he was Archbishop Sava of Serbia. Obeying the instructions of their founder, the monks gave St Sava his staff, the "Milk-Giver" Icon, and the Icon "Of the Three Hands" (July 3 & June 28).

The holy archbishop took the icon to Hilandari on Mount Athos and put it on the right side of the iconostasis in the church of St Sava at the kellion of Karyes the “Typikario”, which is attached to Hilandari. St. Sava often stayed here and the icon remains there today on the sanctuary screen to the right of the Gate Beautiful, that is, in the place of the icon of Christ, which is on the left, contrary to the usual practice. The icon was later named Typikonissa, since the Rule (Typikon) of St Sava was preserved there.

This rare icon, rare because it exposes the body of the Theotokos, stresses the human dimension of the Holy Incarnation. God took on human nature, and as an infant hungered and breastfed like all babies. It shows Christ in one of His most vulnerable moments, sustained and nourished by His mother in a special bond.

The Hilandari "Milk-Giver" Icon is commemorated on July 3 and January 12.

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Concern For The Good Of All People

by St. Nikolai Velimirovich

Concern for the good of all people! That concern filled the exalted spirits and noble hearts of the holy apostles. Writing about the Apostle Paul, St. John Chrysostom calls him: "The universal father of the world." "As though he", says Chrysostom, "gave birth to the entire world that he anxiously labored and tried to bring all into the Kingdom."

Indeed, most exalted is this title: "Universal father of the world" and if this title could be attributed to anyone, other than God, it could only be attributed to the apostles of Christ. By their parental concern for the entire world, they in truth, were "the universal fathers of the world."

There are many mothers in the world who care less about their own children then the apostles were concerned about the good of their persecutors and adversaries. The Apostle Peter twice saved his most bitter adversary, Simon the Magician, from death: once when the people wanted to burn him and another time when a dog wanted to tear him to pieces. Just think, how the world repaid these their benefactors! As if they were the greatest robbers and criminals.

O how true are the words of St. Cyril who says: "As long as we are in the body, the same occurs to us Christians as to pagans, the difference is only in the spirit."

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Moralistic Therapeutic Deism--the New American Religion

Apr. 18 2005
By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
The Christian Post

When Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by American teenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."

As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these: 1. "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth." 2. "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions." 3. "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself." 4. "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem." 5. "Good people go to heaven when they die."

That, in sum, is the creed to which much adolescent faith can be reduced. After conducting more than 3,000 interviews with American adolescents, the researchers reported that, when it came to the most crucial questions of faith and beliefs, many adolescents responded with a shrug and "whatever."

As a matter of fact, the researchers, whose report is summarized in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Eyes of American Teenagers by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, found that American teenagers are incredibly inarticulate about their religious beliefs, and most are virtually unable to offer any serious theological understanding. As Smith reports, "To the extent that the teens we interviewed did manage to articulate what they understood and believed religiously, it became clear that most religious teenagers either do not really comprehend what their own religious traditions say they are supposed to believe, or they do understand it and simply do not care to believe it. Either way, it is apparent that most religiously affiliated U.S. teens are not particularly interested in espousing and upholding the beliefs of their faith traditions, or that their communities of faith are failing in attempts to educate their youth, or both."

As the researchers explained, "For most teens, nobody has to do anything in life, including anything to do with religion. 'Whatever' is just fine, if that's what a person wants."

The casual "whatever" that marks so much of the American moral and theological landscapes--adolescent and otherwise--is a substitute for serious and responsible thinking. More importantly, it is a verbal cover for an embrace of relativism. Accordingly, "most religious teenager's opinions and views--one can hardly call them worldviews--are vague, limited, and often quite at variance with the actual teachings of their own religion."

The kind of responses found among many teenagers indicates a vast emptiness at the heart of their understanding. When a teenager says, "I believe there is a God and stuff," this hardly represents a profound theological commitment.

Amazingly, teenagers are not inarticulate in general. As the researchers found, "Many teenagers know abundant details about the lives of favorite musicians and television stars or about what it takes to get into a good college, but most are not very clear on who Moses and Jesus were." The obvious conclusion: "This suggests that a strong, visible, salient, or intentional faith is not operating in the foreground of most teenager's lives."

One other aspect of this study deserves attention at this point. The researchers, who conducted thousands of hours of interviews with a carefully identified spectrum of teenagers, discovered that for many of these teens, the interview itself was the first time they had ever discussed a theological question with an adult. What does this say about our churches? What does this say about this generation of parents?

In the end, this study indicates that American teenagers are heavily influenced by the ideology of individualism that has so profoundly shaped the larger culture. This bleeds over into a reflexive non-judgmentalism and a reluctance to suggest that anyone might actually be wrong in matters of faith and belief. Yet, these teenagers are unable to live with a full-blown relativism.

The researchers note that many responses fall along very moralistic lines--but they reserve their most non-judgmental attitudes for matters of theological conviction and belief. Some go so far as to suggest that there are no "right" answers in matters of doctrine and theological conviction.

The "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" that these researchers identify as the most fundamental faith posture and belief system of American teenagers appears, in a larger sense, to reflect the culture as a whole. Clearly, this generalized conception of a belief system is what appears to characterize the beliefs of vast millions of Americans, both young and old.

This is an important missiological observation--a point of analysis that goes far beyond sociology. As Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton explained, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism "is about inculcating a moralistic approach to life. It teaches that central to living a good and happy life is being a good, moral person. That means being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, responsible, at work on self-improvement, taking care of one's health, and doing one's best to be successful." In a very real sense, that appears to be true of the faith commitment, insofar as this can be described as a faith commitment, held by a large percentage of Americans. These individuals, whatever their age, believe that religion should be centered in being "nice"--a posture that many believe is directly violated by assertions of strong theological conviction.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is also "about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents." As the researchers explained, "This is not a religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of sovereign divinity, of steadfastly saying one's prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God's love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of social justice, et cetera. Rather, what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people."

In addition, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism presents a unique understanding of God. As Smith explains, this amorphous faith "is about belief in a particular kind of God: one who exists, created the world, and defines our general moral order, but not one who is particularly personally involved in one's affairs--especially affairs in which one would prefer not to have God involved. Most of the time, the God of this faith keeps a safe distance."

Smith and his colleagues recognize that the deity behind Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is very much like the deistic God of the 18th-century philosophers. This is not the God who thunders from the mountain, nor a God who will serve as judge. This undemanding deity is more interested in solving our problems and in making people happy. "In short, God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process."

Obviously, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is not an organized faith. This belief system has no denominational headquarters and no mailing address. Nevertheless, it has millions and millions of devotees across the United States and other advanced cultures, where subtle cultural shifts have produced a context in which belief in such an undemanding deity makes sense. Furthermore, this deity does not challenge the most basic self-centered assumptions of our postmodern age. Particularly when it comes to so-called "lifestyle" issues, this God is exceedingly tolerant and this religion is radically undemanding.

As sociologists, Smith and his team suggest that this Moralistic Therapeutic Deism may now constitute something like a dominant civil religion that constitutes the belief system for the culture at large. Thus, this basic conception may be analogous to what other researchers have identified as "lived religion" as experienced by the mainstream culture.

Moving to even deeper issues, these researches claim that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is "colonizing" Christianity itself, as this new civil religion seduces converts who never have to leave their congregations and Christian identification as they embrace this new faith and all of its undemanding dimensions.

Consider this remarkable assessment: "Other more accomplished scholars in these areas will have to examine and evaluate these possibilities in greater depth. But we can say here that we have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually [only] tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but is rather substantially morphed into Christianity's misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."

They argue that this distortion of Christianity has taken root not only in the minds of individuals, but also "within the structures of at least some Christian organizations and institutions."

How can you tell? "The language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, . . . and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward."

Does this mean that America is becoming more secularized? Not necessarily. These researchers assert that Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith.

This radical transformation of Christian theology and Christian belief replaces the sovereignty of God with the sovereignty of the self. In this therapeutic age, human problems are reduced to pathologies in need of a treatment plan. Sin is simply excluded from the picture, and doctrines as central as the wrath and justice of God are discarded as out of step with the times and unhelpful to the project of self-actualization.

All this means is that teenagers have been listening carefully. They have been observing their parents in the larger culture with diligence and insight. They understand just how little their parents really believe and just how much many of their churches and Christian institutions have accommodated themselves to the dominant culture. They sense the degree to which theological conviction has been sacrificed on the altar of individualism and a relativistic understanding of truth. They have learned from their elders that self-improvement is the one great moral imperative to which all are accountable, and they have observed the fact that the highest aspiration of those who shape this culture is to find happiness, security, and meaning in life.

This research project demands the attention of every thinking Christian. Those who are prone to dismiss sociological analysis as irrelevant will miss the point. We must now look at the United States of America as missiologists once viewed nations that had never heard the gospel. Indeed, our missiological challenge may be even greater than the confrontation with paganism, for we face a succession of generations who have transformed Christianity into something that bears no resemblance to the faith revealed in the Bible. The faith "once delivered to the saints" is no longer even known, not only by American teenagers, but by most of their parents. Millions of Americans believe they are Christians, simply because they have some historic tie to a Christian denomination or identity.

We now face the challenge of evangelizing a nation that largely considers itself Christian, overwhelmingly believes in some deity, considers itself fervently religious, but has virtually no connection to historic Christianity. Christian Smith and his colleagues have performed an enormous service for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in identifying Moralistic Therapeutic Deism as the dominant religion of this American age. Our responsibility is to prepare the church to respond to this new religion, understanding that it represents the greatest competitor to biblical Christianity. More urgently, this study should warn us all that our failure to teach this generation of teenagers the realities and convictions of biblical Christianity will mean that their children will know even less and will be even more readily seduced by this new form of paganism. This study offers irrefutable evidence of the challenge we now face. As the motto reminds us, "Knowledge is power."

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