New Saints

By Monk Moses the Athonite

Our age is often criticized for many reasons, fairly or unfairly. Yet truly difficult times hide treasures, generating small or great saints. Besides the officially recognized saints, there exist hidden saints throughout the entire twentieth century.

The venerable Methodia of Kimolos (†1908), Saint John of Kronstadt (†1908), the bishop of Zilon Euthymios (†1921), the bishop of Iconium Prokopios (†1922), the bishop of Kydonion Gregory (†1922), the bishop of Moschonision Ambrose (†1922), the bishop of Smyrna Chrysostomos (†1922), the wondrous Elder of Optina Monastery Venerable Anatoly (†1922), and many other venerable ones and new martyrs of Russia, Georgia, Estonia, Poland and other places in Europe, Asia and America.

In the twentieth century we also have the following saints: Arsenios of Cappadocia (†1924), Nicholas Planas of Athens (†1932), Silouan the Athonite (†1938), the venerable Savva of Kalymnos (†1948), the venerable George Karslides of Drama (†1959), the hieromonk Anthimos Vagianos of Chios (†1960), the archbishop of Shanghai John Maximovitch the Wonderworker(†1966), the Serbian hieromonk Justin Popovich (†1979), and the hieromartyr Philoumenos of Jerusalem (†1979).

A reputation of holiness and high virtuous life belongs also to these blessed elders: Archimandrite Ieronymos of Simonopetra (†1957), Joseph the Hesychast and Cave-dweller (†1959), Abbot Amphilochios Makris of Patmos (†1970), the abbot of Longovardos on Paros Philotheos Zervakos (†1980), the abbot of the Monastery of the Venerable David in Evia Iakovos Tsalikes (†1991), the discerning and clairvoyant Elder Porphyrios Kafsokalivites (†1995), the wise Elder Sophrony Sakharov (†1993), the known-to-all and charismatic monk Paisios the Athonite (†1994), the obedient and prayerful Ephraim of Katounakia (†1998), and others.

Holiness-bearing monasticism challenges us and invites us to stand more heroically, to greater frugality, simplicity, modesty and humility. We are obliged to maintain a solid, strong and pure spirit of Orthodox monasticism at all costs. We are called to teach the patience of the Elders of old.

The greatness of our Church is that it generates saints also today. Holiness will be needed much more in the 21st century world. Elder Paisios the Athonite would say that it is impossible to not keep monasticism intact. Holiness is not a forgotten vision or a false hope. Happiness-seeking, secularism, and laziness prevent the emergence of the tree of holiness. The contemporary spirit of having good times, of rushing, of effortless and trouble free work, and superficiality removes holiness.

The purpose of life is holiness. Holiness is the chief issue. Approaching holiness gives peace, joy, gentleness, patience, temperance, and spiritual gifts. The catalogue of new saints is growing also in the 21st century. Sometimes holiness hides itself in places where you would never expect, in cities and villages and not only on Mount Athos. Monasticism is booming today. We all pray that it continues to produce saints who walk the traditional path. Saint Silouan the Athonite would say according to his experience: "The Lord loves us exceedingly and through our unworthy prayers we converse with Him and repent and glorify Him. It is impossible to write how much the Lord loves us."

Through the Holy Spirit you know this love and the soul of one who prays knows the Holy Spirit.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos

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On Personal and Collective Repentance

From an interview with Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos:

Question: Furthermore, remembering that the Gospel starts with the message of repentance, a question could be asked whether repentance is only a personal experience or is there such a thing as collective repentance where an internal transformation of entire peoples could take place? Can we find examples of this in the history of the Church?

Answer: Repentance is the basic prerequisite for experiencing the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ began His teaching with repentance, because He continued the dialogue with man which was interrupted in Paradise. There, Adam with his sin discontinued his dialogue with God and now Christ with repentance started the dialogue for the reestablishment of man’s relationship with God.

In Greek the word repentance (“metanoia”) denotes the change of the nous. According to the Orthodox teaching, the nous is the eye of the soul and is not identified with the reasonable faculty. The nous is distinguished from reason. With sin, man’s nous is darkened, so with repentance his illumination begins. This is why the Orthodox neptic teaching of the Church maintains that the road to God is marked by these three words: purification, illumination and deification. The heart is purified from the passions with purification, the nous is illumined and begins to pray unceasingly with illumination, and in deification one beholds the glory of God.

Therefore, in principle, repentance is a personal experience. But it is also a collective experience, because when entire local Churches lose the truth and their pastoral mission they must repent. This is why we talk about theological and ecclesiological sins. This is how we should interpret God’s epistles to the angels of the Church, as described in the first chapters of the Revelation of John.

For this reason we attach great importance to heresy and schism. Because through heresy we are cut off from the truth revealed by Christ and through schism we break apart the Church of Christ, with terrible consequences for our life, because, as Saint John Chrysostom says, not even the martyrdom of blood can save a man who molests the Church of Christ.

Therefore, collective repentance is the return to the doctrinal truth of the Church and our reintegration with the unity of the local Churches.

From Sobornost, September 2006.

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Maurice Banjoko – ‘How I Became Orthodox’

Maurice Banjoko from Nigeria, an Investment Consultant, in his interview with Pemptousia talks about how he became Orthodox.

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Martyrs and Confessors of Orthodoxy in China

The following article was published in the theological periodical Ecclesiastical Truth, Constantinople, March 23, 1901 - less than a year after the incident.

As is well known, a severe persecution broke out in China against all Christians in general, and in particular against those of the Orthodox mission. Sufficient details of this persecution are already known. Let eyewitnesses inform us of the atrocities in China, since the horrors recall those such as suffered under Nero and Diocletian. We learn from a recent letter in the Moscow News of the Archimandrite Innocent, leader of the Russian Orthodox Mission in China (and as is already known for a long time, the Russian Orthodox Mission is active both in China and Japan), that the recently-formed Orthodox community in China now has its martyrs and confessors of the faith, since they recall the martyric sufferings of the ancient Christian Church. A feeling of holy emotion is truly born in the soul of the reader before such exemplars on behalf of Christ's name in the days of their self-sacrifice; let godly zeal and pious inspiration not at all be separated.

June 11, 1900 was, above all, a day of martyrdom for Orthodox Chinese in Beijing. Some of them, at the horrible prospect of such death and suffering, renounced their faith in Christ and sacrificed to idols, so that they might save their lives. Nevertheless, others boldly confessed Christ by undergoing sufferings and death. The end was frightful for such people.

According to the testimony of non-Christian eyewitnesses themselves, some of the Chinese Orthodox faced martyrdom with amazing self-sacrifice. Paul Wang, the Chinese Orthodox catechist, submitted to martyrdom with a prayer on his lips. Ia Wen, the teacher from the Mission School, was tortured twice. At first, the Boxers mutilated her and then threw her on the ground half-dead. When she recovered, a non-Christian watchman heard her groaning and carried her to his station. A short time later, she was subjected again to new tortures that resulted in her death. But in both instances, she rejoiced and confessed the name of Christ in the face of her torturers. After the frightful events of that first night of persecution, peace-loving Chinese citizens found an eight-year-old boy, John Tsi, son of the priest who was likewise murdered,[1] mercilessly mutilated by the Boxers. To their question whether he was suffering much, the boy replied with a smile on his lips: "Suffering on behalf of Christ is no burden."

The blood of the martyrs has always been seed from which flourishing Christian communities have grown again in non-Christian countries. We pray then that this frightful persecution may at length be a cause for encouragement for both like-believing missions and the little Orthodox flock in China and become, on the contrary, a starting point for greater zeal and a broader expansion of the Kingdom of God in those countries, to the glory of the Scriptural saying: "My gospel will be preached in all the world" (Matthew 26:13),[2] and again: "Many will come from East and West and recline with Abraham and Isaac in the kingdom of heaven."[3]

Orthodox in America — The number of Orthodox from different nationalities in America at present amounts to 29,949. To serve their religious needs, there are altogether forty-two churches and fifty-seven chapels.

I. P.

[1] Mitrophan Tsi-Chung (1855-1900).

[2] Cf. Matthew 24:14.

[3] Matthew 8:11.

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The Child Elias Healed By St. Luke of Simferopol

On the afternoon of May 28th in 2012 in the Church of St. Luke the Physician, which is under construction in the Monastery of Panagia Dobra in Beroia, there was celebrated the Hierarchical Vespers for the Feast of the Translation of the Holy Relic from Simferopol in Crimea to the Monastery. It was officiated by the Bishop of Nazianzus Theodoret, who spoke.

The morning of May 29th there was celebrated the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy in which the Metropolitan of Beroia, Naoussa and Campania Panteleimon was attended by His Grace Theodoret bishop of Nazianzus, Demetrios of Thermi, and many priests who came to honor and receive a blessing from St. Luke.

Shortly before the end of the Service, Archimandrite Sosipatros Pitoulias, at the instigation of the Bishop of Beroia, recounted how Saint Luke the Physician healed his little nephew (photo).

Father Sosipatros was visibly touched as he began to narrate the miraculous incident, saying:

"Little Elias was a few months old and the doctors diagnosed him as having leukemia. I along with Father Gregory Maza did shifts in the hospital where he was sick. On the eve of the Dormition of St. Luke, i.e. June 10th, Father Gregory left the hospital late in the evening to rest and left me in his post. After a while he called me with a frightened and yet happy voice, saying: 'Father Sosipatros, St. Luke did his miracle again!' What was done? When he left the hospital he took a taxi to take him to the home where he lived. Just before they reached the house the unknown taxi driver asked Father Gregory: 'Father, are you all right?' Father Gregory replied awkwardly: 'All is well.' But insistent the taxi driver asked again: 'Father, are you all right?'. Father Gregory not wanting to continue the conversation with the unknown taxi driver again replied curtly: 'All is well'. And then the taxi driver said to him: 'Father Gregory, the child you are caring for that is not yours will be fine!'. Father Gregory was in a daze for a moment, and in addressing the stranger asked how did he know about the child? About me? About all of this? And the taxi driver replied: 'Do not ask a lot Father; the child you care for, but that is not yours, will be well!' With these words the taxi stopped and the shocked Fr. Gregory gave the appropriate cash to the stranger who knew everything. The taxi driver took the money, gave the change, and disappeared. I do not know if the taxi driver was St. Luke or another Saint who spoke through this man, what I know is that little Elias became well!"

The reaction of the audience to this story of Fr. Sosipatros was moving. Little Elias was in church with his parents, still alive, by a miracle of St. Luke.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos

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St. Theodore the Studite: On Bartholomew the Apostle

By St. Theodore the Studite

The blessed apostle Bartholomew preached first in Lycaonia, and after in India, and at the last in Alban, a city of Great Armenia, and there he was first flayed and afterward his head smitten off, and there he was buried.

And when he was sent by our Lord to preach, as I suppose, he heard how our Lord said to him: "Go, my disciple, to preach, void out of this country, and go fight and be capax of [valiant in] perils. I have first accomplished and finished the works of My Father, and am first witness; fill thou the vessel that is necessary and follow thy Master, love thy Lord, give thy blood for His blood, and thy flesh for His flesh, and suffer that which He had suffered; let thine armor be debonair in thy sweatings, and suffer sweetly among wicked people and be patient among them that perish thee."

And the apostle recoiled not, but as a true servant and obeissant to his master went forth rejoicing, and as a light of God illumining in darkness the work of holy Church, like as the blessed St. Austin witnesseth in his book, that, like a tiller of Jesus Christ, he profiteth in spiritual tilling.

St. Peter the Apostle taught the nations, but St. Bartholomew did great miracles. Peter was crucified the head downward, and Bartholomew was flayed quick, and had his head smitten off. And they twain increased greatly the Church by the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

And right as a harp giveth a right sweet sound of many strings, in like wise all the apostles gave sweet melody of the unity divine, and were established by the King of kings. And they departed among them throughout all the world, and the place of Armenia was the place of Bartholomew, that is from Ejulath unto Gabaoth. There thou mayst see him, with the plough of his tongue, ear [plough] the fields unreasonable, sowing in the deepness of the heart the word of the faith, and in planting the vines of our Lord and trees of paradise. And to everyone each setting medicine for the remedies of the passions, rooting out pernicious thorns, cutting down trees of felony, and setting about hedges of doctrine.

But what reward yielded the tyrants to their curate? They gave to him dishonour for honour, cursing for benediction, pains for gifts, tribulation for rest, and right bitter death for restful life. And since that he had suffered many torments, he was of them discoriate and flayed quick, and died not, and yet for all that he had them not in despite that slew him, but admonished them by miracles, and taught them by demonstrances, that did him harm. But there was nothing that might refrain their bestial thoughts, and withdraw them from harm.

What did they afterwards? They enforced them against the holy body, and the maladied and sick men refused their physician and healer, the city refused him that illumined their blindness, governed them that were in peril, and gave life to them that were dead.

And how cast they him out? Certainly, they threw the body into the sea in a chest of lead, and that chest came from the region of Armenia with the chests of four other martyrs, for they did also miracles and were thrown with him into the sea. And the four went before a great space of the sea, and did service to the apostles like as servants in a manner, so far that they came into the parts of Sicily in an isle that is named Lipari, like as it was showed to a bishop of Ostia which then was present. And these right rich treasures came to a right poor woman. And these right precious margarets [pearls] came to one not noble, the bright shining light came to one right heavy.

And then the other four came in to other lands, and left the holy apostle in that isle, and he left the other behind him.

And that one which was named Papian went into a city of Sicily, and he sent another, named Lucian, into the city of Messina. And the other twain were sent into the land of Calabria, St. Gregory into the city of Columna, and Achate into a city named Chale, where yet at this day they shine by their merits.

And then was the body of the apostle received with hymns, louings, and candles honourably, and there was made and builded a fair church in the honour of him.

And the mountain of Vulcan is nigh to that isle, and was to it much grievous because it received fire, the which mountain was withdrawn by the merits of this holy saint from that isle seven miles, without to be seen of any body, and was suspended toward the sea. And yet appeareth it at this day to them that see it, as it were a figure of fire fleeing away.

Now then, therefore, I salute thee, Bartholomew, blessed of blessed saints, which art the shining light of the holy Church, fisher of fishes reasonable, hurter of the devil which hurted the world by his theft. Enjoy thee, sun of the world, illuminating all earthly things, mouth of God, fiery tongue pronouncing wisdom, fountain springing good things, full of health, which hallowest the sea by thy goings and ways not removable, which makest the earth red with thy blood, which repairest in heaviness, shining in the middle of the divine company clear in the resplendishour of glory. And enjoy thee in the gladness of joy insatiable. Amen.

Source: Englished by William Caxton, 1483

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The Mission of Saints Pantaenus and Bartholomew in India

1. Mission of Pantaenus in India

About a hundred and twenty years (ca.180 or 190) after the traditional date of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas the Apostle, a second Christian mission is reported to have reached India. The great Church in Alexandria, the center of Egyptian Christianity, sent its most famous scholar, Pantaenus, head of the theological School in that city, “to preach Christ to the Brahmans and philosophers there”, wrote Saint Jerome in the fifth century.1

A deputation from India reached Alexandria some time in 179 or 189 AD. Impressed by the erudition of Pantaenus, according to Saint Jerome, they asked Demetrius to send him to India for discussions with their own Hindu philosophers and it is to the credit of the good bishop that he judged the Christian world mission to be no less urgent a priority then the advancement of Christian learning. Without hesitation he took his most famous scholar from the theological school and sent him as a missionary to the East. Eusebius also gives an early account of this mission.

Both Eusebius and Saint Jerome have reported that Pantaenus found the Gospel of Matthew reported to have been left there in India by Saint Bartholomew. Some writers has suggested that having difficulty with the language of Saint Thomas Christians, Pantaenus misinterpreted their reference to Mar Thoma (Bishop Thomas) as Bar Tolmai (the Hebrew name of Bartholomew). Some others say Eusebius and Saint Jerome confused India with Arabia or Persia as was done by some other classical writers.

Interestignly, the pupils and successors of Pantaenus, Clement and Origen, write about India as if they know more of that land than passing myths and in no way confused it with Arabia and Persia. They may have heard this from Pantaenus himself. They speak of “Indian Brahmans” and “gymnosophists” and Clement writes discerningly of the difference between “Sarmanane” and “Brahmans” describing the former in terms that suggest the “hermits” or “holy men of India”.2

2.Mission of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle in India

Two ancient testimonies exist about the mission of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle in India. These are of Eusebius of Caesarea (early fourth century) and of Saint Jerome (late fourth century). Both these refer to this tradition while speaking of the reported visit of Pantaenus to India in the second century.

According to Eusebius, Pantaenus, “is said to have gone among the Indians, where a report is that he discovered the Gospel according to Matthew among some there who knew Christ, which had anticipated his arrival: Bartholomew, one of the Apostles, had preached to them and had left them the writings of Matthew in Hebrew letters, which writing they preserved until the aforesaid time”

Saint Jerome would have that Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, sent him to India, at the request of legates of that nation. In India Pantaenus “found that Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, had preached the advent of the Lord Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew, and on his return to Alexandria he brought this with him written in Hebrew characters.”

In these testimonies Eusebius appears to be not quite sure of what’s reported. Saint Jerome, while writing to Marcellus, acknowledges the primacy of Saint Thomas, the Apostle in India.

“He ( Jesus) was present in all places with Thomas in India, with Peter in Rome, with Paul in Illyria, with Titus in Crete, Andrew in Greece, with each apostle and apostolic man in his own separate region.“3

3. Opinion of Authors about Saint Bartholomew the Apostle's Mission in India

Previously the consensus among scholars was against the apostolate of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle in India. The majority of the scholars are skeptical about the mission of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle in India. Stililingus (1703), Neande (1853), Hunter (1886), Rae (1892), Zaleski (1915) are the authors who supported the Apostolate of Saint Bartholomew in India. Scholars such as Sollerius (1669), Carpentier (1822), Harnack (1903), Medlycott (1905), Mingana (1926), Thurston (1933), Attwater (1935) etc. do not support this hypothesis. The main argument is that the India Eusebius and Jerome refer to here should be Ethiopia or Arabia Felix.

4. Kalyan – The Field of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle's Mission

The recent studies of Perumalil and Moraes hold that the Bombay region on the Konkan coast, a region which have been known after the ancient town Kalyan, was the field of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle’s missionary activities and his martyrdom.

The town of Kalyan, was an ancient port and it is supposed to be the Kalliana, the traveler Cosmas Indicopleustes visited in the 6th century as he reports in his “Christian Typography”.

According to Pseudo-Sophronius (7th century) Saint Bartholomew preached to the “Indians who are called Happy” and according to the Greek tradition the Apostle went to ”India Felix”. The word Kalyan means “felix” or “happy” and it is argued that the Kalyna region came to be known to the foreign writers “India Felix” and its inhabitants, the Indians, “called the happy”.

Perumalil interprets the “India Citerior” of the Hieronymian Martyrology as Western India, and the “India” of the Passio Bartholmei as the Maratha Country.4

There are no local traditions about the mission of Pantaenus or the Apostolate of Bartholomew the Apostle in India. According to Moraes this is due to the fact that the history of the Christians of Bartholomew got intermingled with that of the Thomas Christians (the Syriac tradition is that Saint Bartholomew preached in Armenia). According to Perumalil, Bartholomew Christians continued as a separate community till the coming of the Portuguese and got merged with the Christians of Bombay.5

Notes:

1. Jerome - Epistola LXX ad Magnum oratorem urbis Romae

2. Clement - Stromata, 15

3. Jerome – Epistola LIX ad Marcellam

4. Perimalil - The Apostles in India

5. Moraes - A History of Christianity in India AD 52-1542

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On Nominal Orthodox Christians and Clergy

From an interview with Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos:

Question: A key problem faced by the Church in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe is, of course, the question of the so called nominal Christians. Namely, a large proportion of the populace of these countries formally declare themselves Orthodox Christians, but in spite of that they do not confess the Orthodox faith (instead they confess either agnosticism or atheism), and subsequently, they don’t partake in the prayer life and liturgical life of the Church, and the only thing seen by them in Orthodoxy is mere folklore and ethnic mark. What stand should be upheld towards those people, especially if it is taken into consideration that quite often they aspire to influence and control the Church? Finally, in which way should the Church itself approach these nominal Christians in order that they be gathered in its bosom?

Answer: The “nominal Christians” or the “nominal clerics” is a basic problem for the Church, because they cause Church schisms with their various passions. They consider the Church a social institution, a social organization, a religion, even at best, a religious association or a national institution.

It has to become clear, as I said before, that the Church is the “Body of Christ and a communion of deification”, according to the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas. It is the Body of Christ, because its Head, Christ, is closely tied with its members through the Sacraments and the Doctrines. It is also a communion of deification, because its members participate, in various degrees, to purification, illumination and deification.

Those members of the Church that do not live within this perspective are gradually led to agnosticism and atheism and are secular members, ailing members of the Church, irrespective of whether they pretend to belong to the Church.

We have to realize that the Church is a spiritual hospital and not a competitive field for passions to dominate. The saints are the physicians, and Christ is the physician par excellence and the Shepherds who work in the name of Christ and within the framework of the saints perform a healing function. All Christians must be in the process of being healed.

In this context, the Church cannot be transformed to folklorism and nationalism. St. Paul defines clearly the task of the Christians when he writes: “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5).

In the end, however, the Church heals Christians with its pastoral care, regardless of their spiritual age. What is required is that clerics know the method of healing.

From Sobornost, September 2006.

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We Are Most Likely To Die On Our Birthday

Be careful blowing out the candles. Scientists have found we are more likely to die on our birthday than any other day.

June 11, 2012

The Telegraph

Researchers who studied more than two million people over 40 years found a rise in deaths from heart attacks, strokes, falls and suicides.

William Shakespeare died on his birthday on April 23 1616. The actress Ingrid Bergman also died on her birthday, in August 1982.

On average, people over the age of 60 were 14 per cent more likely to die on their birthdays.

Heart attacks rose 18.6 per cent on birthdays and were higher for men and women while strokes were up 21.5 per cent - mostly in women.

Dr Vladeta Ajdacic-Gross of the University of Zurich, said: 'Birthdays end lethally more frequently than might be expected.' He added that risk of birthday death rose as people got older.

Canadian data also showed that strokes were more likely on birthdays, especially among patients with high blood pressure.

There was a 34.9 per cent rise in suicides, 28.5 per cent rise in accidental deaths not related to cars, and a 44 per cent rise in deaths from falls on birthdays.

Psychologist prof Richard Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire, said: "It seems to be a valid finding.

"There are two camps - one is the camp that suggests you eat too much and your getting on a bit and that causes you to die.

"The other is a placebo effect. You are knife-edged on death. And you kept yourself going until your birthday. You think 'that's it I've had enough I'm out of here'."

Dr Lewis Halsey, of the University of Roehampton, said: 'One interesting finding is that more suicides happen on birthdays, though only in men.

'Perhaps men are more likely to make a statement about their unhappiness when they think people will be taking more notice of them.'

The study is published in the journal Annals of Epidemiology.

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A Meditation for the End of the Pentecostarion

By Sergei V. Bulgakov

With this Sunday, the services according to the Pentecostarion are concluded. The conclusion of the Pentecostarion services with the commemoration in honor of all the Saints, as His Grace Innocent,  Archbishop of Chersonese (refer to the Works of Innocent, Archbishop of Chersonese, Vol. 1, pp. 519-521 [Sochineniia Innokentiia, Archiep. Khersonskago, t. I, str. 519-521]) teaches, is the most suitable conclusion to the celebrations of the Lord. It is the goal for which our Savior left the earth and ascended to heaven and for which the Holy Spirit left heaven and descended to earth, - this high goal consists in nothing else than, as in the sanctification of the sinful human race, in leading all of us to heaven. But the choirs of the Saints of God make up the assembly of indisputable witnesses that this blessed goal be achieved, that the Savior who is ascended from us has definitely prepared a place for all His followers, that the Comforter who is descended to us really combines with the possibility that very carnal people may reside in the mansions of the Heavenly Father. How is it that all who were holy to God, now blessed with us, are not servile to us men? Because their glory is the glory of the Redeemer Son and the Consecrator Spirit: without the merits of the Son heaven would not be opened to any of them, but without the grace of the Spirit not any of them could possibly enter into the opened heaven. Therefore the present festival in honor of all the Saints also consists of the most natural and pleasing conclusion of the festivals of the Lord. Therefore it itself is the direct fruit of events remembered in them. But the marvelous sequence and the divinely-wise order of the festivals of the Holy Church, naturally, motivates us to ask ourselves: is there such a sequence of this kind of holy order even in our celebrations?

We have now passed through the entire cycle of celebrations, we have reached the end of festivals according to the season; but has their end and intention actually been accomplished by this very action? Have we come nearer to what the main end of all festivals and establishments of the Church consists in, all the mysteries and all its services, all our grateful and natural life that is for our sanctification in Christ? Now already completing the memory of all the Saints, can we say about ourselves, that we have become freer of all that is sinful, purer from all that is earthly and corruptible, one in spirit with all that is spiritual and heavenly? This is the natural and necessary fruit which the Church assumed to now see in us after so many celebrations of the light! She expected that the suffering of the Lord would shake the heart most persistent in sin, that with His Resurrection everything that has not yet had time to be completely suppressed by sin would revive in our spirit, that with His ascension to heaven the thought and wish for heaven would arise in the most indifferent soul, that with the descent to earth of the Comforter the weakest would convert and venture to walk the way of faith and love. Were these many expectations fulfilled? Is the harvest in us great after so long a sowing? What does our Lord now see nestling close to us from the height of the glory of His Saints? Although He sees some conformity with that great asceticism, is it He who lifted them up for us, being on earth? What did the Holy Spirit, who descended from the Father for us, find in us? Will they now find much joy in us, not looking at our celebration in their honor and our holy brethren in heaven? When we celebrate in their honor even they undoubtedly do not remain idle. We remember their acts and deeds, and they will examine our morals, paradigm of life and action. Seeing their labors and victories over the enemies of salvation, we should be calmed in spirit. Seeing our falling and changes in truth, they should be distressed about us. What, if they see nothing much in us, except the falling and changes? After this what does our celebration in honor of all the Saints mean for those very saints, if not the day of complaint against all of us sinners? Such are our festivals! The cycle of church festivals is bright and magnificent; the cycle of our festivals occurs in darkness and ugliness. In the church cycle the very laments terminate in the spiritual celebration; in our cycle the very celebrations often lead to spiritual laments. In the same vein, can we be glad when our Lord who ascended up for us sees that His suffering on the cross remains without any fruit for many of us, and that many of His followers live as if He did not also come for their salvation on earth? Can we be comforted when the Spirit Comforter sees how many will not remember anything about His presence among us, constantly breathe the spirit of the world and walk contrary to His inspiration of grace? Can our heavenly brethren accept our magnifications with joy when they find that our earthly brethren madly waste their precious grace inherited generally by all men, do not at all correspond to their heavenly nobility and walk in every evil, contrary to the will of the Heavenly Father? After this one remedy to make the present festival pleasing to our Savior, for the Spirit Comforter, and for all the Saints is to acquire for ourselves their lament for our sins. Repentance suddenly changes everything. When we shall begin to lament before God, then the inhabitants of heaven will be glad again, like they lamented when we are betrayed to temporal and sinful pleasures. But is the lamentation about sins acceptable for the conclusion of the celebration of the Church? For the righteous, certainly, it would not be acceptable; but for the sinners only more acceptable. The sick are also treated in the feasts; and what illness is more dangerous than sin? However, is what began the cycle of the sacred days now concluded? Is it not the memory of the Fall of Adam, and we who are all his descendants in the presence of Adam? Therefore is it not better to conclude it, not by our ascending, but through our repentance from our own fall? Thus the end will return to the beginning, and will return us to that blessed and unoriginate beginning, in which the souls of all the holy brethren are now blessed. "Do not hesitate", the Holy Scripture inspires each of us, "to turn to the Lord, nor postpone it from day to day"; "do not be confident of cleansing that you add sin to sin". "For suddenly the wrath of the Lord will go forth, and during the time of punishment you will perish" (Sir. 5:5-7).

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First Sunday After Pentecost or All Saints Sunday

By Sergei V. Bulgakov

In the services for this Sunday over and above the usual glorifications of the resurrection of Christ, the choirs of all the Saints pleasing to God, who have shone through faith in the coming and the arrival of the promised Redeemer, together with those who exercised asceticism in piety are glorified. In the church hymns we magnify: patriarchs, forefathers, prophets, apostles, martyrs, hieromartyrs, confessors, hierarchs, venerable and righteous fathers and mothers and all the Saints, who from the ages were well pleasing to God, and "above all" "our Sovereign Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-virgin Mary". In glorifying their memory, let us also ask their prayerful petitions before God for us. Since "by the Holy Spirit is every soul enlivened", i.e. is cleansed, renewed and alas settled, and since the divine grace of the Holy Spirit is consecrated, it has made our first-born brethren, written in the heavens, and made them our worthy prayer books before God, that, they have celebrated the most glorious descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and who glorified His beneficial power, consecrating the souls of all believers, then to properly glorify also those holy foster children of the grace of God, who were consecrated and perfected by the power of the All-holy and Life-creating Spirit of the Lord. This commemoration also fulfills the honoring and glorifying of those pleasing to God, who, owing to their numbers and their not being known, special commemorations were not established for them. Glorifying the saints and numbering them among the ranks or choirs, the Holy Church points out to us their various virtues for imitation.

The Orthodox Church honors various men pleasing to God who appropriated various names, corresponding to their various ascetic acts of virtuous life on earth. Such names are: patriarchs, forefathers, prophets, apostles, hierarchs, holy equal to the Apostles, Hieromartyrs, Great Martyrs, Venerable martyrs, martyrs, confessors, Venerable ones, Righteous ones, Disinterested ones and Blessed ones.

For Patriarchs, Forefathers and Fathers see under the Sundays before Christmas. 

Prophets are great according to the pious life of the men of the Old Testament who were selected by God Himself and were sent by Him to various places for predicting the future to the people, with regard to the coming of Christ, the Savior of the world, to earth.

Apostles are the great men of the New Testament, the people closest to Christ the Savior, His worthiest disciples and companions, who were sent by Him to various countries for the preaching of the Divine Gospel to the people.

Hierarchs and Fathers ("our Fathers among the saints") are the Eastern Patriarchs, the pious Popes of Rome, the Patriarchs, Archbishops, heirs to the Holy Apostles in the Christian Church and their great co-workers in preaching the Gospel and in their labor of true piety.

Holy Equal to the Apostles and Enlighteners are the men and women of royal or princely origin, but sometimes also of simple calling, who by their own preaching turned entire countries and peoples to Christ. Hieromartyrs are Christian bishops and presbyters who died from torture for their belief in Christ.

Great Martyrs are the pious men and women of various worldly ranks and positions, who courageously and with great patience thoroughly underwent various persecutions, tortures, and torments by their torturers for their holy Christian faith.

Venerable Martyrs are the pious and true ascetic men and women, included in the monastic calling, who suffered from the pagans and heterodox believers for their faith in Christ.

Martyrs are those men and women of various callings and positions, who without confusion, but sometimes even with joy, went one by one or in groups into the presence of their torturers, and there were tortured to death for their firm and unshakable confession of their faith in Christ.

Confessors and Passion-bearers are those great men of virtuous life of the Christian Church, courageously and fearlessly everywhere and always confessed their deep faith in Christ, who openly recognized themselves as true Christians, who endured torments and torture for this, but did not receive a martyr's death; some of them are called branded, because during torture special brands were put on the person.

Venerable Ones are the great, pious and Christ-loving men and women, desert-dwellers, hermits (who separated themselves from the world to the desert and there saved themselves in solitude), recluses (who voluntary enclosed themselves in separate caves and cells for their entire life) and pillar-dwellers (who practiced asceticism under the open sky on pillars, or high towers), silent ones (who voluntarily took up the asceticism of silence), and are all inclusive in the monastic calling.

Righteous Ones are the great men and women, who were glorified for their virtuous and pious life, zealous for the fulfillment of the commandments of God and for their unbowed observance of the truths of the Gospel teaching, not shirking their family or public obligations and living in the world. 

Disinterested Ones or Unmercenaries are men well pleasing to God who through their unmercenary labor for the benefit of their neighbors served the suffering and healed the sick.

Blessed Ones are the men and women of various callings and positions, who in carrying out their mortal life, both in the world and in the desert, with unusual reserve, with extreme deprivation and denial of every possible worldly good, but sometimes even with many varieties of foolishness, all this "for the sake of Christ".

The Holy Church has regularized the remembrance and honor of all righteous men who have moved in eternity because "righteous men", according to the word to God, "live for ever" (Wis. 5:15) not only in heaven, but also on earth; because "their memory" abides from generation to generation "with praises" (Prov. 10:7), and among the blessings before the eyes not only of God but also of the people; because they, being alive even in the Divinely sanctified ark of grace in time, have co-operated for the beloved by the "place where the glory [of God] dwells" (Ps. 25:8) for the entire eternity. We honor and magnify the saints of God and consequently all of them are our fathers and brethren according to the spirit of the Christian faith and according to that love by which they are indissolubly joined to us; wherefore true "love never disappears" (1 Cor. 13:8). Being one with us by nature, the saints pleasing to God also make us one with the Church of the Lord Jesus, who is the one foundation and the one Head, the one God and the one Savior, the one means of salvation and the one hope of the saved. Thus, the glorified Saints have a close and uninterrupted though invisible dialogue with us. We call on them in our prayers, as contributors to our salvation, as protectors and comforters in the afflictions and misfortunes laid on us, as defenders against the invisible powers of Hades, and we do this not in vain. The holy ones of God hear us when we pray, unite our entreaties to their prayers, lifting them up as pure and fragrant incense (Rev. 5:8) to the holy table of the Pantocrator, ask His Goodness for mercy on us, satisfy the justice that is so frequently irritated by our iniquities, and send mercy and the "grace from the One Who is, and Who was, and Who is to come" (Rev. 1:4) to us. Being in the kingdom of God, they "have already received the kingdom, the magnificent and quality crown from the hand of the Lord" (Wis. 5:16), but by the spirit of humility they will not die to compose "crowns" of the kingdom from themselves "and to offer" themselves "before the throne" of the Lamb (Rev. 4:10-11, 5:11-14), petitioning before Him, as "Mediator between God and men" (1 Tim. 2:5), that He be merciful to us sinners, carried away in the abyss of perdition and by the vanities of the world, both the impulses of the passions and temptations of the evil one. If the saints pleasing to God, neither looking at the spiritual height of their perfection and holiness, nor at their visible distance from us, will intercede to gaze upon on us, the proud and vain, with an eye of compassion and to save us by their prayers and mediation, then we all the more should also honor and glorify their memory from generation to generation, that, glorifying them, we glorify "God, Who is wonderful in His Saints" (Ps. 67:36), and, honoring them, we "honor grace with God, residing and acting in them, and the help from God we ask through them" (Orthodox Catechism). Besides, the gathering of most of all those saved, which "God, Who is rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ", already "made us sit with Him on the heavenly" thrones (Eph. 2:4-6), evidently showing us all immensity of the power of the merits of the Savior and the power of saving grace, serves as vivifying and encouraging for us in the formidable arena of salvation, wherefore "through faith" in the Redeemer even we "have obtained access", to that same "grace", in which stood all those pleasing to God (Rom. 5:2). But, strengthening in us the hope of salvation, the commemoration of the blessed choirs of Saints also serves for us as the encouragement for unrelenting patience and self-denial. The Saints of God are blessed with light in the house of the heavenly Father, but the enjoyment of peace and unearthly joy is the reward and recompense for their labor and asceticism, that, having disdained the world with their good deeds, they steadily flowed "to the honor of the highest calling of God" (Phil. 3:14). Thus if we want to inherit salvation, to settle in heaven and to be blessed among those standing in the choir of the Saints, we should live holily and undefiled according to our "Holy calling" (1 Pet. 1:15). "The grace of God is saving for all men" (Tit. 2:11), but does not save anybody against their will; she is omnipotent, but not violent. "The heavenly Kingdom", even with the assistance of grace, "has suffered violence" (Mt. 11:12), and that only those admire it, who, prevailing completely over any sinful temptation, course their way to the Kingdom with effort and patience. (Sermons and Speeches of Sophronius, Bishop of Turkistan, Vol. 1, pages 90-102 [Slova i rechi Sofroniia, Episcopa Turkestanstskago, t. I, str. 90-102]).

Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone
As with fine porphyry and royal crimson, having been adorned with the blood of Thy martyrs shed throughout the world, Thy Church cries out to Thee: O Christ God, send down Thy bounties upon Thy people, grant peace to thy habitation and great mercy to our souls.

Kontakion in Plagal of the Fourth Tone
Like the beginning of our existence, the universe offers Thee, O Lord, the God-bearing martyrs as the first fruits of creation: through their prayers establish Thy Church, Thy habitation, in profound peace, and maintain it through the Theotokos, O Thou, Who art Great in mercy.

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The Rabbi Who Converted On Pentecost In 1952

The synagogue in Arta.

Among the many converts to Orthodox Christianity was the Jewish rabbi Paul Fotiou from the Hebrew community of Arta in Greece, who converted from Judaism and was baptized as an Orthodox Christian together with his family.

To read a little about the Jews of Arta, see here.

Archimandrite Nektarios Ziompolas writes the following about Paul Fotiou:

"I came to know Paul Fotiou from places and environments of holy churches in Athens where he preached, and repeatedly in conversations I heard him talk about his conversion from the Hebrew religion to the Orthodox Christian faith. When he spoke we heard him with awe and emotion and we had general questions. He intensely lived the sacramental life of the Church. His face and his character breathed respect, "smelling" like incense. I will mention one particular incident from my acquaintance with Paul Fotiou, of which I witnessed. From what I remember it happened between the years 1960 and 1962 in Athens.

It was Holy Thursday night and we were in a church in Athens for the Service of the Holy Passion. I was a layman then and I was found at the side of Paul Fotiou, next to the iconostasis before the icons of Christ and the Forerunner. When the beautifully voiced priest read the Gospel passage: "When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. 'I am innocent of this man’s blood,' he said. 'It is your responsibility!' All the people answered, 'His blood is on us and on our children!'" (Matthew 27:24-25), Paul Fotiou fell sharply to the ground unconscious. And while the priest continued reading, we transferred him to the sanctuary. A doctor in the congregation immediately saw him and he did what was necessary, and soon he was recovered and did not want to leave before finishing the Service. Of course, the crowd of the congregation pretty much got news of what happened, and thought he fainted from standing. Few knew this happened at that moment when he heard the terrifying Gospel. In other words those words spoke within him, and he was quite touched, having lived after two thousand years the then foolish confession of his then patriots the Jews .... His heart converted from one lost to the real Messiah Jesus; he broke and realized the horrible crime in history that happened on Golgotha...."

Paul Fotiou wrote about his conversion in a booklet in Greek titled My Conversion to Christ, from which an excerpt is given below:

MY CONVERSION TO CHRIST

By Paul Fotiou

You are probably familiar from the newspapers of the great event which happened a decade ago, by the grace of the Lord, to me and my family, but perhaps not. It regards my return to Christ and my baptism on the feast of Pentecost in the year 1952 in the Holy Metropolis of Arta, of myself and my entire family. For me and my family this was a big milestone in our lives, so we always thank God, through Jesus Christ His Son and our God, for His grace and honor which He did to us, to invite us in His way to His salvation. Our gratitude to Him as well as our obligations for others is great, primarily to our brothers the Israelites, who by misinterpreting the Holy Scriptures violently reject and hate the already come Messiah Christ. Him whom our fathers handed over to a shameful death and His Father raised Him on the third day from the dead according to the Scriptures. Indeed, very exceptionally for them I write this booklet, to facilitate this with the help of the Holy Scriptures to bring them to want and come back and accept as their Savior Jesus, Who now will not come to save but to judge the living and the dead.

Appearances of the Lord Towards My Illumination

The first appearance of the Lord

It was the period of the Triodion, namely the second week of the Prodigal Son, a time when God calls us to repent and fast in order to celebrate the horrors of the Passion and Crucifixion. So then I saw in my sleep the following. I saw that I was doing Saturday Vespers while studying the Pentateuch from the parchment, from the passage of the Exodus from Egypt, and I saw there three Greek words in gold ink, which said: "Faith Freedom Nation".

Turning the next page I saw that I found myself in a big house and at the gate stood two soldiers.

At that moment our Lord Jesus Christ appeared. The Lord knocked on the gate and immediately I descended and opened it. Entering through Christ took from his pocket a picture with 360 people and gave it to me. Since I could not comprehend the interpretation of this photograph, He said: "So many of you left as hostages and so many of you returned from Arta, 360. It is time to repent for the sin of your fathers, which was My Crucifixion." He then showed me the holes in His hands. And having illumined the interpretation of the 26th chapter of Leviticus, He disappeared....

The second appearance of the Lord

After two months and since I continued to study various books of the Orthodox Church and followed the Divine Liturgies, we arrived at Holy Thursday. On the night of Holy Thursday I fell asleep very upset, because of what I had heard in church. And for the second time I saw Christ as follows.

I saw that I was with my family, that was exterminated in Germany, and we ate together in the hallway of my house. In an instant the door knocked and entered the postal distributor of Arta and he gave me a letter. I opened the letter and saw inside the photo that the Lord gave me the first time and a waiver of the Rabbi of the Jewish community. Again I was ecstatic with the photograph of 360 people. Then an unfamiliar voice sounded through the house, which told me: "So many of you left and so many of you returned. It is time to not hear anyone. Take your family and come with Me, the sin of your fathers is torturing you. Repent and come with Me to be saved."

From that moment my faith was inflamed further and announced to my family urging us all to go as soon as possible to Metropolitan Seraphim for catechesis and baptism. The next day I learned from a friend that my then brother Israelites had devised a plan to remove me from the synagogue if I went to synagogue on Saturday, as other Scribes and Pharisees in the days the Lord. So I avoided it and the third day of Easter we went to the Metropolitan for family catechism, giving promise to His Eminence that we will notify him ten days before our baptism.

The third appearance of the Lord

Forty days passed between Easter and Ascension eve evening, at which time is celebrated the Pentecost of the Israelites, and we had the habit of spending the night in different houses of more than twenty people each, to study the tradition of the Mosaic Law at Sinai. That night, along with my family, we were studying a book that had the conversation of St. Gregory the Archbishop with a Rabbi named Erwan, who had been invited by a king of Ethiopia to discuss Christ. The Chief Rabbi requested forty days time to study the Holy Bible and then discuss. After the end of the period he presented and discussed for three days and nights with seventy teachers. Eventually, the Israelites said they would believe, on the condition that the Lord would appear to them, which was done. But because of the small faith of the Jews, as soon as the Lord appeared to them "while the doors were shut" (He came on a cloud in the middle of the room) the Archbishop prayed and they were blinded. Then, while they were blind, the Archbishop urged them to be baptized. After baptism the eyes of their soul were opened and they believed in the Savior of mankind Christ together with the King and his court, a total of 1500 people around the city. It was midnight when I studied them, and I heard three knocks on the roof of my house and fearfully closed the book and went to lie down. Then I heard the door knock in my room and in came our Lord Jesus Christ, holding in his hand a piece of cotton smeared with oil and with it anointed me crosswise on the face and told me: "Paul, Paul, from tomorrow you will be mine. Whoever appears, do not be shaken, I will be in you." Immediately I got up and said to my wife and told the incident to all my family members to watch and not be shaken by any cowardice or the offering of money, as much as it may be, which unfortunately came the next day.

The Bribery Attempt

The next day, the first day of the Jewish Pentecost, there appeared the whole of the Community Council in my home around eleven o'clock in the morning to convince me with offering huge sums. This was even done by my relatives who arrived from Corfu. But forewarned by my Lord I was steadfast, along with my family, in the future correct faith with my baptism in the name of the Triune Godhead of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The 8th of June 1952

The next day I notified the Metropolitan of Arta Seraphim to baptize us. So Sunday, June 8, 1952, the day of Pentecost of the Orthodox Church, at 12 noon was my baptism along with the three members of my family before the clergy and the authorities of the city and many people, calculated at over three thousand.

The Epistle of Paul Fotiou, former Rabbi of Arta, to the Rabbi's and Leaders of Israel.

"Those who survive in the lands of your enemies will waste away because of their sin; they will also waste away because of their fathers’ sins along with theirs. But if they will confess their sin and the sin of their fathers — their unfaithfulness that they practiced against Me, and how they acted with hostility toward Me..." (Leviticus 26:39-40).

My beloved Jews, behold the wonder of our daily destruction from the Germans, who unfortunately took us and annihilated us because of the sins of our fathers, who twisted the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and crucified the Messiah Christ, and the sin of the crucifixion was thrown upon us, when the avid Pharisees said before Pilate: "His blood upon us and upon our children" (Matt. 27:25) and the rest of the mob agreed saying "Amen" and He was taken away....

Finally, my beloved, we see in the Hebrew tongue one word greater in writing than any other words, which we shout out with melodic power and tone: "Remember the Law of Moses which was spoken at Horeb", etc. It is necessary to study every bit of this chapter together with the 26th chapter of Leviticus in which is written all the catastrophes of the Jews for disobeying the Law of God, to the point that we are a people accountable....

Beloved, I do not speak out of material interest, but I speak by the grace of the Holy Spirit which I received within me by our Lord Jesus Christ on the day of my baptism. I speak to you through repentance, both for me and for all of mankind unto our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Messiah and Savior of all repentant sinners, and may we all one day become a flock under one Shepherd - Christ. Amen.

With love in Christ,

Paul Fotiou

Source: Translations by John Sanidopoulos

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The Appearance of the Theotokos to a Greek Sergeant in 1941

T.T. 712 on 3 March 1941

The Sergeant Nicholas Gatsaros

To

The 1/40 Regiment of Ezones

In reference to the appearance of the Holy Mother of God and what she said to me.

I take this opportunity to inform you that yesterday, Sunday, March 2, 1941, at about 8 p.m., I was walking adjacent to the army encampment of the Second Regiment that was on a small elevation of about 300 meters high. I suddenly felt the need to move from where I was standing. A mysterious force appeared to move me in a specific direction. The wind had stopped blowing and it was a clear starlight night. In returning to my tent, I had not taken ten steps when suddenly a demure woman dressed in black appeared before me and blocked my path. I could see her face in the dim light. I was startled by this vision. When I recovered from this unexpected encounter, I realized from the history of the Church that the Panagia often appears to people either in visions, during sleep or during the military operations of our country.

I, a military engineer, knelt before her in order to kiss her hand. My emotions overwhelmed me and I began to cry. My feet and my lips were trembling for a long time. I then heard her speak to me:

“I am the Panagia.” She said, “Do not be afraid my child. I have appeared here to tell you three things that you should never forget.

1. This war was declared arrogantly without provocation by Italy against Greece. It is my will that Greece be victorious in this war.

2. This war has been declared against Greece so that the world will learn that it is being caused because the world is distancing itself from the Christian Faith. The Church’s holy mission has been blasphemed and condemned. The world has been moving toward immorality and debauchery and it must change its ways. It must learn that God exists and rules everything. Profound proof of this reality is the frequent miracles that are performed by the Saints of the Church of Christ.

3. The world must learn that justice will always prevail over force.

Tell and write all these things to the commanding officer so that they will not be misunderstood, since the Greek Army is under my protection and it will be victorious.”

The Panagia suddenly disappeared and my eyes became blinded. When I finally recovered a little, I immediately went to my tent where I told everyone what had happened to me.

Nicholas Gatsaros

After this appearance of the Panagia, all the soldiers gave donations to build a Church to the Panagia on the spot where she appeared.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos

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Orthodox Theology and Psychotherapy

From an interview with Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos:

Question: Blessed Elder Paisios of Mount Athos frequently had stated that some of the most serious problems experienced by contemporary humanity is the ever increasing spread of mental illnesses. Would it be right to think that these ailments of the soul have a spiritual background, and consequently, the only true psychotherapy for them should be the one which the Orthodox Church could provide?

Answer: Mental and spiritual illnesses, even illnesses of the body, are related to man’s existential problems, that is, his distancing from God and the entry of death to our existence. Sin is viewed as a spiritual illness. The death of the body, which we inherit from our parents and lies in our cells with the genes of aging, is a consequence of man’s distancing from God.

The Orthodox Church preserves this therapeutical method, the neptic tradition, which we may call Orthodox psychotherapy. According to St. Gregory Palamas, the Church is the Body of Christ and a communion of deification. The phrase “communion of deification” shows the way one experiences deification by Grace in his personal life.

Mental illnesses have repercussions on the body, the same way illnesses of the body affect the soul. Beyond this, there are neurological illnesses due to physical exhaustion, there are demonic influences, or sometimes God allows an illness for man’s spiritual aid. This is why in some cases illnesses of the body assist man’s spiritual life more than health does.

I believe that spiritual fathers who work on man’s therapy must distinguish between bodily, spiritual, psychological and demonic illnesses. This distinction is the objective of Orthodox theology. A theologian is Orthodox if he is able to discern between the created and the uncreated, the demonic and the divine, the psychological and the spiritual, the physical and the spiritual.

Since you mentioned Father Paisios, I have a personal view that on various illnesses he referred the ill ones sometimes to spiritual fathers, sometimes to physicians and other times to saints. He used to say often: “This kid needs a saint” and would send him to Saint Nektarios, to Saint Gerasimos, et al., while other times he would send him to physicians he knew.

Sobornost, September 2006.

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Saint Ioannikios the New of Romania (+ 1638)

Saint Ioanichie the New (Feast Day - July 26)

Saint Ioannikios (Ioanichie) the New was born of pious parents from Muscel in Romania. From a young age he rejected worldly things and was pulled towards Cetatuia Monastery. For fifty years Saint Ioannikios lived in asceticism in a cave on Mount Negru Voda. His ascetic efforts, prayers for the whole world, his fasting, and his tears were covered with mystery. Only once a week a monk would come to bring him bread and water. Also the abbot of the monastery would come very often to bring him Holy Communion for him to receive.

Saint Ioannikios the New was the spiritual guide of the great prince Michael the Brave (1593–1601) and the ruler Matei Basarab.

The monk Ioannikios foresaw the year of his repose (1638) and inscribed it on the upper wall of the cave.

In 1944 Fr. Poimin Barbieri, abbot of the Cetatuia - Negru Voda Skete, as it was then called, was lowered through a hole into the cave, near a steep wall fourteen meters high, while behind him there was a cliff one hundred feet deep. Entering the cave with the monk Isidore, he found lying on a stone the relics of Saint Ioannikios. On a rock he found engraved in Cyrillic letters: "Ioannikios monk, 1638".

The relics of the Saint remained in a chapel of the Cetatuia Monastery from 1944 until 1948. That year they buried him near the door of the church.

In 1996 the chancellor was authorized by the local hierarchy to build a new cemetery when he refound the relics of the Saint.

Today the relics are in the Cetatuia Monastery. He was canonized by the Holy Synod of the Church of Romania in June of 2009. His memory is celebrated on July 26.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos

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Caution Regarding the "Prophecies" of Elder Paisios

By Theo

I met Fr. Paisios in 1975. Ever since I met him 30-40 times, almost every time by myself. I never heard him say "prophecies", such as when there will be wars, when we will take Constantinople, who will be commander-in-chief, etc. After his death I saw many "prophecies" distributed in magazines and books or disseminated by the media. I thought he might have actually said such things, but not to me. Until about a month ago when I heard from a friend of mine that the day before he visited the Holy Mountain and Fr. Isaiah, who was a novice of the Elder and now lives in his cell, told him that the Elder never uttered such "prophecies", and never referred to when there will be war, etc.

As for the politicians who "use" his name, the last time I met him, together with others, on 10/09/1993, which was election day, he told us with indignation about politicians of the then two major political parties who exploited his name (of course he never recommended a politician, for the people to vote for) to gain votes and how he supposedly "decorated" one of them when he met him.

The above demonstrates the unethical use of some holy people and Mount Athos by "well-wishers". Figures like Fr. Paisios aimed towards the depth of the soul, towards that which remains and leads us to Christ and eternity, and not to the frivolous and transient.

Let those who read such "prophecies" and recommendations be careful then, and not accept and propagate them so easily.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos

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A Balanced View Of Ecumenical Dialogue

From an interview with Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos:

Question: The question of the participation of the Orthodox Church in what is called “ecumenical dialogue” with heterodox confessions raises great unease and disagreements inside the Church community. Between the overenthusiastic immersion in such rapprochement with the heterodox, which bleaches in a sense the boundaries dividing the Church and the world, and the often too easy scandalization by every move unjustifiably suspected of even slightly compromising the identity of the Orthodox Church as Una Sancta, which had led occasionally to schism, what is the right course that should be taken in dealing with this issue? Do you consider that such “ecumenical dialogue” could be of any use to the Church?

Answer: The two temptations you mention are dominant in our days. Sometimes there is an ultra-optimism leading to secularism and doctrinal minimalism, while sometimes there is a reaction leading to fundamentalism-fanaticism.

The point is not dialogue per se. The Apostles and the Fathers engaged in dialogue. The problem is a dialogue which alters theology as revelation of truth, and the Church as the unique Body of Christ, and pastoral care as the practice of the Church which leads to deification. The problem of the so-called Ecumenism lies on these points. The Orthodox Church is Ecumenical, that is, catholic-orthodox, because it possesses the wholeness of theology and the wholeness of life, but cannot be ecumenistic, that is, live a doctrinal minimalism and an ecclesiological aberration.

The fundamental point is that in such a dialogue between the Orthodox Church and other Denominations one must set an Orthodox ecclesiological basis and the participants must be people who live empirically the truth of the Church and have a patristic mind and view the doctrines in an inner way, not externally and conceptually. This means that they will see how the doctrine answers man’s existential problems, namely, what life is, what man is, and how man is united with God.

This is why in the Divine Liturgy we refer to the unity of faith and the communion of the Holy Spirit and not to the “union of the Churches” and the communion of firms, organizations, even “Christian” ones, nor to public relations actions.

From Sobornost, September 2006.

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The Wondrous Grave of Nicholas Motovilov

Nicholas Motovilov was a spiritual child of St. Seraphim of Sarov, and is most famous for writing A Conversation On the Purpose of the Christian Life, that occurred in November 1831 in the forest near Sarov between himself and St. Seraphim.

Motovilov throughout his life worked hard to bring to Russian public awareness the name of St. Seraphim, who was eventually canonized in 1903.

Motovilov died on January 17, 1879 and was buried at Serafimo-Diveyevsky Monastery, as foretold by St. Seraphim of Sarov. On his grave a large tree has grown, which the communists at one point tried to take down but were unable. Some see on the tree a miraculous formation of the head of a bear and the icon of the Theotokos of Umilenie. Both are known from the life of St. Seraphim, with the former being a close companion of St. Seraphim in the forest of Sarov, and the latter being the icon before which St. Seraphim hung on a tree and prayed while on the rock for a thousand days and later died while kneeling before.

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Metropolitan Kallistos of Diocleia on the Economic Crisis

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Diocleia recently spoke with Pemptousia regarding the financial crisis in Greece, which is relevant for other parts of the world as well. A partial transcript of the talk is below:

First of all, to me the problem arises from the problem that we do not distinguish between "what I want" and "what I need." I want many things, but do I need them all? The assumption in our western society has been that we should have a continuing rise in the level of our economic well-being, that people should have more and more material goods. Now perhaps we have to change our mind on that point. There are so many things that we expect to have, and that we demand, but that we do not really need. So the first thing is to distinguish between what I want and what I need.

Now people certainly need food, clothing, a home; they need also more than that to give them hope and joy in their daily life. But we cannot go on expecting, year by year, that we shall always have more material goods. We need to learn that to say, "Enough. I do not need all these extra things. I can do without them."

The resources of the world are not unlimited. But the problem is, they are very unjustly distributed. So many people have luxuries that they do not really require, and this means that other people are going hungry. So let us make that distinction. We have to stop saying, "I wish to have more," and to say, "I have enough." And we need, I think, to share far more, not only inside each country, but between different countries. In Britain certainly the gap between the rich and the poor is growing greater. This is something that we should take seriously. Something is very wrong in our society if more and more goods and benefits are being accumulated in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

So without wishing to seem too theological, I have to say what is required is repentance, metanoia, in the literal sense of the word. The Greek word means "change of mind." We need to have a new way of looking at ourselves and other people, a new way of looking at our society. We need in this way a kind of social repentance, which would also be for each of us a personal repentance; an ecological repentance, because one aspect of the present crisis is that we have lost a proper human relationship with the environment around us. We need to start again and to think once more.

Our Lord said, "Man will not live by bread alone," but man cannot live without bread. The Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev said, "Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question." So that is that spirit that I would like to look at our crisis in, that we need to appreciate our responsibility to those who are in need, who do not have enough bread to eat, who are going hungry. And we need to change our own outlook, and to start again, distinguishing between our want and our need.

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