Homily for the Ninth Sunday of Matthew - The Internal Problem of Mankind (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

Homily for the Ninth Sunday of Matthew

The Internal Problem of Mankind

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

"Take courage, it is I; be not afraid" (Matt. 14:27)

Sacred Chrysostom, interpreting the event according to which the Apostle Peter, while walking on the waves, then sank, says that Christ at that moment did not stop the wind, but stretched out His hand and caught him, saying "O you of little faith, why did you hesitate?" (Matt. 14:31). In this way, Christ showed that the change in Peter was not caused by the force of the wind, but by his lack of faith. If his faith did not weaken, then he could easily face the wind. That is why Christ took him by the hand and let the wind blow, showing that the wind cannot do any harm when the faith is firm.

The Difference Between Reason and the Nous According to Saint Paisios the Athonite

 

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

I once asked the late Father Paisios what is the difference between reason and the nous and he answered me with an amazing example.

He told me that the senses are very "large", they are like the grapes that we press and the must that is created; reason is like the wine that comes out of the must and the nous is much finer and is like distilled wine such as tsipouro.

This means that the saints who know the two energies, rational and noetic, have empirical knowledge of what they are and how they work.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.

 

 

Homily Two on the Transfiguration of the Savior (Archim. George Kapsanis)

By Archimandrite George Kapsanis,

Former Abbot of the Athonite Gregoriou Monastery

(1988)

The feast of the Divine Transfiguration of the Lord has profound and many theological meanings. From time to time we hear them from the sacred hymns and from the sacred readings, but here too we have said a few things. Today I want to draw your attention to a certain point, that the Transfiguration of the Lord is not only a Christological event, but it is also an anthropological event. It is done not only to show the glory of Christ the Savior, but it is also done to show the glory of a man in Christ. Man after his fall tarnished the heavenly beauty he had. And since then the clear image of God in man has not been seen. It should have to be revealed therefore what man really is, how much glory and how much beauty he has. This true man was restored by Christ. And he revealed it on the Mount of Transfiguration.

The Heart in the Hesychastic Treatises of St Gregory Palamas

The Heart in the Hesychastic Treatises of St Gregory Palamas

By Monk Vartholomaeos

Introduction

In a Russian village not so long ago, a pious middle-aged Russian woman, striving to live a conscientious Christian life, went to see her priest for confession. Having listened to her for a while, and perceiving her general instability of thought and therefore also life, the elderly priest took a small metal cross into his hand, and in a friendly, but stern manner, struck the woman twice upon the head saying, ‘you silly woman, go inside, go inside, and you will find rest’. This unorthodox behaviour of the confessor, in a strange way, is a most practical and direct way to express what we mean by the term Hesychasm.

Homily on the Immortality of the Soul (St. Sebastian Dabovich)

By St. Sebastian Dabovich

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto Him. (Luke 20:38)

There are many proofs testifying to the immortality of the soul, and they differ by degrees of strength, and the source from whence they proceed. There are proofs of supposition, then positive ones, and, finally, decisive proofs. We have some in visible nature, others are had from the attributes of God's being, and from the nature of our soul, and then there are open and experimental proofs.

What do we see in nature? A change of one and the same being from one condition to another higher form of existence. This is observed more clearly, especially, in the world of insects. Take, for an instance, the creeping worm and the flying butterfly, etc. In the same manner does man here on earth undergo two principal forms of life, to say nothing of his ages.

First he is formed and lives unconsciously in his mother's womb, then, on being born into the world, he lives on the earth. This life is incomparatively higher than the first, yet here the days for man are exchanged by dark nights; after days of good fortune there come days of misfortune. It is natural for him to await a third and better life, when he will freely move in the space over the earth, where it is eternal day, and where there is no sorrow nor sighing.

Life and Writings of Diadochos of Photiki

By Archimandrite Dr. Theodoritus Polyzogopoulos

1. His Life and Position in Christian Literature

2. The Anthropology of Diadochus of Photice (The Creation of Man)

3. The Anthropology of Diadochus of Photice (The Salvation of Man)

The Body and Athletics in Orthodox Theology (3 of 4)

...continued from part two.

3. Mental Training

It is known that athletes, to achieve their objective, struggle daily to train under the supervision of a qualified coach, and of course under particular training rules.

As is known with those who deal with these issues, that since man consists of the union of body and soul, it is thus necessary for an athlete to have a good psychological and mental constitution to be successful in their purpose. Therefore, along with physical exercises, the athlete does mental exercises, namely concentration, attention, a good psychological condition, etc. The effort to obtain a good psychological condition is called mental training.

The Body and Athletics in Orthodox Theology (2 of 4)

Continued from part one...

2. The View of Saint Nektarios on Exercise and Fitness Clubs

Saint Nektarios, Bishop of Pentapolis, in the year 1901 was situated in Athens, and he produced and published a text called On Exercise. This period is important, because as is known a few years prior, in 1896, the Olympic Games were held in Athens, and as might be expected it had cultivated a spirit of euphoria around athletics and many fitness clubs were founded for this purpose. Therefore, it is interesting to see the perspective of a Saint, the great Saint of our day, regarding this subject. In this way we will have a criterion by which to judge contemporary events in regards to athleticism and the Olympic Games. This text was republished by Metropolitan Makarios of Kenya and Eirenoupolis in his book Historical Annals of the Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa, Volume I, Nicosia 2002.

The Body and Athletics in Orthodox Theology (1 of 4)

On Saturday, 27 September 2003, in preparation for the Olympics in Athens in 2004, the Synodal Committee for the Olympic Games in 2004 of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, together with the second Youth Sports Executive Congress, organized a conference with the theme "Athletic and Spiritual Exercise: The Body in Athletics and Orthodox Spirituality". This took place at the Inter-Orthodox Center of the Sacred Monastery of Penteli.

The Conference was chaired by His Beatitude Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and All Greece, who declared, among other things, at the beginning of the conference:

"The hierarchy of body and soul as valuable and the virtues that should adorn us that we may not fail in our lives, are a key element in our lives and that we all, regardless of the service all of us have assumed in our society, must be fighters in life and ascetics of body and soul. And the Lord will crown us with the wreath of victory, having fought honorably and conscientiously. For achieving this purpose let us never forget that the greatest virtue together with love is discernment. Let us never forget how everything relating to the soul is immortal and this is what we should mainly care for."

Man and his True Life (St. Athanasios Parios)

By St. Athanasios Parios

True knowledge of God is the foremost and chiefest part of happiness, the root of immortality. Man's happiness consists of two things: first, of a true conception of God; and second, of the acts that man as a rational being ought to perform. "To know You is the whole of righteousness, and to comprehend Your power is the root of immortality" (Wisd. of Sol. 15:3).

+++

It is very proper and necessary for Christians to believe in the Holy Scriptures and in the views of the divinely wise Teachers of the Holy Church: the Basils, the Gregories, the Chrysostoms, the Athanasioses, the Cyrils, the Ambroses, the Damascenes - men who were of the same mind-set as the Apostles.

+++

Man was not created for the Earth, but for Heaven. He is not wholly the body, but also the soul, which does not disintegrate together with the body at death, but is immortal.

+++

Man is chiefly the soul, which is rational and indestructible.

+++

"God created man of the dust of the earth, and breathed upon his face the breath of life, and the man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7). This statement must be rightly understood, in order to avoid the heretical view that the soul is from the essence of God. Such an interpretation is part of the teaching of the pantheists. What is meant is that to the body that was created of the earth God gave vivifying energy, and this became constitutive of the essence of the soul. In other words, "inspiration" means the formation of the soul.

In Holy Scripture, it is said that the human soul was created in the image of God. It is said to be an image in that it is incorporeal, immaterial, ruling, invisible, possessing the power of freedom and self-determination - for God has all these, though to a higher degree. It means also that the soul is immortal, for God is immortal. He alone is immortal by His nature, whereas the soul of man, as an image of God, is immortal through Grace, not by nature.

+++

The soul is the most valuable, the most precious of human things. Yet there are persons who have no affection for it, and no fear lest they completely lose it....

In olden times, when virtue was honored, the first and only care of the Christians was that regarding their soul. Those unforgettable Christians, afire with the aspiration for the salvation of their soul, withdrew to far away place and became monastics, in order to devote themselves to the cultivation of virtue. There they hastened to God-inspired and sanctified men, in order to be taught what to do in order to save their soul.

+++

Pythagoras and Plato, and their followers, rightly held that the soul is immortal. However, lacking the divinely revealed teaching, they mythologized regarding the origin of the soul and the afterlife, teaching the pre-existence of the soul and its reincarnation.

+++

The love of learning is a natural law, and Aristotle's saying: "All men by nature desire knowledge," which appears at the beginning of his Metaphysics, is axiomatic.

+++

Cebes, and before him Socrates, called true education that which effects a purification of the soul from the irrational passions, and results in the achievement of all the virtues: courage, justice, temperance, clemency, gentleness, compassion, and all the rest, which constitute the subject matter of Ethical Philosophy. These virtues lead man to happiness.

- From Modern Orthodox Saints 15: Saint Athanasios Parios by Constantine Cavarnos.

 

The Theological Problem With the Phrase "Value of the Human Person"

On March 5, 2016 Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos issued a letter to the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, requesting that certain phrases and terms be changed or deleted from two issued texts to be discussed at the Holy and Great Synod in June 2016. The text titled "The Mission of the Orthodox Church in the Modern World" contains some problematic phrases related to divine and human personhood, which contradict the patristic understanding of the term "person". After stating the changes that should be made, he concludes by issuing a summary of the theological justification for this change, which has been translated below.

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

In order to justify the proposal that the phrase “value of the human person” be replaced by the phrase “value of the human being” and that the phrase “communion of persons reflecting the communion of Divine Persons” be deleted, the following theological positions will be pointed out:

The Dangers of Parisian Theology

Orthodox Ecclesiastical Theology

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

When we speak of Parisian theology, we mean that theology which was formed from various Russian theologians that had opposed the reforms of Peter the Great, and which was expressed in the West by Russian slavophile immigrants. The Theological Institute of St. Sergius in Paris cultivated the basic concepts of this theology, because many Russian theologians fled there.

It is, of course, known that these Russian theologians had a sense of the Orthodox hesychastic tradition and, observing the humanistic principles of western civilization, entered into dialogue with the various philosophical and religious movements of the West and tried to help. That is, they sought to do what the Church Fathers of the fourth century did, namely to respond to the inquiries of westerners, and to solve, by means of Orthodox Revelation, the existential, philosophical, anthropological, social, and other such problems prevailing in the West.

The Theological Crisis and Its Impact on Daily Ecclesiastical Life (4 of 6)

...continued from part three.

b) "The Human Person"

Many studies have been made in our day about the "human person", and the features are even identified, which are self-knowledge, otherness and ecstasy/eros.

The idea that man is a person began with the Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky, who clearly wrote: "For my part, I must admit that until now I have not found what one might call an elaborated doctrine of the human person in patristic theology, alongside its very precise teaching on divine persons and hypostases." But he continues: "Thus I shall not put forward an historian’s examination of Christian doctrines, but simply some theological reflections on the questions which must be answered by the notion of the human person in the context of Christian dogma."

Saint Symeon the Brother of God as a Model for our Lives

St. Symeon the Brother of God (Feast Day - April 27)

By Protopresbyter Fr. George Papavarnavas

Saint Symeon was one of the four sons of Joseph, the betrothed of the Most Holy Theotokos, which he acquired from his first wife. The other three were James the first hierarch of Jerusalem, Joses and Judas. He was also called Simon, which is a diminutive of the name Symeon, just like the Apostle Peter in the beginning of his Catholic Epistle is called Symeon (Acts 15:14; 2 Peter 1:1).

He became the second Bishop of Jerusalem after his brother James. He pastored his flock in a manner pleasing to God for more than twenty years, with much toil and sweat, and he led many Greeks and Jews who were in error to the knowledge of God. Having suffered much for the faith, he was perfected by martyrdom. He was crucified like his brother yet Lord and Teacher Jesus Christ in 98 A.D., at the age of one hundred and twenty years. In his iambic verses we read the following: "As a brother of the Lord, Symeon, you suffered, as a brother of the Lord you hung on the wood."

The Inheritance of the Ancestral Sin

By Archimandrite Maximos Panagiotou,

Holy Monastery of Panagia Paramythia in Rhodes

We did not inherit the guilt of the original ancestral sin, but its consequences. With this, due to our remoteness from God, the entire human race is fallen and is in corruption with the tendency towards evil. This can be given a parallel example: if our natural environment due to our current irrational use of it is irreversibly damaged, the next generations of people will have no responsibility for the evil they were born in, but they will inherit the corruption of nature.

That the Qualities of the Soul Exist by the Grace of God

By St. John of Damascus

The soul, accordingly, is a living essence, simple, incorporeal, invisible in its proper nature to bodily eyes, immortal, reasoning and intelligent, formless, making use of an organized body, and being the source of its powers of life, and growth, and sensation, and generation, nous being but its purest part and not in any wise alien to it; (for as the eye to the body, so is the nous to the soul); further it enjoys freedom and volition and energy, and is mutable, that is, it is given to change, because it is created. 

Do Animals Have Souls?

By Protopresbyter Fr. Konstantinos Stratigopoulos

Saint Gregory Palamas wrote something amazing; that a person’s soul possesses essence and energy.

Now, you shouldn’t let the terminology confuse you. “Energy” is whatever we can see expressed: emotions and feelings are energies of the essence, which we cannot approach. “Energy” is all those things that express our behavior. Essence and energy.

The Human Body: Ascesis and Exercise

By His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos

of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

1. The Human Body according to Ancient Greek Philosophy

From ancient times, the mystery of man engaged philosophers who, as expected, studied man in relation to the He who Is, God. The questions of what man is, what the body is and what motivates the body are questions of utmost significance and importance.

According to one interpretation, in Greek the word "body" (sōma) derives from the word sēma meaning, “sign”. Among many other meanings, the word sēma means a pointer showing a grave. Therefore, in this sense, the word sōma refers to ancient Greek philosophy, which viewed the body as a sēma -­‐‑ the grave of the soul.

Orthodox Bishop Answers 4 Questions on Science and the Theory of Evolution

Metropolitan Nicholas of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki studied Physics at the University of Thessaloniki where he received his Bachelors in 1976, and after serving in the army he continued his studies at Harvard and M.I.T. where he received his Masters of Arts and Masters in Science, and then in a combined program of Harvard and M.I.T. (HST = Health-Sciences-Technology) he received his Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering. Upon completing his studies he worked simultaneously for New England Deaconess Hospital, NASA and Arthur D. Little. After teaching at Harvard and M.I.T., he went on to teach at the School of Medicine at the University of Crete as well as at the University of Athens. He then went back to Boston where he received both a Masters in Theological Studies and a Masters in Theology from Holy Cross School of Theology, and a doctorate from the University of Thessaloniki in Bioethics. In 2008 he received an Honorary Doctoral Degree from the University of Athens School of Theology in Science and Religion.

The following questions on science and the theory of evolution were presented to His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki:

Man and His Worth According to St. Gregory the Theologian

By His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos

of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

The ancient Greeks dealt with the problem of man. Alkmaion of Kroton said, as preserved by Theophrastos: "It is said that man differs from other animals because he has intelligence, while the others have senses but not intelligence". Menander's saying is also well known: "How graceful man is when he is a man".

The Holy Fathers studied extensively man and his worth as created in the image of God. St. Gregory the Theologian, to confine myself to him, is very expressive. In one of his sermons he says:

"What is this new mystery about me? I am small and great, humble and noble, mortal and immortal, earthly and heavenly". The first are of this world, while the second are of God, the first are attributes of the flesh, the second attributes of the Spirit. And he concludes by describing the purpose of man's existence, which shows his ontology and inner objective: "I must be buried together with Christ, be risen with Christ, inherit with Christ, become a son of God, this God".

In another sermon, St. Gregory the Theologian, after discussing man's creation, which followed the creation of angels and of the perceptible world, so as to be a kind of second world, a great one in his smallness, he then talks about man, as created by God:

"Another angel, pilgrim, combination, overseer of the visible creation, partaker of the invisible, king over earth, under the King of heaven, earthly and heavenly, temporal and eternal, visible and invisible, a measure of humbleness, spirit and flesh together".

He then gives another definition which is the summary of the entire Orthodox Anthropology and Christology and Soteriology. Man is "an animal residing here but transferring elsewhere, and the end of this mystery is to move towards God." That is, man resides on earth but moves elsewhere and the end of this mystery is for him to become God by grace. And, as he says subsequently, the dim gleam of truth he finds here on earth leads to the vision of God's brightness.

Source