Saint Gerasimos of Kefallonia and the Biker

 

Metropolitan Gerasimos Fokas of Kefallonia narrated the following incident:

I was up at the monastery in the old church of Saint Gerasimos.

The coffin was open and among the pilgrims I noticed a young modern-type, with long hair, biker clothes and an investigative look. He stood serious, concentrated in front of the Saint and looked at him motionless for some minutes. Then, without offering veneration, he left.

Reflection for the Sunday of the Blind Man (St. Theophan the Recluse)

 By St. Theophan the Recluse

Simplicity of faith argues with crafty unbelief. Faith, coming to the blind man who received sight, enlightened his mind’s eyes, and he clearly saw the truth. See how everything was logical for him. They ask him: "What do you say of Him who gave you sight?" "He is a prophet," he answered, that is, the messenger of God, clothed in miracle-working power. An indisputably true conclusion! But learned erudition does not want to see this trueness and seeks to evade its consequences. However, this being impossible, it approaches unlearned simplicity with the suggestion: Give God the praise, we know that this man is a sinner. Simplicity of faith does not know how to connect these concepts — sinfulness and miracle-working - and expresses this openly: "Whether he be a sinner or not, I don't know; one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see." What can one say against such deduction? But the logic of the unbelievers is obstinate, and even in the face of obviousness it is not ashamed to affirm that it does not know where he who opened the blind man’s eyes is from. "Herein is a marvellous thing," the sensible logic of faith says to them, "that ye know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes. Now we know that God hears not sinners, but if any man be a worshipper of God, and does His will, him he hears. Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of God, He could do nothing" (John 9:17–33). It would seem as though after this nothing remained other than to bow down before the power of such a conclusion. But learned erudition could not stand the sensible logic of faith, and drove it away... Go now, prove the truth of the faith to those whose mind has been corrupted with obstinate unbelief. The unbelievers of all times are cut from the same cloth.

 

 

Thomas Sunday - Wrestling With God (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

"Unless I see ... I will not believe" (Jn. 20:25)

The Apostle Thomas, in order to believe in the Resurrection of Christ, asked to see, because he had not yet received the Holy Spirit and had not acquired an inner sense, which would assure him of the Deity of Christ. He wanted to see and feel in order to gain tangible knowledge of God. But the knowledge of God is not an experience of the senses, but of inner information, inner communion with Christ, which is channeled into the body as well. However, the sacred hymn of this Sunday calls the unbelief of Thomas "good", on the one hand because it was well-intentioned, and on the other hand because it became a cause to prove the Resurrection of Christ.

Bright Monday - God Exists

By Archpriest Rodion Putyatin (1807-1869)

"No one has seen God at any time" (John 1:18).

This is from the reading of the Gospel for today. No one has ever seen God, and it is impossible for men to see God. Unbelievers ask:

"How does God exist when no one has ever seen Him?"

"But how do you, unbelievers, know that there is no God, when it is impossible to see Him, therefore, it is impossible to know whether He exists or not?" - we believers ask them.

"Why, then, did not God, Whom it is impossible to see, reveal Himself to people in such a way that they could see that He exists?" - the unbelievers ask again.

When Socialist Revolutionaries Tried to Blow Up the Wonderworking Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God of “the Sign” in 1898

On March 8, 1898, three young men who were atheist Socialist revolutionaries, forerunners of Bolshevism, led by the future inventor and scientist Anatoly Georgievich Ufimtsev (1880-1936), hoped to shake the people’s faith in the Kursk-Root Icon’s wonderworking power, so they decided to destroy it. In the Cathedral of the Sign in the city of Kursk, during a vigil in honor of the Honorable Cross, as the Cross was being processed around the church, they placed a time bomb that was made in Finland next to the Icon as an "offering", but the bomb did not explode at the intended time during the service, instead a devastating explosion at 2 o’clock in the morning shook the Monastery's walls while the church was empty.

The Answer of the Three Hierarchs to Western European Education

 

 

By Archimandrite Kyrillos Kostopoulos

 

Greek and foreign scholars often hear that the European Renaissance and the European Enlightenment are the most brilliant continuation of Ancient Greek Education.

But is this claim true? With the voice of Stentor we answer: No!

Our negative answer is based on the fact that none of the European philosophers were able to contribute with their humanistic teachings to the spiritual completion of man, who has now rushed onto the stage of the European theater of the absurd.

When the Soviets (Successfully) Blamed Orthodox Christian Icons for an Epidemic of Syphilis

By Daniel Peris

Icons played a uniquely important and personal role in the lives of the Russian Orthodox; they were present in the home of each believer and occupied a special corner of the peasant hut. Not surprisingly, they were the target of extensive antireligious propaganda. The specific charges made against icons varied over time. In 1924 Bezbozhnik claimed that an epidemic of syphilis in the countryside was being spread through the practice of kissing icons. Five years later, during collectivization, grain caches were claimed to have been found under icons. The resolution of the icon problem was straightforward: icons should be removed and destroyed. Early in the 1920s, the antireligious media reported that the population was turning away from icons. Bezbozhnik u stanka printed a pledge signed by thirty-eight workers at the Krasnaia Zvezda factory in Moscow, vowing that none had an icon and none practiced "icon worship." The consequences of disposing of icons were potentially miraculous. Bezbozhnik reported that after the Novyi Put' (New Path) commune in Nizhnyi Novgorod Province threw out its icons in 1925, the commune began to prosper: "Without God our affairs are much better. We obtained two tractors, a sophisticated thresher, and all the necessary equipment for working the land...." Later in the decade, more pointed activism was deemed necessary. In both Iaroslavl' and Pskov, the local League councils held campaigns to collect icons from apartments and workers' dormitories. The regime's success in removing icons from urban public places seems not to have been repeated in private apartments or in the countryside generally. The League's own propaganda provides indirect evidence of the continuing widespread presence of icons well into the 1930s.

Synaxis of Saint Maria Skobtsova of Paris and Her Companions (+ 1945)

Saint Maria Skobtsova of Paris (Feast Day - July 20)

Elizaveta Pilenko, the future Mother Maria, was born in 1891 in Riga, Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, and grew up in the south of Russia on the shore of the Black Sea. Her father was mayor of the town of Anapa, while on her mother's side, she was descended from the last governor of the Bastille, the Parisian prison destroyed during the French Revolution.

Her parents were devout Orthodox Christians whose faith helped shape their daughter's values, sensitivities and goals. As a child she once emptied her piggy bank in order to contribute to the painting of an icon that would be part of a new church in Anapa. At seven she asked her mother if she was old enough to become a nun, while a year later she sought permission to become a pilgrim who spends her life walking from shrine to shrine.

Miracles of Saint Basil of Ostrog (5 of 5)

...continued from part four.

THE VISION OF THE ITALIAN GUARDS

Maksim Jovovic wrote down the story in 1959:

“In the village of Zupci, near Bar, people still talk of the incident that happened to some Italian guards in the World War II.

It took place one dark night in 1942 when the occupying Italian army was guarding its positions at Ribnjak, in a church dedicated to St. Basil of Ostrog which was had been by King Nikola.

As the Italian soldiers were building a fire in the church and preparing their supper, suddenly the entire church was bathed in a strange light. A white-bearded Elder clad in the robes of an Orthodox Bishop appeared before them.

He ordered them sternly to clean up the church and leave at once. The church went dark and the elder disappeared in the darkness. The soldiers were filled with fright and ran out of the church and all the way down to the foot of the hill. They prepared their supper there and would not on any account ever eat and prepare food in the church again.

One day one of the Italian guards saw an icon of St. Basil of Ostrog in the home of a local family. He said: 'This is exactly what the Bishop who turned us out of the church looked like!'"

Saint Susanna of Georgia as a Model for our Lives

St. Susanna of Georgia (Feast Day - August 28)

By Protopresbyter Fr. George Papavarnavas

Saint Susanna, or Shushanik as she she was affectionately called, lived in the fifth century. She was from Iberia, known today as Georgia, and the king at the time was Vakhtang I Gorgasali. Shushanik's husband, Varsken, was a feudal lord (pitiakhsh) of Kartli in Georgia. He was a Christian, but only by name. Eventually, he denied his faith and for no special reason subjected himself to the king of Persia and embraced the fire-worshiping faith of the Persians. He also asked his wife, who was a woman of God, to deny her faith. She rebuked him for his apostasy and then boldly confessed her faith in the true God. He then had her harshly tortured in an unforgiving way, and full of wounds she was cast into prison, which was a sunless dungeon. There the Saint spent the last six years of her life with patience, fasting and prayer.

The Miracle of the Bleeding Icon of the Mother of God in Torginskoye in 1922

In 1922, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia, and the red partisans (Communist insurgents) defeated the whites (Tsarist rebels) and imposed a new order, the customs and traditions of the people began to be eliminated.

In the Cossack village of Torginskoye, near Nerchinsk, they shut down the parish church and nailed boards to its doors.

This was a renowned church throughout the Trans-Baikal in the region of Zabaykalsky, due to its miraculous icon of the Mother of God, which was honored not only by the Cossacks, but also foreigners.

This church celebrated its feast on July 8th. Crowds of believers flocked from throughout the region. After the Supplications, all would go outside the church and process the sacred icon through the surrounding villages. This litany no longer took place, having been eliminated by this new power.

That year a terrible drought had fallen on Zabaykalsky. The earth split due to the heat, and springs, rivers and wells had dried up. Leaves from the trees yellowed and withered as if a fire had passed through. The crops in the plains had also dried up.

The Miracle of the Church of the Prophet Elijah in Chernobyl

The only church in Chernobyl dedicated to the Old Testament Prophet Elijah is first mentioned by chronicles in the 16th century. Following the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in April 1986 the church was closed. Services in it were resumed in 2001. The church contains the revered icons of “The Saviour of Chernobyl” and of St. Nicholas the Wonder-Worker.

In April 2011, on the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia visited Chernobyl. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church served a funeral service (panikhida) there for the repose of the accident victims. The Patriarch then noted that the containment and stoppage of the nuclear power station accident “became a great moral feat for thousands of people” and called upon the gathered people not to forget the Chernobyl disaster victims.

Healthy and Pathological Spiritual States

By Heracles Panagiotides, Ph.D

University of Seattle, Department of Neurological Surgery

PIETISM

Virtues have their opposites, but they also have their pseudo-virtue counterparts. Whereas faith or belief on the one hand is one of the most fundamental religious attributes, on the other hand, it is one of the most misunderstood concepts. Faith to most people is equated with a cognitive conviction that is based on acceptance of ideas that are communicated by others. The basis of acceptance is often either an emotional or a cognitive argument. It is an affirmative response to someone's saying "take my word for it". The cognitive mechanism behind this type of persuasion is a topic in itself, so I will not expand on it at this time. There is, however, another epistemological source of persuasion that is based on empirical knowledge.

This last element separates faith that comes from experience and belief that is the product of emotional or rationalistic persuasion. Subsequently, I will be referring to persuasion that is the result of a rationalistic or emotional argument as belief, whereas for empirically based conviction I will be using the term faith. This distinction is important because it represents the two different types of conviction that one finds in religion. In both cases the cognitive understanding might exist, but, while faith is the result of experience, belief comes through emotion or rational sounding arguments. Along this line of thinking, one often observes the phenomenon, where experience can produce knowledge that is beyond understanding and language. This would be the definition of a mystical experience. Another important yet difficult point is that of defining the authenticity and validity of empirical knowledge. This is a rather difficult task that also deserves a special treatment.

Elder Paisios on Religion and Societal Problems

Elder Paisios the Athonite said the following in June of 1985, shortly before the fall of Balkan and Soviet communism:

They were going to abolish religion, because they thought religion creates problems. Now they slowly see that humans, when they don't have a faith, they don't have boundaries and they become beastly; they have nothing to stand on without ideals.

Let Us Guard Our Faith As The Greatest Treasure

By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea

Do not be scandalized when you hear what is said against the Faith, since they who say those things do not understand its essence... You should always remember the basic principle that the early Christians knew very well. They considered unfortunate the man who knew all the sciences, but did not know God. Conversely they considered the one who knew God to be blessed, even if they completely lacked human knowledge.

When St. Gabriel the Fool Visited a Synagogue, a Mosque and a Baptist Church

Fr. Gabriel often visited people who had different religious views. He tried to share grace with everyone and lead them to the true faith. He says himself:

"Once, dressed as I was in my monastic schema, I went to the Synagogue. At the entrance hung a large portrait of Moses. I venerated it. The attendees liked this. Moses was a great prophet and I gave him his due respect. I had entered as they were reading from the Bible. Few were there and they looked at me with surprise. I began to preach, and when they heard about Christ they called for their High Priest. He came out but he did not stop me. Afterwards he invited me into his office. He listened with great interest and attention to what I said about Christ. Finally, he thanked me and we bid farewell.

A Hymn of Praise to Faith (St. Nektarios of Pentapolis)

By St. Nektarios of Pentapolis

Faith! Divine Gift, fruit of Divine Revelation, knowledge of mysteries, heavenly wisdom, teacher of divine truths, ladder of heaven and earth, link of God and man, evidence of divine friendship and love, expression of the transmission of heavenly gifts.

How One Is Led From Unbelief To Belief

By Elder Teofil Paraian

I don't know if anyone can say that they led someone else to faith by their own power.

I have followed cases, as much as I am able, where people were led to the knowledge of God back in the olden days and in our time now. As many cases as I was able to follow I learned from.

Dialogue Between an Elder and an Atheist: A Compelling Case for Christianity

One morning, the Elder Epiphanios Theodoropoulos was in a conversation with 2-3 visitors at his home. One of them was an ideological atheist and a communist. Suddenly, someone from outside came rushing in, and informed them that the city of Athens had been flooded with photographs of Mao Tse Tung, with the inscription “Glory to the great Mao”. It was the day that the Chinese dictator had died.

Atheism and Its Underlying Cause

By Monk Moses the Athonite

It is needless to stress the fact that the denial of the existence of God is everyone's right. God gave us unlimited freedom, so that even if we wanted to we could deny Him.

I will not attempt to prove at all the existence of God. I believe His existence cannot be proved by reason, but He is only experienced in the depth of the heart. Therefore, anyone is free to profess whatever they want. However, we do not need at all for an atheist to mock a believer and of course the opposite.