Homily on the Seventh Sunday of Luke (Archpriest Rodion Putyatin)

 Homily on the Seventh Sunday of Luke

By Archpriest Rodion Putyatin

"Do not be afraid, only believe, and she will be healed" (Luke 8:50).

Many of you, listeners, noticeably care about pleasing God and saving your souls: you pray at home, go to the church of God, keep the fasts established by the Church, confess and partake of the Body and Blood of Christ - in a word, you try to live according to the teachings of the Orthodox Church. Meanwhile, you are often afraid, worried, tormented, agitated that you are not doing anything pleasing to God, that you will not be saved in any way - you are so afraid that you reach despondency, to the point that you are ready to abandon the whole work of salvation.

Homily One for the Twelfth Sunday of Matthew - Three Shocking Questions (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

 

Homily for the Twelfth Sunday of Matthew

Three Shocking Questions

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

"What good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? ... 

What do I still lack? ... 

Who then can be saved?" (Matt. 19:16-25)

 

Beloved brethren,

A young man, as today's Gospel reading told us, approached Christ and talked with Him. People's dialogues with Christ are always revelatory, because His energy penetrates into their existence, reveals the depths of their inner world, creates great surprise. In reality, Christ with love and tenderness enters the heart of man and creates surprises and questions.

What Does It Mean That Christ Ascended and Sat at the Right Hand of the Father? (Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol)

 

By Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol

 

On the Fortieth day after the Resurrection the Lord physically left the world and went up to and ascended to heaven and sat at the right hand of the Father. Of course, this is not a place. That is, He does not have a chair next to the Father and sat down, nor is heaven a geographical space.
 

It is a place where God is located and these things are said so that we can understand that Christ left and took human nature with Him and was taken up as the God-man, not as God. As God He was always with His Father and was not separated for a moment. And when He was on earth and when He was in Hades He was with God His Father. That He took with Him human nature is exactly the result of all the previous events - the Cross, the Tomb, the Passion and the Resurrection. The human nature of Christ was ascended and with it the whole deified human nature was ascended.
 

Therefore this event of the Ascension, of our deification, is an event that now concerns all mankind. It is the glory of the human body. It is what reveals how much God has honored humanity.

The theory that in the Church and in her teaching the human body is despised and only constantly speaks of spiritual life and virtues, is not correct.

 

On the contrary, the Church and Orthodoxy are the ones who speak first and foremost about the deification of the human body. Nowhere else do we even theoretically have a deification of the human body, such as we have the deification of the human body in Orthodox theology.
 

This is what the Ascension of Christ means. None of what Christ did was for Himself. The Ascension of Christ does not mean that Christ simply returned "to His house" after His presence on earth.

This is not the reason for the Ascension.

 

The reason for it is precisely to show us what is our path and where do we end up, where Christ has raised us.

 

Remember how before He suffered that night in Gethsemane, when He prayed to His Father, He prayed for us. Then He said: "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me." That is, Christ asked His Father, that in all ages, in His endless kingdom, where He is, there we may be.

And where is Christ? In the glory of God the Father, He is equal to His Father. And to Him belongs this nature, while it is given to us by grace. Thus we know that since Christ is at the right hand of the Father, therefore we too are at the right hand of God the Father, seeing and participating in this glory and deification of our human nature.

 

Source: Περιοδικό Παράκληση, Αρ. Τεύχους 89, Έκδοσις Ιεράς Μητροπόλεως Λεμεσού. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.

 

 

Fourth Homily for Holy and Great Friday (St. Luke of Simferopol)

 

Homily Spoken Before the Holy Epitaphios of Great Friday

 

By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and All Crimea

(Delivered on April 23, 1954)

With sinful hands we, the servants of God, carried the holy shroud before you. It is not only holy, it is terrible, for it depicts the naked dead body of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, executed by His accursed enemies. How could this crime, the most terrible of all the crimes of the human race, have been committed?! Why did not the Son of God implore His Father to send legions of angels to slay His accursed enemies, who thirsted for His blood?

With our strength, our mind and heart, we would never have found the answer to this terrible question. Let us look for someone who could explain this inexplicable thing to us. Who will we find?

Holy Week is About the Search for Adam Among the Dead

By Dr. Panteleimon Levakos

"You came down to earth to save Adam, 

and not finding him on earth, Lord, 

You descended into Hades to seek him."

This verse, from the Lamentations on Great Saturday, states, in a very concise yet apt manner, the plan of Divine Providence for the salvation of mankind, in the persons of Adam and Eve.

The second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son and Word of God, became a perfect human being in order to save us. He came down from heaven into the womb of the Virgin Mary, so that He could become the same as us and in order to call us to our heavenly home. In this verse, the hymnographer refers to the aim of God’s descent to the earth: the purpose of the incarnation of the Son is the fulfillment of the promise to our first ancestors that the Son and Word of God would crush the head of the serpent and bring Adam and Eve back into the bliss of Paradise, into direct communication with God.

Homily Two for the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

 

 Homily Two for the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee

 

 The Righteousness of the Pharisee and the Sigh of the Publican

 

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

Today is the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee and the blessed period of the Triodion begins, in order to strive to reach Pascha with the health of body and soul.

It is a period of intense prayer and the atmosphere of prayer is more suitable for revealing the inner disposition of people. In prayer the spiritual condition of the people is presented, so it is no coincidence that Christ, in order to express the opposition between the Pharisee and the Publican, presented them at the time of prayer.

The Geese in a Blizzard: A Russian Christmas Parable

There was a man who did not believe in God and did not hesitate to tell everyone about his attitude to religion and religious holidays. However, his wife believed in God and raised her children in the faith, despite her husband's caustic attacks.

One winter evening, the wife went with the children to the service at the local village church. There should have been a sermon on the Nativity of Christ. The wife asked her husband to go with them, but he refused. “This whole story is nonsense!" - he said - "Why did God suddenly need to humiliate Himself and appear on Earth in the form of a man? This is ridiculous!"

Recapitulation According to Saint Irenaeus of Lyon

 By Archimandrite Michael Stathakis

The work of the Asia Minor born St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, could be considered as an intersection but also as a foundation in patristic and theological thought. St. Irenaeus left as a legacy to the Church and to the generations after him, theological truths, which formed the foundation on which all the later theology of the Fathers and the Ecumenical Synods was based.

An in-depth scholar of Holy Scripture and Tradition, Irenaeus is the first to realize the historical continuity and the inextricable link between the real events of the Old and New Testaments. In his attempt to combat Gnosticism and its influence on Christianity, he interprets the narrated events of the Scriptures realistically and teleologically as a whole, because he is the first to realize their salvific significance. It is worth noting that until then the role of Christ in the salvation of man was considered, even by Christian apologists, to improve, aid and complement the general human weakness.

The Christological Teaching of St. John of Damascus (Fr. John Romanides)

 

By Prof. John S. Romanides 

University of Thessaloniki

 

Having lived and written during the century following the Sixth Ecumenical Council, St. John of Damascus represents the Orthodox Theological Tradition, which was still living in the interpretive atmosphere created by the debates surrounding the Sixth Council. It is quite natural, therefore, that the Fathers of this Council, Sts. Maximus the Confessor and Sophronius of Jerusalem, should exercise a very strong influence on his teachings concerning the Person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

      

At the same time, the Damascene sees clearly from his vantage point the lines of terminological development from the Third Ecumenical Council through the Fourth and Fifth Ecumenical Councils within the framework of the Fathers of these Councils. At the same time, he is a master of the presuppositions of the Trinitarian debate enveloping the decisions of the First and Second Ecumenical Councils and sees clearly the complete interdependence or even identity, which exists between the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and Christology.

      

Homily on the All-Revered Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos (Elder Philotheos Zervakos)

By Elder Philotheos Zervakos

When the Patriarch Jacob fled from his father's presence because of the threat posed to him by his brother Esau, he came to a deserted place around sunset, took a rock, put it under his head, and fell asleep. Then he saw a ladder resting on the earth, and its top reached to heaven, and the Angels of God ascended and descended on it, and the Lord supported it above. When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he said: “How awesome this place is! This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:17).

That mystical ladder was a type and image of the noetic ladder, of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, whose revered Dormition we joyously celebrate.

The Grandparents of Christ and Soteriology

The soteriological plan for the salvation of humanity was realized in the birth of Mary, so honoring those who were selected to bring Mary forth is an idea that developed in Byzantium from the eighth century onward. In the eighth century, Kosmas Vestitor summarized the reasons for celebrating Mary's parents, "through whom the beginning of salvation for all has come about."

From the eighth to the eleventh century, Byzantium developed feast days to include the grandparents of Christ into the ecclesiastical calendar in order for the Church to form a more holistic view of salvation in its liturgical life. This is when we begin celebrating the Nativity of the Theotokos (Sept. 8), Saints Joachim and Anna (Sept. 9), the Entry of the Theotokos (Nov. 21), the Conception of Saint Anna (Dec. 9) and the Dormition of Saint Anna (July 25).

Saints Alexander and Antonina as Models for our Lives

Sts. Alexander and Antonina (Feast Day - June 10)

By Protopresbyter George Papavarnavas

The holy martyrs Alexander and Antonina lived at the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century. They were from a town called Kardamos. As Christians they lived with self-control and prudence. Antonina dedicated her life to works of love, to the service of her neighbors, and had as her main occupation the care of the widows, the orphans, and of the weak and persecuted people in general. Her way of life and especially her preoccupation with works of love gave birth to the suspicion among the pagans that she was a Christian, and for this reason she was reported to the prefect Festos, who had her arrested, and he tried to convince her to deny Christ and sacrifice to the idols.

The Temptations in the Wilderness

By Alexandros Kosmatopoulos

In the narrative of the event of the baptism of Christ, the Forerunner is hesitant and in awe at the prospect of baptizing Jesus: ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ Jesus insisted, however, and replied, ‘Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness’ (Matt. 3:14-16). Time has to be completed, the past has to be completed, a long period of preparation has to be completed for the way to appear between the baptism in water and the baptism of fire (Matt. 3:11).

I believe that the baptism of fire involves an encounter with the powers of darkness. The battle is fought not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the principalities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Eph. 6:12). With these words, Saint Paul implies that these powers claim to be of a transcendental nature and that they play an important role in people’s lives. Christ’s encounter with the devil introduces us to the struggle with this ancient evil.

The Incarnation of God: The Cause of Man's Deification (Archimandrite George Kapsanis)

The Incarnation of God: The Cause of Man's Deification

By Archimandrite George Kapsanis

The Church Fathers say that God became man in order to make man a god. Man would not be able to attain deification (gr. theosis) if God had not become incarnate.

In the years before Christ, many wise and virtuous people had appeared. For example, the ancient Greeks had reached quite high standards of philosophy about the good and about God. Their philosophy, in fact, contained seeds of the truth, the so-called ‘spermaticos logos’. They were very religious people, after all; they were not at all atheist, as some of our contemporaries are trying to present them, who do not know the facts well. But of course they did not know the true God; they were idolaters, yet very pious and god-fearing people. For this reason, by attempting to remove its faith in God from the psyche of our devout people, even without their consent, educators, teachers, politicians and civil governors act in a way inconsistent to the memory of the Greek nation, and so they commit "hubris" (gr. hybris) in the ancient meaning of the word. In essence, they attempt its de-hellenization, because the Tradition of the Greeks, throughout our ancient, recent and modern history, is a Tradition of piety and respect for God, on which all the worldwide cultural contribution of Hellenism was and is based.

The Incarnation and Redemption (Fr. George Florovsky)

The Incarnation and Redemption

Fr. George Florovsky

"The Word became flesh": in this is the ultimate joy of the Christian faith. In this is the fullness of Revelation. The Same Incarnate Lord is both perfect God and perfect man. The full significance and the ultimate purpose of human existence is revealed and realized in and through the Incarnation. He came down from Heaven to redeem the earth, to unite man with God for ever. "And became man." The new age has been initiated. We count now the "anni Domini!" As St. Irenaeus wrote: "the Son of God became the Son of Man, that man also might become the son of God."1 Not only is the original fullness of human nature restored or re-established in the Incarnation. Not only does human nature return to its once lost communion with God. The Incarnation is also the new Revelation, the new and further step. The first Adam was a living soul. But the last Adam is the Lord from Heaven (1 Cor. 15:47). And in the Incarnation of the Word human nature was not merely anointed with a superabundant overflowing of Grace, but was assumed into an intimate and hypostatical unity with the Divinity itself. In that lifting up of human nature into an everlasting communion with the Divine Life, the Fathers of the early Church unanimously saw the very essence of salvation, the basis of the whole redeeming work of Christ. "That is saved which is united with God," says St. Gregory of Nazianzus. And what was not united could not be saved at all. This was his chief reason for insisting, against Apollinarius,2 on the fullness of human nature, assumed by the Only Begotten in the Incarnation. This was the fundamental motive in the whole of early theology, in St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, the Cappa-docian Fathers, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and St. Maximus the Confessor. The whole history of Christological dogma was determined by this fundamental conception: the Incarnation of the Word as Redemption. In the Incarnation human history is completed. God’s eternal will is accomplished, "the mystery from eternity hidden and to angels unknown." The days of expectation are over. The Promised and the Expected has come. And from henceforth, to use the phrase of St. Paul, the life of man "is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3).

When the Holy Spirit Liturgizes in the Heart: A Most-Illuminating Conversation

I recently had a conversation with someone inquiring of me about the meaning of 1 Corinthians 6:19, where Saint Paul says, "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?" This is basically how it went:

"John, I have a very specific question: When do our bodies become temples of the Holy Spirit?"

"St. Paul is very clear in 1 Corinthians that our bodies become temples of the Holy Spirit when we receive the Holy Spirit into our hearts."

"And when exactly is this? Are we born with the Holy Spirit in our hearts?"

Beware These Two Thoughts and Fear Them (St. Silouan the Athonite)

By Saint Silouan the Athonite

Beware these two thoughts, and fear them. The first suggests 'You are a saint;' the other, 'You will not be saved.' Both come from the enemy, and there is no truth in them. Instead, think to yourself, 'I am a great sinner, but the Lord is merciful. He loves man with a great love, and will forgive me my sins.'

On the Salvation of Those Who Died Before Christ (St. Anastasios of Sinai)

I am offering the translation below in response to the translation here:  http://ldysinger.stjohnsem.edu/@texts/0-03_plato/99_anast-sinai.htm. There, "hades" is translated as "hell", which is not accurate, but even worse, in section 3, the translation of the first sentence reads: "Having heard this you cannot believe that there is no repentance in hell." This is a serious mistranslation, making it as if St. Anastasios believed there was "repentance in hell", which is something no Church Father believed. Therefore the translation below is a more accurate translation to remedy the false attribution of such a teaching to St. Anastasios.

By St. Anastasios of Sinai

(Questions and Answers, 61)

QUESTION 61:

In regard to the Greeks who died before the coming of Christ, is it fitting to pray for them, rather than condemn them?

ANSWER:

The Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Redemption (Fr. George Florovsky)

By Fr. George Florovsky

In the death of the Savior the powerlessness of death over Him was revealed. In the fullness of His human nature Our Lord was mortal, since even in the original and spotless human nature a "potentia mortis" was inherent. The Lord was killed and died. But death did not hold Him. "It was not possible for him to be held by it" (Acts 2:24). St. John Chrysostom commented: "He Himself permitted it. ... Death itself in holding Him had pangs as in travail, and was sore bested … and He so rose as never to die.127 He is Life Everlasting, and by the very fact of His death He destroys death. His very descent into Hell, into the realm of death, is the mighty manifestation of Life. By the descent into Hell He quickens death itself. By the Resurrection the powerlessness of death is manifested. The soul of Christ, separated in death, filled with Divine power, is again united with its body, which remained incorruptible throughout the mortal separation, in which it did not suffer any physical decomposition. In the death of the Lord it is manifest that His most pure body was not susceptible to corruption, that it was free from that mortality into which the original human nature had been involved through sin and Fall.

Our Effort and the Power of God's Grace

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

"No good works are accomplished by our efforts alone but by the power and will of God. Nevertheless, God demands effort on our part in conforming to His will." These are the words of Saints Barsanuphios and John. Few words but much said. We are obliged to labor, to cultivate and to prepare every good thing, and if some good will take root, grow and bring forth fruit, that is up to the power and will of God. We plow the furrows and God sows, if He wills it. We cleanse the vessels of the Spirit and God pours the Spirit into these vessels, if He wills it. He can do anything if He wills it. And He will do everything that responds to the highest wisdom and suitability, that is, to His plan of man's salvation.