Saturday, April 29, 2006

Still a mortal one

As I watched the first installment of Eisenshtein's Ivan the Terrible last night I realized that I needed to know more about this tyrant of a tsar and the surrounding history of his reign beyond the fable of a story presented in the film. So I found this apropos quote in the life of St. Philip Metropolitan of Moscow:
On the week of the Veneration of the Precious Cross, March 21, 1568 before the beginning of the Liturgy, the Metropolitan was standing on the cathedra (the raised place in the middle of the church). Unexpectedly, the tsar entered the church accompanied by a drove of oprichniks. All of them, the tsar including, were dressed up in tall black hats, black cassocks, with daggers and swords glistening from under the clothes. Tsar Ivan approached the Prelate from the side and three times bowed his head for a blessing. The Metropolitan was standing still, looking at the icon of Christ the Savior. At last the boyars said, "Metropolitan, the tsar demands your blessing." Philip turned to the tsar as if not recognizing him and said, "This strange attire makes our Orthodox tsar look unfamiliar to me, nor do I recognize him in what he is doing as our tsar. Oh, pious one, what pursuit led you to losing your grandeur? Since the beginning of times it was unheard of that a tsar would bring trouble to his own people. Tatars and heathens have order and fairness while we do not. We offer bloodless sacrifices even to our God, but beyond these walls the innocent blood of our Christians is shed. I lament not of the innocent murdered as martyrs and saints; it is your soul that I mourn over. Although a monarch blessed from above, you are still a mortal one, and you will have to account for all of your deeds before the Lord."

Friday, April 28, 2006

Self-Interpreting Scripture?

Spiritual knowledge is like a house built in the midst of Greek and worldly wisdom, in which house, like a tightly locked trunk, there is the knowledge of the divine Scriptures, and the unutterable treasure hidden in this knowledge of the Scriptures, that is, Divine grace. Those who enter this house cannot see this treasure if the trunk is not opened for them, but this trunk cannot be opened by any human wisdom. This is why people who think in a worldly way do not know the spiritual treasure which lies in the trunk of spiritual knowledge, And just as someone who lifts this trunk on his shoulders cannot by this alone see the treasure which is inside, so also even if someone were to read and learn by heart the divine Scriptures, and could read them all like a single psalm, he cannot by this alone acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is hidden in them. For just as what is hidden in the trunk cannot be revealed by the trunk itself, so also what is concealed in the divine Scriptures cannot be revealed by the Scriptures themselves.
St. Symeon the New Theologian

Thursday, April 27, 2006

The justification of desire

As today is one of the feasts of the New-Martyr St. Hilarion receive a word from him:
...there is nothing easier than to re-interpret Christ's teaching according to one's personal taste and to invent 'Christianity,' passing off, under this name, the dreams of one's heart and the images of one's own idle fantasy. The sacred books of the New Testament were written by practical, unscholarly apostles. Throughout the centuries there have been 'correctors of the Apostles,' as Saint Irenaeus of Lyons calls them, ones who considered themselves higher than the Apostles, those 'Galilean fishermen.' Does it become a highly educated European [or American] of the twentieth century [or 21st] to accept on faith all that is said by some 'fishermen'? So many free themselves from the authority of the Apostles and desire to interpret Christ's teaching while being guided only by their personal whims. Leo Tolstoy, for example, bluntly declared that the Apostle Paul did not properly understand Christ's teaching; it follows that Tolstoy considered himself to be higher than the Apostle Paul. One can marvel greatly at how far people go in their 'interpretation' of Christianity. Whatever they might desire, they immediately find in the Gospel. It would appear that it is possible to cover one's every idle dream and even ill-intentioned thought by means of the Gospel's authority.
St. Hilarion (Troitsky)

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

The slander of women

Miss Wisk’s mission, my guardian said, was to show the world that woman’s mission was man’s mission; and that the only genuine mission, of both man and woman was to be always moving declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings. …Such a mean mission as the domestic mission, was the very last thing to be endured among them; indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat down to breakfast, that the idea of woman’s mission lying chiefly in the narrow sphere of Home was an outrageous slander on the part of her Tyrant, man.
Esther from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Breaking the seals

When the seal on the tomb is removed, then the seal of the many, totally obscure and unclear prophecies, is also removed. Christ resurrects and the mysteries become known. The seal of the tomb is removed not only from His body but also from the countless words and visions of the prophets. Christ resurrects and the prophetic words are also resurrected. Descending into Hades the Lord brought the heavenly light to the souls of the righteous fathers and prophets. By His resurrection, He brought their words and visions to the light of understanding and truth.
St. Nikolaj Velimirovic

Friday, April 21, 2006

Putting humanity right

If zeal had been appropriate for putting humanity right, why did God the Word clothe himself in the body in order to bring the world back to his Father using gentleness and humility? And why was he stretched out on the cross for the sake of sinners, handing over his sacred body to suffering on behalf of the world? I myself say that God did all this for no other reason, except to make known to the world the love that he has, his aim being that we, as a result of our greater love arising from an awareness of this, might be captivated by his love when he provided the occasion of this manifestation of the kingdom of heaven’s mighty power—which consists in love—by means of the death of his Son.
The whole purpose of our Lord’s death was not to deliver us from sins, or for any other reason, but solely in order that the world might become aware of the love which God has for creation. Had all this astounding affair taken place solely for the purpose of forgiveness of sin, it would have been sufficient to redeem us by some other means. What objection would there have been if he had done what he did by means of an ordinary death? But he did not make his death at all an ordinary one—in order that you might realise the nature of this mystery. Rather, he tasted death in the cruel suffering of the cross. What need was there for the outrage done to him and the spitting? Just death would have been sufficient for our redemption—and in particular his death, without any of these other things which took place.
St. Isaac of Ninevah

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

The question of faith

…a great many people enter into the questions of faith and the Church solely as bold and decisive reformers who want to remake everything according to their own personal desires.
St. Hilarion (Troitsky)

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

For the good of the deed

Find apropos reading here.
In the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, when the foolish ones lacked oil, it was said: ‘Go and buy in the market.’ But when they had bought, the door of the bridechamber was already shut and they could not get in. Some say that the lack of oil in the lamps of the foolish virgins means a lack of good deeds in their lifetime. Such an interpretation is not quite correct. Why should they be lacking in good deeds if they are called virgins, even though foolish ones? Virginity is the supreme virtue, an angelic state, and it could take the place of all other good works.
I, the humble one, think that what they were lacking was the grace of the All-Holy Spirit of God. These virgins practiced the virtues, but in their spiritual ignorance they supposed that the Christian life consisted merely in doing good works. By doing a good deed they thought they were doing the work of God, but they little cared whether they acquired thereby the grace of God’s Spirit. Such ways of life based merely on doing good without carefully testing whether they bring the grace of the Spirit of God, are mentioned in the patristic books: There is another way which appears as good at the beginning, but it ends at the bottom of hell (Prov. 16:25).
Anthony the Great in his letters to monks says of such virgins: ‘Many monks and virgins have no idea of the different kinds of wills which act in man, and they do not know that we are influenced by three wills: the first is God’s all-perfect and all-saving will; the second is our own human will which, is not destructive, yet neither is it saving; and the third will is the devil’s will—wholly destructive.’ And this third will of the enemy teaches man either not to do any good deeds or to do them out of vainglory, or for some other good, but not for Christ’s sake. The second, our own will, teaches us to do everything to flatter our passions, or else it teaches us to do good for the sake of good an not to care for the grace which is acquired by it. But the first, God’s all-saving will, consists in doing good solely to acquire the Holy Spirit as an eternal, inexhaustible treasure which cannot be rightly valued. The acquisition of the Holy Spirit is, so to say, the oil which the foolish virgins lacked. They were called foolish just because they had forgotten the necessary fruit of virtue, the grace of the Holy Spirit, without which no one is or can be saved, for: ‘Every soul is quickened by the Holy Spirit and exalted by purity and mystically illumined by the Trinal Unity’ (Hymn of Degrees, tone four, first antiphon). The Holy Spirit Himself takes up His abode in our souls, and this very settling into our souls of His Omnipotence and His abiding with our spirit of His Trinal Unity grants to us every possible means of acquiring the Holy Spirit which prepares in our soul and body a throne for God by means of His all-creating indwelling with our spirit, according to the unlying Word of God: I will dwell in them and walk in them; and I will be to them a God and they shall be my people (2 Cor. 6:16).
This is the oil in the lamps of the wise virgins which could burn long and brightly; and these virgins with their burning lamps were able to meet the Bridegroom, Who came at midnight, and could enter the bridechamber of joy with Him. But the foolish ones, though they went to market to buy some oil when they saw their lamps going out, were unable to return in time, for the door was already shut. The market is our life; the door of the bridechamber which was shut and which barred the way to the Bridegroom is human death; the wise and foolish virgins are Christian souls; the oil is not good deeds but the grace of the All-Holy Spirit of God which is obtained through them and which changes souls from one state to another—that is, from corruption to incorruption, from spiritual death to spiritual life, from darkness to light, from the stable of our being (where the passions are tied up like dumb animals and wild beasts) into a temple of the Divinity, into the shining bridechamber of eternal joy in Christ Jesus our Lord, the Creator and Redeemer and eternal Bridegroom of our souls.
St. Seraphim of Sarov

Monday, April 17, 2006

Let us go with Him

As the Lord was going to his voluntary passion,
He said to the Apostles on the way,
Behold, we go up to Jerusalem,
And the Son of Man shall be delivered up, as it is written of Him.
Come, therefore, let us also go with Him,
Purified in mind.
Let us be crucified with him and die through Him
To the pleasures of this life.
Then we shall live with Him and hear Him say:
I go no more to the earthly Jerusalem to suffer,
But to my Father and your Father,
To my God and your God.
I shall raise you up to the Jerusalem on high
In the kingdom of heaven.
Stikhera of Holy Monday

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Podvig

Take away the personal fire for podvig, and you have a shattered cluster of conflicting passions, which destroy a man from within and incite rebellion and chaos with whomever that man encounters.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

The rights of women...(and men)

Many have attacked these imaginary rights of women; many more have defended them. But amidst all the eloquent verbiage that has aroused so many good souls and weak heads, no one has ever cited those principles of moral responsibility and world-wide truth upon which the concept of rights might depend, and about which a sensible controversy might at least have been carried on. ... The real subject of the controversy…was not the rights of men and women, but their mutual responsibilities that determine their mutual rights, those responsibilities of women and men that are obvious to every sensible creature. But it is quite natural that they did not realize this, because of their habit of considering rights as something independent and because of their blind faith in the science of the immaterial.
Alexey Khomiakov

Friday, April 14, 2006

The opposite of an error

…they created a new theological dogma of the Godhead [the Filioque] in direct opposition to the Arians under the influence of this same superficial logical thought — a dogma they regarded as true only because it was the direct opposite of one form of heresy, forgetting that the direct opposite of an error is generally not the truth, but only the other extreme of the same error.
Ivan Kireevsky

Thursday, April 13, 2006

On the "social" Fathers

We should not forget that the word of the Prophet, of the Apostle and of the Saint is said according to the maturity and the spirituality of the people they address. If the word is imperfect, this is not because of the difference in the spirit of the Holy Father but is due to the inability of the people to grasp something loftier. It is not that the Father does not know, but that the flock is unable to grasp it. Not to mention that in many patristic works which have a social content, the hesychastic spirit is also clearly present.
Let me take the case of St. Chrysostom, as you mentioned before, to be more specific. St. Chrysostom is considered a social Father and appropriate to be read by people in the world. Many refer to his teaching about various social and moral questions, yet they forget that the same Father lived in a hesychastic and ascetic way, with watchfulness, with tears and mourning, with unceasing prayer, with the remembrance of death.
Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The Ideals of education


1. Man is a being who can be perfected and completed in the most ideal and real way by the God-man and in the God-man.

2. The perfection of man by the God-man takes place with the help of the evangelical witnesses.

3. The illuminated and educated man sees in every man his immortal and eternal brother.

4. Every human work and action—philosophy, science, geography, art, education, culture, manual labor, etc.—receives its eternal value when it is sanctified and receives meaning from the God-man.

5. True enlightenment and education is accomplished through a holy life according to the gospel of Christ.

6. The saints are the most perfect illuminators and educators; the more holy a man is the better an educator and illuminator he becomes.

7. School is the second half of the heart of the God-man; the first is the Church.

8. At the center of all centers and of all ideas and labors stands the God-man Christ and His theanthropic society, the Church.
St. Justin (Popovic)

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Heavy and oppressed hearts

When one hears of so many modern doctrines ostensibly in sympathy with Christianity, but actually proclaiming openly the alleged impotence of Christianity and its inability to branch out into the tree of life, and insisting that it should surrender all spheres of life, except our inner consciousness, to some self-sufficient activities “after the rudiments of this world” (Col. 2:8), one’s heart feels heavy and oppressed indeed. For that is really worse than a direct challenge by unbelief, which hates Christianity, thus obviously crediting it at least with some power. This kind of theology is nothing short of the obsequies of Christianity, when the heat of battle is already past and one may say a good word even for the foe, already annihilated. These teachings, in praising Christianity, without allotting to it any domain of life, destroy it also as our inner possession: for if Christianity is to be driven out everywhere on the ground that a different order, having nothing in common with spirituality, is now to reign on earth, and that there is to be an autonomy all of its own henceforth, then the same thing will have to be said of emotional life, which is also subject to laws of its own, also autonomous throughout, it must have an absolute immanent stability and must in itself be God.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

Monday, April 10, 2006

Sacred history

Only for the childish mind is the Old Testament set forth as 'sacred history,' as if 'history' comprises its essence for a Christian.
Fr. Michael Pomazansky

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Church

...where the voices of men, of children, and of women, arise in our prayers to God mingling and resounding like the waves which beat upon the shore. This Church also enjoys a profound calm, and malicious spirits cannot trouble it with the breath of heresy.
St. Basil the Great

Saturday, April 08, 2006

On the way

It was clearly stated on the posters that the whole proletariat must stand firmly on the way to industrial development. This enlightened Makar at once: first he must find the proletariat, underneath the proletariat would be the way...
Makar in Andrei Platonov’s Makar the Doubful

Friday, April 07, 2006

Denying the Church

If anyone denies the Church with its religious ideals, then Christ becomes for him only a teacher-philosopher in the category of Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Lao-Tse and others.
St. Hilarion (Troitsky)

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Something to remember on the journey to Church

Abba Daniel and Abba Ammoe were traveling. Abba Ammoe said, 'Father, when will we arrive at the cell?' (that is, so that they could to pray to God). Abba Daniel replied, 'And who is taking God away from us now?' The same God is in the cell and outside the cell. By this we are taught uninterruptedness of prayer, thoughts about God, and contemplation of God's works in us and around us. The Church facilitates prayer and intensifies it. So it is the same with solitude and confinement; each in its own way facilitates and intensifies it. He who does not want to pray will not be bound either by a church or a cell. Neither will he who has felt the pleasure of prayer be able to separate his nature or journeying from prayer.
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

"Validity" of inspired texts

What is important is the Church’s judgment on the contents of the work and the use which she has made of it. Does not the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews say in quoting a psalm of David: ‘But one in a certain place testified…’? thus showing to what extent the question of authorship is of secondary importance in the case of a text inspired by the Holy Spirit. What is true of Holy Scripture is also true of the theological tradition of the Church.
Vladimir Lossky

Monday, April 03, 2006

Nothing further

The philosophical orientation towards autonomous rational thought which began in the West about the time of the Protestant Revolution, and whose first representatives in philosophy were Bacon and Descartes, has steadily grown and spread in the course of three and one-half centuries, sometimes proliferating into numerous separate systems, sometimes combining to produce their great summations, thus passing through all the stages of possible progress, and has finally attained the last, all-inclusive conclusion beyond which European man’s mind cannot aspire without completely changing its basic orientation. For when man rejects every authority except his abstract thinking, can he advance beyond the view which presents the whole existence of the world as the transparent dialectic of human reason, and human reason as the self-consciousness of universal being? Obviously, in this case, the ultimate goal which can be conceived by abstract reasoning separated from other cognitive faculties, is the goal he has been approaching for centuries, has now attained, and beyond which is nothing further to seek.
Ivan Kireevsky (1856)