The pre-existence of souls?

We already existed before this world, because our creation was decided by God long before our actual creation. Before our creation we therefore existed in the thought of God, we who later turned out to be intelligent creatures of the Divine Word. Thanks to Him, we are very ancient in our origin, because 'in the beginning was the Word.'
St. Clement of Alexandria

...the World-generating Reason also considered, in His mind's great representations, the images of the world formed by Him, this world which was generated later, but, which, for God was present even then. Everything is before God's eyes: what will be, what was, and what is now. For me such a division is set by time: that one thing is ahead, another thing behind. But for God all merges into one, and all is held in the arms of the Great Deity.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus

So I almost fooled you didn't I (or rather St. Clement did)? Upon the first few words you were thinking, "What's going on here?" But then you realized this is a much more lofty idea than some measly pre-existence of souls.

The fools for Christ

...seem to reject the Apostle Paul's admonition to accept any personal deprivation and sacrifice in order to avoid scandalizing the faithful (1 Cor. 8:13). But what kind of scandal is St. Paul talking about? It is something that causes confusion in the realm of truth, and may thus deprive others of the possibility of participating in truth--the possibility of salvation. If by eating food offered to idols you give your brother's 'weak conscience' grounds for supposing that there is some connection between idol worship and the truth and life of the Church, then the responsibility for the confusion you cause is great indeed.

The challenge of the fools, however, does not create confusion in people's faith, nor does it obscure the Church. It simply surprises those who have identified faith and truth with the secularized concept of moral uprightness and conventional decorum. Fools for Christ have the gift, and the audacity, to manifest openly the human fall and sin which is common to us all: this is the reality of our nature, and it is not cancelled out by individual cases of 'improvement,' nor by concealment behind social externals.

In this sense, every monk in the Orthodox East is a kind of 'fool for Christ.' He wears a garment of mourning, openly declaring that he accepts our common fall and sin; and he withdraws into the ascetic life, waging war on this fall and this sin on behalf of us all. This same acceptance is the calling of every member of the Church. If we persist in ignoring the Gospel of salvation and continue to identify the regeneration of man with the social recognition of individual virtues, with worldly success in gaining individual moral respectability, then the fault is ours alone--and it is an error which bars us from truth and life.

The prototype to which the Church has always looked is not individual moral self-sufficiency, but the monks' lament of repentance. This lament is ultimately joyful--a 'joyful sorrow'--and turns sin into a measure of the acceptance of Christ's love. Man is able to mourn and lament only when he knows exactly what he has lost, and experiences this loss as a personal deprivation, a personal thirst. This is why repentance, the personal sense of the loss of God, is also a first revelation, our first acquaintance with His person, our first discovery of the extent of His love.

In the case of the fools for Christ, certainly their shocking freedom from every law, rule, restriction or code of obligations is not simply didactic in its purpose, reminding us of the danger of identifying virtue and holiness with conventional social decorum and egocentric moral rectitude. No one can ever really teach simply by calling into question mistaken concepts and ways of life: one has to make the fulness of the saving truth incarnate in oneself. The shocking freedom of the fools is first and foremost a total death, a complete mortification of every individual element in their lives. This death is the freedom which can break and destroy every conventional form; it is resurrection into a life of personal distinctiveness, the life of love which knows neither bounds nor barriers.

The example of the 'fools for Christ,' then, is neither extreme nor inexplicable, as it may perhaps seem to many people. It is the incarnation of the Gospel's fundamental message: that it is possible for someone to keep the whole of the Law without managing to free himself from his biological and psychological ego, from corruption and death. And that on the other hand, it is enough is someone humbly accepts his own sin and his fall, without differentiating it from the sin and fall of the rest of mankind, trusting in the love of Christ which transfigures this acceptance into personal nearness and communion, into a life of incorruption and immortality.
Christos Yannaras

Quantity=Quality?

Having recently finished War and Peace I will have to concur with Turgenev for my summary:

The novel itself aroused my keen interest: there are tens of pages which are absolutely magnificent, first class--all the descriptive parts, the stuff of everyday life--a hunt, a drive at night, and so forth. But the historical addition, which is precisely the part which enraptures the reader, is sham and charlatanery. ...Tolstoy impresses the reader with the tow of Alexander's boot, the laugh of Speransky. He forces the reader to believe that he knows everything about his subject, if indeed he goes down to these minute details, but in reality he knows only these small details.
Ivan Turgenev

In the power of Christ

...I am going to mock the world.
St. Symeon of Emesa

Discerning evil

St. Gregory the Theologian had baptized a certain philosopher, Maximus by name, and liked him so much that he kept the philosopher in his home, sharing his table with him. However, this Maximus, was as dangerous and cunning as a serpent. After a period of time, through intrigue and bribes, he obtained recognition of some Constantinopolians as patriarch, in place of St. Gregory. When this temptation, after great confusion, was removed, some rebuked Gregory for keeping his greatest enemy with him. The saint replied: 'We are not to blame if we do not discern someone's evil. God alone knows the inner secrets of man. And to us is commanded by law, that with fatherly love, to open our hearts to all who come to us.'
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

Delivered unto us

Holy Scripture, then, is not an objectified 'source' of Christian truth and revelation, like the 'theoretical' texts which outline the impersonal and objective principles of an ideology. Nor are their two sources of objective authority, Scripture and Tradition, as Roman Catholic rationalism would have it. Prior to any written formulation, Christian faith and truth is a fact, the fact of God's incarnation and man's deification. It is the unceasing realization and manifestation of this fact, its tangible embodiment in history--in other words, it is the Church

This order of precedence is a fundamental precondition for approaching the ethics of the Gospel--and, for that matter, the whole teaching of Scripture. The Gospel finds its manifestation in the fact of the Church; and if we overlook this fact, we are left with nothing but a disembodied teaching whose significance may be exceptional, but is bound to be relative. (As we know, Scripture formed the basis for all the heretical distortions of the event of salvation, and many who reject Christianity have devoted serious study to the text of Scripture without abnegating their rejection.)

Prior to any written formulation, the historical reality of the Church is the 'gospel,' the 'good news'--the news of incarnate truth and salvation. For this reason, we cannot think of the Bible as the 'founding charter' of the Church, containing theoretical 'statutes' for the Christian faith and a code of 'commandments' for Christian ethics. Christianity is not made up of 'metaphysical' convictions and moral directives which always require a priori intellectual acceptance. The Gospel of the Church is the manifestation of her life and her experience: and this experience was set down by the eyewitnesses of the resurrection, of the beginning of man's salvation: '...even as they delivered unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word' (Lk 1:2).
Christos Yannaras

Freedom and sin

The Catholic novelist believes that you destroy your freedom by sin; the modern readers believe, I think, that you gain it in that way.
Flannery O’Conner

Zacchaeus was a wee little man

Anyone who is chief among many in wickedness is little in spiritual stature, for the flesh and the spirit are opposites to one another, and for this reason he [Zacchaeus] cannot see Jesus for the crowd. Crowded in by a multitude of passions and worldly affairs, he is not able to see Jesus acting, moving, and walking about. Such a man as this cannot recognize Christian acts for what they are, namely, Christ acting and moving in us. But such a man, who never sees Jesus passing by and cannot perceive Christ in Christian acts, will sometimes change from negligence and come to his senses. Then he will climb up to the top of the sycamore-fig, passing by every pleasure and sweetness, as signified by the figs, and counting them as foolish and dead. Becoming higher than he was and making ascents in his heart, [Ps. 83:6] he is seen by Jesus and can see Jesus, and the Lord says to him, Make haste, and come down, which means, Through repentance you have ascended to a higher life; come down now through humility lest pride and high mindedness make you fall. Make haste, and humble yourself. If you humble yourself, I must abide at your house, for it is necessary that I abide in the house of a humble man. Upon whom shall I look, if not upon him who is humble and meek, who trembles at My words? [Is. 66:2] Such a man gives half of his goods to the destitute demons. For our substance is twofold: flesh and spirit. The righteous man imparts all his fleshly substance to the truly poor, the demons who are destitute of everything good. But he does not let go of his spiritual substance, for as the Lord likewise said to the devil concerning Job, Behold, I give into thine hand all that he has, but touch not his soul. [Job 1:12] And if he has taken any thing from any man by false accusation, he restores it to him fourfold. This suggests that if a man repents and follows a path that is opposite to his former way of wickedness, he heals his former sins through the four virtues, and thus he receives salvation and is called a son of Abraham. Like Abraham, he also goes out of his land and out of his kinship with his former wickedness and out of the house of his father, meaning, he comes out from his old self and rejects his former condition. He himself was the house of his father, the devil. Therefore, when he went out of the house of his father, that is, when he went out of himself and changed, he found salvation, as did Abraham.
Blessed Theophylact

The foundations of science

…Our entire understanding of life, our entire science (I speak not of theologial science but of science in general, the scientific spirit) is based on the idea of Logos, on the idea of God the Word. This holds true not only for science but even for the whole of life itself, for the whole structure of our soul. We conceive of everything under the category of the law, the measure of harmony. This idea of logism, an idea that is often distorted to the point of unrecognizability, is the basic nerve of everything that is alive and genuine in our mental, moral, and aesthetic life. The one universal, all-embracing 'Law' of the World, the hypostatic Name of the Father, Divine Providence, without the will of Which a hair does not fall from our heads, Which makes 'the lilies of the field' (Matt. 6:28) grow and feeds 'the birds of the air' (Matt. 6:26), God, Who depletes Himself by His creation of the world and by economy—that is the religious presupposition of our science, and outside of this presupposition, more or less abstratly formulated, there is no science. The 'unformity of the laws of nature'—that is the postulate without which all science is empty sophistry. But this postulate can be made a psychological reality only by faith in That word about Which St. John prophesies in the first verses of his paschal Gospel: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not' (John 1:1-5). Those are the 'foundations of science.' And if we reject them, a cruel revenge is inevitable: the fall of a science that is built on shifting and engulfing sands.
St. Pavel Florensky

Apropos to the feast of St. Mark of Ephesus

…may the Lord deliver us from such delusion: and may there be given to you a hatred against the serpent, that as they lie in wait for the heel, so you may trample on their head.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem

A new ascetical exercise?

In the presence of men who have committed their lives to Greek Orthodox monasticism, Lagos tied a babushka under her chin and wore a long skirt. There must not be any distractions.

I would think it would be hard to tie a babushka under the chin but if you can do it you definitely deserve a place in heaven!

Further, since when do monks devote themselves to "Greek Orthodox monasticism" and not Jesus the Christ?

CCT yea you know me

Ecumenical alert!

So I read about this group some time ago in a certain publication but had forgotten about it until now. What is a year in Orthotime anyway?

The first questionable content of said article is the mention of an "ecumenical officer" - which I ask is exactly what? Maybe they are in charge of arresting those accused of "intolerance"? I did a little google search on these so-called "ecumenical officers" and evidently it is a hip term now with the ecumenical kids.

The article next states that "Christian Churches Together" began with an "effort to form 'a more credible Christian witness'". At this point one must ask: what "witness" can be more "credible" than the Truth that is Jesus Christ which is present in the Orthodox Church? From this groups webpage we read the following, "CCT is a new forum growing out of a deeply felt need to broaden and expand fellowship, unity, and witness among the diverse expressions of Christian faith today". I don't know about you but I always like it when degrees of heretical beliefs are referred to as "diverse expressions of Christian faith". I'll tell you one thing - that Arius had some nifty "diverse expressions"...

Moving right along to the real issue of social justice I will quote from the next paragraph: "Organizers said that tackling poverty would be the group’s first priority." ...no comment. And from the webpage: "CCT, out of its commitment to grow closer together in Christ, can offer a significant and credible voice in speaking to contemporary culture on issues of life, social justice and peace." I refer you to this post.

Now on to the meat of the matter we look at "The Chicago Statement" and find such statements as "We long for the broken body of Christ made whole, where unity can be celebrated in the midst of our diversity" and that "common witness will be visible through our: Seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit through biblical, spiritual and theological reflection, Engaging in common prayer". So now we have Orthodox believing that the Body of Christ is broken and that they must go outside the Church, among heterodox, to seek the Holy Spirit through prayer with them?

Next you ask, "How do I become a member!?" And they answer, "All you have to do is confess Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the scriptures and you're in!" And you say, "Good because I thought Arius had the correct interpretation of the scriptures!"


P.S.: It is not by chance that I mention Arius - today is the feast of St. Athanasius who smashed that heretic of heretics.

Human glory

My friends, why do you partake of human glory to the point of intoxication, a glory that begins with a song and ends with lying in the mire?
The unanimous glory that comes from men is the most inglorious, because it is indifferent.
If your glory is a reward from the people, then you are a day laborer who has been paid off, and tomorrow the people can throw you off their fields.
Truly, no new day recognizes your contract with a day gone by. Every day opens a new field and makes a new agreement.
If your glory is the work of your mighty arms, your days will be anger and your nights will be fear.
If your glory is the work of your wisdom, wisdom will be a castration of your glory and you will be unable to move.
If you call your glory your own, Heaven will punish you for lying and stealing.
Stroll with your glory through a cemetery and see whether the dead will glorify you..
In truth, you are already strolling through a cemetery, and you are receiving flory from mobile tombs. Who will glorify you, after the mobile tombs become immobile?
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

To gain the Kingdom

If, at times, the dogmas of the Faith seem to be like solid food, first endeavor to fulfill the moral dogmas of Christianity, then the understanding of the dogmas of the Faith will be revealed to you. Inquisitive questioning of higher things without effort regarding the improvement of your life does not bring any benefit. At one time, the monks of Egypt reflected about Melchisedek and not being able to come to a clear understanding about the mysterious personality of this ancient king and high priest, invited Abba Copres to their assembly and asked him about Melchisedek. Upon hearing this, Copres struck himself three times on the mouth and said, 'Woe to you Copres! You left that which God commanded you to do and you question that which God does not require of you.' Hearing him, the monks were ashamed and dispersed. St. John Chrysostom writes, 'And, if we adhere to the true dogmas and are not concerned about our behavior, we will not have any kind of benefit; and in the same way, if we concern ourselves about our behavior and neglect true dogmas, we will receive no benefit for our salvation. If we want to be delivered from Gehenna and to gain the kingdom, we need to be adorned on both sides: correctness of dogmas and honorable living.'
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

Christian yoga?

Noetic prayer must, however, take place within the climate of the Orthodox Tradition and in the framework of the asceticism of the Orthodox Church. I say this because some people are cutting noetic prayer away from the whole asceticism of the Church, with the result that it is being presented as a Christian yoga. Actually when prayer is cut off from repentance and godly mourning, from the keeping of Christ's commandments, by which the tripartite soul is purified, from the sacramental life of the Church, then it loses its value from the orthodox point of view, since it is done mechanistically, exoterically, in the manner of the Buddhistic exercises.
Met. Hierotheos (Vlachos)

The Kingdom of God is within you

All that belongs to God carries the seal of immortality. And, the Kingdom of God is immortal. If we desire to breathe the air of immortality, we must enter within ourselves, within our hearts, within the Kingdom of God. Outside of ourselves is the air of time, the air of transitoriness and decay in which the soul breathes with difficulty. ... We are constantly outside ourselves. The Lord wants to return us to ourselves, in His home and to His homeland. For us, the Kingdom of God is within us: outside of ourselves is a foreign land. In order to escape from a foreign land and find our true home, in which we directly encounter God, we must enter within ourselves, into our hearts. There is the King, there also is the Kingdom.
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

Just like the kingdom of God, the Spirit has both a gradual historical manifestation and a discontinuously eschatological manifestation, which are irreducible one to the other. Otherwise it is incomprehensible how the final state, the illumination of creation the expulsion of death, in a word, the 'future age' could be distinguished from the preliminary state of waiting, from 'this age,' in which death still reigns.

Thus, the ideas of the Kingdom of God and of the Holy Spirit resemble each other formally. But this resemblance is not only formal. In its general idea, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the Kingdom of the Father unquestionably has its roots in the Gospel, and it gets its verbal justification in the Apostle Paul: 'The kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit' (Rom. 14:17)—Εν Πνευματι Αγιωι, 'in' or 'of the Holy Spirit,' i.e., in the righteousness, peace, and joy produced by the Holy Spirit. The subjective state of righteousness, peace, and joy produced by the Holy Spirit is that same Kingdom of God which is 'within' us (Luke 17:21), the barely noticeable mustard seed of faith sown in the soul. But growing and showing itself above the field of what is mine and only mine, above the domain of subjectivity, the sprout of the seed of faith becomes objective, cosmic, universal. Liturgy and the sacraments are the outward manifestations of the Kingdom of God in Church life. The working of miracles and contemplative insights reveal the same Kingdom in the personal lives of the saints.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

The habit of virtue is the restoration of the powers of the soul to their primordial nobility and the unification of the main virtues for action that is proper to the soul by its nature. This does not come to us from outside, but is innate to us from our creation, and through this we enter into the kingdom of heaven, which according to the Lord’s words is within us.
Nikitas Stithatos

Love

Brethren, God is Love which heaven lowers to earth; Brethren, man is love which raises earth to heaven.
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

On martyrs

…how did the Holy Martyrs confront the idol worshippers, and how did the New Martyrs confront the Muslims? Did they not confess the truth? Could we imagine them praying together with them? In that case we would not have any martyrs!
Holy Monastery of the Paraclete

Apropos to the feast of St. Gregory bishop of Nyssa

‘People said, Man is a microcosm …and thinking to elevate human nature with this grandiloquent title, they did not notice that they had honoured man with the characteristics of the mosquito and the mouse.’
St. Gregory of Nyssa

"church history"

Taken from an advertisement from a certain church in the local newspaper: "This class will outline the history of Protestants from the first-followers of Jesus, through the Reformation and Baptists in the -- area." I'm guessing they refer to the "first-followers" of Jesus referred to in John 6:66: "From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." ... It is tempting to attend this course and it would be quite entertaining but a) it is on Sunday's during the divine liturgy and 2) it costs $20 - that kind of entertainment isn't worth $20.

Cheerfulness

I think here is an apropos application of the accustomed axiom "You've gotta' be kidding me".

Herb morphosis

Let none associate with the soul-destroying Manicheans, who by decoctions of chaff counterfeit the sad look of fasting, who speak evil of the Creator of meats, and greedily devour the daintiest, who teach that the man who plucks up this or that herb is changed into it.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem

A new sacrament?

Certainly, Christianity has a logical expression contained in the Creed; but this is not separate from other manifestations. It also has a logical teaching, which we call theology. But this is only a branch of general teaching. To isolate it is a great error; to give it exclusive preference is madness; to see in it a heavenly gift tied to certain functions is a heresy. That would be to establish a sacrament of rationalism.
Alexey Khomiakov

The righteous

From today's readings for Vespers:

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be affliction, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of men they were punished, their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them.
(Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-6)

But the righteous live for ever, and their reward is with the Lord; the Most High takes care of them. Therefore they will receive a glorious crown and a beautiful diadem from the hand of the Lord, because with his right hand he will cover them, and with his arm he will shield them.
(Wisdom of Solomon 5:15, 16)


Everything is transient, everything passes by, everything fades away. There is only One Who Abides, Αλη'θεια. Truth- Αλη'θεια is Unforgetfulness, that which is not licked off by the streams of Time; it is Solid Ground not eaten away by corrosive Death; it is Essence most essential in which there is no Non-being at all. In Truth, in the Incorruptible One, the corruptible being of this world finds its protection. From Truth, the Strong One, the world’s being receives strength-chastity. God gives victory over Time, and this victory is 'remembrance' by God Who does not forget. He Himself is above Time and can make everything commune with Eternity. How? By remembering it.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

A place of rest?

When I'm in the "sunset" of my days someone better let me spend them at the Sunset Home.