Some people are convinced that sacred tradition is guarded by episcopal synods. But contemporary synods in the Orthodox Church are not like the local or ecumenical councils of bishops in the age of the early Christians, because the early councils were composed of bishops who had mastered the Church’s therapeutic method. Their aim in coming together as a council was not merely to safeguard the Church’s doctrine and liturgical order, as is the case today.

No, their aim was to preserve and protect the Church’s therapeutic method. So a proper bishop is a master of the therapeutic method of the Church. During those early years, the work of a bishops’ synod was absolutely vital, more so than today. Their task was to preserve and protect the Church’s therapeutic method and curative treatment.

But when the bishops’ synod would safeguard this method, they would struggle along two fronts. The inner front involved taking care to safeguard sound ascetic culture and practices within the Church. The outer front consisted in safeguarding doctrinal teachings for the cure of the soul. Another aspect of the inner front was protecting dogmas from heresies, which always have their source in people who have not mastered the proper therapeutic method. Whenever an innovation appears within the Church, it always means, from the very moment it appears, that the person introducing the innovation not only fails to view doctrine properly, but he also fails to be in a healthy spiritual state.

Some of the greatest Fathers of the Church were systematizers who situated their understanding of doctrine in the context of the therapeutic method. These include St. John of Damascus, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Symeon the New Theologian, and St. Dionysius the Areopagite, among others. We should also mention the disciples of St. Gregory Palamas. Moreover, we also find all these basic principles present and organized in the works of St. Ignatius the God-bearer, because this is an unbroken tradition dating back to the first century. The same basic principles are also present throughout St. Paul’s epistles, as well as throughout the entire Old and New Testaments. If we have the proper criteria, we can discover the presence of these basic principles and locate them in texts that contain them.

St. Makarius of Egypt carefully explains these issues by setting forth a coherent body of principles. He claims that Christians who do not have noetic prayer are not intrinsically different from believers in other religions. The only factor that makes such Christians different from believers of other religions is that these Christians intellectually believe in Christ and merely accept Christian doctrine, while the believers in other religions do not accept Christian doctrine. But such Christians do not gain anything from this kind of intellectual faith, because it does not heal them or purify their hearts from the passions. In terms of healing the human personality, they remain without benefit and with behavior that does not differ from that of non-Christians. This can be seen in their way of life.

Consider an Orthodox Christian whose soul is sick, but who not only fails to struggle to be healed, but does not even imagine that the Church has an effective therapeutic strategy for curing his sickness. What is the difference between such a nominal Orthodox Christian and a Muslim, for example?

Does doctrine make him different?

But what good is doctrine when it is not used as a pathway towards healing? What good is doctrine when it is merely kept hung up in the closet so that it can be worshiped? In other words, what is the point of worshiping the letter of the law and ignoring the spirit, hidden within the letter?

- Fr. John Romanides Patristic Theology (Lecture 58, On Councils)

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Dormition is one of the Twelve Great Feasts of the Christian faith, and particularly since it falls on a Sunday this year, many Orthodox Christians who otherwise might not celebrate the feast will have the opportunity.

Of course, this is a great preaching opportunity, so we here at Preachers Institute, are offering an article on Dormition and a few things which we hope you will find valuable as you prepare this festal sermon.

1. Preach the Gospel

Don’t forget to preach the Gospel – tell your listeners the Good News! The only reason we are celebrating Dormition at all is because of the incarnation, suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, the feast of the Dormition is, indeed, a feast of resurrection! Be sure to make this connection to every listener with clarity. You may wish to treat this feast as a real opportunity to preach the Resurrection to those who may never get another chance to hear it!

This is a resurrectional feast!

2. About the Feast Itself

The word ‘Dormition’ simply means ‘falling asleep’ – the biblical idiom for a believer’s death.

The Dormition (Falling Asleep) of the Theotokos is one of the Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church, celebrated on August 15. This feast is called the Assumption in the western churches, and commemorates the death, resurrection and glorification of the Virgin Mary, Christ’s mother. It proclaims that Mary has been “assumed” by God into the heavenly kingdom of Christ in the fullness of her spiritual and bodily existence.

The Tradition of the Church is that Mary died as all people die, not “voluntarily” as her Son, but by the necessity of her mortal human nature which is indivisibly bound up with the corruption of this world.

The Orthodox Church teaches that Mary is without personal sins. In the Gospel of the feast, however, in the liturgical services and in the Dormition icon, the Church proclaims as well that Mary truly needed to be saved by Christ as all human persons are saved from the trials, sufferings and death of this world; and that having truly died, she was raised up by her Son as the Mother of Life and participates already in the eternal life of paradise which is prepared and promised to all who

“hear the word of God and keep it.” (Luke 11:27-28)

The services of the feast repeat the main theme, that the Mother of Life has

“passed over into the heavenly joy, into the divine gladness and unending delight” of the Kingdom of her Son. (Vesper verse)

The Old Testament readings, as well as the gospel readings for the Vigil and the Divine Liturgy, are exactly the same as those for the feast of the Virgin’s nativity and her entrance into the Temple. Thus, at the Vigil we again hear Mary say:

“My soul magnifies the Lord and my Spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” (Luke 1:47)

At the Divine Liturgy we hear the letter to the Philippians where St. Paul speaks of the self-emptying of Christ who condescends to human servitude and ignoble death in order to be

“highly exalted” by God his Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

And once again we hear in the Gospel that Mary’s blessedness belongs to all who

“hear the word of God and keep it.” (Luke 11:27-28)

Thus, the feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos is the celebration of the fact that all men are “highly exalted” in the blessedness of the victorious Christ, and that this high exaltation has already been accomplished in Mary the Theotokos. The feast of the Dormition is the sign, the guarantee, and the celebration that Mary’s fate is, the destiny of all those of “low estate” whose souls magnify the Lord, whose spirits rejoice in God the Saviour, whose lives are totally dedicated to hearing and keeping the Word of God which is given to men in Mary’s child, the Saviour and Redeemer of the world.

Finally it must be stressed that, in all of the feasts of the Virgin Mother of God in the Church, the Orthodox Christians celebrate facts of their own lives in Christ and the Holy Spirit.

What happens to Mary happens to all who imitate her holy life of humility, obedience, and love.

With her all people will be “blessed” to be “more honorable than the cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim” if they follow her example. All will have Christ born in them by the Holy Spirit. All will become temples of the living God. All will share in the eternal life of His Kingdom who live the life that Mary lived.

In this sense everything that is praised and glorified in Mary is a sign of what is offered to all persons in the life of the Church. It is for this reason that Mary, with the divine child Jesus within her, is call in the Orthodox Tradition the Image of the Church. For the assembly of the saved is those in whom Christ dwells.

3. About The Dormition Fast

For the first fourteen days of August during each year, the Holy Orthodox Church enters into a strict fast period in honor of the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary.

Every Orthodox Christian is aware and generally knows the reason behind the fasts for Pascha and Christmas. But while they may know of the Dormition Fast, few follow it, and more than a few question why it is there, neither knowing its purpose.

First, given the pervasive misunderstanding of the purpose of fasting itself, a refresher on its purpose is always a good idea. There is a perception that we should fast when we want something, as though the act of fasting somehow appeases God, and seeing us “suffer” gets Him to grant our request. Nothing can be further from the truth. It is not our fasting that pleases God, it is the fruits of our fast (provided we fast in the proper mind set, and do not merely diet) that please Him.

We fast, not to get what we want, but to prepare ourselves to receive what God wants to give us. The purpose of fasting is to bring us more in line with another Mary, the sister of Lazarus, and away from their sister Martha, who in the famous passage was

“anxious and troubled about many things.”

Fasting is intended to bring us to the realization of

“the one thing needful.”

It is to help us put God first and our own desires second, if not last. As such it serves to prepare us to be instruments of God’s will, as with Moses in his flight from Egypt and on Mt. Sinai, as well as our Lord’s fast in the wilderness. Fasting turns us away from ourselves and toward God. In essence it helps us become like the Theotokos, an obedient servant of God, who heard His word and kept it better than anyone else has or could.

So why do we fast before Dormition?

In a close-knit family, word that its matriarch is on her deathbed brings normal life to a halt. Otherwise important things (parties, TV, luxuries, personal desires) become unimportant; life comes to revolve around the dying matriarch. It is the same with the Orthodox family; word that our matriarch is on her deathbed, could not (or at least should not) have any different effect than the one just mentioned.

The Church, through the Paraklesis Service, gives us the opportunity to come to that deathbed and eulogize and entreat the woman who bore God, the vessel of our salvation and our chief advocate at His divine throne. And as, in the earthly family, daily routines and the indulgence in personal wants should come to a halt. Fasting, in its full sense (abstaining from food and desires) accomplishes this. Less time in leisure or other pursuits leaves more time for prayer and reflection on she who gave us Christ, and became the first and greatest Christian.

In reflecting on her and her incomparable life, we see a model Christian life, embodying Christ’s retort to the woman who stated that Mary was blessed because she bore Him: blessed rather are those who hear His word and keep it. Mary did this better than anyone. She heard the word of God and kept it so well, that she of all women in history was chosen not only to hear His Word but give birth to it (Him). So while we fast in contemplation of her life, we are simultaneously preparing ourselves to live a life in imitation of her.

That is the purpose of the Dormition Fast. (source)

4. Why Is Dormition So Important?

The eminent Orthodox theologian, Fr. Sergei Bulgakov, beautifully expresses the high regard which the Orthodox Christians have for the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, for her special role in the salvation of mankind, when he affirms,

“The warm veneration of the Theotokos is the soul of Orthodox Piety.”

St. John of Damascus, one of the great Orthodox fathers, pointed out that when the Blessed Virgin Mary became the Mother of God and gave birth to Christ, the Redeemer of Mankind, she became the mother of mankind. We call the Virgin Mary “Theotokos”, from the Greek, which means “The Birth-Giver or the Bearer of God.”

Why not refer to her simply as the Blessed Virgin Mary? Because, there are many holy Marys who were virgins, but there is only one Theotokos.

This is the highest title that can be bestowed upon any member of the human race.

The Theotokos, the Virgin Mary, was

“blessed amongst women,”

and she was chosen

“to bear the Savior of our souls.”

We, therefore, as Orthodox Christians, consider her to be the Queen of all the saints and the angels.

Knowing that she holds such a high place in the Kingdom of Heaven and that she is eternally present at the throne of God interceding for mankind, we, as good Orthodox Christians, must pray for her love, guidance, and protection. We must never forget to ask for her intercessions in times of sickness and danger, and we must constantly thank her for her care and her prayers in our behalf.

The word “paraclesis” has two different meanings: the first is “consolation,” from which the Holy Spirit is called the “Paraclete,” or “Consoler”; the second is “supplication” or “petition”. The Service of the Paraclesis to the Theotokos consists of hymns of supplication to obtain consolation and courage. It should be recited in times of temptation, discouragement or sickness. It is used more particularly during the two weeks before the Dormition, or Assumption, of the Theotokos, from August 1 to August 14.

The theme of these Paraclesis Services centers around the petition…

“Most Holy Theotokos, save us.”

Since these Paraclesis Services to the Theotokos are primarily petition for the welfare of the living, let the whole Church pray for you during the first fifteen days of August and especially on the Great Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos on August 15th.

5. Special Blessings on Dormition

It is the custom in some churches to bless flowers and herbs on the feast of the Dormition.

It is the final Great Feast on the Christian Calendar. Thus, as a symbol of all believers, the liturgical year begins with the Nativity (birth) of the Theotokos, and ends with her Dormition (falling asleep).

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The attributes of the Church are innumerable because her attributes are actually the attributes of the Lord Christ, the God-man, and, through Him, those of the Triune Godhead. However, the holy and divinely wise fathers of the Second Ecumenical Council, guided and instructed by the Holy Spirit, reduced them in the ninth article of the Symbol of Faith to four — I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. These attributes of the Church — unity, holiness, catholicity (sobornost), and apostolicity — are derived from the very nature of the Church and of her purpose. They clearly and accurately define the character of the Orthodox Church of Christ whereby, as a theanthropic institution and community, she is distinguishable from any institution or community of the human sort.

I. The Unity and Uniqueness of the Church

Just as the Person of Christ the God-man is one and unique, so is the Church founded by Him, in Him, and upon Him. The unity of the Church follows necessarily from the unity of the Person of the Lord Christ, the God-man. Being an organically integral and theanthropic organism unique in all the worlds, the Church, according to all the laws of Heaven and earth, is indivisible. Any division would signify her death. Immersed in the God-man, she is first and foremost a theanthropic organism, and only then a theanthropic organization. In her, everything is theanthropic: nature, faith, love, baptism, the Eucharist, all the holy mysteries and all the holy virtues, her teaching, her entire life, her immortality, her eternity, and her structure.

Yes, yes, yes; in her, everything is theanthropically integral and indivisible Christification, sanctification, deification, Trinitarianism, salvation. In her everything is fused organically and by grace into a single theanthropic body, under a single Head — the God-man, the Lord Christ. All her members, though as persons always whole and inviolate, yet united by the same grace of the Holy Spirit through the holy mysteries and the holy virtues into an organic unity, comprise one body and confess the one faith, which unites them to each other and to the Lord Christ.

The Christ-bearing apostles are divinely inspired as they announce the unity and the uniqueness of the Church, based upon the unity and uniqueness of her Founder — the God-man, the Lord Christ, and His theanthropic personality:

“For another foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (I Cor. 3:11)

Like the holy apostles, the holy fathers and the teachers of the Church confess the unity and uniqueness of the Orthodox Church with the divine wisdom of the cherubim and the zeal of the seraphim. Understandable, therefore, is the fiery zeal which animated the holy fathers of the Church in all cases of division and falling away and the stern attitude toward heresies and schisms. In that regard, the holy ecumenical and holy local councils are preeminently important. According to their spirit and attitude, wise in those things pertaining to Christ, the Church is not only one but also unique. Just as the Lord Christ cannot have several bodies, so He cannot have several Churches. According to her theanthropic nature, the Church is one and unique, just as Christ the God-man is one and unique.

Hence, a division, a splitting up of the Church is ontologically and essentially impossible. A division within the Church has never occurred, nor indeed can one take place, while apostasy from the Church has and will continue to occur after the manner of those voluntarily fruitless branches which, having withered, fall away from the eternally living theanthropic Vine — the Lord Christ (Jn. 15:1-6). From time to time, heretics and schismatics have cut themselves off and have fallen away from the one and indivisible Church of Christ, whereby they ceased to be members of the Church and parts of her theanthropic body. The first to fall away thus were the gnostics, then the Arians, then the Macedonians, then the Monophysites, then the Iconoclasts, then the Roman Catholics, then the Protestants, then the Uniates, and so on—all the other members of the legion of heretics and schismatics.

II. The Holiness of the Church

By her theanthropic nature, the Church is undoubtedly a unique organization in the world. All her holiness resides in her nature. Actually, she is the theanthropic workshop of human sanctification and, through men, of the sanctification of the rest of creation. She is holy as the theanthropic Body of Christ, whose eternal head is the Lord Christ Himself; and whose immortal soul is the Holy Spirit. Wherefore everything in her is holy: her teaching, her grace, her mysteries, her virtues, all her powers, and all her instruments have been deposited in her for the sanctification of men and of all created things. Having become the Church by His incarnation out of an unparalleled love for man, our God and Lord Jesus Christ sanctified the Church by His sufferings, Resurrection, Ascension, teaching, wonder-working, prayer, fasting, mysteries, and virtues; in a word, by His entire theanthropic life. Wherefore the divinely inspired pronouncement has been rendered:

“. . . Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27).

The flow of history confirms the reality of the Gospel: the Church is filled to overflowing with sinners. Does their presence in the Church reduce, violate, or destroy her sanctity? Not in the least! For her Head — the Lord Christ, and her Soul — the Holy Spirit, and her divine teaching, her mysteries, and her virtues, are indissolubly and immutably holy. The Church tolerates sinners, shelters them, and instructs them, that they may be awakened and roused to repentance and spiritual recovery and transfiguration; but they do not hinder the Church from being holy. Only unrepentant sinners, persistent in evil and godless malice, are cut off from the Church either by the visible action of the theanthropic authority of the Church or by the invisible action of divine judgment, so that thus also the holiness of the Church may be preserved.

“Put away from among yourselves that wicked person” (I Cor. 5:13).

In their writings and at the Councils, the holy fathers confessed the holiness of the church as her essential and immutable quality. The fathers of the Second Ecumenical Council defined it dogmatically in the ninth article of the Symbol of Faith. And the succeeding ecumenical councils confirmed it by the seal of their assent.

III. The Catholicity (Sobornost) of the Church

The theanthropic nature of the Church is inherently and all-encompassingly universal and catholic: it is theanthropically universal and theanthropically catholic. The Lord Christ, the God-man, has by Himself and in Himself most perfectly and integrally united God and Man and, through man, all the worlds and all created things to God. The fate of creation is essentially linked to that of man (cf. Romans 8:19-24). In her theanthropic organism, the Church encompasses:

“all things created, that are in Heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers” (Col. 1:16).

Everything is in the God-man; He is the Head of the Body of the Church (Col. 1:17-18).

In the theanthropic organism of the Church everyone lives in the fullness of his personality as a living, godlike cell. The law of theanthropic catholicity encompasses all and acts through all. All the while, the theanthropic equilibrium between the divine and the human is always duly preserved. Being members of her body, we in the Church experience the fullness of our being in all its godlike dimensions. Furthermore: in the Church of the God-man, man experiences his own being as all-encompassing, as theanthropically all-encompassing; he experiences himself not only as complete, but also as the totality of creation. In a word: he experiences himself as a god-man by grace.

The theanthropic catholicity of the Church is actually an unceasing christification of many by grace and virtue: all is gathered in Christ the God-man, and everything is experienced through Him as one’s own, as a single indivisible theanthropic organism. For life in the Church is a theanthropic catholicization, the struggle of acquiring by grace and virtue the likeness of the God-man, christification, theosis, life in the Trinity, sanctification, transfiguration, salvation, immortality, and churchliness. Theanthropic catholicity in the Church is reflected in and achieved by the eternally living Person of Christ, the God-man Who in the most perfect way has united God to man and to all creation, which has been cleansed of sin, evil, and death by the Savior’s precious Blood (cf. Col. 1:19-22). The theanthropic Person of the Lord Christ is the very soul of the Church’s catholicity. It is the God-man Who always preserves the theanthropic balance between the divine and the human in the catholic life of the Church. The Church is filled to overflowing with the Lord Christ, for she is

“the fullness of Him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:23).

Wherefore, she is universal in every person that is found within her, in each of her tiny cells. That universality, that catholicity resounds like thunder particularly through the holy apostles, through the holy fathers, through the holy ecumenical and local councils.

IV. The Apostolicity of the Church

The holy apostles were the first god-men by grace. Like the Apostle Paul each of them, by his integral life, could have said of himself:

“I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20).

Each of them is a Christ repeated; or, to be more exact, a continuation of Christ. Everything in them is theanthropic because everything was recieved from the God-man. Apostolicity is nothing other than the God-manhood of the Lord Christ, freely assimilated through the holy struggles of the holy virtues: faith, love, hope, prayer, fasting, etc. This means that everything that is of man lives in them freely through the God-man, thinks through the God-man, feels through the God-man, acts through the God-man and wills through the God-man.

For them, the historical God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the supreme value and the supreme criterion. Everything in them is of the God-man, for the sake of the God-man, and in the God-man. And it is always and everywhere thus. That for them is immortality in the time and space of this world. Thereby are they even on this earth partakers of the theanthropic eternity of Christ.

This theanthropic apostolicity is integrally continued in the earthly successors of the Christ-bearing apostles: in the holy fathers. Among them, in essence, there is no difference: the same God-man Christ lives, acts, enlivens and makes them all eternal in equal measure, He Who is the same yesterday, and today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). Through the holy fathers, the holy apostles live on with all their theanthropic riches, theanthropic worlds, theanthropic holy things, theanthropic mysteries, and theanthropic virtues. The holy fathers in fact are continuously apostolizing, whether as distinct godlike personalities, or as bishops of the local churches, or as members of the holy ecumenical and holy local councils. For all of them there is but one Truth, one Transcendent Truth: the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Behold, the holy ecumenical councils, from the first to the last, confess, defend, believe, announce, and vigilantly preserve but a single supreme value: the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The principal Tradition, the transcendent Tradition, of the Orthodox Church is the living God-man Christ, entire in the theanthropic Body of the Church of which He is the immortal, eternal Head. This is not merely the message, but the transcendent message of the holy apostles and the holy fathers. They know Christ crucified, Christ resurrected, Christ ascended. They all, by their integral lives and teachings, with a single soul and a single voice, confess that Christ the God-man is wholly in His Church, as in His Body. Each of the holy fathers could rightly repeat with St. Maximus the Confessor:

“In no wise am I expounding my own opinion, but that which I have been taught by the fathers, without changing aught in their teaching.”

And from the immortal proclamation of St. John of Damascus there resounds the universal confession of all the holy fathers who were glorified by God: “Whatever has been transmitted to us through the Law, and the prophets, and the apostles, and the evangelists, we receive and know and esteem highly, and beyond that we ask nothing more. . . Let us be fully satisfied with it, and rest therein, removing not the ancient landmarks (Prov. 22:28), nor violating the divine Tradition.” And then, the touching, fatherly admonition of the holy Damascene, directed to all Orthodox Christians:

“Wherefore, brethren, let us plant ourselves upon the rock of faith and the Tradition of the Church, removing not the landmarks set by our holy fathers, nor giving room to those who are anxious to introduce novelties and to undermine the structure of God’s holy ecumenical and apostolic Church. For if everyone were allowed a free hand, little by little the entire Body of the Church would be destroyed.”

The holy Tradition is wholly of the God-man, wholly of the holy apostles, wholly of the holy fathers, wholly of the Church, in the Church, and by the Church. The holy fathers are nothing other than the “guardians of the apostolic tradition.” All of them, like the holy apostles themselves, are but “witnesses” of a single and unique Truth: the transcendent Truth of Christ, the God-man. They preach and confess it without rest, they, the “golden mouths of the Word.” The God-man, the Lord Christ is one, unique, and indivisible. So also is the Church unique and indivisible, for she is the incarnation of the Theanthropos Christ, continuing through the ages and through all eternity. Being such by her nature and in her earthly history, the Church may not be divided. It is only possible to fall away from her. That unity and uniqueness of the Church is theanthropic from the very beginning and through all the ages and all eternity.

Apostolic succession, the apostolic heritage, is theanthropic from first to last. What is it that the holy apostles are transmitting to their successors as their heritage? The Lord Christ, the God-man Himself, with all the imperishable riches of His wondrous theanthropic Personality, Christ—the Head of the Church, her sole Head. If it does not transmit that, apostolic succession ceases to be apostolic, and the apostolic Tradition is lost, for there is no longer an apostolic hierarchy and an apostolic Church.

The holy Tradition is the Gospel of the Lord Christ, and the Lord Christ Himself, Whom the Holy Spirit instills in each and every believing soul, in the entire Church. Whatever is Christ’s, by the power of the Holy Spirit becomes ours, human; but only within the body of the Church. The Holy Spirit—the soul of the Church, incorporates each believer, as a tiny cell, into the body of the Church and makes him a “co-heir” of the God-man (Eph. 3:6).

In reality the Holy Spirit makes every believer into a God-man by grace. For what is life in the Church? Nothing other than the transfiguration of each believer into a God-man by grace through his personal, evangelical virtues; it is his growth in Christ, the putting on of Christ by growing in the Church and being a member of the Church. A Christian’s life is a ceaseless, Christ-centered theophany: the Holy Spirit, through the holy mysteries and the holy virtues, transmits Christ the Savior to each believer, renders him a living tradition, a living life:

“Christ who is our life” (Col. 3:4).

Everything Christ’s thereby becomes ours, ours for all eternity: His truth, His righteousness, His love, His life, and His entire divine Hypostasis.

Holy Tradition? It is the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man Himself, with all the riches of his divine Hypostasis and, through Him and for His sake, those of the Holy Trinity. That is most fully given and articulated in the Holy Eucharist, wherein, for our sake and for our salvation, the Savior’s entire theanthropic economy of salvation is performed and repeated. Therein wholly resides the God-man with all His wondrous and miraculous gifts; He is there, and in the Church’s life of prayer and liturgy. Through all this, the Savior’s philanthropic proclamation ceaselessly resounds:

“And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Mt. 28 20).

He is with the apostles and, through the apostles, with all the faithful, world without end. This is the whole of the holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church of the apostles: life in Christ = life in the Holy Trinity; growth in Christ = growth in the Trinity (cf. Mt. 28: 19-20).

Of extraordinary importance is the following: in Christ’s Orthodox Church, the Holy Tradition, ever living and life-giving, comprises: the holy liturgy, all the divine services, all the holy mysteries, all the holy virtues, the totality of eternal truth and eternal righteousness, all love, all eternal life, the whole of the God-man, the Lord Christ, the entire Holy Trinity, and the entire theanthropic life of the Church in its theanthropic fullness, with the All-holy Theotokos and all the saints.

The personality of the Lord Christ the God-man, transfigured within the Church, immersed in the prayerful, liturgical, and boundless sea of grace, wholly contained in the Eucharist, and wholly in the Church—this is holy Tradition. This authentic good news is confessed by the holy fathers and the holy ecumenical councils. By prayer and piety holy Tradition is preserved from all human demonism and devilish humanism, and in it is preserved the entire Lord Christ, He Who is the eternal Tradition of the Church.

“Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh” (I Tim. 3 16)

He was manifest as a man, as a God-man, as the Church, and by His philanthropic act of salvation and deification of humanity He magnified and exalted man above the holy cherubim and the most holy seraphim.

Originally published in Orthodox Life, vol. 31, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb., 1981), pp. 28-33. Translated by Stephen Karganovic from The Orthodox Church & Ecumenism (in Serbian) by Archimandrite Justin (Popovich) (Thessalonica: Chilandar Monastery, 1974), pp. 64-74.

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Senior Editor of Touchstone Magazine, and archpriest of All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago, IL, Fr. Patrick is, perhaps, the most erudite writer in the Orthodox Church in North America today. This article, one of his Pastoral Ponderings, was published by Orthodoxtoday.org.

Publican and Pharisee

The Lord’s account of the two men who

“went up to the temple to pray” (Luke 18:9-14)

may be said to illustrate three characteristics of Christian Prayer.

It shows such prayer to be

• theologically structured,
• persistent, and
• pure.

First, the prayer is theologically structured. Jesus tells us that this Publican

“went up to the Temple to pray.”

He could have prayed anywhere, we suppose. He might have gone out into the woods, for instance. Some folks have told me, over the years, that they don’t come to church on Sunday because they find it more comfortable to pray out in the woods, or in the privacy of the home, or on the beach, or perhaps on the golf course. We presume that this Publican could have done the same, but he chose to make a special trip to the Temple, a particular house set apart for the purpose of worship.

That is to say, the Publican gave a determined theological structure to his prayer.

It may have been the case that this Publican went up to the Temple at one of the special times for prayer, such as the ninth hour, when the evening sacrifice was being offered. Thus, the Acts of the Apostles tells us,

“Peter and John went up together to the temple to pray at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.”

This time of the evening sacrifice was a favored time of prayer. One of the Psalms recited at that hour contained the lines,

“Let my prayer be set before You as incense, The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

Jews observed this evening hour of prayer throughout the whole world, uniting their hearts and minds in communion with the evening sacrifice taking place in the Temple. Thus, in the Book of Acts we find the Centurion Cornelius observing that same ninth hour of prayer.

When Cornelius became a Christian, did he stop observing that daily discipline of evening prayer? Of course not. Indeed, he and the other converts carried it right over into the Christian Church as the canonical hour of Vespers, which we have continued, in an unbroken tradition, to the present day. It is instructive to observe that Vespers invariably contains the lines,

“Let my prayer be set before You as incense, The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

Or perhaps the Publican went up to the Temple to pray at the third hour, the time of the morning sacrifice. That too was a standard time of daily prayer for Jews throughout the world, who united their hearts and minds with the morning sacrifice being offered in the Temple. This third hour, we recall, was the time at which the Holy Spirit descended on a group of Jews gathered in the upper room on the first day of the week.

Those Jews, when they became Christians, did not stop that daily discipline of prayer at the time of the morning sacrifice. It passed over into the Christian Church as the canonical hour of Orthros or Matins, which we have observed ever since. Vespers and Matins are older than any other part of our daily liturgical format; they are older than the Christian Church.

Or it may be the case that the Publican went up at some other time during the day, a time dictated solely by his personal preference. It makes no difference. The important thing to observe is that he made his prayer in the Temple. That is to say, he gave his prayer a defined theological structure. His prayer was not a purely private devotion. It was offered within a theological context, because the Temple was an institution of theological history.

The Publican’s prayer was rendered in the setting of an “organized religion.” It found its proper frame of reference in an ongoing community of shared faith and binding address. His prayer was situated within salvation history. It expressed his identity as a child of Abraham and an heir of the covenant. He prayed in continuity with Moses and the prophets. In prayer his soul was united to David, the author of the Psalms.

The Publican’s prayer was an expression of his very identity.

Second, the Publican’s prayer was persistent. Jesus tells us that this Publican

“standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’”

Luke uses here the imperfect verb etypten, which literally means,

“he kept on beating his breast.”

The Publican was not afraid to repeat himself in his prayers.

Luke also uses the imperfect tense in two other scenes of prayer in chapter 18 of his Gospel. Thus, in describing the cry of the widow in the parable that comes just before this one, Luke says that when this lady came to the judge’s house, she cried out repeatedly. Similarly, later in this same chapter of Luke, we read of the blind man of Jericho, who kept on crying out to Jesus as He walked along the road. These were all repeated prayers.

The Publican’s “Lord, have mercy” was prayed many, many times. He was not content with just once. His prayer was persistent. He would give God no rest.

Persistent prayer tends, in short, to be repetitious prayer. This is a perfectly biblical style, in spite of a strange modern bias against repetition in prayer. Apparently it was this somewhat recent bias that caused the translators of the King James Bible to mistranslate the Greek word polylogia (“wordiness”) as “vain repetition” (Matthew 6:7). Repetition in prayer, however, is exactly what we find in these stories in the Gospel, where petition takes the form of repetition. There is nothing “vain” about it.

Third, the Publican’s prayer was pure. It was a simple pleading for the divine mercy, a prayer of humility and repentance. In short, it was a pure prayer. Unlike the Pharisee in this parable, the Publican passed no judgment on anyone else. Knowing himself to be a sinner, he was not the least bit disposed to think of himself as better than others.

Pure prayer is humble and repentant. It is not self-righteous. It is not puffed up and self-satisfied. Pure prayer does not seek its own fulfillment. A man that prays with spiritual purity stands in stark contrast to those who pray in order to find some sort of spiritual lift or personal satisfaction.

We don’t know if the Publican felt spiritually fulfilled by his prayer. In fact, we surmise that perhaps he didn’t. We suspect that he felt just as miserable after his prayer as he did before. He was no less a sinner for having admitted to being a sinner. When he left the Temple that day, we may presume that he was not content or happy with himself. None of that has anything to do with the purity of prayer.

No, purity in prayer means that the prayer is unselfish. It is not prayer made for the sake of some spiritual experience or devotional high. These qualities are not essential to prayer. Indeed, they may serve in some cases as nothing better than distractions. What is important in prayer is its purity. Pure prayer is unselfish prayer.

The Publican’s prayer represented the gift of himself to God. True, it was a poor gift, because he was a sinner, and he knew it. Yet, according to Jesus,

“this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Such is the prayer of the man who is justified through faith, not by his own merits. His prayer is pure because it is based solely in the mercy of God.

This is the prayer that Jesus teaches in the parable of the Publican.

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His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos serves the Metropolis of Nafpaktos in the Church of Greece. His study of the patristic texts and particularly those of the hesychast Fathers of the Philokalia, many years of studying St. Gregory Palamas, association with the monks of the Holy Mountain (Mount Athos), and many years of pastoral experience, all brought him to the realization that Orthodox theology is a science of the healing of man and that the neptic fathers can help the modern restless man who is disturbed by many internal and existential problems. In his books, he conveys the Orthodox spirit of the Philokalia to the restless and disturbed man of our time. This is why they have aroused so much interest.

The Second Coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead are closely connected with the coming judgement, the so-called future tribunal. All men will stand before the dread judgement seat of Christ.

In the Creed we confess that Christ will come with glory

“to judge the living and the dead.”

This conviction constitutes the central teaching of the Church, as we shall verify in what follows. In all the assemblies for worship and in the Divine Liturgy there are words about presence before the throne of God. The priest prays:

“For a Christian end of our life, painless, peaceful and unashamed, and for a good answer before the dread judgement seat of Christ, we beseech Thee.”

In what follows we shall have an opportunity to emphasize the fact that although we use images of a tribunal, the judgement will have more the character of a revelation and manifestation of the spiritual state of the person. Moreover, all the images used have a symbolic character. Christ and the saints, as we shall see, use such images to make people understand pictorially that dreadful day when they will see the reality. Consequently, unless we do away with the images, we must enter into their essence and inner content.

According to St. Symeon the New Theologian,

“What we have to say about the judgement is difficult to explain because it is not about present and visible things but about future and invisible ones”.

The present things are seen, the future is invisible, and that is why purity of nous, much prayer and much zeal are required.

In Holy Scripture a great deal is said about the coming judgement, which is a starting-point for eternal life and eternal Hell. Christ’s parables about the Ten Virgins, the tares and the weddings are well known. It is not easy or possible for us to analyze all these elements. However, we shall set down the most significant ones.

Christ assured the people that He Himself would judge the people in the age to come.

“For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgement to the Son” (Jn. 5:22).

And this is not independent of the fact that Christ is the prototype of man, since man is an image of Christ, but also the rebirth of man comes through Christ. He became man, suffered, was crucified, rose again and was taken up. He, then, will be the judge of men.

“And He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42).

Also the Apostle Paul preached the same teaching on Mars Hill, when he said:

“He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all, by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).

In these apostolic passages it appears that Christ will be the judge of men. A parallel passage from the Apostle Paul is his exhortation to his disciple Timothy:

“I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His epiphany and His kingdom…” (2 Tim. 4:1).

The Second Coming of Christ is called epiphany and kingdom, which is connected with the judgement of dead and living, that is to say, those who have died previously and those who will be living at that time.

The connection of the Second Coming of Christ with the throne shows both the majesty of God and Christ’s authority to judge men, but also men’s fear in the face of the judgement and the judge. Christ used this image when he said that when he comes with the angels,

“He will sit on the throne of His glory” (Matt. 25:31).

The throne, which is a symbol of His glory, but also of the authority which He has over men, has its origin in the worship of the divinities of ancient times and of the god – emperor of the Romans, but also in the Old Testament, as well as in the Revelation of John. The Prophet-king David already writes in one of his psalms:

“He has prepared His throne for judgement. He shall judge the world in righteousness” (Psalm 9:7-8).

And there is a portrayal saying “preparation of the throne”, which has been connected with Golgotha. Since the eleventh century the depiction of the “preparation of the throne” has been connected with the Second Coming of Christ and the coming tribunal.

The meaning of the throne, which suggests the imperial throne and the tribunal, has been closely linked with Christ’s judgement of the living and the dead, and we find it in many passages in the epistles of the Apostle Paul. Referring to the fact that we are all suppliants, servants of Christ, and we should not judge others, he affirms:

“For we shall all stand before the judgement seat of Christ” (Rom. 14:10).

The Christians of Rome, to whom this is said, had knowledge and experience of what the emperor’s and the judge’s throne meant. He also says the same thing to the Christians of Corinth:

“For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10).

Since the final judgement of men will take place, and since the real Judge is Christ, Christians should avoid judging their fellow men, their brothers. The Apostle Paul writes:

“He who judges me is the Lord… who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the heart” (1 Cor. 4:5).

In this passage, apart from the fact that it says that Christ is the true judge of men, at the same time the way in which He will judge is also presented. He who is the true light, by His appearing will reveal all the hidden things of darkness and will manifest all the wishes and desires which there are in the heart. In another place the Apostle Paul refers to the judgement which will come from the saints. He writes:

“Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?” (1 Cor. 6:2).

This passage shows again the way in which the Judgement will take place. It is not a matter of a worldly tribunal where the accusation will be pronounced, and there will be witnesses for the accusation and for the defence, and then the decision will be heard. The image of the future tribunal is taken from the judiciary, but its content is different. The appearing of the Sun of Righteousness will reveal everything, all will be stripped of their outward distinctions and there will be a comparison of saints with sinners. This is the meaning of the saying that the saints will judge the world. We shall look at all these things in what follows when we speak of how the Fathers interpret the scriptural passages which refer to the future judgement.

Christ’s parable of the wedding is well known. When the king came to the place where those invited to his son’s wedding were gathered, he saw one person who was not wearing a wedding garment. Then he reprimanded him, saying,

“Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?”

He commanded that he be bound hand and foot and cast into the outer fire, where there will be

“weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 22:1-14).

According to the interpretation of this parable by St. Gregory Palamas, the wedding refers to the Second Coming of Christ and to the Kingdom of Heaven. The entry of the King, who is God, is “the manifestation at the time of the future judgement”. The garment of the spiritual wedding, which was indispensable for those invited, was virtue. And naturally when the Holy Fathers speak of virtue, they mean the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and not a superficial human virtue. He who lacks the garment of virtues will not only be unworthy of the Kingdom of God, but also will be punished. Not only the soul but also the body will prove to be unworthy of that bridal chamber, if it has not lived in self-control, purity and sobriety. The punishment for not having a wedding garment is connected with his removal from the dwelling-place of those rejoicing and from close association with them. It is basically a question of separation from God and not sharing in His grace.

The fact that his hands and feet are bound, by order of the King, refers to a person’s constriction by successions of sins which occur in this life. The unbearable pain and great suffering which the person feels when he commits them in this life will continue in the next life as well. The fact that he is cast into the outer fire indicates

“his having become far from God because he did not do deeds of light here”.

Inasmuch as he did not practice deeds of light in this life, in that day he cannot participate in the light. Saying that he is separated from God means this. The darkness into which he will be taken is synonymous with the inextinguishable fire, the unsleeping worms, the weeping and gnashing of teeth. All these things point to

“the impending unbearable sufferings touching both soul and body”

and the mournful cries of useless and perpetual regret. That is to say, they will repent of the deeds they have done, but it will never be possible to be comforted, for the repentance to be brought to an end.

The passage about the coming judgement is matchless and most expressive, and since it is a teaching of Christ, it is authentic through and through. No one can doubt it and wish to be called Christian. And this because what is said about the judgement comes from the indisputable mouth of Christ (Matt. 25:31-46).

We shall not quote the text of the Gospel which describes the coming judgement, but we shall refer to the interpretation given by St. Gregory Palamas, and within the interpretation we shall also look at the related events.

When Christ has come in glory and with His angels, He will separate the people, as the shepherd does, and the righteous will be placed at His right, and the unrepentant sinners at His left. The judgement will be based on the love or hate which they have shown towards their brethren who found themselves in difficult circumstances. The question is, why is charity the only criterion? And is it altogether right that people should be saved by charitableness, while some people are condemned to everlasting death simply because they did not show sympathy to their fellow men?

St. Gregory Palamas makes a wonderful analysis of the passage, out of the whole experience of the Church. He says that the righteous will enjoy the Kingdom of God, not simply because of a small deed of charity which they have done, but because of their whole reborn existence. This is shown by three things.

First, by the fact that they are called sheep. By this term he shows that they are righteous, gentle, forbearing, and walk the level and trodden path of the virtues, that is to say, they have followed Christ, who is the real Shepherd of men. And not only have they followed him but they have become like Him, who is the lamb of God. This means that throughout their lives they kept the commandments of God, but also that they were always ready

“for the death beyond the good”.

Some of them are sons of God because they are guardians

“of the mystical rebirth from God”

and others are paid workers, for they have acquired grace once more by the sweat of repentance and humility.

Secondly, the righteous have in their lives lived the love which is completion of the law, it is the virtue which towers above all the other virtues and is their head. Love towards humanity is an expression of the reborn man, especially when that love is within a love for God.

Thirdly, the righteous are also characterised by humility. For although Christ reminds them of what they have done, they do not feel it. Humility is connected with love. The righteous feel unworthy of praise. Therefore, by all these characteristics the righteous show that they are united with God, spiritually reborn.

The opposite happens with the sinners, who will stand at Christ’s left. They are not condemned simply for the omission of a few small acts of love and charity, but for the opposite reasons for which the righteous were praised.

First, he calls the sinners children,

“as being impudent and undisciplined and going down the precipices of sin”.

Just as goats go up to high places, the same is observed in sinners. The unrepentant sinners have not acquired the prudence of Christ, they have not become sheep that are led by the true shepherd, but they preferred the disordered and impudent life, they have not made themselves like the lamb of God, which means that they did not possess the character of sacrifice for their brothers.

Secondly, they did not show charity and love, which means that they had not been reborn of the Holy Spirit. At the same time they showed hate. Just as love is the fullness of all the virtues, so also hate and deeds of hate, the unsympathetic manner, and the uncommunicated opinion is “the fullness of sin”.

The sinners are judged by their misanthropy, because all evils follow from this.

Thirdly, sinners are distinguished by their arrogance, which is connected with an unsympathetic manner. And then, when they are reproached for their lack of sympathy, instead of humbly drawing near, they contradict and justify themselves. It shows that misanthropy has become their nature.

Just for this reason the righteous enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the sinners are sent to Hell.

Analyzing this point, St. Gregory Palamas says that the righteous enjoy eternal life:

“They have life and they have it abundantly”

“Life” refers to coexistence with God, and “abundantly” means that they are sons and inheritors of the Kingdom of God, that is to say they share the same glory and kingdom. Sinners have no share of God. At the same time they will coexist with the demons and will be consigned to hell fire.

St. Symeon the New Theologian, interpreting this passage, says that Christ is referring to something deeper and more essential. The fact that He reproaches the sinners, since He was hungry and they did not feed Him or He was thirsty and they did not give Him water to drink, means that He was hungry for their salvation and they did not measure up to it.

Through his creation by God, man is in His image and likeness, and through his coming into the Church, which is the Body of Christ, he is closely connected with God. Likewise through the sacraments he becomes a member of the Body of Christ. So when he does not live in accordance with God’s commandments, it is as if he was letting Christ be hungry and thirsty.

Analyzing this idea, St. Symeon says that Christ was hungry for man’s conversion and repentance and man did not satisfy His hunger. He thirsted for man’s salvation, and man did not give Him a chance to taste it. He was bare of virtuous deeds, and man did not clothe Him with them, for when the Christian as a member of Christ lacks these virtues, He is as if left naked with His limbs exposed. He was shut into the narrow, filthy, dark prison of man’s heart, and man did not wish to visit Him or bring Him out into the light. The Christian knew that it was because of his indolence and inactivity that Christ was ill, and he did not help Him by good works and acts.

Christ really desires the salvation of man, whom He created, and through love He has endured many sufferings for his salvation. At the same time, through holy Baptism the Christian is a member of His body. And when he does not measure up to this desire of Christ and remains in the darkness of sin, then he condemns himself.

It is impressive when he says that he was in the narrow, dark and filthy prison of the heart. Actually through holy Baptism the grace of God remains in the depth of the heart of man. But divine grace is hidden by the sins which we commit after our entry into the Church. Thus Christ is as if imprisoned in the heart. Man’s Hell will be precisely this.

Connected with this is St. Gregory Palamas’ interpretation of Christ’s Parable of the Ten Virgins. According to the parable, the five wise virgins who had oil with them along with their lamps, went in to the wedding, while the five foolish virgins, who had no oil, were not found worthy of this great joy (Matt. 25:1-13).

According to St. Gregory Palamas, entrance into the Kingdom of God is connected with virginity, not simply of the body, but properly of the soul. Everyone can experience this virginity. Virginity is practised by asceticism, self-control and the various struggles of the virtues. But hands too are needed to hold the lighted lamps, as well as oil. The hands are the active life of the soul, that is to say repentance, the effort to purify the soul. Lighted lamps are the right nous in which there will be that diligent spiritual knowledge which rests on the active life of the soul, is consecrated through a life in God and is kindled by the illuminations which come from Him. It seems here that it is a question of purity of heart and illumination of the nous. Noetic prayer, unceasing communion with God, is linked with the illuminations which come from God. But there is need for plenty of oil, which is love, the summit of all the virtues.

Judging from our analysis of patristic passages referring to the future tribunal, it seems that the coming judgement is not a typical legal process but is Christ’s expression and revelation of man’s inner spiritual condition. He who is reborn of the Holy Spirit will then appear clearly to all men; his kinship with Christ, who will shine radiantly, will be revealed. And he who is not reborn, and especially he who has a dark and unenlightened nous, will be revealed to all men, because he will have no share in God. Just as the appearing of the sun throws light on all things, so also the coming of the true Sun of Righteousness will be a real revelation of the inner dispositions and desires of men. We shall see this put more expressively, especially in the teaching of St. Symeon the New Theologian.

First it must be underlined once more that Christ is the Kingdom of Heaven. He is the true light which will shine at His coming to judge men. St. Symeon the New Theologian, referring to Him, says:

“Thou Kingdom of heaven, Thou Christ, earth of the meek, Thou Paradise of verdure, Thou divine nuptial chamber, Thou ineffable banquet hall, Thou table open to all, Thou bread of life, Thou unprecedented beverage….”

He adds that Christ, who is the unapproachable sun, will shine in the midst of the saints, and then all will be illuminated according to their faith, practice, hope, love, purity and illumination, which comes from His Spirit. The different mansions which will exist in Paradise will be reckoned as “the measures of their love and their vision of Thee”.

Therefore according to his spiritual purity a man will radiate the brightness of God. The coming of the Sun of Righteousness among men will reveal everything. This is also how the Apostle Paul’s saying is understood:

“…your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory” (Col. 3:3-4).

Another saying of the Apostle Paul is parallel:

“Anything shown up by the light will be illuminated; and anything illuminated is itself a light” (Eph. 5:13).

All who have accomplished divine things in their lives will be in the light, and those who have done depraved things, as St. Symeon the New Theologian teaches, “will be in the darkness of punishments” and there will be a great gulf between them.

Thus at His appearance Christ will reveal men’s way of life, their whole being, what is at the depth of their heart. This revelation is eternal life and eternal hell, because the first is participation in God, and the second is connected with non-participation and non-communion with God.

What will happen in the next life, at the coming Judgement, is also going on already. St. Gregory Palamas says that Christ is the Sun of Righteousness, the never setting, true and eternal light. The souls of the saints are in it now, and in the future life their bodies will be in it as well. Those who do not repent now, although they enjoy the physical, sensible sun and are comforted by the other creatures of God, are living outside the light. Then in the future life they will find themselves very far from God and will be delivered over to eternal Hell.

Therefore what will be in the next life is experienced already now. So St. Symeon the New Theologian asks God to give him His grace already now, as a pledge, that he may enjoy it in the coming life:

“Grant me henceforth to serve Thee, my Saviour, and to receive Thy Divine Spirit, pledge of Thy kingdom and hence to enjoy Thy banquet, Thy glory, that I may see Thee, O my God, unto the ages of ages”.

This is a concern of all the saints. They do not fear death, but they fear what will happen after that, especially at the Second Coming of Christ. They are not so much concerned about the time of their death as about the way in which they will depart, that is to say what will be their condition at that hour, for that will have eternal consequences.

St. Symeon says that he has a fear and horror of dying with a blind nous. Even if a person receives sensible light, the light of the eyes after his resurrection, it is of no use if he has no spiritual eyes to see God. In such a case a man who has come out of the dark dwells in darkness again and will be separated from God unto the ages.

Thus the appearance of God as sun will reveal the spiritual nakedness of a man. Now we have the possibility of concealing our spiritual nakedness by various means, but then all will be revealed. In one of his Catechetical Discourses St. Symeon the New Theologian presents the truth that it is not a matter of a man’s profiting from all the material, sensory and mental gifts which he happens to have in his life.

He puts many questions, such as where will be the sumptuous dinners, the various costly costumes, the arrogance of those in authority, and so forth? I would like to focus attention on his saying that then the nakedness of man’s soul will be revealed. He asks:

“Where will be the great names? Where the holiness that others attribute to us or we attribute to ourselves? Where will those be who now flatter and deceive us, who call us holy and wipe off the chaffing of our feet?”

Many of us have the illusion that we are holy, that we are full of virtues, since there are also many flatterers who cultivate this self-esteem. But then all will be revealed, and all men will see our nakedness.

There are many things in this life which conceal the blindness of our hearts and the nakedness of our souls. Many times this happens through the wisdom and knowledge of the world. We think that we are something, while essentially we are dead to God, we have nothing good. Then all will be revealed. St. Symeon the New Theologian asks:

“Where will be the pretended prudence of those who are honoured for their knowledge and wisdom of the world? Where our presumption and illusion that we are something, though we are nothing?”

This is precisely why great fear and trembling will then seize those who are slack, careless and slothful.

So, blessed is the man who lives in repentance and sees himself “lower than every creature”, because “then he will stand at His right hand in glorious apparel”. Only those adorned with the grace of God will stand at the right hand of the throne of God.

When St. Symeon speaks of clothes and nakedness, he does not mean only the existence or lack of virtues, but the Holy Spirit, the very light of God. Then the night will become as light as the day; every house and cave, even heaven and earth will be removed, and thus all who have not put on Christ, that is to say

“those who have not received the light… and previously been in it and become light”,

then will appear naked and will be filled with much shame. Every act, bad or good, every thought, every memory that has arisen in us from our very birth till our last breath will appear. All will be revealed before men.

It is impressive here that those who appear naked will be chiefly those who have not seen the light in this life and have not become light. In that case the problem is not moral, but spiritual, ontological. The nakedness is related to not having participated in the light in this life. Therefore St. Symeon recommends that they enter the narrow gate through penitence

“and see the light that is within it”

already in this life. The vision of the uncreated light is not a luxury of the spiritual life, but the essence and purpose of it.

In the teaching of St. Symeon the New Theologian something else appears as well which is connected with what has been said. When we keep the commandments of God, we are brought to the light. Therefore not to keep the commandments takes us away from the light and commits us to darkness. So in reality the commandments of God will condemn man. The word of God is living and abides for ever. The neglected word of God

“will stand in the presence of each one of us then and condemn whoever has not observed it”.

The Judgement will be by the commandments of God, which will test the faithful and unfaithful. In reality the unfaithful will be self-condemning for the deeds which they have done. Then a man will not get help from human wisdom and knowledge nor from eloquence of words nor from money and earthly possessions.

In the Biblico-patristic tradition we also see another way in which men will be judged in the future Judgement. It is said that men will be judged by the saints. We find this already in Christ’s words to His disciples:

“Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28).

The Apostle Paul maintains the same thing. Reproaching the Christians for turning to worldly tribunals to solve their various affairs, he says:

“Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?” (1 Cor. 6:2).

But how is this judgement known by the saints?

St. Symeon answers this point as well. He says that every man, finding himself faced with eternal life and that unutterable light, will see “one who is like him and will be judged by him”. All men who have lived on earth in different ways of life will be judged by other men who have lived with them in the same conditions of life. And the ones lived in accord with the will of God, the others rejected His commandments. This means that there can be no excuse that the conditions of life were difficult and that therefore they could not live according to God’s ordinances.

Thus fathers will be judged by fathers, relatives and friends by relatives and friends, brothers by brothers, the rich by those who were rich, the poor by those who were poor, the married by those who have excelled in the married state, etc. When sinners look at sinners who have repented, whoremongers who have not repented see penitent whoremongers, when the kings see holy kings, etc, and in general, when each person sees that someone like himself, who had the same nature, the same hands and eyes, the same conditions of life has been saved, this will be a self-condemnation, he will have no arguments and no excuses.

St. Symeon’s words which I shall quote exactly are very characteristic:

“Thus each of us sinners will be condemned by each of the saints, and likewise unbelievers by those who believe, and sinners who have failed to repent by those who perhaps have sinned more but have fervently repented.”

It is terrible at that hour for someone to see in the glory of God

“him who received the tonsure with him standing on the right hand, the one who ate and drank with him, his contemporary, his colleague”

being completely surrounded by great glory like Christ, while he himself is the opposite. Then he will be unable to speak at all.

This is just what it means that we shall be judged by the saints. We will be censured by their penitence and by the fact that they lived under the same conditions and yet they have been shown to be recipients of the Holy Spirit, imitators of Christ in every respect. We shall not be able to justify ourselves at all.

Another point which we see in the teaching of St. Symeon the New Theologian is that in the future Judgement those who have not received the Holy Spirit will be deprived of eternal life. Not only those who have sinned will be deprived of Paradise. Someone may not have sinned but if he has no virtues, which are the fruit of the Holy Spirit, he will be deprived of eternal life, he will be expelled from Paradise and will go to Hell. What St. Symeon said is characteristic:

“Even if he has no sin but if he is without virtues, he stands naked.”

So even if we have not committed sins, we shall prove unworthy of the glory of God if we have no virtues.

He goes on still further to emphasise that virtues are not enough, but the glory of God, the grace of God is also needed. This means that the virtues are not simply achievements of man’s individual effort, but fruits of the Holy Spirit. Just as Adam, because he did not keep the commandments of God, was stripped of divine glory and deprived of Paradise, so also he who will be found “truly stripped of divine glory” will be deprived of the paradise of the kingdom of God and the heavenly bridal chamber.

What one needs in order to enter the Kingdom of God at the Second Coming of Christ is the participation of the Holy Spirit.

The Judgement Day is terrible because, apart from other things, one will learn “that those who do not have the Holy Spirit shining like a torch in their spirit and dwelling inexpressibly in their heart are committed to eternal darkness”.

Therefore the repeated exhortations of St. Symeon the New Theologian, who is rightly regarded as the “theologian of Light”, are to keep away from evils and passions, to free the heart from every impurity, to acquire a pure nous, participate in divine grace, enjoy the divine Light. When a man lives in this way, then when Christ comes, there will be revealed and expressed an ineffable joy. He will participate in God, while the sinner will see God, but that will be self-condemnation and self-punishment, and he will experience the caustic energy of light.

In conclusion let me say that Christ will come into the world again, and this will be His Second Coming. The whole creation will be renewed, the dead will rise again, all who are alive then will be changed, and the judgement of men will follow. All these things are truths which will happen in any case, but we do not know the day and hour when they will happen.

Therefore Christ exhorts us always to be ready. Just as happened with Noah’s flood, where men were

“eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage”

until Noah entered the ark and then all understood that the flood had come, the same will happen at the appearing of the Son of Man. So Christ says:

“Watch, therefore, for you do not know at what hour your Lord is coming” (Matt. 24:37-42).

And at the end of the Parable of the Ten Virgins Christ said:

“Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming”.

Source

© 2010, Preachers Institute. All rights reserved. On republishing this, please provide a link to the original post.

Senior Editor of Touchstone Magazine, and archpriest of All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago, IL, Fr. Patrick is, perhaps, the most erudite writer in the Orthodox Church in North America today. This article, one of his Pastoral Ponderings, was published by Orthodoxtoday.org.

One of the stories that have proved troubling to students of Holy Scripture over the years is the account of Uzzah, who stretched forth his hand to steady the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, we recall, was being carried by ox cart in order to be installed at David’s projected new shrine at Jerusalem. Some obstacle, however, perhaps a bump in the road, caused the oxen to lurch, nearly upsetting the cart and putting the Ark in danger. The Bible describes the scene:

“Uzzah put out his hand to the Ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. Then the anger of the Lord was aroused against Uzzah, and God struck him there for his error; and he died there by the Ark of God” (2 Samuel 6:6-7).

The shock of readers is surely understandable. Wasn’t Uzzah’s sudden reaction, after all, simply an instinctive response to save the dignity of the Ark? To the extent that we can even describe his deed as intentional, wasn’t that intention good and honorable? How is it, then, that the all-seeing Lord, the God who searches hearts, did not look favorably on what Uzzah did? Shouldn’t he have been rewarded rather than punished

The problem is not a recent one, and readers of the Bible have pondered it for centuries. For example, the Jewish historian Josephus, writing about the same time as some New Testament authors, explained that Uzzah was struck dead for touching the Ark,

“since he was not a priest” (me on hierus — Antiquities of the Jews 7.4.2.81).

This explanation of Josephus is based on prescriptions in Numbers 4, which lists the duties of priests and Levites in regard to the treatment and transportation of the Ark.

This interpretation of the event, which does not necessarily imply a conscious moral failing on the part of Uzzah, is essentially sound, I believe. The Ark of God was very holy, and holiness is dangerous. Uzzah was hurt when he touched something holy.

In this respect it is important to reflect how little we know about the divina, the things of God. The little we do know will prompt us, surely, to be cautious in how we handle them, even in our minds.

The things of God are not what we want or imagine them to be. God Himself determines what they are, and God has not the slightest concern for our own interpretations of them. Their holiness is real, objective, and even physical.

Holiness is likewise not dependent on man’s recognition of it. It resembles electricity in this respect. The trespasser who is electrocuted when climbing too high on a high voltage tower perishes without regard to his own understanding of what he is about, or his innocent intentions, or his personal theories concerning electricity.

David learned this lesson about holiness from the death of Uzzah. Consequently, when the Ark was later returned to Jerusalem, it was borne, not by ox cart, but on the shoulders of the Levites, as it was supposed to be and as God had prescribed (1 Chronicles 15:2,15; Deuteronomy 10:8; 31:25; 1 Samuel 6:15).

David perceived what must be perceived by any who would approach the living God in worship–God decides the nature, structure, and spirit of the worship. Our religious feelings—whether by private or corporate preference–do not determine how we worship. The content and form of our worship has been established, rather, by the inherited, authoritative transmission of the worship itself. We hand it on as we have received it. We do not take it upon ourselves to give form to the worship. If we are faithful, the worship gives form to us, and the example of Uzzah instructs us on the peril of acting otherwise.

Correct (“orthodox”) worship is not the uninformed, spontaneous outpouring of human activity, and the worshipper must be on guard against identifying his personal impulses with the agency of the Holy Spirit.

Undisciplined, off-the-cuff people are far more likely to act under the impulse of suspect and impure spirits than under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. For this reason, mere spontaneity and a “sense of fulfillment” in worship are not adequate nor reliable indications of the agency of the Holy Spirit.

David perceived that correct worship is not chiefly concerned with meeting the religious needs and aspirations of human beings, but with the glory of God, which is inseparable from His holiness. The fundamental ground of true worship is not the religious nature of man, but the glorious manifestation of God. Indeed, any worship that is not a response to God’s Self-revelation must of necessity be idolatrous, the worship of something that man himself creates from the resources of his own religious nature.

For worship to be authentic and true, therefore, God Himself takes the initiative.

God must be revealed in order for man to worship correctly, and God determines how He is to be worshipped.

Otherwise, man is simply worshipping the works of his own hands, the thoughts of his own mind. Orthodox worship does not consist in the attempt to express man’s religious aspirations, but in meeting, in faith, the manifestation of God in His truth. If man thinks to worship God without rules and rubrics, heaven only knows what he is up to.

© 2010, Preachers Institute. All rights reserved. On republishing this, please provide a link to the original post.

Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen) is an Eastern Orthodox priest, monk and spiritual child of ascetic and spiritual struggler Bl. Father Seraphim Rose, of St Herman of Alaska Monastery, Platina, California. Fr Damascene is the author of Fr Seraphim Rose: His Life And Works and Christ The Eternal Tao, as well as numerous articles on Eastern Orthodox faith, doctrine and spirituality. This article is from a talk delivered at the Annual Assembly of the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America, St. George Serbian Orthodox Church, San Diego, California, February 28, 2003.

1. The Misuse of the Incensive Power

Since we are approaching Forgiveness Sunday, I’ve chosen, with the blessing of His Grace Bishop Longin, to speak on the subject of Anger, Judgment, and Resentment, and on their cure: Forgiveness and Reconciliation.

First I will speak about the problem and then I’ll discuss the solution.

Anger, judgment, remembrance of wrongs, grudges, resentment: these are passions with which all of us struggle in one way or another. Why are we prone to them? According to the Holy Fathers of the Church, the power that causes anger was part of man’s original nature, which was created “good” by God (cf. Genesis 1:31). The Fathers say that man’s soul was originally created with three powers:

• the intellective or “knowing” power,
• the appetitive or “desiring” power, and
• the incensive or “fervent” power.

Man was supposed to use his intellective power to know God, his appetitive power to yearn for God, and his incensive power to courageously repel temptation beginning with the temptation of the serpent in the Garden.

Instead of using their incensive power to repel temptation, however, Adam and Eve succumbed to their first temptation: they ate of the forbidden fruit.

According to the Holy Fathers, the essence of the serpent’s temptation lies in these words:

“Eat of this fruit and you shall be as gods” (cf. Genesis 3:5).

St. John Chrysostom says that Adam

“expected to become himself a god, and conceived thoughts above his proper dignity.” [1]

This is a key point which we’ll keep coming back to.

When the primordial Fall occurred, man’s original nature, created in the image of God, became corrupted. He acquired what the Holy Fathers call a fallen nature. He still had the image of God in him, but the image was tarnished: “buried,” as it were, under the corruption of his nature. Now he had an inclination toward sin, born of his desire to be God without God’s blessing. All of us share that fallen nature; there is a part of each one of us that wants to be God. In popular modern terms, that part of us is called the “ego.”

When man fell, the three powers of his soul became subject to corruption, along with his body, which became subject to death and decay.

Now man used his intellective power to puff up with knowledge and be superior to others; now he used his appetitive power to lust after other people, after the things of this world, after sinful pleasures, wealth, and power; and he used his incensive power, not against temptation, but against other people, against things, and sometimes against life and God Himself. The incensive power expressed itself as sinful anger and wrath.

The first man born of woman, Cain, got so angry and jealous that he murdered his own brother, Abel.

So, here we are, all members of the family of Adam and Eve, possessing a fallen nature that wants to be God, and a corrupted incensive power that gets angry at the wrong things.

Very clear teachings on anger and the incensive power can be found in the first volume of The Philokalia, in the teachings of St. John Cassian, a Holy Father of the fifth century. According to St. John Cassian, all anger directed at other people all such wrong use of our incensive power blinds the soul. He writes:

“We must, with God’s help, eradicate the deadly poison of anger from the depths of our souls. So long as the demon of anger dwells in our hearts … we can neither discriminate what is good, nor achieve spiritual knowledge, nor fulfill our good intentions, nor participate in true life…. Nor will we share in divine wisdom even though we are deemed wise by all men, for it is written:

Anger lodges in the bosom of fools (Eccles. 7:9).

Nor can we discriminate in decisions affecting our salvation even though we are thought by our fellow men to have good sense, for it is written:

Anger destroys even men of good sense (Proverbs 15:1).

Nor will we be able to keep our lives in righteousness with a watchful heart, for it is written: Man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness of God (James 1:20)….

“If, therefore, you desire to attain perfection and rightly pursue the spiritual way, you should make yourself a stranger to all sinful anger and wrath. Listen to what St. Paul enjoins:

Rid yourselves of all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking, and all malice (Eph. 4:31).

By saying all he leaves no excuse for regarding any anger as necessary or reasonable. If you want to correct your brother when he is doing wrong or punish him, you must try to keep yourself calm; otherwise you yourself may catch the sickness you are seeking to cure and you may find that the words of the Gospel now apply to you:

Physician, heal yourself (Luke 4:23), or

Why do you look at the speck of dust in your brother’s eye, and not notice the beam in your own eye? (Matt. 7:3).

“No matter what provokes it, anger blinds the soul’s eyes, preventing it from seeing the Sun of righteousness…. Whether reasonable or unreasonable, anger obstructs our spiritual vision. Our incensive power can be used in a way that is according to nature only when turned against our own impassioned or self-indulgent thoughts. [2]

Here St. John Cassian is telling us that, when we use our incensive power against temptationagainst impassioned or self-indulgent thoughtswe are using this power as it was originally intended to be used, according to our original, virtuous nature, created in the image of God.

However, when we use our incensive power against anything elseespecially against other peoplewe are misusing it, according to our fallen nature.

2. Playing God

Often anger is evoked in us because of our pride. This again is a function of our fallen nature: that part of us that wants to be God. As would-be gods, we want to be in control, we want things to go our way. When things don’t go our way, when other people don’t follow our lead and go along with our program, we get angry. This leads us to judge others. Judging others is one way of playing God.

God is King, and He is Judge. Of course, it’s best to be a King. Therefore, in trying to play God, our ego first of all tries to get above others and above life itself by playing King. We can try to be King in many ways. It may be by trying to run the show and get our own way. It may be by seeking acceptance, approval, praise, respect, popularity, earthly security, or an important position. It may be through our achievements and abilities, which are used toward ultimately selfish ends. It may be through vanity over our looks, our intellect, and so on.

Even if we were to have the world at our feet all the time, and thus confirm our King-status in our own mind, we would eventually feel conflict for we’re not meant to be King. You can see this vividly in the lives of celebrities, many of whom, having risen to the “top” in the eyes of the world, are filled with inward conflict.

Most of us, however, find it impossible to play King all the time. The world is not at our feet. We try so hard to get our own way and make things work out exactly like we want, but it just doesn’t happen that way. People don’t want to cooperate with our own way of doing things. We don’t get enough of the respect and admiration we need in order to keep up the illusion of our Kingship. On the contrary, we often experience the exact opposite: rudeness, disrespect, neglect, abandonment, injustice.

What is the ego our fallen nature to do in this case? How can it still play God? How else than by judgment? As we said, God is King and He is Judge. When we can’t be King, we take the loser’s way of playing God: we become the Judge. No matter what happens to us, or what people have said and done to us, we can always seem to get above them by being their Judge. For a time it feels great! Other people and the circumstances of our life made us feel less like a god; they have hurt and humiliated us. But we can still be a god in our own mind by judging!

Judgment brings with it an exhilaration of false power. Its energy comes from the wrong, prideful use of our incensive power. But, like playing King, playing Judge eventually leads to inward conflict. If we are setting ourselves up in God’s place, our soul cannot fulfill its original purpose of worshiping, serving and loving God. Thus, each time we judge, we’re placing a barrier between ourselves and God. A wall immediately goes up.

3. Resentment

If left unchecked, anger and judgment will pass into what the Holy Fathers call “secret anger,” “remembrance of wrongs,” or “resentment.”

Resentmentprolonged angeris deadly to the soul. St. Tikhon of Zadonsk says:

“Just as fire if it is not extinguished quickly will swallow many houses, so anger if it is not stopped right away will do great harm and will cause many troubles. [3]

The Holy Apostle Paul tells us:

Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil (Eph. 4:267).

“If we take St. Paul’s saying literally,” writes St. John Cassian, “it does not permit us to keep our anger even until sunset. What then shall we say about those who, because of the harshness and fury of their impassioned state, not only maintain their anger until the setting of this day’s sun, but prolong it for many days? Or about others who do not express their anger, but keep silent and increase the poison of their anger to their own destruction? They are unaware that we must avoid anger not only in what we do but also in our thoughts; otherwise our mind will be darkened by our anger, cut off from the light of spiritual knowledge and discrimination, and deprived of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. [4]

Why is resentment such a deadly sin? The Holy Scriptures tell us that God is love. Therefore, explains the Russian Holy Father St. Ignatius Brianchaninov,

“Resentment or rejection of love is rejection of God. God withdraws from a resentful person, deprives him of His Grace, and gives him up to spiritual death, unless the person repents in good time so as to be healed of that deadly moral poison, resentment. [5]

If for whatever reason we do not forgive someone and hold onto our anger, it will truly be to our own destruction. It can poison our entire lives, make us the captives of the devil, and eventually prevent us from entering the Kingdom of Heaven. To help us not to lose our salvation due to resentment, God allows us to feel inward conflict. This inward conflict helps us to become aware of the fatal danger of the malady of resentment, and to seek to be cured by the Supreme Physician, Jesus Christ.

The inward conflict may take many forms. We may feel weighed down, unable to breathe lightly or freely, as if we are captives. We may experience irrational fear, commonly known as anxiety. We may become susceptible to physical ailments. In most cases, we will feel an inward emptiness. That emptiness comes from the fact that, by holding onto our anger and judgment, we have separated ourselves from God. We no longer have His Grace, His Life, inside us, and without that we are just hollow vessels.

Our spiritual emptiness may express itself in a generally dissatisfied and cynical attitude, in which we’re always attracted to negative thoughts and words about others. We may try to fill the void with drugs or the excessive use of alcohol. Interestingly, the Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book” says:

“Resentment is the number one’ offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stems all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. [6]

Sometimes our resentment hurts the person we are resenting, sometimes it does not. However, in either case we gain nothing; we only lose, for in either case we are the ones who are hurt the most. Let’s say someone has actually wronged us. If that person repents, he will be forgiven by God. But if we hold onto our anger, we will not be forgiven and will suffer the consequences.

4. Forgiveness

Having looked at the malady of anger, judgment, and resentment, let’s go on to look at the cure. What are we to do to be freed of this sickness?

Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us clearly:

Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. And to him who smites you on the one cheek, offer also the other (Luke 6:2729).

Rather than resenting those who wrong us, we are to love them, and we express this love by blessing them and praying for them. We do this because we are commanded to do so by Christ. He has commanded this for our own sake, for our own salvation, because He loves us; and we do it for His sake, because we love Him. Our fallen nature rebels against this:

“What? Bless and pray for that person who wronged me?”

But for Christ’s sake, we go against our fallen nature, and force ourselves to pray. We ask God to bless and have mercy on the person who hurt us, we wish good things for him, we wish his salvation, just as our Lord wishes his salvation. In this way we begin to become like God Himself, Who, according to the words of Christ,

is kind to the unthankful and the evil (Luke 6:35).

In going against our fallen nature, we return to our original naturethe image of God in usand we grow in the likeness of God.

Abba Dorotheus, a Desert Father of the sixth century, says that we can be healed of the sickness of resentment

“by prayer right from the heart for the one who has annoyed us. We can pray such words as, O God, help my brother, and me through his prayers.’”

“In this,” says Abba Dorotheus, “we are interceding for our brother, which is a sure sign of sympathy and love, and we are humiliating ourselves by asking help through our brother’s prayers. [7]

When we continually force ourselves to bless and pray for others in this way, we will find that our Lord Jesus Christ will change, renew, and refresh our hearts. It may take some time and persistence, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, we will be changed. The poison of resentment, by the Grace of Christ, will leave our system.

Again our Lord has told us:

Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you shall be forgiven (Luke 6:37).

The cure for anger, judgment, and resentment is forgiveness, pure and simple. No matter what terrible afflictions and unspeakable injustices have befallen us, we can be free of their negative effects on us through forgiveness.

I once asked a Romanian Orthodox priest named Fr. George Calciu about this. For twenty-one years he had been locked in Communist prisons, where he had endured the most unimaginable horrors ever perpetrated by human beings. And yet when I met him here in America, he was happy, joyful, like a child, totally free of any negative effects of this torture on his soul. He had found the secret of forgiveness. I asked him,

“How can people overcome judgment?”

He looked at me, almost with astonishment, and answered,

“It’s simple. Just don’t judge!”

It’s truly simple. But we must keep in mind that we can’t do it on our own: We need God’s help to heal our fallen, wounded nature, to humble our pride. Therefore, as we pray for those who have hurt us, we should pray that God will help us to forgive, that He will soften our hard hearts, warm our cold hearts, and grant us a loving, merciful, and forgiving spirit.

Elder Sampson (Seivers) of Russia, who reposed in 1979, was a man well-equipped to speak on the subject of forgiveness. As a young novice monk, he was arrested by the Communist authorities, shot in a mass execution, and thrown into a common grave. By Divine Providence he survived the shooting, and was pulled out of the grave still breathing by his brother monks and nursed back to health. Later he was arrested again and spent nearly twenty years in Communist concentration camps. But he never held onto bitterness and resentment: He completely forgave both his executioners and his torturers. In his later years, when he was serving as a spiritual father to many people, he was especially tough when his spiritual children refused to forgive someone, even for some petty annoyance. He said:

“I’ve always concluded: this means that they still have not gotten the point, that the whole secret, that all the salt of Christianity lies in this: to forgive, to excuse, to justify, not to know, not to remember evil.

“The Holy Fathers are the children of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. The result of this action of Grace is when the heart excuses. It loves, it can speak well of someone and pray for him. It does not remember offense or evil.

“Therefore,” said Elder Sampson, “it is impossible to forgive and not excuse. This is a psychological fact. The heart is made this way. It was not the brain, not the nervous systemas science attempts to teach, and the psychiatrists especiallybut it was the heart that was made this way by God. It is called a Christian heart. It excuses, it does everything possible in order to justify and excuse. Isn’t that so?! That is a Christian quality!

“The pagan or the Moslem does not know about this … the action of the Grace of the Holy Spirit…. Try telling a Moslem to justify and excuse, to love his enemy. He will kill you. [8]

Once Elder Sampson was asked,

“What can an angry person do?” He replied, “He must pray and pray for healing. For the sake of his faith, for the sake of his insistence, the Lord will change his heart.” [9]

5. Watchfulness and Prayer

The Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers affirm that, as we pray for spiritual healing from passions like anger and resentment, we must also practice constant watchfulness or attention over our thoughts. Christ spoke much about watchfulness, both directly and in parables. At the conclusion of one such parable, He said: What I say to you I say to all: Watch (Mark 13:37). Later, as He was going to His final Passion, He told His disciples:

Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation (Mark 14:38).

Watchfulness and prayer are closely connected. St. Symeon the New Theologian explains this connection as follows: “Watchfulness and prayer should be as closely linked together as the body to the soul, for the one cannot stand without the other. Watchfulness first goes on ahead like a scout and engages sin in combat. Prayer then follows afterwards, and instantly destroys and exterminates all the evil thoughts with which watchfulness has already been battling, for attentiveness alone cannot exterminate them. [10]

The evil one wants to trap us. He tempts us with evil thoughts against our brothers and sisters, trying to sow the seeds of judgment and resentment against them, inciting our fallen nature so that we will stray far from our first-created image and be separated from God. We must not take the bait. Whether our anger arises from our own fallen nature or from the suggestions of the evil one, we need to cut it off at once. And to recognize it at once, we must practice watchfulness over our thoughts.

St. Theophan the Recluse writes:

“The passions and desires rarely attack by themselvesthey are most often born of thoughts. From this we can make a rule: cut off thoughts and you will cut off everything. [11]

In The Philokalia, the growth from a thought to a passion is described with scientific precision. First comes the provocation of the thought, then the conjunction of the thought with emotion, then the joining or agreement of the will with the thought. If the soul does not pull back at this point, the thought becomes a habit, and the mind is constantly preoccupied with the object of the passionate urge. Finally the person falls into the captivity of the urge, and rushes to satisfy it. [12]

From this it can be seen why it is so important to cut off angry and judgmental thoughts at the time of their provocation. St. John Cassian writes:

“If we wish to receive the Lord’s blessing, we should restrain not only the outward expression of anger, but also angry thoughts. More beneficial than controlling our tongue in a moment of anger and refraining from angry words is purifying our heart from rancor and not harboring malicious thoughts against our brethren. The Gospel teaches us to cut off the roots of our sins and not merely their fruits. [13]“

The more we entertain thoughts of anger, the more they will grow and harden inside of us, making it harder to uproot them later on. Abba Dorotheus uses the analogy of a tree to explain this: when the tree is young and small, it is easy to pull out of the ground; but when it matures, it is much more difficult to uproot. In another place, Abba Dorotheus uses the analogy of a spark on tinder, which, if it is not put out, can grow into a raging flame. He writes:

“Someone who is lighting a fire first sets a spark to the tinder. This is someone’s provoking remark, this is the point where the fire starts.Of what consequence is that person’s remark? If you put up with it, the spark goes out. But if you go on thinking, Why did he say that to me, and what should I say back to him?’ and If he did not want to annoy me, he would not have said that,’ then you add a small bit of wood to the flame, or some bit of fuel, and you produce some smoke: this is a disturbance of the mind. This disturbance floods the mind with thoughts and emotions, which stimulate the heart and make it bold to attack. This boldness incites us to vengeance on the person who annoyed us…. If, therefore, you put up with a sharp retort from someone, the little spark is extinguished before it causes you any trouble. Even if you are a little troubled and you desire promptly to get rid of it, since it is still small, you can do so by remaining silent with a prayer on your lips and by one good heartfelt act of humility. But if you dwell on it and inflame your heart and torment yourself with thoughts about why he said that to me, and what should I say to him, you are blowing on the embers and adding fuel and causing smoke! From this influx of thoughts and conflicting emotions the heart catches fire and there you arein a passion.” [14]

When a thought of anger or judgment arises in our mind, therefore, we are to cut it off or repulse it at once. In this way we use our incensive power in the way it was intended to be used: to cut off temptation.

Cutting off thoughts does not mean arguing with them or struggling against them. St. Silouan of Mount Athos affirms:

“It is best of all not to argue with thoughts. The spirit that debates with such a thought will be faced with its steady development, and, bemused by the exchange, will be distracted from remembrance of God, which is exactly what the demons are after. [15]

Our struggle should not be against thoughts, but towards remembrance of God. It is enough just to observe our thoughts through the practice of watchfulness. We will thereby recognize our angry and judgmental thoughts right away. We see them, we know that we don’t want them because they separate us from God, and we simply let them go. If we do not align ourselves with the thoughts, they will naturally disappear. The fifth-century Desert Father, Abba Pimen, says:

“If we do not do anything about thoughts, in time they are spoiled, that is to say, they disintegrate. [16]

The thought may come again and again, but each time we are to cut it off in the same way. When the thoughts are continual, it is especially important to turn to God in prayer, asking for His forgiveness and for deliverance from the continual thoughts. This prayer, as mentioned earlier, should include a prayer of good will for the person at whom we are angry or irritated.

In the practice of watchfulness and prayer, we have no better tool than the Jesus Prayer:

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

There is no more powerful name on earth than the name of Jesus Christ to oppose the proud fallen spirits. And, in the words of the Holy Apostle Peter,

There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

When we ask Christ to have mercy on us, we are also humbling our proud fallen nature. We are admitting that we are not God, and that we need God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness. In seeking God’s forgiveness, we are acknowledging the infirmity of our nature, and this helps us to forgive and have mercy on others who share our fallen, wounded nature.

Since the Jesus Prayer is so short and single-pointed, it lends itself to the practice of watchfulness. We can keep our attention on the words of the Prayer more easily than we can with other prayers. This helps us to learn how to repulse or cut off intrusive thoughts, and to keep our attention raised to God. It helps us to develop the habit of inward attention. At the same time, by means of this Prayer we are calling down Divine Grace into our hearts, for we are calling upon the Source of Grace, Jesus Christ.

As we seek to forgive people for whom we feel bitterness, we should also call upon the Mother of God to help us forgive. When Elder Sampson was once asked how he was able to forgive his executioners and torturers, he said:

“One need only pray to the Mother of God and the offense is taken away. It is taken away if you only ask the Mother of God. It is enough for your heart to have some kind of direct contact with the Mother of God, and that horror, offense, injury, sorrow and slander will be taken away.” [17]

6. Reconciliation Through Self-Accusation

Now we’ve looked at the sickness anger and resentment and we’ve looked at the cure: forgiveness and the cutting off of angry thoughts by means of watchfulness and prayer. But what if anger and resentment have already poisoned our relationship with someone else? What then are we to do? Both the Gospels and the Holy Fathers tell us that we are to humble ourselves and seek reconciliation. Christ says:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder,’ and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother will be in danger of the judgment…. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift (Matt. 5:2124).

The Holy Fathers tell us that, in order to be reconciled to someone with whom we are at odds, the first thing we are to do is to accuse ourselves, not the other person. If we do not accuse ourselves, we will never find rest, and we will never make true and lasting peace with our neighbor. We will always be holding onto our pride. Abba Dorotheus provides us with a good example of this from his own experience as the Superior of a monastery. He says:

“Once there came to me two brothers who were always fighting. The older one was saying about the younger one, I arrange for him to do something and he gets distressed, and so I get distressed, thinking that if he had faith and love towards me he would accept what I tell him with complete confidence.’ And the younger was saying, Forgive me, reverend father, but he does not speak to me with the fear of God, but rather as someone who wants to give orders. I guess this is why my heart does not have full confidence in him, as the Holy Fathers say.’

Notice that each blames the other and neither blames himself. Both of them are getting upset with one another, and although they are begging each other’s pardon, they both remain unconvinced because he does not from his heart show me deference and, therefore, I am not convinced, for the Fathers say that he should.’ And the other says, Since he will not have complete confidence in my love until I show him deference, I, for my part, do not have complete confidence in him.’

My God, do you see how ridiculous this is? Do you see their perverse way of thinking? God knows how sorry I am about this; that we take the sayings of the Holy Fathers to excuse our own will and the destruction of our souls. Each of these brothers had to throw the blame on the other…. What they really ought to do is just the opposite. The first ought to say: I speak with presumption and therefore God does not give my brother confidence in me.’ And the other ought to be thinking: My brother gives me commands with humility and love, but I am unruly and have not the fear of God.’ Neither of them found that way and blamed himself, but each of them vexed the other.

“Don’t you see that this is why we make no progress, why we find we have not been helped towards it? We remain all the time against one another, grinding one another down. Because each considers himself right and excuses himself, all the while keeping none of the Commandments yet expecting his neighbor to keep the lot!” [18]

Abba Dorotheus points out a possible objection to this teaching on self-accusation. Someone might say:

“Suppose a brother troubles me and I examine myself and find that I have not given him any cause, how can I accuse myself?”

To this Abba Dorotheus replies:

“If a man really examines himself, in the fear of God, he will usually find that he has given cause for offence, either by deed or word or by his attitude or bearing. But if, in scrutinizing himself, he sees that he has given no cause in any of these ways at that moment, it is likely that at another time he has offended him either in the same circumstances or in others, or perhaps he has offended another brother and he would want to suffer on that account or for some other wrongdoing. If he examines himself in the fear of God and gropes about diligently in his own conscience, he will always find cause for accusing himself.” [19]

Here is a recent example of what Abba Dorotheus was writing about. It comes from the wonderful book Counsels for Life: the Life and counsels of a modern Greek Elder, Fr. Epiphanios Theodoropolos, who reposed in 1989. In this book we read:

“A former spiritual child of the Elder, acting aimlessly and against the counsel of the Elder, was ordained. Fr. Epiphanios was deeply grieved and declared this to him. Of course, the Elder’s grief was misinterpreted by that youth. Thus, one day, the young man came to the Elder’s house and, full of anger, without controlling himself, started scolding Fr. Epiphanios and calling him passionate, bitter, envious, egotistical, etc. Bowing and speechless, the Elder listened to him. And while we awaited from moment to moment for the Elder to cut him off like a rushing stream and make him recover from this misbehavior, the Elder suddenly lifted up his eyes and in tears told him, Thank you, my child, for all you said. And, furthermore, if you open my heart, you will see that I am worse than what you call me.’” [20]

From this account we see that, according to Abba Dorotheus,

“The habit of accusing ourselves will work out well for us and bring us much profit, and nothing else that we can do will bring this about. [21]“

It sometimes happens that, after a quarrel, one person will come to the other and say, “Forgive me, but …” and then go on to justify himself. In other words, “Forgive me, but I’m right after all.” This is not good enough. Yes, the outward form of saying “Forgive me” is there, but behind that outward form is a heart that is still refusing to accuse itself. Our apology should rather be unconditional. We need to acknowledge our own sins, not call attention to the sins of another. We’re not responsible before God for the other person’s sins, we’re only responsible for our own.

As the above examples indicate, if we are at odds with another person, we should not wait for the other person to come to us in repentance before we ourselves apologize. It sometimes happens that a person who is older or of a higher rank will think that his inferior should apologize first. But our Lord Jesus Christ has never said that the lesser one should first ask for forgiveness. If the younger one does not have the sense to take the first step toward reconciliation, then by all means the one who is older or in higher rank should be the first to humble himself.

A moving example of such humility is found in the Life of St. John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria, who lived in the seventh century. Once, when St. John was serving the Divine Liturgy, he suddenly remembered that one of his subordinates from the lower clergy was angry with him for something. Then St. John, the Patriarch, left the holy throne, called the lower clergyman to himself, and fell at his feet, asking him for forgiveness. The clergyman was disturbed and ashamed by the great humility of the Patriarch, and himself fell at the Saint’s feet and cried with tears,

“Forgive me, Father.”

In this way, St. John showed by example that even those with higher status can ask first for forgiveness and that the humility of the greater affects their subordinates very powerfully. [22]

Yet another example of the power of humility and forgiveness comes from the Life of the above-mentioned Greek Elder, Fr. Epiphanios Theodoropolos:

“Someone thought that the Elder had treated him unjustly. He did not want to accept his explanations for anything. So he went to the Elder, full of anger, and showered him with a storm of accusations and curses. As he peeled an apple, the Elder listened to him silently till the end. As soon as the angry one finished cursing, the Elder offered him a piece, telling him, Would you like, my child, a little apple?’

“A second shower of cursing: Not from you, hypocrite!’

“The person got up abruptly to leave. Then the Elder stopped him and told him: I will only tell you one word. Life has many changes. If you ever end up in need and think that I might be able to help you, don’t hesitate to knock on my door, fearing that I will remember these things you told me today. I have already forgotten them. Go with God’s blessing, my child!’

“Sure enough, a few years later, the person knocked on the Elder’s doora plain shipwreck of life. Not only was he then aided and supported, but, crushed and humble, he also became a frequent visitor of the Elder’s confessional.” [23]

7. Endurance

All of the stories I’ve related so far have ended in the mutual reconciliation of the parties involved. It happens in life, however, that no matter how many attempts one person makes to be reconciled to the other, the other person remains hardened in his malice and will not be reconciled. What is one to do in such cases? The Holy Scriptures and Holy Fathers clearly tell us: Endure.

He that shall endure to the end will be saved, says our Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 10:22).

Our Lord has given us the ultimate example of endurance and forgiveness when He, the Incarnate God, suffered without complaining on Golgotha and prayed on the Cross for his enemies:

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34).

St. Stephen the Archdeacon acted in the same way by praying for his murderers while they were stoning him:

Lord, lay not this sin to their charge (Acts 7:60).

According to the Holy Fathers, when we endure injustices without harboring bitternessthis is a kind of martyrdom. It is unto our salvation. Our Lord has told us:

Blessed are you, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy: For behold, your reward is great in heaven (Luke 6:2223).

In his book Strife and Reconciliation, Archimandrite Seraphim Aleksiev points out:

“If we make peace with our enemy, our success is double: we have snatched both ourselves and him from the claws of the evil one. If we do not succeed in persuading our enemy to be reconciled, we should not continue in our spitefulness toward him. We should not hate him as he hates us, so that the loss will not be doubled and our soul not perish together with his. In such cases, the wisest thing to do is to forgive him, so that if he perishes at least we will not be devoured by the devil.” [24]

In The Prologue of Ohrid, St. Nikolai Velimirovich relates a profitable tale that powerfully illustrates this point. In the entry for February 9, the Life of the Holy Martyr Nicephorus, we read:

The biography of this martyr clearly demonstrates how God rejects pride and crowns humility and love with glory. There lived in Antioch two close friends, the learned priest Sapricius and the simple layman Nicephorus. Somehow their friendship turned into a terrible hatred for each other. The God-fearing Nicephorus attempted on many occasions to make peace with the priest. However, at no time did Sapricius desire to be reconciled. When a persecution of Christians began in the year 260, the presbyter Sapricius was condemned to death and brought to the place of execution. The sorrowful Nicephorus followed after Sapricius, beseeching him along the way to forgive him before his death, so that they might depart in peace.

“I beseech you, O martyr of Christ,” said Nicephorus, “forgive me if I have sinned against you!”

Sapricius did not even want to look at his opponent, but quietly and arrogantly walked toward his death. Upon seeing the hardness of the priest’s heart, God did not want to accept the sacrifice of his martyrdom and crown him with a wreath, so He mysteriously withheld His Grace. At the last moment, Sapricius denied Christ and declared before the executioners that he would bow down before the idols. So it is with blind hatred! Nicephorus implored Sapricius not to deny Christ, saying,

“O my beloved brother, do not do that; do not deny our Lord Jesus Christ; do not forfeit the heavenly wreath!”

But all was in vain. Sapricius remained adamant. Then Nicephorus cried out to the executioners, “I too am a Christian; behead me in place of Sapricius!” The executioners informed the judge of this, and the judge ordered the release of Sapricius and beheaded Nicephorus in his place. Nicephorus joyfully lowered his head on the block and was beheaded. Thus, he was made worthy of the Kingdom and was crowned with the immortal wreath of glory. [25]

8. The Law of Forgiveness

Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us a spiritual law: If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matt. 6:1415).

Elder Sampson affirms that this Divine law is absolute: “No virtue,” he says, “can atone for the lack of forgiveness. No podvig [ascetic undertaking], no almsgiving can atone for the refusal to forgive.

“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors (Matt. 6:12). That is the only condition for being heard by God, for salvation. You cannot buy off God with formalities. The law of God is an absolute law! That is why it is so painful and difficult for us when we meet souls which are not Christian, that is, souls which have no intention, or even the desire, to forgive.” [26]

In the Lives of the Saints, there are many accounts which show that Christ’s law regarding forgiveness is truly absolute. For example, in The Spiritual Meadow we read the account of the Desert Father, Abba Isaac:

“Once,” says Abba Isaac, “a demon approached me in the form of a youth. You are mine,’ the demon said. I asked him how he could say that. Because three Sundays running you have received Holy Communion while being at daggers-drawn with your neighbor,’ he said. I told him he was lying. But he said, Are you not harboring a grudge against him because of a plate of lentils? I am the one who is in charge of grudges, and, from now on, you are mine.’ When I heard that, I left my cell, went to the brother and prostrated myself before him in order to be reconciled with him. When I returned to my cell I found that the demon had burned my mat on which I prostrated myself, because he was so consumed with jealousy for our love.” [27]

An even more sobering tale is found in the Russian Lives of Saints for February 27: the Life of St. Titus of the Kiev Caves, who lived in the twelfth century:

In the Russian monastery of the Kiev Caves there lived a hieromonk by the name of Titus. He and the deacon Evagrius loved each other very much and got along very well. Everyone marveled at their sincere friendship, but the devil then embroiled them so badly that they could not stand each other. When one of them was censing the church, the other one ran away from the incense; and even if he could not escape in time, the first one did not cense him. A long time passed and they lived constantly in this sinful darkness, and thus irreconciled they dared to take Holy Communion. The brothers pleaded with them to make peace, but they would not hear of it.

It was God’s Providence that the priest Titus should fall fatally ill. He then began to cry bitterly for his sin and sent people to ask the deacon Evagrius for forgiveness on his behalf. The deacon not only did not forgive him, but he cursed him with bitter words. The brothers, when they saw that Titus was already in agony, brought Evagrius by force to reconcile them. The sick man stood up with great difficulty, fell at the feet of the deacon, and begged him with tears in his eyes,

“Forgive me, Father!”

But Evagrius callously turned his face away from him and said,

“I do not want to forgive him, either here or in the life to come!”

As he said these words, he tore himself from the hands of the brothers and fell to the ground. They wanted to lift him up, but they found him dead. At the same time, the blessed Titus was immediately healed. Everyone was terrified by the occurrence and began asking Titus what it meant. Then he told them what he had seen with his spiritual eyes:

“When I was ill and I did not give up my anger towards my brother, I saw that the angels were withdrawing from me and were crying over the death of my soul, and that the demons were rejoicing at my anger. That is why I asked you to go to the brother and implore him for his forgiveness for me. When you brought him to me, and I bowed before him and he turned away from me, I saw an angel who was holding a fiery spear and who struck the unforgiving one with it. Immediately, he fell dead. But to me the same angel gave his hand and helped me up, and here I am healthy again.” [28]

In the book Strife and Reconciliation, Archimandrite Seraphim Aleksiev comments on this story:

“How often in life it happens that embittered and irreconciled Christians suddenly leave this world and set out for the Kingdom of Eternity with anger in their souls! What pardon can they expect from God if they themselves have not forgiven those who have sinned against them?! It is terrible to live irreconciled, but it is even worse to die irreconciled! Bitterness and strife make the soul unfit to bear Divine Grace, and thus they destroy it….

“In the Life of St. Basil the New it is said that the last trial with which souls passing to the other world are tested is the trial of mercifulness. This is not by accident, but in accordance with God’s law. If we have observed and fulfilled all the commandments and avoided all sins, but we have remained irreconcilable and bitter towards our personal enemies, we will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only the merciful will be shown mercy. The man who has been lenient towards others will enjoy God’s lenience toward his own weaknesses. The spiteful will remain unforgiven.

St. Tikhon of Zadonsk says clearly:

The doors of God’s mercy open before the thieves, murderers, fornicators, publicans, and all other sinners, but they close before the spiteful.’” [29]

In his monastery in Romania, St. Paisius Velichkovsky commanded that, if some disturbance were to occur among the brethren, there must be true reconciliation on that very day, according to the Scripture:

Do not let the sun go down on your anger (Eph. 4:26).

And if someone were to grow hard in heart, not wishing to be reconciled, he was not allowed over the threshold of the Church, nor allowed to say the “Our Father” until he became reconciled. [30] How could he say without hypocrisy the words,

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,

unless he had truly forgiven?

By not allowing irreconciled brothers into the church, St. Paisius made them aware that their prayers would not be heard, and they would not be allowed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, if they held onto their resentment. As we enter the church, and especially as we approach the Holy Chalice, let us remember this. Let us remember everything that the Holy Scriptures, the teachings of the Holy Fathers, and the Lives of Saints have told us about how necessary it is to shed our resentments and have a forgiving heart.

If we forgive our neighbors their transgressions, then and only then will God forgive us. Then and only then will we be able to pray boldly:

And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, because He Himself has said: Forgive, and you shall be forgiven.

9. Offenses as Blessings

If looked at in the right way, the offences that come to us are actually blessings in disguise. They offer us an opportunity to forgive and thus receive God’s blessings and Grace. As St. Ignatius Brianchaninov affirms,

“All the sorrows and sufferings caused us by other people never come to us except with God’s permission for our essential good. If these sorrows and troubles were not absolutely necessary for us, God would never allow them. They are indispensable, in order that we may have occasion to forgive our neighbors and so receive forgiveness for our own sins…. Let us force our heart to accept from our neighbor all kinds of offences and injuries that they may inflict upon us, so as to receive forgiveness for our countless sins.” [31]

When we forgive, then our hearts, once darkened and weighed down by the sin of resentment, are made light and free. We receive the ability to attain true, pure prayer, undistracted by any cares or anxieties about ourselves, or by any fears and apprehensions. We live in simplicity of heart, free from care, for, as the Scripture says, Perfect love casts out fear (I John 4:18). This simplicity, this peace and lightness, is a foretaste of the heavenly blessedness that awaits all those who follow the commandment of our Lord Jesus Christ: Forgive.

I would like to conclude now with a poem by St. Nikolai Velimirovich, entitled “Forgiveness,” which well sums up everything that has been said thus far:

That God may forgive us, let us forgive men.

We are all on this earth as temporary guests.

Prolonged fasting and prayer is in vain

Without forgiveness and true mercy.

God is the true Physician; sins are leprosy.

Whomever God cleanses, God also glorifies.

Every merciful act of men, God rewards with mercy.

He who returns sin with sin perishes without mercy.

Pus is not cleansed by pus from infected wounds,

Neither is the darkness of the dungeon dispelled by darkness,

But pure balm heals the festering wound,

And light disperses the darkness of the dungeon.

To the seriously wounded, mercy is like a balm;

As if seeing a torch dispersing the darkness, everyone rejoices in mercy.

The madman says, “I have no need of mercy!”

But when he is overcome by misery, he cries out for mercy!

Men bathe in the mercy of God,

And that mercy of God wakens us to life!

That God may forgive us, let us forgive men,

We are all on this earth as temporary guests. [32]

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1. Essential aspects of the Biblical doctrine of repentance

The doctrine of Repentance is represented in different books of the Old and New Testament. There it is set out with different degrees of fullness depending on historical conditions as well as on the sacred authors? purposes and objectives. Philologically it is not restricted to any one term; and while the biblical teaching about salvation was evolving, repentance terminology was also acquiring fullness and accuracy in meaning.

That is why in setting out the biblical doctrine of repentance there arises a difficulty of a technical character. The abundant material and the wholeness of the scene call for the carrying out of a scrupulous and consistent analysis of repentance in all biblical books, and only after that, can we put the different parts and features of this doctrine together and suggest a certain system as a synthesis. However, while relevant to a comprehensive monograph, such an approach is unacceptable in a short report, not pretending to fullness. So the author suggests that a “mathematical” method should be used in summary of the material: first, a “theorem” will be formulated, i.e. the total scheme of the biblical doctrine of repentance will be presented, followed by it?s “proof”— illustrations of different aspects of the biblical doctrine in certain texts and examples.

Bearing in mind the historical genesis of the biblical doctrine, the final outline will be presented on the basis of the idea that there is a mutual harmony in matters of the doctrine in the books of Scripture.

Briefly the Biblical repentance doctrine can be represented in the following way. From the Scriptural point of view, repentance is an overall change in human life, a fundamental shift of life courses, a person?s conversion from sin to the Lord and confirming him upon a new way of life. In the process of repentance a number of aspects can be marked out, that can be described both logically and formally. With regard to form we are required to distinguish internal and external, as well as private and public repentance. The types mentioned are closely interconnected and may serve as the external terms of the different stages of repentance, and that reflect the logical process.

The first logical stage of repentance is contrition, i.e., when a person (or even a group of people) realizes the viciousness of his way of life, understands sins as definite transgressions of the commandment, and apprehends the bitterness drawn to the soul and to all the human essence by sin.

The second stage of repentance — turning — brings change in the sinner?s life, his appeal to the Lord begging for pardon and forgiveness.

The third stage — confession — when the penitent uses different ways to express his repentance by oral declamation, offerings in the Old Testament, or the Sacrament in the New Testament Church. Confession is needed not only to express feelings of repentance but to present the sinner with the belief that he is forgiven by the Lord. The stage of purification has also to be attributed to the logic of repentance. That is the mysterious effect of God?s Grace on the penitent, in the course of which, the Lord heals the nature struck down by sin, forgives sins and gives power to do good deeds.

And the last stage — remaining in virtue — is the penitent’s conversion from all former evil deeds in favor of striving for the good. We will bear in mind this general plan of the biblical doctrine of repentance while studying the following examples, and we will recall that the authors of the sacred books were not restricted to any strict scheme given in advance when setting out the doctrine of repentance. That is why in the examples from the Bible the stages of the repentance process may differ from the above logical plan both in their sequence and number.

Read the rest of the article here, or download the PDF here.

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This presentation was an address delivered at a Convocation of the Orthodox Inter-Seminary Movement at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, MA on November 10th, 2007, and at the Pan-Orthodox Clergy Synaxis at Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles, CA on November 13th, 2007.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God.

Your Eminence, Metropolitan Gerasimos (GOA), Your Grace, Bishop Joseph (AOC), Your Grace Bishop Ilia (Albanian/Ecumenical Patriarchate), Your Grace Bishop Maxim (SOC), Your Grace, Bishop Benjamin (OCA), my brothers in the sacred priesthood, brothers and sisters in Christ:

It is an honor and a joy to raise my voice together with yours on this great day in the praise of our father among the Saints, John Chrysostom. I am so pleased to accept the invitation of His Eminence to address you this afternoon concerning the life and teachings of Chrysostom.

The Commemoration. The entire Church rejoices this year in the commemoration of the 1600th anniversary of the repose of Saint John. All throughout the world significant synaxi have been held to commemorate the life of Christianity’s greatest homilist and a foremost Father of the Church? Chrysostom – The Golden Mouth, [1] to meditate upon his sacred teachings, and to learn better how he might help us live for Jesus Christ in our own day and age.

Symposia and divine services in honor of Saint Chrysostom have been held in various places in our own land this year. The ROCOR sponsored a conference in September in Saint Louis which convened at a church dedicated to Chrysostom. The Monastery of St John Chrysostomos (GOA), north of Chicago near Kenosha, WI, held a similar September symposium, bringing many theological luminaries from Greece to America to speak about Saint John.

I. The Basic Biography of Saint John Chrysostom

My intention in this lecture is to highlight a number of areas in which I believe Saint John Chrysostom has precious contributions to make to contemporary Christians. I have entitled this lecture, Saint John Chrysostom for the 21st Century. Toward that end, however, I would like to begin by making a brief verbal sketch of St John’s life, then mention some of the areas in which he has been duly influential throughout the history of the Church, and then, upon that foundation, address Chrysostom’s relevance for the practice of contemporary Christianity.

His Birth and Parents. Saint John was born in or around A.D. 349, as best as we can tell, in the city of Antioch. His father, Secundos, was a high-ranking civil servant in the Roman administration, and his mother, Anthusa, was a devout Christian, who has recently been numbered among the saints by the Church of Greece. Her feast day is shared with Saints Nona and Emmelia, the mothers respectively of Saints Gregory the Theologian and Saint Basil the Great. Hence, we commemorate on January 30th the Three Holy Hierarchs, and shortly thereafter, on the Sunday that falls in the Afterfeast of the Great Feast of the Presentation, the holy mothers of the Three Holy Hierarchs.

Student and Ascetic. For the pedagogical purposes of this lecture I would like you to think of the saint’s life as divided into three fundamental portions: his early life as a student and ascetic, his life as priest in Antioch, and his life as bishop in Constantinople. [2] Chrysostom’s father died when he was a young boy, and his mother was but twenty years old. She spent the rest of her life completely devoted to John’s formation as a Christian and a scholar. As a young man he was enrolled amongst the students of the greatest rhetor of the empire, the pagan Libanius. [3] His education under Libanius followed a traditional Greek mode that had not changed much since the 4th century B.C.

It was under Libanius that Chrysostom learned Greek diction and elegance of expression that would serve him so well as a preacher throughout his life. The curriculum was all in Greek, Latin forming no official part of his education, and focused on the classics. Saint John passed through all three stages of the traditional paideia: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric with outstanding success. Libanius is said to have remarked in light of his approaching death that of all his students it was John who was most accomplished to succeed him, if it had not been that the Christians had stolen him. Indeed they had, and it would not be the last time in God’s providence that he was stolen.

Saint John completed his studies about A.D. 367 and was baptized at the Paschal vigil A.D. 368 by Saint Meletios, who served as the Orthodox bishop of Antioch from approximately A.D. 360 until his death at the 2nd Ecumenical Council in A.D. 381. For three years after his baptism Saint John served in Meletios’ presence in the church, and studied the Scriptures in a small monastic brotherhood gathered around Diodore and Carterios. In A.D. 372, with rumors swirling of an impending ordination, Chrysostom fled to the mountains outside Antioch to struggle against his passions under the tutelage of an elderly Syrian master.

By spiritual insight Chrysostom mastered himself during these years, and then retreated to a cave where for an additional two years he memorized the Holy Scriptures and never laid down to sleep. Chrysostom described this period in his life as a time in which he devoted himself completely to prayer by night and Scripture study by day. [4] Through this extreme asceticism Chrysostom broke his health, and returned to Antioch sometime around A.D. 378.

Saint John’s years as a student and an ascetic would leave a deep impress on his future, and provide the foundation for his powerful ministry as an exegete and preacher of the Holy Scriptures. The inspired content of his preaching ministry was formed in the mountains, and the masterful pedagogical style was formed in his schooling. This combination took the Christian world by storm.

Priest and Preacher in Antioch. After St Meletios’ death he was sent back from Constantinople to Antioch to be buried next to Saint Babylas, and Flavian was elected Bishop of Antioch. In his first year as Bishop of Antioch Flavian ordained Chrysostom a deacon. Saint John was 32 years old, and would serve for five years as a deacon. During this period Chrysostom never preached, but launched his writing career, producing pamphlets, letters and essays on various topics, especially on the ascetical life. Besides his liturgical and literary labors, Saint John served Flavian as his personal assistant and liaison in administering charity to the some 3,000 virgins and widows on the doles of the church. In A.D. 386, when Deacon John was 37 years old, Archbishop Flavian ordained him to the priesthood, and appointed him as the city’s cathedral preacher. [5] Saint John would serve in this capacity for twelve years. Immediately, Chrysostom launched his preaching career, and from this period on most of the works we have from his pen are, in fact, edited versions of his sermons. Typically, during his years as a priest, [6] several stenographers recorded his sermons as he gave them in church, and then delivered them to him for editorial work prior to publication. [7]

Bishop in Constantinople. In late October A.D. 397 Asterios, count of the civil diocese of the East and governor of Antioch, summoned Chrysostom to the great martyrs’ shrine just outside the Romanesian gate [8] for an important message. Chrysostom assumed that he was to be the courier of some important communiqué from the emperor to the bishop and church. Instead, he was seized by imperial officials, placed inside an imperial coach, and taken 1200 km. to Constantinople, never to see his beloved home city of Antioch again. Bishop Nektarios of Constantinople had died, and John was to be consecrated as his successor, the 12th Bishop of Constantinople. In either mid-December A.D. 397 or on Feb. 26th, A.D. 398 he was consecrated at the hands of Archbishop Theophilos of Alexandria and at the direction of the Emperor Arcadios. For the next ten years Saint John would receive into his heart the people of Constantinople and shepherd them as his flock.

Constantinople was exploding. There were between 200,000 and 300,000 persons in the city of Constantine, which had been consecrated in A.D. 330, a mere six years after Emperor Constantine launched his construction project upon the small town of Byzantium. John took up his pastoral responsibilities immediately and continued with an unbroken stream of preaching and Scriptural commentary until the end of his life.

Adjacent to the episcopal chancery was a convent of 250 virgins ruled over by the saintly Deaconess Olympia, who would become Saint John’s spiritual daughter and best friend. Chrysostom entered into a visitation of the diocese and its reform. He began where he lived, in the episcopal palace, which had become, under his predecessor, a center of extravagant hospitality for the new upper class of Constantinople and the clergy. [9] Chrysostom slashed the budget, sold off many precious items stored at the chancery, and used the excess funds to erect at least one hospital. He took most of his meals alone.

He reformed his clergy, immediately defrocking a number of deacons, who were guilty of heinous crimes, rebuked the celibate clergy who were living in so-called “spiritual marriages” with virgins, deposed numerous bishops guilty of obtaining their office by simony, brought regulations to the city’s monastic brotherhoods, demanded accountability from the women who were enrolled on the church’s widows’ list by requiring them to live as devout widows or to get remarried, served as imperial counselor, ruled as proëstamenos of the resident synod of Constantinople, [10] served the divine services and preached several times per week, [11] oversaw charitable institutions, kept abreast of civil activities, sought to influence imperial legislation with the Church’s teaching, and organized missionary activities. Besides all these duties in the city itself, Chrysostom was asked by surrounding dioceses to adjudicate several cases and oversee controversial elections.

The influence of bishop of Constantinople was increasing as the city’s size and importance in the empire was increasing.

Chrysostom was not always well-received in his new position of authority. Some of Constantinople’s wealthier citizens were offended by his bold rebukes and his willingness to call them to account. Unfortunately, though Chrysostom came to Constantinople as the imperial favorite, by the year 401 he had become somewhat alienated from the Empress Eudoxia. It seems that Chrysostom censured her for allocating to herself a widow’s property. Nevertheless Chrysostom baptized the son of the imperial couple, Theodosios II, on Theophany, A.D. 402. In A.D. 403 Chrysostom’s consecrator turned arch-enemy, Archbishop Theophilos of Alexandria, arrived in Constantinople together with 29 of his Egyptian bishops, took up residence in the imperial palace in Chalcedon in the suburb called “The Oak” and held a iniquitous synod against Chrysostom.

This synod, known throughout history as the “Synod of the Oak,” charged Chrysostom with some 29 crimes (many of them beyond the ridiculous), and ended up deposing Chrysostom for not appearing before their illicit assembly. The Synod sent a notice to the emperor of the condemnation and suggested that Chrysostom was treasonous and should be banished. Banished by imperial edict he was, and no sooner had he been exiled than an earthquake struck the city. In fear and trembling the guilty Empress asked her husband, the weak-willed Arcadios, to recall Chrysostom from exile. Chrysostom refused to re-enter the walls of the city until the illegitimacy of the Synod of the Oak had been declared. Peace was re-established, but it was not to hold for long.

Soon the empress decided to have a silver statue of herself placed in the plaza of the Cathedral, had it installed noisily and unveiled during the time while Saint John was celebrating the Divine Liturgy! Discerning the provocation and going along with it, Chrysostom exclaimed in righteous indignation, “Again Herodias dances and demands on a platter the head of John.” On Great Saturday, A.D. 404, Chrysostom was confined to the chancery and soldiers were sent to break up the baptismal ceremonies. Blood ran in the font, and more than 3000 catechumens were scattered. An assassination attempt was made on John’s life by the slave of one of his priests. On the Thursday after Pentecost, June 9th, enemy bishops forced the imperial hand and on June 20th Chrysostom was banished for the final time. He would spend the next three years in exile. Most of this period was spent in Cucusus in Armenia. He carried on from there a voluminous correspondence.

We have over 240 letters extant from this period. From exile he wrote several treatises intended to encourage his Constantinopolitan flock, which was suffering severe persecution from the civil authorities for keeping their allegiance to Saint John. During his exile, Emperor Honorios, brother of Arcadios and Emperor of the West, together with Pope Innocent and leading Bishops of the West, demanded of Arcadios that Chrysostom be restored to his throne. In A.D. 407, after three years of exile in which Saint John’s Armenian place of exile had become a place of pilgrimage for the faithful, Chrysostom was further exiled to Pityus, the very outskirts of the Empire on the eastern shores of the Black Sea. In extreme illness and suffering abuse from the soldiery and barbarians who threatened the expedition, Chrysostom fell asleep in Christ on September 14, A.D. 407 at the age of 58. The company had stopped outside the church of the Holy Martyr Basiliskos.

In the night the Saint appeared to Chrysostom and informed him that they would soon be together. Chrysostom asked to be vested, received the Holy Gifts, made his cross, and prayed his last words, “Glory to God for all things.”

II. Chrysostom’s Continuous Influence.

Since the Saint’s death in A.D. 407 his influence has only increased throughout the entire world much in the way that our Lady’s fame has. Our most pure and ever-virgin Lady Theotokos prophesied under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that “all generations will call me blessed.” A similar wave of adulation has arisen throughout history in the case of Saint John Chrysostom. During his lifetime many of his works were published, translated and studied in the far parts of the Empire. [12]

He was duly famous in all parts of the Christian world. He bore fruit in a multitude of pious disciples such as Saints John Cassian, Proclus, Nilus and Mark the Ascetics, Isidore of Pelusium, and Bishop Palladius (his biographer). Since the title “Golden Mouth” was bestowed upon Chrysostom, each generation of great scholar-preachers of the Church have been awarded the title of “New Chrysostom,” even up until modern times with men such as Ss. Tikhon of Zadonsk and Nicolai of Ži?a. By the 11th century Chrysostom’s fame was so great that he was numbered by the Church as one of the “Three Holy Hierarchs”, the three satellites, the three moons or universal luminaries of the Church. We celebrate Saint John’s life liturgically on November 13th (his primary feast), January 27th (the translation of his relics), and January 30th (the Three Holy Hierarchs). Scholarship has engaged Chrysostom’s work in every era of Church history. And not just Orthodox Christian scholars like Saint Photios the Great, but non-Orthodox as well like the Latin Thomas Aquinas, who considered Chrysostom’s Commentary on Matthew to be virtually inspired, or the Protestant Reformer John Calvin, who held Chrysostom in such high regard as an exegete.

III. Chrysostom’s Special Contributions to the Holy Church over the last 1600 years.

Saint John Chrysostom is not just a great personality, but has left an indelible stamp upon Orthodox Christianity. He made significant contributions to the life of the Church in a number of important areas, such as:

Prayer and Liturgy. Most Orthodox Christians know the name of Saint John Chrysostom not through reading his books, but by praying his liturgy. The liturgy we celebrate on all but ten Sundays of the Church year is that attributed to Saint John. While some portions of the Saint John Chrysostom Liturgy pre-date him and some post-date him, and it remains very difficult to identify the provenance of each portion of the sacred service, yet the Church affirms that Chrysostom was a master liturgist, responsible for at least the basic contours of what we know today as our Orthodox Divine Liturgy.

Besides the Liturgy itself, Saint John has consistently inspired the priesthood with a vision of the glory and necessity of preaching, and that after every Gospel lesson of every liturgy. There was probably never a person in history better qualified to preach prior to becoming a priest, but Chrysostom never did. He saw preaching as a priestly function, as a fruit of apostolic succession. He taught us that preaching changes people and is to be a living word, not dead. In my experience many Orthodox priests have a very unorthodox conception of preaching and could benefit themselves and their people greatly by learning to take the preaching of the Word, as seriously as did the greatest preacher in the history of the Church. Chrysostom handled the preached word, trusting that it conveyed Christ’s all-powerful word, as carefully as he did the Holy Eucharist.

We could mention the prayers ascribed to Chrysostom in the Services of Preparation for and Thanksgiving after Holy Communion, which demonstrate that the Golden Mouth is the theologian of the Eucharist par excellence. His homilies and commentaries have provided spiritual fare for many a preacher to feed to his flock, and his Paschal Homily is read in every Orthodox church temple on Pascha. His devotion to the martyrs, often preaching at their shrines and on their feast days, and his encouragement of the discipline of sacred pilgrimages has helped establish the ethos of our worship.

Priesthood and Pastorate. Every Orthodox seminarian knows the influence of Saint John Chrysostom in the area of priestly formation and pastoral theology. His most famous work is On the Priesthood (in 6 books), and, together with the works of St Gregory the Theologian In Defense of My Flight and Saint Gregory the Dialogist Pastoral Rule, serves as the quintessential patristic teaching on priesthood and pastorate. Chrysostom’s teaching on this subject is of great value today for Orthodox Christians in America, who are tasked with spreading Holy Orthodoxy to many heterodox Christians who do not believe in the sacred priesthood. I have longed required Chrysostom’s On the Priesthood be read by my parish catechumens, knowing that coming to believe in the priesthood will be one of the revolutionary and necessary changes in their lives as they ready themselves for reception into the Holy Church.

Patron of Marriage and Monastic Life Both. No Father of the Church has more to contribute to the Christian understanding of marriage and monastic life, and of their interplay, than does Saint John Chrysostom. Chrysostom was a devoted monastic, and remained philo-monastic his entire life. At the same time he spent most of his adult years pastoring married Christians and guiding the families of his parish and diocese in Christian living. Beautifully, Chrysostom presents a unified and inspiring vision for both of these sanctified ways of life. Many of his early works, when he was focused on his ascetic brotherhood and not yet pastoring, were devoted to the exaltation of virginity. Many of his works written while pastoring and preaching to families provide concrete guidance to Christians on how to make their marriages spiritual, their families monastic, and their homes churchly. [13]

Did Chrysostom change? Some contemporary theologians and clergymen are uncomfortable at best, and embarrassed at worst, with Chrysostom’s ascetical works and his zealous promotion of monastic life in such works as On Virginity, Against the Opponents of the Monastic Life, Letters to Fallen Theodore, or A Comparison between a King and a Monk. Because Chrysostom’s later writings so exalted the married life and held forth such spiritual potential for Christian family life these same critics suggest that Chrysostom changed or matured in his views as he acquired greater pastoral experience.

These same thinkers suggest that we should not make too much of Chrysostom’s earlier works, and assert that they are in contradiction with his later works on the subject of marriage and virginity. I posit that such an interpretation of Chrysostom is erroneous and should be completely rejected. I suggest that such a notion is illogical, contradicted by Chrysostom’s own words, and insulting to the Saint himself, and hence impious. Those who suggest such things actually reveal in so doing more of their own minds and discomforts than those of Chrysostom.

Chrysostom himself never grew uncomfortable with his zealous promotion of the monastic life, nor did he lose his zeal for the virginal life. Chrysostom did change over the course of his life. Every Saint changes from glory to glory. Saint John’s change was not a change from error to truth, or from despising marriage to valuing it. He changed his emphases and tactics due to the variety of circumstances God brought about in his life. For instance, when he was in the midst of ascetics he wrote for ascetics, and when he became a pastor of families he gave himself to exalting married life and parenting. Wherever he was he used his great powers to lift his fellow Christians up to the heavenly kingdom. To suggest even implicitly that one cannot argue that the highest form of Christian life is the monastic life, while at the same time adoring and praising the married life, is illogical. To exalt the better is not to denigrate the good.

This is one of the central tenets of Chrysostom’s early work On Virginity. Our monastics are not allowed to become monastics because they despise marriage, for such is the teaching of heretics according to Saint John. Not only did he defend marriage from heretical criticism when he was a young ascetic, but he continued to exalt virginity when he was living amongst the married and teaching them the glories of family life. For Chrysostom married Christians were always to have their eyes upon the monastics, those living the angelic life.

No where in any of Chrysostom’s corpus does he ever disown, change, retract, or modify his views on the supremacy of virginity and the monastic life. On the contrary, we find just the opposite. We find Chrysostom reaffirming his teaching on this subject without revision at various significant points in his ministry. For instance, his series on 1 Corinthians, delivered as a priest in Antioch, contains a reference to his early ascetical work On Virginity.

When he comes to expound the seventh chapter of this epistle, the single most detailed and clear teaching in the New Testament about the supremacy of the celibate life, rather than give detailed instruction to his flock he refers them to his work On Virginity as the abiding summation of his teaching on the subject. No alterations. No disclaimers. Just reaffirmation. Again, if we examine the last of his works to be published, his Commentary on Hebrews, published posthumously by the priest Constantios, we find there in his commentary on chapter thirteen the clear teaching again on the centrality and supremacy of the monastic life. Chrysostom maintained his consistent teaching throughout his ministry. He did not begin his writing career as a youthful extremist, but as a mature and formed thinker. He was not promoted to such ranks in the church of Antioch while being a detractor of marriage. Nor did he guide Saint Olympias and her nuns, and encourage monastics throughout the world while Bishop of Constantinople having become suspicious of monastic life.

If I were pressed to document any change in Chrysostom on this topic I would refer simply to one aspect of his vision in the relationship between married Christians and monastics, what we might call a policy matter. In his On the Comparison between a King and a Monk Chrysostom argued that parents should have their children educated by monastics, who are best equipped, as the true guardians of Christian society, to form young people. In a later work, and probably with more pastoral realism, Chrysostom posited that his earlier suggestion about monastic tutelage was not always practical, and that parents should simply choose the best tutors possible for their children. [14]

Bible Study in the Christian Life. St John did not just model intense devotion to the study of Holy Scripture, but he labored to inculcate faithful Bible reading in the lives of his parishioners. Chrysostom’s devotion is seen not only in his focused memorization and mediation upon the entirety of the Scriptures, but also in the labor of love he made of exegesis. His commentaries upon all of Saint Paul’s 14 Epistles, as well as upon the Gospels of Matthew and John,and the Acts of the Apostles, show how important he considered every word of Scripture to be in the life of the Christian and of the Church.

And he was not devoted just to the New Testament, but to the Old Testament as well. His homilies on New Testament books include literally thousands of quotations from the Old Testament, from which he drew all the fundamental paradigms for his typological understanding of the New. He also gave himself to extended commentary upon select books of the Old Testament such as multiple homiletical series on the first book of Moses, called Genesis, extended commentary on the Psalter, and upon other wisdom books such as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. He preached on the life of Saul, David, and Hannah the Prophetess. He expounded the Prophecy of Isaiah. His work was immense. We have no larger corpus in Greek patristic literature than that of Saint John Chrysostom.

He considered ignorance of the Scriptures amongst the laity to be the supreme cause for the weakness of the Church and the eclipse of her witness. He called upon his faithful to read the appointed liturgical lections prior to coming to the Divine Liturgy so that they could understand the text and sermon more adequately. He challenged his people to discuss the readings and the sermon on the way home from services, using the image of twisting a newly-picked flower in one’s fingers so as to examine its beauty from all sides. Christians should discuss the readings and homily around the dinner table on the Lord’s Day, and the father of the home should fulfill his duty to read Holy Scripture to his family every day without fail.

Wealth and Poverty. Another area of Christian ethics in which Chrysostom has been duly famous throughout Church history is that of wealth and poverty. His most famous condensed treatment on the subject is found in a collection of seven sermons he gave on the pericope of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Many passages of Saint John’s Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles are cherished for their poignant teaching about possessions and wealth. Chrysostom did not tire of extolling the communal way of life of the early Jerusalem Church, and continued to encourage his faithful to eat together as a way of saving money and providing for those in need. Extended reference to the Christian approach to riches is found throughout his corpus – it was one of the central themes of his life.

Cut from the same divine cloth as St James the Brother-of-God, Chrysostom considered it his responsibility to speak truthfully to the wealthy about their responsibility to care for the needs of their less fortunate brethren. All the fundamental principles of the Christian ethic involving the use of money are found articulately put forth by Chrysostom. He explains the nature of true wealth as the acquisition of virtue. He explains the cause for financial gain as the blessing of God so one might be able to help the less fortunate. He forever singed into the consciences of his people a repulsion to what he considered to be the most foul four-letter word capable of articulation:the word “Mine.” And he did not speak in mere generalities, but called upon his wealthy parishioners to build churches upon their estates, to provide the salary for a priest and deacon so that the peasants living on and near the estate could go to church regularly and have their spiritual needs attended to.

He criticized extravagant uses of money like gilding roofs with gold, and spending large sums of money on fancy shoes and book bindings. He counseled with regards to architecture and the building of homes, that a good home should be like a good shoe: with a snug fit.

It should not be too large so that it flops around and causes one to stumble, and not to small so that it constricts and causes pain. Each house should be functional, and should have a bedroom set aside with a plaque above the entrance door reading: Jesus’ room. There one should lodge the visitor, the poor, or the sick, in the conviction that as long as said person is in residence Jesus resides in the home. Each family should place a small alms chest near their prayer corner and deposit something prior to beginning prayers in order to open heaven to one’s supplications.

IV. Saint John Chrysostom and 21st Century Christians.

All the above are areas in which Chrysostom has always been appreciated by our forebears, and continues to exercise his influence today. In this last portion of my lecture I would like to focus upon what I perceive to be several areas in which Saint John Chrysostom’s life and teachings may render the 21st century Christian particular assistance. The Church finds Herself in this new millennium faced by unique particularities, which demand an articulate word from the Holy Fathers to guide us through the unique challenges of post-modern life.

The Sanctification of City Life in an Age of Global Urbanization. We live in a historic moment in time. Sometime in the next few months demographers predict that, for the first time in recorded history, more than ½ of the human population will live in cities. The next 25 years are expected to witness a radical increase in what has already been decades of high speed urbanization. This increase will be most acute in developing countries, and much of it will not be a move to mega-cities but to cities of 500,000 persons or less. With such intensive populations relocation and the growing number and importance of the world’s cities comes tremendous sociological, political and economic consequences. This is particularly true if the growth is unplanned growth, such as is taking place in Dhaka, Bangladesh- where 3.4 million of the city’s 13 million people live in slums.

In 1987 I visited Dhaka and witnessed the immense flood damage and human destruction that was the fruit of radical and unplanned urbanization. Health crises, access to water, poverty, all of these are concentrated in cities, and yet these same cities are the way out of such trials for most. Urbanization is one of the central issues of the 21st century. Much attention is now being given to the physical realities of urbanization, but still little to the spiritual realities. Churches, clergy, spiritual and charitable resources, these are all immediate and just as concrete needs of urbanization.

Here is where Saint John Chrysostom’s witness shines so brightly and holds forth such importance for us today. Chrysostom was a city boy. Born and raised in one of the leading cities of the Roman Empire, Antioch, and finished his life in Constantinople. He did not lead a life detached from the surging city crowds. He knew human traffic. He loved it and sought to save it. St. John considered Christians to be saviors of the city, guardians of the city, patrons of the city, and teachers of the city. [15] Besides his own practical experience of the city, from his Hellenic intellectual inheritance Saint John possessed a tremendous appreciation for the ????? as the very center of civilization. [16] No Father of the Church has left us a more articulate vision for the sanctification of the city than Saint John Chrysostom. It is our Christian task to plumb his depths in crafting a responsible vision for Christian ministry in this urban context.

As we do so we should note a number of things. Chrysostom believed that the Church sanctifies all. Cities should be full of churches. Chrysostom built them and served in them, and he believed that there was absolutely no substitute for urban Christians participating regularly in the divine services of the Church. The chaos and buzz of urban life is regulated and sanctified and elevated by participation in the morning and evening prayers offered in God’s temples. Chrysostom expected to see his people in church many times during the week, and many of his famous homilies were not delivered on Lord’s Day gatherings but during week day prayers. Chrysostom also believed that the key to sanctifying the city was to sanctify the home. The quality of home life will determine the quality of city life. All legitimate work should be embraced as true vocation, and it is the duty of the clergy to help the faithful appreciate their employment as a means to serving the Lord God.

City Christians must also, according to the Saint, make regular pilgrimage outside the hubbub of the city to the shrine of the sacred martyrs, and the desert dwellings of the holy monastics. The practice of regular pilgrimage is of great importance for those who live in the dense and pressure filled dwelling of the city. And though we should visit the hermits outside the city, we should also establish within the city a strong monastic presence. To make the city a monastery was Chrysostom’s dream. Though we have just a small number of monasteries in our land, yet even most of them are far outside the city.

Chrysostom experienced something quite different, and just as traditional. Saint John promoted and invested in the perfection of city monasticism.

Where was Saint Olympias’ convent but in the center of Constantinople? Where was Monk Isaac’s monastery but in the center of Constantinople? City monasticism provides both a refreshing reminder of our heavenly ambitions to city dwellers, and a strong force in the concrete and political expression of Christianity in our urban centers. Chrysostom exerted great energy to fight what he deemed a demonic and sensuous city culture and to Christianize it. He was not content to merely observe, let alone participate in, the endless stream of illicit entertainments and spiritual distractions that the great cities in this fallen world inevitably produce. He attacked the pagan forms of wedding celebrations, the sensuous theatre, the public excesses, the race track, and the immodesty of the Roman bath house. [17] Saint John Chrysostom can greatly assist us in our quest to sanctify city life in this age of radical urbanization.

The Supreme Importance of Churchmanship in an Age of Radical Individualism. Saint John taught that the Church is a profound miracle. Whence is the origin of the Church? From where did our sacred community arise, brothers and sisters? It has no mere human foundation. The apostles did not simply gather together and come up with the idea of this organization, with certain goals, members, and dues. Not at all. The Church is the continuation of the miracle of the Nativity of Christ. The Son of God was enfleshed in the womb of the Holy Virgin, and born into the world. The Son of God is progressively enfleshed in the establishment and propagation of the Church in the world. The Church is His very Body, the miraculous expansion of His Incarnation in the world. The supernatural origin of the Church is demonstrated, according to St John Chrysostom, by the miracle that took place on the Precious and Life-Giving Cross.

When our Savior was hanging upon the Cross He was pierced with a spear, and suddenly blood and water poured out from His sacred side. [18] This blood and water is Holy Baptism by which one is incorporated into the Church, and the Holy Eucharist by which one grows in the Church. These holy mysteries came forth from the side of our Savior in the same way that Eve was taken from the side of Adam. The Church is the Bride of Christ, and so was taken from His side while on the Cross as a fruit of His sacred atonement. She is a miracle of new creation.

Our unity in the Church, according to Chrysostom, is a supernatural wonder. In the Church we experience an intimate union with Jesus Christ. This reality of being “in Christ” is the most used image by the great Apostle Paul in describing the Christian life. The Christian life is a Church life, for it is by Holy Baptism that we are incorporated into Christ and His Church. As Christians we possess a unity far greater than that of earthly organizations. We share a common womb, a common mother in the Church, a common Father in God, a common table from which we eat our food of everlasting life, a common language of doxology, a common quest, a common animating spirit, a common ethic, and a common destiny. This unity is expressed each Divine Liturgy according to Saint John Chrysostom in our partaking of the Holy Eucharist in which partaking we are actualized together as the Body of Christ. This is the reason that we celebrate the Holy Liturgy with one single holy chalice. The singular sacred cup bears witness to our unity. Even should we distribute Holy Communion in multiple chalices we do not bless multiple chalices. We consecrate one alone, and then we bring other empty chalices and fill them from the one sacred chalice.

Our experience of Church is transformative. The sacredness of our community is testified to by what actually happens when we gather together around the holy altar. Divine services are the single most powerful agent in personal holiness.

“Nothing contributes to a virtuous and moral way of life as does the time you spend here in church.” [19]

There is grace behind every action of the Holy Liturgy. Chrysostom often waxes eloquent concerning the liturgical movements of the service. When the deacon exclaims “Stand upright,” he is addressing our souls primarily, and not just our bodies. The preaching sanctifies. The Holy Eucharist enlivens and flames leap from our mouths, blood is painted on the doorposts of our bodies and the angel of death passes over us.

Nothing is more precious, more central, more transformative and miraculous, in our human existence than life in the Church.

With the gift of this sacred community come sacred obligations to every Christian. True sacred fellowship is the power of the Church. Listen to the words of Chrysostom,

“Let us prefer the time we spend here in church to any occupation or concern. Tell me this. What profit do you gain which can outweigh the loss you bring on yourself and your whole household when you stay away from the religious services? Suppose you find a whole treasure house full of gold, and this discovery is your reason for staying away. You have lost more than you found, and your loss is as much greater as things of the spirit are better than things we see. Attendance in the divine services greatly encourages your brothers and sisters in the faith and spiritual battle … the Church went from 11 to 120 to three thousand to five thousand to the whole world and the reason for this growth was that they never left their gathering. They were constantly with each other, spending the whole day in the temple, and turning their attention to prayers and sacred readings. This is why they kindled a great fire. We too must imitate them.” [20]

Chrysostom taught that the communal responsibilities of Christian people far exceeded their merely needing to be faithful participants in the divine services. He called upon them to take responsibility for each other, and to function as an authentic family. If a faithful Christian is friends with a lazy Christian, the faithful one should go to the lazy one on Sunday, and literally drag him along to liturgy.

While commenting on Ps. 50 Chrysostom stated that if an immoral Christian was seen by other congregants getting into the communion line the faithful should report this immediately to the priest so he can exclude him from communion. If a faithful Christian hears his brother blaspheme he should strike him in the mouth, and “sanctify his right hand.” The picture of communal responsibility is clear, and in our individualistic live-and-let-live context, appears extreme. But Chrysostom holds membership in the Church very high and assumes that there are many communal responsibilities associated with it designed by a loving God to work for the salvation of the entire community. And the responsibilities do not lie solely with the laity.

The clergy must be serious pastors. They must not leave their sheep diseased or in danger. An example of such serious pastoring can be found in Chrysostom’s own life as a priest at the time of the tax riots in Antioch. Saint John preached a series of 21 sermons during the tense days following the riots. During this series Chrysostom sought to reform his people from the habit of swearing. No less than 15 times did Saint John address the subject in a period of just a few weeks, sermon after sermon. He knew his people were growing very weary of him preaching with the same focus, yet they had not ceased their bad habit and Chrysostom refused to pretend that they had and move on.

Finally, he acknowledged their grievances and assured them that he could move on very quickly if they wished. They only needed to stop swearing and then he would move on. It was completely in their hands. He was a faithful physician, and not a professional or a show-man. He insisted on bettering his patients. The result was that swearing decreased and Chrysostom moved on, but a most important point about life in the Church had been expressed by the Saint. The life we lead in the Church is a life centered on personal change.

Brother and sisters, many of our Orthodox people do not have an authentic experience of what true ecclesial life is. We do not appreciate the miracle of life in the Church, and we content ourselves with an empty and alienating individualism. An evil spirit of “it’s just me and Jesus, baby” has permeated much of American Christianity today to our nation’s detriment. Our faith teaches us that there is no dichotomy between Jesus and the Church. Our Savior is not a floating head to be communed with apart from His sacred Body. Churchmanship is at an astonishing low in our times. Saint John Chrysostom stands at the throne of God ready to illumine us and our people about the miracle of sacred community, and to save us from the death of self-worship. [21] This age of individualism and religious game playing is a time for serious pastoring, revived churchmanship, and sacred obedience to the Church.

The Call to Trust the Lord in an Age of Acute Anxiety. Besides being an age of urbanization and radical individualism, contemporary life is an age of acute anxiety. The 20th century has been dubbed by some intellectuals the “age of anxiety.” That the last 100 years has witnessed a marked increase in anxiety levels and the numerous pathologies, such as depression, which stem from acute anxiety is a matter of scientific fact. In an authoritative and widely distributed article entitled The Age of Anxiety? Birth Cohort Change in Anxiety and Neuroticism, 1952-1993, [22] and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Case Western Reserve University Psychology Professor, Jean M. Twenge, documents through two meta-analyses of various sociological groups in America the effect of changing cultural times on personality development. Twenge documents the increase in anxiety levels in our culture in the last half-century, and argues that changes in the larger sociocultural environment have been a leading cause: changes such as the increase in violent crime, [23] worries concerning nuclear war, fear of disease such as AIDS, and the entrance of women into higher education and the workplace (a place of great stress). These contributing factors are exacerbated by media coverage, which leads to a greater perception of overall environmental threat.

More people visit doctors for anxiety than for colds. Anxiety is a predisposing factor for major depression and suicide attempts. Another area in which anxiety levels can be measured is in the prevalence of drug treatment for anxiety and depression. The common use of Prozac, so common that in recent times some one-fourth of the adult American population had been treated with it, is a major signal. Depression is an epidemic in our society. We live in an age of melancholy.

Many of our contemporary spiritual elders, such as Elder Paisios the Athonite, have addressed the anxiety of modern man. Elder Paisios taught that modern man is afflicted with three unique pains: divorce, cancer, and mental anxiety and illness. Out of his great love for his fellow man, Father Paisios wished to bear some of the burden. He could not bear the pain of divorce since he was not married, and he did not want to suffer mental anxiety and illness because it would affect his prayer. So he prayed for and received cancer, and taught modern men how to bear it for God. He wrote that cancer, with its typical drawn out process of killing its victim, has led untold numbers to repentance and has populated Paradise.

We have become an anxious people because our sins have increased, and our faith has waned. The 20th century was a century of acute anxiety because it was a century of hideous violence and unbridled licentiousness. Several years ago, in an effort to understand the 20th century better, I read Sir Martin Gilbert’s three-volume History of the 20th Century. His masterful work left me with a profound awareness of the 20th century as the most violent hundred years in the history of mankind. This is a judgment made by the World Wars and atrocities against human rights that filled the century.

When the new abortion holocaust, which has taken the lives of more than 50 million unborn children in the last 34 years, is taken account violence becomes the defining motif of the century. Violence was the particular sin of Noah’s age that provoked the wrath of the Lord God to bring the universal flood upon mankind. [24] Certainly the Almighty cannot be pleased with the last hundred years, a century that many would like to forget.

We Christian believers must address our culture’s worry head-on. We are called by Jesus Christ to witness by our confidence and trust in Him in an anxious age. [25] We must live a life of serene trust in the Lord, the life of faith, and call our fellow man to such a trust. Saint John Chrysostom can be of great assistance to us in this calling. Chrysostom’s life was full of earthly sorrows: the loss of his father as an infant, and of his mother and sister as a young man; physical illnesses; tormenting passions; a turbulent and unstable civil and ecclesiastical ethos; [26] kidnapping and displacement; immense pastoral responsibilities; sustained opposition; false accusation by his brother bishops at the Synod of the Oak; imperial trickery; banishment and death in exile. Yes, it sounds like a Saint’s life does it not? One large cross upon which the Saint resolved to stay.

In the midst of these very sorrows Chrysostom found tremendous joy, and lived through them all by trusting confidently in the will of God. His most precious writings on this subject of faith in time of anxiety are, no doubt, those that were written by him while in exile. Here we have words crafted out of the very heat of the furnace, and we see the triumph of his faith. Two treatises particularly I would like to call to your attention. These two treatises were composed by Chrysostom in exile, not long before his death, in order to comfort his dear friend the Deaconess, Saint Olympias, who was suffering from extreme depression due to her spiritual father’s banishment.

The first is a small work, some fifteen pages, entitled That No One Can Harm the Man Who Does Not Injure Himself. In this beautiful work, Chrysostom teaches that there is only one thing in life to fear, only one thing to be anxious about. That one thing is sin. It is the only thing we should fear, and if we do fear it, then we will never have to fear anything else at all because the good God will see to it that nothing harms him who puts his trust in Him. I commend to each of you the reading of this profound treatise. The second work is longer, perhaps 100 pages (and needing its first English translation), entitled On Providence.

In this more extended treatise, Chrysostom provides numerous justifications from reason and the creation to put one’s complete confidence in the governance of the Lord God, reminds his readers of the security of being a child of the one God, Who is the Father Almighty. God has the heart of a Father for us, and the resources of the Almighty to put a Father’s heart into action.

There is no suffering endured in faith by the believer which will not be redemptive. And lastly, Chrysostom calls upon believers to remain in reverent silence before human outcomes and developments that are beyond our comprehension. Confident silence is the best response to events which we cannot understand. It was with such faith, such serene trust in the Lord God, that Chrysostom came to his end,lay down, received the Holy Gifts, made his Cross, and uttered his final words, with which I will conclude my lecture:

“Glory to God for all things.”

© 2010, Preachers Institute. All rights reserved. On republishing this, please provide a link to the original post.

by Rebecca Herman

When my husband and I, after a long struggle within the Anglican Communion, were in the process of becoming Orthodox, we were struck and comforted by our priest’s fundamental catechetical premise:

“In the Church, we believe that which has been revealed to us.”

With equal assurance, he taught that the Faith undoubtedly goes through changes and development in many areas but divine revelation is the same yesterday, today, and forever. You are free to disagree – even to disbelieve – yet, he maintained (as I believe does the Church) that some matters are settled and not up for negotiation. Thus it is that I do not believe women were, are, or ever shall be, called by the Church to the ordained priesthood. I believe this order to be God-ordained and neither a punishment for my sex, nor a glorification of my husband’s.

My purpose in this review is not to sway another’s opinion on women’s ordination; most are content and firm in their present position. I also do not cover the topic of the female deaconate, being content, myself, that some things are allowed by the Holy Spirit to die out.

I do hope, however, that Dr Valerie Karras’s argument for women priests sways no one toward acceptance of the novelty; up against the weight of Revelation and Tradition, her premise, though intriguing, is lacking. Furthermore, I am surprised and disappointed that St Vladimir’s Seminary believed Karras’s piece worthy of publication in Thinking Through Faith—New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars (Aristotle Papanikolaou and Elizabeth H. Prodromou, eds; St Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Crestwood, NY, 2008).

In all charity and due respect—new perspectives, indeed—shame on them!

An old saying came to mind while reading Karras’s article, and I paraphrase:

“She who defines the terms wins the argument.”

From the first time she used it, I knew that Karras’s term “women’s liturgical participation” was going to be key to her argument. When you are no longer talking about order, as in holy orders and ordination, but about liturgical participation, the rules of engagement have changed. In fact, while making counter-argument notes in the book’s side margin, over and over again, I wrote order and revelation. (Granted, there are a few places where I wrote OK as well as OMG!)

At times Dr Karras lets others do the heavy lifting when it comes to weighty controversy. For example, she quotes Elisabeth Behr-Sigel as part of the forward:

“An Orthodox woman who is competent to do so can occupy a New Testament teaching post in a prestigious theological faculty such as that of Thessalonica. She is, however, not permitted to read the Gospel in the worship of the people of God. An Orthodox theological conference declares unanimously that ‘any act denying dignity to the human person, any discrimination between men and women based on sex is a sin’. But, following a custom that has progressively been established in the Orthodox Church, women remain barred from the altar” (p.114).

However, the embedded quote was taken from the same Inter-Orthodox Theological Symposium held in Rhodes, Greece from October 30 to November 7, 1988, which stated:

As might be expected, much attention was paid by the symposium to express the view that the Orthodox Church could not envision the possibility of the ordination of women as presbyters or bishops. According to the official “Conclusions” of the consultation, this position was not the result of cultural and social factors, but rather is reflective of the church’s understanding of Christ and of the reality of men and women.

[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3818/is_/ai_n9107871 (viewed 11/20/08)]

Karras tempts one to leaping jumps of justification with insufficiently referenced words such as these:

“In the United States, at least three priests, one in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and two others in the Orthodox Church in America, were prohibited in the past several years by their diocesan bishop and their Synod of Bishops, respectively, from continuing to include girls among their parish’s acolytes. The hierarchs’ rationales ranged from fear of negative reactions from traditionalist elements within the church, in the former instance, to an argument, in the latter, that female acolytes were contrary to tradition because only men have served within the altar (which is historically untrue)” (p.115).

With regard to the above quote, Karras offers the following footnote:

“With respect to the contention that ‘only males are to be admitted to service within the holy altar,’ this is patently untrue, whether one considers the ordination of female deacons at the altar in the Byzantine Church, the regular acolyte activities of nuns in monastic churches, or the informal functions of older women maintaining the sanctuary in Greek parish churches or assisting in the vesting of the clergy in the altar areas of the great cathedrals of Russia” (pp.115-116).

As far as I know, at least as I was taught, no one should go into the holy place (the altar) without a blessing. There are, as Karras noted, instances where females are blessed to go behind the iconostasis. It is interesting to note, however, that she places no proscriptions on those who do so (e.g., post-menopause), but that would, no doubt, lead her back toward the so-called traditionalist elements. Why on earth do Russian clergy need women’s help vesting in cathedrals? That one seems completely out of left field. As the befuddled, such as my sixteen year old son, are known to say, “I got nuthin.” In this case, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Really, though, since when is “traditionalist elements within the church” a questionable position? In my experience, a stance against such would seem a slope worthy of avoidance. (In other words, sans the traction of tradition, you may slide.) May God bless the hierarchs who prohibited these innovative priests from such “untraditional elements.”

Karras then sets up her foundational paradigm with this introduction:

“Unfortunately, both proponents and opponents of restricting women’s liturgical participation rarely explain their argument’s underlying theological anthropology explicitly” (p.122).

Now, substitute the word Tradition or Revelation for “restricting women’s liturgical participation” and you’d have a different problem. That is, both Tradition and Revelation imply God’s guidance and order (assuming, as one ought, there is such a thing). Whereas “restricting women’s liturgical participation” sounds like a rights issue. Better yet, substitute women’s ordination to the priesthood for “restricting women’s liturgical participation” and you’d have a more honest quandary. She continues:

“Even more rarely do they recognize where their particular anthropological view fits with the broader ‘timeline’ of salvation history – in other words, where it lies in the progress of human history from creation to the eschaton (the ultimate end). While most of the Fathers do not articulate their views in the type of clearly organized fashion we use today, most of them do – implicitly, at least – develop their theological anthropology in the context of a timeline of human development. This timeline contains several stages:

STAGE I – God’s eternal plan for humanity before creation (ahistorical ideal humanity);

STAGE II – God’s creation of humanity and its existence in paradise (prelapsarian humanity), which need not be understood literally;*

STAGE III – humanity on earth, after the fall and the expulsion from paradise but before Christ (postlapsarian humanity BC);

STAGE IV – humanity on earth, after Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection (postlapsarian humanity AD); and

STAGE V – humanity in its resurrected state, after Christ’s second coming (eschatological humanity). [pp.122-123]

I guess if one views holy orders within the Church as the culmination of human development, then this 5-stage structure has a future. But, it has no past (at least within the Church) when it comes to women’s ordination to the priesthood. Karras’s anthropological paradigm, rather than reflecting Tradition, displays a form of ecclesiastical evolution.

“[L]iturgical practice—the lex orandi (rule of worship)—is, or should be, related to the lex credendi (rule of faith). This dictum, however, is not always true, particularly where liturgical traditions are based on social, cultural, and other non- theological factors.* But, the assumption that it is operative with respect to women’s liturgical participation has thus led many Orthodox both in writings and at various theological dialogues to assert unequivocally that the Church’s theology does not support the ordination of women to the priesthood” (p.126).

See the asterisk marking the sentence (above)? That sentence was, to me, the assumption! Divine order is based on social, cultural, and other non-theological factors? Our Lord was [sic] truly God and truly man – but with certain limitations? The mind boggles. (Besides, it is a fact that female priests were a reality in Old Testament and New Testament times – just not within the revealed faith of Judeo-Christianity.)

Using giant leaps of logic, after mentioning women preachers in the ancient Church and virgins and deacons [i.e., deaconesses] chanting in the Byzantine era, Karras says:

“Ironically, those who would restrict women from liturgical activities outside of those of the laity as a whole believe that they are being traditional and Orthodox by excluding women from contemporary participations in liturgical activities in which, historically, they have participated” (p.143).

Here, in a footnote, she cites Acts 21:9 and 1 Corinthians 11:5. She also states:

“and as commented on by early church fathers such as St John Chrysostom” (p.143).

Acts 21: 7-9: When we had finished the voyage from Tyre, we arrived at Ptolemais; and we greeted the brethren and stayed with them for one day. On the morrow we departed and came to Caesarea; and we entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with him. And he had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied (emphasis on Acts 21:9, mine).

1 Cor. 11:5: … but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head—it is the same as if her head were shaven.

She then asks:

“Why is male domination of woman considered ‘God-ordained’ by persons who have no theological opposition to receiving treatment for cancer or using machinery to avoid manual labor?” (p.143)

Male domination? Now there’s a defining term! Within our struggles with the consequences of The Fall we are to find a back-handed argument for women’s ordination? It’s interesting that Karras’s paradigm is all about anthropology as opposed to Divine Order and Revelation as perfected in Christ. Order, as I believe St Paul would agree, works both ways, male and female. It is not, however, about male domination.

Dr Karras includes a curious footnote to her 5-stage anthropological paradigm:

“It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the question of whether or not one understands the creation account(s) in Genesis in a literal manner. Certainly, the Greek Fathers were generally unconcerned with a literal approach to understanding the significance of Genesis, and most modern Orthodox theologians do not view evolutionary theory as being incompatible with the belief that God is the ultimate Creator. This means that what is important are the theological concepts of humanity’s movement away from God, God’s movement toward humanity, and humanity’s responsive return back toward God, but one need not believe that the discussion of Adam and Eve in paradise refers to an actual time and place on earth” (p.123).

When readers are told that their belief (e.g., literal or allegorical) in the story of The Fall is inconsequential to the scope of this article — and then to base one’s entire argument on a paradigm of prelapsarian, postlapsarian, and eschatological humanity—seems to suggest that interpreting the story the old way is not required but please, whatever you believe, apply the modern virtue of [obvious] eschatological egalitarianism to it. (In this understanding of the story, Eve = good; New Eve = bad.)

Troubling, though not surprising, is Karras’s disdain for Motherhood. Why is it that one of God’s greatest gifts, one which is only available to women, is so suppressed and diminished by those aspiring to spiritual “fatherhood”? For instance:

“This emphasis on gifts, functions, and roles as gender-defined is particularly troublesome when the function and behavior of one woman—the Theotokos—is extrapolated to all women. That the Theotokos was not one of the Twelve does not mean that no woman could ever be an apostle. In fact, the Apostle Paul ranks Junia as an apostle in Rom 16.7 …” (p.150).

It’s obligatory for Dr Karras to bring this up, yet providential that I’d just read an article in Touchstone magazine dealing with the subject of Junia and her inclusion in the “women’s right to ordination” agenda:

“Those who, believing her to be an apostle, are concerned to maximize the status of Junia, appear to be on the horns of a dilemma. Either they can make her out to be a leading apostle in a maximal sense of that word, together with Peter, James, John and Paul—in which case they have a major problem explaining her almost- invisibility in the records; or they can assign to her an apostleship in a minimal sense of that term, perhaps like that of Epaphroditus in Philippians 2:25—in which case, they have not proved anything that will be of much use to them in their sociocultural agenda” (Touch, p.26)

“If Junia is needed to validate the ‘leadership roles’ of such women as these, then good luck to her. But there are no reasons for seeing Junia and her status as having any relevance to the question of admission of women to the presbyteral or Episcopal priesthood of the ancient churches, in which the sacerdos images the Father and the Bridegroom of his church. Whether it has or has not had any bearing upon the admission of women to the non-sacerdotal ministries of the Reformation tradition, I would not presume to discuss” (Touch, p.27)

[John Hunwicke, former Head of Theology at Lancing College in England, now Senior Research Fellow at Pusey House, Oxford;

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=21-08-022-f (viewed - 11/6/08).]

Back to Karras and the Theotokos:

“The Theotokos is unique, and her role in the economy of salvation was and is unique. To lump all women into the same category, that is, to assume that all women must act and serve as Christian women in the same manner as the Virgin Mary—something that is never done with Christian men vis-à-vis Christ or any particular male saint—is to ignore the Church’s tradition of canonizing women whose activities and charisms were diverse and to objectify the Theotokos, simultaneously depersonalizing all other women” (p.151).

Granted. But there is no tradition of canonizing women who were ordained to the sacred priesthood. Besides, who are these people that lump all women into the “same category”? Her own words, later in the sentence, show that the Church has, through the ages, recognized and honored various activities and charisms of all Her saints—female and male—all of which are called to emulate the Mother of God!

“The Church’s message is clear: the Theotokos is venerated not just because she is Jesus’ mother, but because she was attentive to God, which made her appropriate to become God’s chosen vessel” (p.151).

Having fled such language in my previous life, I cringe when I hear of the Mother of God referred to solely as “God’s chosen vessel.” She is the Bride of God Unwedded. She was chosen precisely for her faithfulness (i.e., chastity, fidelity). She is the Mother of all Christians and a “role model” for all her children, male and female. She symbolizes the Church which, though an able vessel, is the very Body of Christ.

For Karras, “order” seems to be synonymous with “domination”—

“The postlapsarian BC model (Stage 3) is biblically grounded in the list of negative consequences of the fall given in Gen. 3:16-19, and is usually used to support male domination over women in the church and family life and significant limitations on women’s liturgical participation … It is strongly inegalitarian and ignores the importance of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection on women’s liturgical life as members of the faith community. Essentially, it makes our fallen condition and specifically our fallen condition from before Christ, normative for the Church. As such, it is insupportable theologically” (pp.152-153).

I have no idea how one can counter such an asinine argument. The Fall of Man is negative — by our own free will and action, yet the consequences of the Fall may be for our salvation. Again, who supports “male domination”? Karras’s arguments seem to go against the very witness of Scripture and the experience, not to mention Tradition, of the Church. All I can do is reread the above quote over and over again and keep coming to the same conclusion: We disagree on what we believe.

Later on, after giving examples of participants in the various “stages” she has devised, Karras says:

“Of course, not everyone fits neatly into just one of these three models: for example, there are many nuns who are living a virtually eschatological life already, but who nevertheless believe it proper to submit themselves to certain gender-based restrictions because they are still women in a fallen world” (p.154).

In the book’s margin I wrote: OMG! Order! But, it is at the end of her piece that Dr Karras, in my opinion, steps completely out of revealed order and tradition (forgive the long quote):

“[T]here is no valid theological reason not to ordain women to the priesthood if we truly operate from an eschatological normative anthropology. Thus, the Logos’ incarnation as a male human being—which has been seen as significant by many of those who oppose the ordination of women to the priesthood, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church—is irrelevant in terms of an eschatologically oriented anthropology. The argument that Christ’s maleness requires the priest’s maleness in order for the priest to be appropriately “christic” in his iconic function is illegitimate since (1) the priest liturgically images the Church (which is symbolically female) more than he does Christ (for example during the anaphora, culminating in the consecration of the bread and wine, he speaks on behalf of the Church); and (2) even more importantly, given Orthodoxy’s incarnational soteriology, any theological argument based on the significance of the maleness of Christ has disastrous consequences for Orthodox soteriology with respect to women. After all, if, as St Gregory the Theologian opined, “that which is no assumed is not healed” (referring to Christ’s taking on of our fallen, mortal human nature in order to restore it), how can female humanity be saved if Christ’s maleness so differentiates him from female humanity that a woman cannot become an icon of him?” (pp.155-156)

Okay, here’s what I wrote in the margin: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Again, I’m speechless. Therefore, I shall let the same Inter-Orthodox Theological Symposium (Rhodes, 1988) cited earlier speak for me:

While men and women equally share in bearing the “image of God,” the distinction which allows a few men and no women to be ordained through cheirotonia to this “special priesthood” is a result of the “order of nature.” This understanding flows from the deeper understanding of the relation of men and women in the plan of salvation in Christ. This understanding is not viewed “in any case … as a diminution of the role of women in the Church” (III: 8). Women are of equal honor with men.” “As such, women in the Church assume their own rules for the restoration of the distorted image of God, which are a consequence of sin” (III: 8).

[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3818/is_/ai_n9107871 (viewed 11/20/08)]

Of course, Karras sees things differently:

“Do we really want to advocate for the normative value of a negative consequence of the fall, especially at the same time that we try to alleviate or mitigate the other negative consequences enumerated in Gen 3:16-19 (disease, toilsome work, pain in childbirth, and even death)? (p. 157)

NO! She didn’t! All of these consequences have been alleviated, mitigated—destroyed — in the God-Man, Christ. Our chore is not to do away with these things on earth, but to struggle well with and against them to attain the kingdom of heaven.

Besides, how can she build her salvo upon a story that she’s already informed us need not be understood literally. Perhaps she assumes that those who do understand The Fall, as recounted in the book of Genesis, in a more “literal” sense (i.e., as received and experienced by the Church) are the very ones who need swayed on the issue of women’s ordination? For, as that same catechizing priest taught me years ago:

“Where you start determines where you end up.”

I’ll end with another female writer, Frederica Mathewes-Green, who comes at the issue from a totally different angle:

“Since we can’t understand sex in the instinctive, body-deep ways our ancestors did, it’s natural that we won’t understand sex differences. We don’t see any more how savory and good these differences are. While you could sort humans in many ways-by height or shoe size or age-the all-time favorite is by sex. We just get a kick out of gender differences, even though most of the human body plan is shared by men and women alike. It’s the distinctives that we highlight: women’s clothes suggest an hourglass figure no matter what shape the lady inside, while men’s jackets are enhanced by brawny padded shoulders. After a birth the first thing we want to know is “Boy or girl?,” and lumpy, indistinguishable newborns are stuffed into baseball costumes or palest pink. We pass along gender-based jokes, because clumsy stereotypes point toward something that fascinates and delights us. The difference between the sexes is the most cheerful and exhilarating thing we know: it’s where babies come from. The difference between the sexes is how we partner with God in the creation of life.

If we can’t understand the difference between male and female, we sure can’t understand what previous generations knew about the value of an all-male priesthood. I can only hope that some future generation will regain the peace and clarity we’ve lost, and be able once again recognize and enunciate this mystery.”

[http://lists.ctcnet.net/pipermail/frederica-l/2007-January/000247.html (viewed 11/19/08)]

While I lack the sharpened tools of theological verbiage to counter Dr Karras’s arguments in a scholastically convincing way, I am convinced that we not only do not believe the same things, but that her agenda relies on reaching outside of Revelation and Tradition. I also find it ironic (and unfortunate in a “broad-brush” sense) that comparing her arguments to St Paul’s, with regard to the role of women, I am ever more convicted by St Paul’s. Some women should just keep quiet. I know such a viewpoint differs from that of Dr Valerie Karras. But, then again, really, I’m fine with that.

As a woman in the world seeking to bear fruits worthy of the eschaton – even the kingdom of heaven – I’d rather err on the side of the Church “against which there is no law.”

— Rebecca Herman

Wife, mother, woman; happily unordained

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© 2010, Preachers Institute. All rights reserved. On republishing this, please provide a link to the original post.