Orthodox Monk

Update on the Gnostic Chapters of St Diadochos of Photiki

2011-12-26T14:33:00.001Z

We have passed our translation of the Gnostic Chapters of St Diadochos of Photiki, together with all the rights, notes and commentary, to Fr Theophanes (Constantine) of Kavsokalyvia, Mount Athos. He has thoroughly reviewed the translation and published it on his own site. Hence, those wishing the best translation of the work should go there. We will be removing our own translation and commentary shortly. Fr Theophanes will be writing an introductory essay on the work which he will be posting to his site in due course.

Is a Rasophore a Monk or a Novice?

2011-12-07T10:43:00.005Z

We have received an email from someone who describes himself as a rasophore monk in a canonical Orthodox church. While his email states that he would prefer to keep the communication private, we did subsequently receive his written permission to post his email publicly and discuss it. Seraphim is not the rasophore monk’s real name. We should point out that we really regret private correspondences we have engaged in. It is much safer for all concerned for the discussion to be conducted publicly with the identifying information removed. That way Orthodox Monk avoids hassle. He also gets to convey his views to his whole readership. Here is Rasophore Monk Seraphim’s email, somewhat edited:

Dear Orthodox Monk, greetings in the Lord!

First of all, let me introduce myself. I am a rasophore monk from a canonical Orthodox Church and my name is Rasophore Monk Seraphim. I've been reading your blog ‘Orthodox Monk’ and there has been a discussion of whether or not a rasophore monk is a monastic. It was stated that the Greek Church does not consider a Rasophore a full monk, but a novice, because he hasn't made any vows (such a statement was really striking to me), while the Slavic tradition (Russian and others) considers him a monk even without his having made vows—a kind of ‘pre-fully-monastic’. I myself was tonsured a Rasophore and during my tonsure I did not give vows; however, my bishop and the laity consider me fully monastic. My question, I mean, questions are: if a rasophore decides to return to the world for whatever reason, will he be canonically punished? Are there any canonical proceedings to leave the rasophore state and return to the lay state?

I ask this because I've met rasophores who have decided—and still decide—to leave the monastic state (as rasophores), not necessarily to take up the married life but for other reasons such as caring their parents who are ill (if they are their only male child), or to find a job to support their parents and so on. Some of them even say they plan to return to the monastery when their parents pass away. I'd like to know how our Orthodox Church deals with these particular situations (parents, jobs), at least on the canonical level. If such a rasophore decides to live in the world as a celibate and unmarried Orthodox lay person, will the Church grant him a return to the lay situation? Is there any difference among the Orthodox traditions? If they decide to return to the monastery some time later, will they be accepted again?

I very much appreciate, Orthodox Monk, any help you might give me to settle my doubt. Thank your very much! These questions are only monastic curiosity. If possible, keep this e-mail unpublished and in your particular in-box I await your reply.

In Christ

Rasophore Seraphim

There are a number of issues here. First of all, is the rasophore a monk or a novice? There is no clear ruling in canon law on the status of the rasophore. The canons of the Church are clear on the status of the monk, and perhaps to a lesser extent, on the status of the novice. The issue here, however, is whether a rasophore is to be considered a monk or a novice. Next, there are issues of conscience for the rasophore—how did he understand what he did in becoming a rasophore and what personal commitments did he make to God before and during and after his tonsure?

Let us start with the status of the monk or nun in the Orthodox Church. For the sake of argument let us consider a monk of the small or great schema, so that there is no doubt that the man is a monk (or the woman a nun); we will address the particular issue of whether a rasophore is also to be considered a monk below.

There is no canonical provision for the laicization of a monk in the Orthodox Church. In the Roman Catholic Church there is a provision for the laicization of the monk that accomplishes its purpose by treating the monk’s vows as given to the community (monastery) and not to God. The point of this strategy, we understand, is that vows given to men can be dispensed (revoked, nullified) whereas vows given to God are irrevocable. Hence, if the monastic vows are given to the Community (monastery), then they can be dispensed by the Community (monastery). However, if the vows are given to God, then they are eternal. This might seem like jesuitical casuistry, but we once met a Jesuit priest who had left his order without permission and who explained the reasoning to us, also explaining that in his own conscience he considered his vows as given to God and therefore irrevocable. In other words, he himself considered that his vows were unbreakable even though he had left the order and was living as a married layman. Needless to say he had psychological problems being in this condition.

In the Orthodox Church, there is no similar provision for the laicization of monks. The monk is understood to have given his vows to God. And the best teaching in the Orthodox Church is that vows given to God are irrevocable. However, it is known that in some jurisdictions when a priest-monk is defrocked he is also reduced from the monastic to the lay state. The reason for this is obvious: as a monk he would be wearing the habit and be a cause of scandal. But there is no canonical foundation for such a practice of reducing a monk to the lay state. What does this mean? To us—and we are neither theologians nor saints with the gift of clairvoyance—this means that although the man is no longer wearing the habit he is bound before God for his monastic obligations.

Let us make this a little clearer. Let us suppose that a monk who has given vows to God violates his vows. The monastery expels him and the Holy Synod reduces him to the lay state. Does this mean that the man can do what he wants? No. The vows cannot be dispensed and he will answer for them on the Day of Judgement. What he must do is keep his vows while living as a layman. It doesn’t make any difference whether he’s wearing blue jeans or the habit or whether he shaves or not: he’s still bound.

We don’t want to go into details, but there is a very famous case of a priest-monk hearing the confessions of political persons who engaged in espionage—evidently passing on what he learned in confession and otherwise to a foreign intelligence service—and who in a crisis of conscience ceased his priesthood, cast off the habit and married. He was counselled by an Elder to continue living with his wife in the lay state—but as a monk. Needless to say the man experienced psychological crises up to the time of his death.

Now the question is this: is the rasophore a monk? What we understand in our limited knowledge is that the consensus on Mt Athos is that the rasophore is a monk and obliged to continue in the monastic state. However, for the pastoral reasons alluded to above, the Church of Greece treats the rasophore as a novice, which means that he can take off the habit and live without penalty as a layman. Here it should be understood that the Church of Greece does not have jurisdiction over Mt Athos; the Patriarch of Constantinople does. However, if a Greek monk leaves Mt Athos he will almost invariably end up in Greece under the jurisdiction of the Church of Greece, so the attitude of the Church of Greece to a rasophore who has cast off the habit and left Mt Athos is of great practical importance. As far as we know there is no particular procedure for this, just as there is no particular procedure for a novice to leave a monastery and resume his life as a layman. However, as rasophore monk Seraphim points out, Slavic jurisdictions treat the rasophore as a monk, not as a novice. So in such jurisdictions the rasophore who returned to the world would not be able to marry in Church—unless people looked the other way. In the diaspora, anything goes, which is unfortunate.

What penalties does the monk who returns to the lay state have? We are not a confessor and not an expert on the canons, but we imagine that the only possible conditions under which a confessor would allow the man to receive communion would be if he on the one hand lived as a monk in the world and on the other hand sorted out any problems he had with the monastery and the circumstances surrounding his casting off the habit (e.g. was there a woman involved?).

This brings us to the matter of conscience. Let us suppose that I am on a boat on the high seas. There is a storm and I am afraid that the boat is going to capsize. I make a vow to God that if he saves me, I will give two sheep to such-and-such a monastery. I am saved. I don’t give the two sheep. I die. What happens next? I have a problem. I owe God two sheep. He doesn’t need the sheep but I am obliged to keep my vows to God. Let’s suppose that it’s a really serious storm and instead of two sheep I vow to become a monk. Same thing. If I don’t become a monk, then when I die I have an unfulfilled vow to God. I have a problem.

So in the case of someone who has given vows to God—for example the Jesuit mentioned above—the problem on the Day of Judgement is his conscience: what he obliged himself to do before God.

So let us consider a man who is tonsured a rasophore. Let us first take the case where his jurisdiction treats the rasophore as a novice. What did the man himself understand in conscience about what he was doing when he became a rasophore? If he understood that he was becoming a monk, and was committed before God to becoming a monk, then he has implicit vows to God. He must keep these implicit obligations to God even if his jurisdiction treats him as a novice. He must live as a monk. But if he thought he was becoming a novice? Let us hope that he had a serious conversation with the Abbot before he was tonsured, so that there was no confusion about what was involved in the tonsure.

Let us now take the case where the jurisdiction treats the rasophore as a monk. Then certainly unless there are issues such as psychological incapacity to understand what was entailed in becoming a rasophore, the rasophore is a monk bound to remain in the monastery working towards the fullness of the monastic state. Hence, if he returns to the world for whatever reason, he still has his obligations to God. He has to live as a monk.

Rasophore monk Seraphim raises the issue of possible legitimate reasons to return to the world—aged parents and so on. These things are pretexts since on the one hand they would have been discussed with the Abbot before the tonsure and directions given; and, on the other hand, the monk has no obligations to those in the world such as Rasophore Monk Seraphim describes. For example, when a married man becomes a monk, under canon law the marriage is automatically dissolved. So the monk is free of such worldly obligations; indeed they must be seen as temptations of the Devil to return him to the world.

However, this is not the place for Rasophore Monk Seraphim to raise such questions. The appropriate place is at the feet of his Elder and Abbot.

Orthodox Veteran (Updated 22.11.2011)

2011-11-18T11:54:00.005Z

We have received an email from Glen Barrett (not his real name). With his permission we print it, slightly edited, and provide our answer. However, we must point out that we are not a medical doctor or lawyer and cannot provide personal advice to anyone; our answers must be taken only in the most general terms, as applying to anyone who might be found in a situation such as the one described. Here is the email:

Dear Orthodox Monk:

I have recently discovered your blog and it has been a source of great education and edification for me, so thank you for that. Before I get into the substance of my question I’ll give a little background. Some years ago I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy from Protestantism. I did so after reading for some time about Orthodoxy and taking catechumenical classes at the nearest canonical Orthodox Church. I felt drawn toward Orthodoxy then, both spiritually and intellectually, and I still do today. However, at the time I was a member of the US Armed Forces and not long after my conversion I had to deploy to the Middle East and wasn’t able to attend services for upwards of eighteen months. Upon my return, I slowly began making my way back into Orthodox practice during which time I was diagnosed with a series of injuries that precluded my continued service in the military. Not long after my medical retirement from the military I accepted a position working outside the US as an instructor for the military. It pays the bills, and for that I am thankful, but the area I am in is remote and doesn’t offer me the opportunity to take part in Orthodox services, as the nearest canonical Church is several hours away and presents multiple language barriers.

Background offered, here is the substance of my question:

God’s will, as related to an individual, seems to have two aspects: general and specific. In general, as I understand it, God’s wants all of us to live moral lives and grow to know Him. By living moral lives, I mean following morality as it is understood by the Orthodox Church in Holy Tradition and Holy Scripture. But what of the specific, more personal aspects of God’s will? Growing up as a Protestant, I was taught, in as much as generic Protestantism teaches, that God has a specific, particular will for every Christian. Go here, do this, go there, be that; very scripted and divinely managed. Does Orthodoxy teach something similar and, if so, how does one discern God’s particular will for himself? Less abstractly, here is my personal dilemma and the situation I am trying to make sense of.

My background in the military was very tactically-oriented and in that environment I flourished. In that environment, I felt a sense of belonging and accomplishment and felt as though my particular talents were being used to their best. It was a hard life, physically, mentally and spiritually, but I enjoyed the challenge of it. I was sad to leave the military but understood the necessity of it as I had injuries that precluded my continued service. Since leaving that environment I have been listless, to the point of ennui. I would like to rejoin that community or one similar, albeit in a different capacity, but have had great difficulty in gaining admittance. So, my question: how should an Orthodox Christian (i.e. how should I) discern the difference between a door that is temporarily closed and one that is closed permanently? How should an Orthodox Christian discern in himself between persistence and stubbornness?

I understand that this is a complex issue and one that would be best served by working with a spiritual father or Church Elder but as I said those options are not available to me at present. I am hesitant to engage in more advanced spiritual practices to assist with this issue, as I am not actively practising the liturgy and I understand that spiritually speaking a young Orthodox should not run off into the numinous without the guidance of a more experienced member of the Church.

I apologize for laying this burden on you, but I do not know where else to turn in this, as I am the only Orthodox member of my family and, forgive my lack of charity, the pat Protestant answers that served in my youth no longer satisfy.

God Bless and Thank You,

Glen

This is a very complex issue. Let’s start from the beginning. A man has found fulfilment in the military in a ‘very tactical’ assignment. In a classic description of the esprit de corps of an elite military unit he writes, ‘I felt a sense of belonging and accomplishment and felt as though my particular talents were being used to their best. It was a hard life, physically, mentally and spiritually, but I enjoyed the challenge of it.’ But now the man has been injured and has been obliged to leave his unit. He wants to return to it in any capacity at all but has not been allowed. Should he keep trying?

We don’t know. We don’t know what injuries Glen has suffered even at a lay level of description. We don’t know the medical and administrative policies concerning medical discharges of the particular branch of the US Military to which Glen was attached. We have no idea whether anything would come of it if Glen were to write to the Secretary of the Army (or equivalent) or to the Secretary of Defense or to the President. Maybe yes, maybe no, depending on the circumstances. Short of a revelation, there is no way we can answer the question.

However, we can make some general observations. There are really two possibilities: either the man should and can, through persistence, return to his unit; or he should drop the matter and move on with his life. That of course is Glen’s issue with the discernment of the will of God for him.

Assuming that none of Glen’s listlessness and ennui is due to his injuries, Glen is essentially suffering from a form of grief. His listlessness and ennui—one might think ‘mild depression’—are the result of his bereavement in being separated from his unit. This is perfectly natural, we think, so long as it does not go on an inordinate length of time. However, we are not a medical doctor.

Moreover we think that the transition from a very intense life to a rather more sedentary life is also causing Glen’s ennui: when we transition from a very intense way of life to a less intense way of life, there is necessarily the feeling of listlessness and ennui that Glen refers to. This again is natural; it is only overcome when we begin to transfer our psychic energy to new endeavours. This can take some time and implies that we find other endeavours which interest us to the same degree that the old endeavours did.

Should Glen write to the officials mentioned above? Assuming that his injuries do not objectively preclude his returning to his unit—he will have to be honest with himself—there is no reason not to give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is that the officials either ignore his appeal or say no.

However, before he writes, Glen might wish to think about the following issues. If we assume that Glen’s injuries do in the final analysis constitute a barrier to his returning to his unit in any capacity, then he has just found out the will of God for Glen: objective circumstances which either impose a duty on someone or prevent him from doing something are the will of God for that person.

Let us explain. Let us suppose in a first hypothetical case that the unmarried Glen has fathered a child with an unmarried woman. Then the will of God is that Glen marry the child’s mother. Case closed.

Let us suppose in a second hypothetical case that Glen is happily married and his wife dies. Then the will of God is that Glen live without his wife. Glen is going to experience grief for a time and then must move on with rest of his life. Glen’s present predicament vis à vis his military service is that he doesn’t know whether he’s in the position of a man who has lost his wife or whether persistence will pay off in his returning to the unit.

Let us look at broader issues that Glen should think about. First of all, conversion to the Orthodox Church by an American Protestant, especially from an Evangelical (including charismatic or Pentecostal) background is very difficult. The basic problem is that such people have a spiritual experience—either being ‘born again’ or ‘being baptized in the Holy Spirit’—before entering the Orthodox Church and that prior experience seems to them to be a touchstone for all further religious experience even in the Orthodox Church. The experience of joining the Church seems to them to have been accomplished in their being born again or in being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Hence conversion to Orthodoxy is often seen as merely the culmination of an authentic spiritual life already lived long before entry into the Orthodox Church.

But that means a number of things. These people bring a lot of evangelical or charismatic spiritual baggage with them into the Orthodox Church. They have a tendency to remake their local Church into an idealized version of what they think the Orthodox Church should be based on their pre-Orthodox Protestant spiritual experiences. They have a tendency to pick and chose from Orthodoxy since they received the Holy Spirit long before they entered the Orthodox Church and have the spiritual discernment to purify Orthodoxy. They tend to impose their will on their fellow parishioners. Much of the disarray in the Orthodox Church in America can be traced to this.

Properly, a conversion to the Orthodox Church implies a spiritual death to all that has gone before and a learning of the authentic patristic interpretation of Orthodoxy. Properly, it entails being ‘born again’ in baptism. Hence, in being born again in baptism, the new convert encounters a life that is Orthodox, and learns how to live that life from his priest and from the Fathers of the Church.

We are not suggesting that Glen comes precisely out of this background. However we want to make clear that conversion from Protestantism in America to the Orthodox Church is problematical.

Now, the issue we would like to pose to Glen to think about is this. It is perhaps possible for you to return to your unit and the Orthodox Church does not forbid military service. However, you have just converted to Orthodoxy and perhaps it is time for you to concentrate not on rejoining your unit but on becoming a mature Orthodox? We don’t have an answer to this. It is conceivable to us that a Spirit-bearing Orthodox Elder might to one person counsel return to the unit and to another person leaving the military to concentrate on the Orthodox spiritual life.

And here we get to the substance of Glen’s question—how can we discern the will of God for us? God’s will is not quite as rationalist as Glen’s description of the Protestant understandings of the will of God that he encountered in his youth. However, as part of a personal relationship between the Orthodox believer and God, God does have a will for each person. Sometimes we learn the will of God situationally, as we described above, and sometimes we learn it charismatically—but charismatically from an Orthodox Elder. This usually involves Life and Light. That is, when in discussion with an Orthodox Elder we discover the will of God for us, the experience is that of meeting the Light and Life and Love of God in the person of the Elder. One common problem Westerners have in meeting such an Elder is that they tend to over-interpret his words as if the Elder were an oracle. What must be received is the sense of what the Elder is saying as he is illuminated by the Holy Spirit concerning us. The Spirit gives life. The letter kills.

(Update 22.11.2011: Here is what we wrote in an older post:

Let us look at the full definition that St John of Sinai gives of discernment, to be found in Step 23, 1 of the Ladder of Divine Ascent:

23, 1 Discernment, first, is in beginners the true deep knowledge of things which pertain to themselves; in intermediates, then, the spiritual sense which faultlessly discriminates among that which is really good, that which is naturally good and the opposite (i.e. the bad); in the perfect, finally, that spiritual knowledge existing within the perfect which comes about through divine enlightenment and which is strong enough to illuminate that which exists darkly in others.

O perhaps most generally this is known to be and in fact is discernment: the sure possession of the will of God in every time and place and thing, which exists only in those who are pure in heart and body and mouth. Discernment is an unspotted conscience and a pure sense.

First, it should be obvious that the degree of discernment that St John assigns to the perfect is rare.

Next, from what we have said it should be clear that this has nothing to do with the exercise of reason by the mind or nous, although the mind or nous certainly has the faculty of reason. However, what is involved is a higher faculty of the mind or nous, what the philosophers call ‘intuitive cognition’. That means ‘seeing directly without using the reason’. So when the Holy Spirit illuminates us, we see directly what it is that we see. This seeing is knowing. It is a spiritual seeing that becomes a spiritual knowing.

We can further see that there are stages in the evolution of the charism of discernment in the man as he proceeds on his spiritual road, and that personal purification plays a very important role.

Wounded by Love contains spiritual reminiscences by Elder Porphyrios, who had the gift of clairvoyance in power. Elder Paisios of Mount Athos is quoted as remarking about his own gift of clairvoyance in relation to Elder Porphyrios’ gift: ‘I have a black and white television set, but Elder Porphyrios has a colour television set.’

On pp. 27 – 33 of Wounded by Love, Elder Porphyrios describes his reception at the age of 16 of the Holy Spirit in power, his resulting illumination, and his simultaneous reception of the gift of clairvoyance. These things were transmitted to him through another Athonite Elder, Elder Dimas, without Elder Dimas’ having anything to do with it: the Holy Spirit ‘jumped’ from Elder Dimas to the young monk without Elder Dimas’ knowledge. Why? How? Who knows?

The translation of the Greek text of the passage has a few problems, but the essential message gets through. Note that ‘clear sight’ in the text is clairvoyance; the original Greek is to dioratiko.

Here we have an account by a modern Elder of how he received the gift of clairvoyance, and if what he says isn’t clear, we are not in a position to make it any clearer.

Let us return to the present post:)

There is another way to learn the will of God which is more difficult. That is to pray. Not to hear a voice or see a vision—God forbid that Glen should do that—but if we pray sincerely and insist, then God will hear our prayer. We will understand our way. It is important to be decisive and to insist—not with arrogance as if God owes us great guys something but rather like the widow in the Gospel Parable. Remember the widow who hassled the wicked judge until he gave her justice—her persistence is what paid off. The wicked judge figured that she wasn’t going away and that to be done with her he had to give her what she wanted. God tells us that we have to do the same with Him. We think that Glen should do this humbly and without getting into an anxiety state. The very act of praying is in some sense an answer. Even if objectively the answer takes time, God knows what he’s doing by delaying. Remember, in the ‘Our Father’ we pray, ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.’ Given that Glen has a job at the moment that keeps food on the table—not to be sneezed at in this day and age—we would think that he should continue doing what he is doing while he prays.

Additionally, since Glen is living overseas, he might consider visiting Mt. Athos. Who knows, maybe a conversation with a Spirit-bearing Elder will happen and he will see what he is to do.

We give him our best wishes.

Ich bin ein Weltanschauungfixer

2011-11-14T12:41:00.010Z

We have received an email from Scotty (not his real name) from Rose-of-Sharon, Kansas (not his real address). The email reads:

Dear Sir:

Are you an Eastern Rite Catholic monk?

Thanks,

Scotty

Rose-of-Sharon, Kansas

To which we replied:

Normally we only reply to emails by posting the email, edited for grammar and syntax and to remove any identifying information, on the blog and then replying on the blog.

Is this acceptable?

Orthodox Monk

To which Scotty replied:

Hello.

Yes, you may post my question. Thank you for asking. Perhaps I should rephrase my question: Are you a member of a monastic order within the Byzantine Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, under the authority of Pope Benedict XVI?

Scotty

Answer: No.

Comment: We are puzzled that someone would even ask. The blog is named Orthodox Monk.

–Orthodox Monk

Theodor Returns

2011-10-23T13:28:00.000+01:00

Theodor has returned. He is insistent that we answer some of his questions. We didn’t want to but we see that we haven’t posted for a while so we are going to answer his questions. Here they are:

Hello.

A few odd but serious (or so I think) questions:

What is the Orthodox Church's teaching/belief regarding intelligent/sapient (human-like) extraterrestrial lifeforms? Could the belief in their existence be in some way compatible with the belief in Christ (as true God and true man)?
What on Earth were the “sons of God” and the “Nephilim” or “giants” mentioned in the Old Testament?
And why used Jesus to call Himself the “Son of Man” rather than the “Son of God”?
What would have happened if the Jews and the Romans would have refused to crucify Christ? I mean, was it really necessary that Christ should die on the cross and only on the cross?

If you have the time, please answer. Thank you.

Whether there are or are not sapient extraterrestrial life-forms is a matter of science. So far no positive evidence has been presented that is both public and scientifically confirmed. There are of course reports (some probably conscious fabrications given their provenance) of visits of alien spacecraft and the like. (We will return to this aspect of the matter below because it is important.)

As far as we know there has been no success with attempts by NASA to discern alien radio signals in the cosmic background noise and there has been no reply to Carl Sagan’s specially coded message to alien life-forms that he had put on an American satellite travelling into deep space.

As Enrico Fermi the Nobel physicist is said to have remarked on the subject of extraterrestrial intelligences, “So where are they?”

Moreover, there’s just an itty-bitty problem with the structure of the universe. Under the current cosmological model, the absolute maximum speed that anything can travel (in any frame of reference) is the speed of light. Some scientists using a cute trick (maybe they’ll get a Nobel for it) managed to photograph the youngest extra-solar planet known to date. It’s about the size and condition of Jupiter. No place that Theodor or we would want to live. How far away was that planet? 450 light-years. That’s a long way away. Under the current cosmological model it would take at least 450 years for aliens living on that planet to reach earth.

So is the current cosmological model valid? Who knows? Some guys think they may have discovered some neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light. Their evidence is being investigated. If the scientific community finally judges that in fact their evidence is valid and something was moving faster than the speed of light, it’s roll over Einstein.

It is certainly true that science is not a finished business and that one day Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity might be over-turned. But for the moment it’s all we have. Everything else is sheer speculation: worm-holes, extra dimensions etc. Using tricks like worm-holes or short-cuts through extra dimensions to visit that youngest planet just discovered is the stuff of science fiction. (Of course we all know that that youngest planet’s moon is Pandora and that there are mystical 12-foot-tall blue humanoids on Pandora.) We can’t even get an electron to do the trick. Moreover, there is absolutely no way to know whether a human being going through a worm-hole would come out the other end anything more than hamburger—after all we’ve never ever found a worm-hole in the cosmos to experiment with.

So one distinct possibility—subject to further discoveries in science—is that the universe is structured the way it is because that’s the way God wanted it to be: although there are sapient extraterrestrial intelligences they are so far away that we’ll never be able to meet. There’s simply no way to know given the state of science today.

As far as we know, there is no teaching in the Fathers on extraterrestrial life-forms. The world-view of the Fathers simply did not encompass that possibility. The Fathers do talk of angels and demons as spiritual realities but there is NO reason to conflate patristic discussion of spiritual realities with the scientific question “Are there extraterrestrial intelligences?”

So we are in a situation where Theodor wants to know whether something that is at the moment extremely hypothetical—there’s still a problem finding a microbe on Mars, Theodor—is going to interfere with his faith in Jesus Christ as true Man and true God; let us say with his faith in the Nicene Creed.

Theodor, don’t you understand that the question itself is the problem, not the answer? The question is the temptation. You might just as well get caught up in speculation, “Well what happens if a meteor strikes my village in Bulgaria?” Well yes it’s possible that a meteor might strike your village; we can’t exclude that possibility. But it’s never happened in recorded human history that someone’s village was wiped out by a meteor. So why would you want to spend all your time making preparations for the event?

Theodor, it is true that a Professor of Theology in the Faculty of Theology in your home-town university might want to deal with the issue in a study of dogmatic theology. Then again he might not. But it is simply too hypothetical for you to worry about. The temptation is that you accept to think about such things. These are the thoughts that make your head spin. If you want to get off the merry-go-round, stop thinking and start loving.

Theodor, the passages in the Old Testament that refer to the “Sons of God” and the “giants” and the “nephilim” are very intriguing and we suspect that if you refer to St John Chrysostom’s commentaries on the relevant passages, you will see what he thinks the terms signify. But the fact of the matter is that no one knows what exactly is being referred to. Scripture seems to be referring to actual realities but with such brevity that nothing concrete can be made of the references. However, if you are interested, you might wish to read some recorded homilies of Elder Porphyrios Baϊraktares (1906 – 1991). These are published in English as Wounded by Love. In these homilies, the Elder, who had very strong gifts of clairvoyance and prevoyance, discusses with a woman her finding ruins on Patmos which would correspond to giants. He also discusses the excavations of the house that the ancient Greek seer Tiresias lived in, with the archaeologist doing the excavations. However, Wounded by Love is the translation of an early edition of Bios kai Logoi, the Greek original, so some material might be missing.

Jesus called himself both “Son of Man” and “Son of God” depending on the particular Gospel. Since he was both true man and true God, this is reasonable.

Theodor, with regard to your fourth question, if you look at St Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Trinity, you will see a portrayal of the pre-eternal counsel of the Persons of the Holy Trinity concerning the creation of Man, the fall of Man, the incarnation of the Word and the earthly life of the incarnate Word, including his Crucifixion and Resurrection. (Incidentally, the angel on the left is the Father; the angel in the middle is the Word; and the angel on the right is the Holy Spirit.)

The point of looking at this icon of great serenity and transcendent beauty is to consider that God had it “all planned out from the beginning”. There is simply no possibility that Christ would not have been crucified. You are dealing with a hypothetical that couldn’t and didn’t occur.

Theodor, the problem is that you allow yourself to think about these things. As St. Diadochos of Photiki writes, when we have a simple faith we are calm but when we insist on investigating everything then we are agitated. The spiritual life is a life of becoming like a small child who loves its mother (one of the psalms portrays this) and its father (all the Gospels portray this). You will go to Heaven based on whether you had mercy, not on whether you knew the answers to the questions you are posing.

That is part of the problem.

The other part of the problem is that the topics you are addressing—the existence of extraterrestrial intelligences, mysterious references to mysterious beings in the Old Testament, what-if questions about what would have happened if those who crucified Christ decided to stone Him instead—are eruptions into your life of a demonic fantasy world. You would be far better off avoiding these issues and others like them.

It is hard to explain this. Even if we assume that these are valid theological questions—and we are sure that a Roman Catholic professor somewhere has addressed them—they are not for you. For although they are questions that might deserve a theoretical answer, the psychological and SPIRITUAL dynamic that you are living is such that for you they are temptations to take you away from reality. In the general case this is clear in historical reports of people taking trips on flying saucers. The people who have made such trips who are not outright charlatans have problems staying in contact with reality. Moreover, this is not just a psychological problem but a spiritual problem also. In addition to anything else these people might have a problem with, they are being tempted by demons. Keep your feet on the ground, Theodor, going to the church of your preference (we are not going to try to convert you to Orthodoxy) and emptying your mind of all such thoughts and questions. Try to be nice to someone instead of thinking about such things. Pray to God that he free you from these things.

Some Questions about Orthodox Anthropology

2011-08-22T12:10:00.005+01:00

We have received a very interesting email from a person named Jean Gove’. Here is the email:

I have come across your blog and have read enough to come to respect your erudition and your broad-mindedness. I can describe myself primarily as a seeker since I still have not settled anywhere securely, although there is always an undeniable attraction pulling me towards an essential Christianity and I have become especially attracted to the Orthodox Tradition.

I have a number of theological problems some of which have surfaced upon a cursory reading of Orthodox doctrine but for now I will stick to the topic of the human soul.

The problem arises from a comparison of Gnosticism and Christianity and the realization that one of the basic differences between the two is that Gnosticism treats the human soul as eternal, and in fact as sharing completely in the essence of God from which it emerged and to which it must eventually return. Christianity on the other hand describes the human soul primarily as a creation of God with no existence prior to the human body in which the soul is embodied.

While the accusation of dualism is usually laid at the Gnostic’s doorstep, the Gnostic doctrine actually resolves itself in a monistic world-view, where everything and everyone is God. On the other hand, it is Christianity that retains the eternal dualism of Creator and created.

At this point, a number of branching problems emerge in my mind:

Since God is described as spirit, is the human soul something essentially different from spirit and from God?
If the soul has no existence prior to the human body to which it is joined, how can its eternity in the future be described? The soul continues to exist forever but has had a beginning. Isn't this a logical impossibility, in that something that has a beginning cannot be eternal? Has there been any discussion of this question in Orthodox theology?
How is the embodiment of the soul best explained? Gnosticism explains it by treating the body as an entrapment of the eternal divine soul, which must free itself from the body to return to the Divine. For Christianity, the case must be that God fully intended for each human being to exist as an embodied soul or ensouled body. Why then do Christians believe in an afterlife (Heaven) where the soul alone continues to exist while the body dies? Wouldn’t a more consistent belief place its hope in an eternal re-embodiment, and in fact consider death, the separation of body and soul, as the evil resulting from the Fall? I know Orthodoxy does consider death as the main result of the Fall but I don't know what its position on Heaven is, or whether there is a position on an eternal re-embodiment. Or is there another explanation to which I am blind?

Eagerly awaiting discussion.

Regards

Jean Gove’

The issues being raised are in what is called ‘anthropology’. Now of course there is a social science taught at university which is called ‘anthropology’ but there is an older philosophical and theological discipline called ‘anthropology’ which studies the nature of man as understood in Christianity or in any other religion, or even in non-religious philosophical systems. What Jean Gove’ is doing is raising issues in anthropology, or to put it another way, in the way that Christianity and non-Christian belief systems view man and his place in the universe. Needless to say there are many different anthropologies. Indeed, a clever philosopher of the social sciences would study the philosophical anthropology underlying any particular ‘scientific anthropology’. But let us turn to Mr. Gove’’s questions.

The first issue is this:

We had to dust off our handbook of philosophy to check up on Gnosticism. Gnosticism is a label applied to a very complex family of disparate, although related, beliefs that arose in the region stretching from present-day Iran to Syria to Egypt to Greece at about the time that Christianity itself developed. These beliefs competed with Christianity until about the 4^th Century, when, we might say, Christianity won. One of the key elements of these Gnostic beliefs was that the innermost part of the human soul was a part of the highest God. Through a very complex chain of events involving demigods and similar, this bit of God has become imprisoned in the human body in an essentially evil material creation, precisely the creation that we experience in our daily lives: the sky, the sun and so on. Indeed, the demiurge which created the evil creation that we humans are imprisoned in was the God of the Old Testament, considered to be a very low god on the celestial totem-pole and an evil one at that. A very complex salvation narrative ensues that involves outwitting the God of the Old Testament to free the divine spark in the soul of man so that it might traverse the very complex celestial hierarchy until that spark of the divine in the human soul reaches the unitary divine far above the God of the Old Testament and the Creation that we know. The primary means to accomplish this return to the unitary divine is gnosis, or knowledge. This seems to have comprised both a proclamation of the truth of the matter and means to overcome the problem, including special magical formulas to pass from one degree in the hierarchy of being to a higher degree.

One of the Gnostic systems was Manichaeism, which held St Augustine before he became Christian. The founder of Manichaeism, the Iranian Manes, taught that the Buddha was one of the messengers of the unitary divine, along with Zoroaster (remember Iran), Jesus and himself. The gnosis that is the means to escape this imprisonment in this body and this creation has structural similarities to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path of Buddhism—the content is quite different, certainly, but the combination of a statement of the problem and the means to solve the problem is reminiscent of Buddhism. Of course we have no idea whether that is in fact a result of the influence of Buddha on Manes.

Moreover, for those who are up on their history of religion, there was a dualist religion in ancient Iran. This religion posited two eternal principles of good and evil in permanent conflict. Manichaeism and some other related Gnostic systems reflect their origins in Iran in showing aspects of this dualism. This is particularly true of Manes’ system, which is consciously dualist, positing eternal opposed principles of Light and Darkness.

Let us now look at Jean Gove’’s assertion:

While the accusation of dualism is usually laid at the Gnostic’s doorstep, the Gnostic doctrine actually resolves itself in a monistic world-view, where everything and everyone is God.

We are not experts but we would think that the accusation of dualism might have much, although perhaps not everything, to do with the historically dualist strains in Gnosticism that arose from Iranian influences.

Would Gnostic systems that do not show this Iranian dualistic strand be truly monistic? Since the demigods are in some fashion parts of the original divine unity, on that level yes. But these gods do wicked things, culminating in the creation of the present Creation, which is unremittingly evil. For the goal of the divine part of the human soul is to escape its imprisonment in the present evil body in the present evil Creation to return to the unitary divine. On this level, an assertion of monism seems forced.

Of course, one can see that a major philosophical problem in Gnosticism is the explanation of how the original unitary God comes to be divided up into a number of lesser gods on successively lower planes of being, which gods show a remarkable propensity to act wickedly, until we get to the God of the Old Testament who creates the world we know in order to trap the divine in us so that it cannot return to the unitary divine. For the whole Gnostic drama is understood to arise because the divine spark in man should not have separated from the original unitary God—that was the result of wickedness and deceit in high places that culminates in the creation of this world by the God of the Old Testament.

Now we strongly doubt that today Gnosticism in its various historical forms would seriously attract anyone. However, although Jean Gove’ doesn’t mention it, there is a philosophical tradition of Neo-Platonist mysticism founded by Plotinus which has much the same structure as Gnosticism but without the heavy-handed mythological apparatus. In Plotinus’ Enneads, there is a simplified hierarchy of degrees of being generated by emanations from higher degree to lower degree, starting with the One and ending with man. Man’s task is again to return to the degree of being from which his innermost self came forth. However, Plotinus, who conducted polemics against Gnosticism, treated the Creation we live in as good. In Plotinus, man’s return to his home is accomplished by what we might call meditative or contemplative practices. There is nothing Christian about Plotinus’ system; it is a development of Plato’s thought.

Let us now look at how Mr. Gove’ contrasts Christianity with Gnosticism.

Christianity on the other hand describes the human soul primarily as a creation of God with no existence prior to the human body in which the soul is embodied.

…

On the other hand, it is Christianity that retains the eternal dualism of Creator and created.

Usually when philosophers speak about theories of or beliefs in God, they divide those beliefs into two main strands of the immanence and transcendence of God. Let us first look at the immanence of God.

In theories of the immanence of God, God is somehow present in the material world, which might even be of the same substance as God. The classical expression of the immanent God is found in Hinduism in the Vedanta of Shankara , although Hinduism is an extremely broad religion that contains very many strands of belief and theological speculation, some of which are diametrically opposed: there are transcendent strands in some schools of Hindu thought. The immanence of God is one of the elements of some forms of Hindu yoga: since man is of the same substance of God, and since the material creation is an illusion (maya) it is a matter of man surpassing illusion to realize his godliness.

Another strand of belief in the immanence of God is the systems such as Taoism, where the universe is a primordial unity that resolves into two complementary principles, yin and yang. These two principles are associated with the female and male respectively, but the concepts are raised to the status of universal principles. Moreover, as this famous symbol shows

when the yin has reached its apogee it turns into the yang and vice versa. That is the explanation of the dots in the tear drops. The tear drop is yin or yang but contains the seed of the complementary principle within. The circle around the two tear drops represents the primordial unity of universe. Now it is somewhat forced to introduce a concept of God into this system since the basic Taoist system doesn’t foresee God as we might understand that concept in the West. However, since Taoism plays the role of a religion for its adherents, we can take it as a doctrine of the immanence of God.

Some aspects of this doctrine of the immanence of God and of two complementary universal principles are to be found in Buddhism. We certainly are not experts in Buddhism, which is very complex both philosophically and in its social and cultural manifestations. Moreover, Buddhism does not treat of an over-arching God. However, one of the Buddhist sutras makes the very bald assertion: “All is Void and Void is all.” This sutra is one of the doctrinal bases of Mahayana Buddhism. If the Void plays the role in Buddhism that God plays in theist religions, then after a fashion one can see an immanent God here. Moreover, in Tibetan Buddhism the theological basis of tantric yoga is the treatment of the male and female as the two basic principles in the universe.

We can see that religious systems which posit an immanent God or First Principle tend to treat ordinary Creation as we know it as impermanent, as a mask of the really real or as a door to the really real. And while we would not want to identify the immanence of God with philosophical monism, the two concepts would in the history of ideas often be found together. For example, there is one strand of Tibetan Buddhism which is a monist mentalism—everything is mind. We would infer that the Void is pure undifferentiated mind.

Let us now look at the doctrine of the transcendence of God. This doctrine is usually associated with Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Each of these three religions has a somewhat different understanding of the transcendence of God.

The main issues with a transcendent God are the relation between God and his Creation, the relation between man and Creation, the relation between man and God and how man can know the transcendent God.

In the three religions just mentioned God created the universe that we know out of nothing. This is to be distinguished from Aristotle or even Plato, who both posited a sort of pre-existing stuff without shape or form (called by Aristotle matter) upon which the creator of the universe imposes form to make matter into the various concrete objects we discover in the universe. In the three religions this universe is not illusory. The reality of Creation is particularly strong in Judaism, which emphasizes the devout Jew’s role in doing something in this concrete world. In all three religions, the Creation is considered to be good. The key statement is that in Genesis: “And God saw all that he had created and it was good.”

Let us now continue with Christianity. Man holds a special place in the Creation. As the Greek Fathers of the Church point out, although in the case of the rest of Creation God merely spoke a word (“God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.”) in the case of man God himself fashioned Adam out of the dust of the earth and then breathed into Adam a “breathe of life”—which is taken by the Fathers to denote the spiritual identity of man, unique in all Creation. St Gregory the Theologian develops the theme that man was to be the connecting link between the material and angelic creations.

Further, God created man in his own image and likeness. These terms ‘image of God’ and ‘likeness to God’ play a very important role in the Greek patristic tradition. In the Greek Fathers the image of God is located in the nous or mind of man, which in the West would be taken to be the created spirit of man, the highest part of his soul. The fact that the spirit of man is in the image of God gives man his dignity as the crown of Creation and also gives him the possibility of knowing God. However, the fact that the spirit of man is finite and created makes man different from God. The Cappadocian Fathers, especially St Gregory of Nyssa, deal with these issues.

The likeness to God the Greek fathers take to refer to the virtue that man had at his creation—virtue as an adornment conferred by God as Grace, not as the mere keeping of rules. Although Fathers such as St John of Damascus teach that man was a spiritual infant at his creation, they agree that man was full of virtue at his creation. Moreover, this virtue was such that man was able to talk to God face to face. St John of Damascus asserts that Adam and Eve did not eat physical food in the Garden of Eden since they were nurtured by the contemplation of God himself.

Man was created with free will. The Fathers of the Church universally locate the explanation of evil in free will. To test man’s free will, God gave Adam and Eve a commandment, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Despite being in the image and likeness of God, Adam and Eve could obey or disobey God. They were neither robots nor the playthings of Fate. But Eve was tempted.

It is important to grasp the patristic understanding of the temptation story of the Garden of Eden. Before the visible Creation was made by God, God made the angelic creation. And all the angelic creation was good. But the angels, who also have nous, also had free will. And one angel led a rebellion in Heaven: Satan, Lucifer, the Devil. He and those angels who followed him were cast out of Heaven and became the demons which exist with one foot in the material creation and one foot out. These demons have lost all likeness to God and all connection to God except for continuance in being, for in Christian theology all that exists is maintained in being by God himself. However, the demons did not lose the intelligence which their possession of nous conferred on them. They are not stupid. It was the Devil which used the serpent to tempt Eve. The Fathers teach that the only thing the demons can do to man is tempt him: they cannot force him to do anything. (The ascetic writers do develop the theme that continued sin leads to addiction to that sin.)

So Eve is tempted and falls and leads Adam to fall. Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden of Eden. It is important to grasp how the Fathers understand this. In being cast out of the Garden, Adam and Eve lose their likeness to God—the virtues they had, including their ability to contemplate God. However, they retain the image of God although it has been distorted. This is a less radical view than either that of St. Augustine or that of his Calvinist descendants: both taught a more complete corruption of human nature by the sin of the Fall.

Thenceforth we have the whole sorry story of human history. However, although God cast Adam and Eve out of Eden, thus making them die spiritually, he did not forsake man. Over time, God reveals himself to man according to man’s now greatly diminished ability to cognize God directly. Ultimately, God reveals that he is a Trinity of Three Persons. The Greek Fathers consistently identify the God of the Old Testament with the First Person of the Trinity, the Father. They also make the Father the principle of unity of the Trinity, in distinction to the West, which following Augustine treats the substance of God as the principle of unity of the Trinity.

God’s interventions in man’s life culminate in his sending the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word of God, to take on flesh as the son of Mary of Nazareth, betrothed to Joseph of the line of David. The Word of God made flesh is a man like us in all things but sin called Jesus who, as St John the Baptist teaches his own disciples, is the ‘lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’

To do this, Jesus dies on the Cross and is resurrected on the third day. On the 40^th day he ascends into Heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the Father (this is taken to refer to the humanity of Christ, since the Word of God is always united to the Father).

On the 50^th day, Jesus sends the Third Person of the Holy Trinity to his disciples. This is the Holy Spirit which proceeds from the Father (you can see that the Father is the principle of unity).

Part of the Christian message is that Jesus will return in glory to judge the living and the dead. This is an event in time but the date is unknown to all but the Father. The dead will be resurrected with their bodies and will be judged by Jesus in the Last Judgement. Those who have done good will enter into eternal life; those who have done evil will depart into eternal fire. In either case man will have resumed his natural state, which is that of an embodied soul. The saved, however, will be embodied souls that have been glorified by the Holy Spirit. For just as Jesus when he was resurrected wasn’t just an ordinary man who had come back from the dead, so the resurrected will not be just ordinary men, but like Adam and Eve were before the Fall, and even more glorified by the Grace of God.

It is important to understand the work of the Holy Spirit. When a person is baptized with an Orthodox Baptism, then the Holy Spirit cleanses the nous, the created spirit of man, from the Devil and all influences of the Devil. In Baptism, the Holy Spirit restores the image of God in man to what it was before the Fall. The Holy Spirit then adds some likeness to God to the man. However, this is not the complete likeness. The task for the baptized Christian is to work as a member of the Church in a synergy with God the Holy Spirit to restore the likeness to God in full. This is God’s test of the free will of every Christian. Not only does God give Grace but he leaves room for the Christian to express his own free will either for or against the will of God.

As St Diadochos puts it, the final stage in the restoration of the likeness is the divine love conferred on the person in a vision of light. This constitutes a mystical experience of God conferring on the person the ability to love others with a Christ-like Gospel love. This final stage has a number of names in Orthodoxy: divinization, adoption as son, resurrection before the general resurrection, theology. It is the state of great Christian saints such as St Seraphim of Sarov. In Orthodox theology, it is understood that the uncreated Grace of the Holy Spirit permeates body and soul of the divinized person in such a way that the likeness to God is attained.

We can see that although there is an essential duality between Creator and created in Orthodox theology, there is a possibility of real mystical knowledge of and communion with the Creator through the Grace of God because man is created in the image of God.

However, even the saints die. As Mr. Gove’ points out, the fact of human death is a consequence of the Fall which happens even to the baptized Christian. When a man dies, there is a personal judgement which is not final until the Last Judgement. The soul of the good man goes to Heaven (Heaven is where God is) while the soul of the bad man goes to Hell (Hell is where the demons are). However, this is incomplete. The full adoption of the good as sons and daughters of the Most High will not take place until the General Resurrection—for Mr. Gove’ is quite right: in Christianity only an embodied soul is complete. Moreover, the condemnation of the bad after death is also not complete and awaits the Last Judgement. Until then, the souls of the bad can be helped, sometimes in very dramatic ways, by the prayers of those still on earth. But a bad person is resurrected with his body just as the just are and appears before Christ, who separates the sheep from the goats. Christ’s criterion in the Last Judgement? Whether we have shown mercy.

After the General Resurrection, the saved will be as the angels in Heaven. This does not mean disembodied, but means ‘without bodily passion’. And the saved will continue eternally, as will those in Hell. There is also an expectation that Heaven and earth will be renewed at the Last Judgement.

We are left with one final issue:

If the soul has no existence prior to the human body to which it is joined, how can its eternity in the future be described? The soul continues to exist forever but has had a beginning. Isn't this a logical impossibility, in that something that has a beginning cannot be eternal? Has there been any discussion of this question in Orthodox theology?

Mr. Gove’ is bringing forward an Aristotelian argument, that something that has had a beginning must ultimately have an end. But although the Catholic Church became quite Aristotelian in the Middle Ages through the work of Thomas Aquinas, even Thomas Aquinas made some alterations to Aristotle to preserve Christian doctrine. More generally, the Orthodox Church is not as Aristotelian, although some great Orthodox saints are Aristotelians. The Orthodox Church more carefully subordinates philosophy to the data of Revelation, treating the mystical experience of God as the highest form of theology.

The main way for Mr. Gove’ to look at the problem of the eternity of the soul is to see that Aristotle posited an eternal universe subject to certain basic metaphysical principles which imply the doctrine that Mr. Gove’ is alluding to, that what begins in time must ultimately end in time. Christianity is a revealed religion which might use one or another philosophical system to assist it in understanding Revelation but without subordinating the data of Revelation to that philosophical system. It is certainly clearly revealed in the New Testament that souls continue to exist infinitely into the future after their creation, and after the General Resurrection with their resurrected bodies. It is a matter of Orthodox dogma that the soul is created at conception.

Fasting in an Orthodox Monastery

2011-07-31T09:13:00.000+01:00

We have received a simple email requesting information on how Orthodox Monks fast. Let us call our interlocutor Gianni, not his real name. Here is what the email says, slightly edited since the author is a non-native speaker of English:

Hello Brother:

I’m a boy from Italy interested in asceticism and wanting to know more about Orthodox monks.

I would like to know if you can tell me what Orthodox monks usually eat.

I mean, I already know that they are vegetarian apart from that days when fish-eating is permitted.

I would like to know precisely what do they eat in a normal non-fasting day

I know they eat two times a day but i didn’t find anywhere what do they precisely eat in a single meal and how much.

I hope you have time to answer me, anyway thank you so much for the useful blog!

With kind cheers and regards,

Gianni

Fasting in the Orthodox Church is very complicated. The particular fast rules are to be found in the liturgical typikon either of the parish or of the monastery and in all cases of doubt the reader must refer either to the parish priest or to the monastic authority for definitive guidance. There are however some basic rules which apply to all, which we will now discuss, for convenience basing our discussion on the rules which apply on Mt Athos.

There are 4 main fast periods in the Orthodox Church:

Great Lent, which comprises the 50 days before Easter Sunday (from Clean Monday to Holy Saturday).
Fast of the Holy Apostles, which is from the Monday after All Saints (the first Sunday after Pentecost) to 28 June, terminating on the Feast of Peter and Paul, 29 June.
The Fast of the Mother of God, from 1 August to 14 August inclusive, terminating on the Feast of the Dormition.
The Christmas Fast, 40 days before Christmas from 15 November to 24 December.

These fasts apply to all Orthodox Christians. The rules are as follows.

Great Lent is a strict fast which forbids everything except vegetables and shellfish. Oil and wine are permitted on Saturdays and Sundays. The Orthodox do not normally fast on Saturdays (in contrast with the Roman Catholics), so oil is permitted on Saturdays every Saturday of the year except the Saturday before Easter Sunday (Holy Saturday), which is a strict fast. Olives are permitted during a strict fast. It should be understood that when oil is permitted or forbidden, olive oil is to be understood. There is some disagreement in practice as to whether non-olive oils such as soy or corn or sunflower oil are permitted when olive oil is forbidden. There is no consistent standard even on Mt Athos on this point: some people there avoid even such oils when oil is forbidden; others use them freely. In addition, there are always variants: even on Mt. Athos, olive oil is permitted during Great Lent at Chilandari Monastery on Tuesdays and Thursdays because of the difficulty of the local climate. In general when olive oil is permitted, so is wine.

Major feasts of the Mother of God and major feasts of the Master always have a dispensation for fish, so during Great Lent fish is served on the feast of the Annunciation, 25 March, or on Palm Sunday, whichever falls first.

There is also a dispensation for fish for the Feast of the Birth of St John the Baptist, 24 June, whatever day of the week it falls on.

A dispensation for fish does not imply a dispensation for dairy products unless there is otherwise a dispensation for dairy products.

There is a complete dispensation from fasting during the 12 days of Christmas (Christmas Day to the Theophany (with the exception that the eve of the Theophany is a strict fast). This is also true for the week after Pentecost.

The Fast of the Holy Apostles is a milder fast with oil and fish permitted Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends. Dairy products are not permitted.

The Fast of the Mother of God follows the same rules as Great Lent.

The Christmas Fast follows the same rules as the Fast of the Holy Apostles except that fish is not permitted from the start of the fast until the Feast of the Entrance to the Temple (21 November), and after that only on weekends until the Feast of St. Spyridon (12 December), when it is permitted whatever day of the week St Spyridon falls on. Then fish is not permitted until Christmas. The eve of Christmas is a strict fast.

We understand that meat is not permitted to the layman during the above fast periods.

In addition to the above fasts, even during a non-fasting period, Wednesdays and Fridays are fast days for all members of the Church. We understand that these days would be treated like Great Lent. In addition, monks also observe Mondays as strict fast days, although this is sometimes ignored.

In general a distinction is made between shellfish such as shrimps (or even land snails) and fish, with shellfish being treated as vegetables.

In addition, various feast days of saints or of the Mother of God or of the Master have dispensations in various degrees, so that on the day which the feast fell wine and oil, or even fish, might be permitted.

As for what monks eat. Much depends on the resources of the monastery. If it has a large garden which can work year-round, that’s different from living in Northern Russia, where there is a short summer growing season. Culture also plays a role. Culturally Greeks and Russians have different diets and don’t take easily to the other’s cultural food norms.

Much also depends on the health and activity of the monk. While monks do not eat meat, meat is usually served to a monk suffering say from cancer.

Normally monks eat twice a day on non-fast days and once a day during fast days, with some adaptations to circumstances.

The reader can see that he needs practical guidance.

Holy Spirit, Feeling Good in Church and the Gospel Morality of the Orthodox Church

2011-07-14T05:14:00.007+01:00

Sorry for the delay in posting.

We would like to look at a form of argumentation for innovation in the Orthodox Church’s moral teaching. This argumentation goes something like this:

The understanding by the Church of the Gospel is dynamic. It has never been full. The author arguing this way then provides a series of examples of his choice—perhaps the treatment of slavery, perhaps something else—to show us that historically in the Orthodox Church the Gospel has never been promulgated in its fullness, that there has always been an evolution in the understanding by the Church of the Gospel. They continue that being a member of the Orthodox Church is a matter of process, perhaps a matter of a spiritual dialectic in or evolution of the understanding of the Gospel by the Church. Then the author goes on to suggest that his particular candidate for innovation in the moral or even doctrinal teaching of the Church falls into exactly this category of features of the Gospel previously misunderstood by the Orthodox Church. The argument usually goes on to refer to the dynamic of being taught by the Holy Spirit, referencing Jesus’ saying in the Gospel of John that the disciples cannot bear these things now but the Holy Spirit will lead them into all truth. The idea is that the Holy Spirit has decided that the time has come to lead the Church into the truth of the particular moral innovation of the person making the argument. Perhaps the person goes on to show why the Church has to respond to the particular pastoral needs or needs for human dignity of those who will supposedly be benefited by the change in the moral teaching of the Church. It is necessary to this form of argumentation to deny the absoluteness of the moral teaching of the Old Testament or even of the Epistles of Paul.

How valid is this form of argumentation? It seems to us that the key to understanding this style of argumentation is to look at how the person making the argument construes the Holy Spirit. It seems to us that they treat the Holy Spirit as a more or less subjective or inter-subjective phenomenon, not as an ontologically distinct being, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.

It seems to us that only a person who had never consciously experienced the Holy Spirit’s presence in power would be able to make this sort of argument. Let us look at the evidence. In the history of the Orthodox Church, we have had a number of great saints with a very dynamic experience of the Holy Spirit: St Diadochos of Photiki, St John of Sinai, St Symeon the New Theologian, St Seraphim of Sarov to name just a few. In recent times there have been a number of Spirit-bearing Fathers on Mt Athos such as Elders Paisios and Porphyrios, to name just two.

In the case of any of these Saints or Elders of the Orthodox Church who had actual conscious experience of the Holy Spirit, has there ever been detected an inclination to change the moral teaching of the Orthodox Church? Is it not rather the contrary?

Surely, if the Holy Spirit were about to lead the Church into all truth, wouldn’t he would use such a great saint or elder, one with prophetic gifts? But it hasn’t happened.

Moreover, St Paul says in 1 Galatians 8 – 12: “But if we or an angel from Heaven preach to you something different from what we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we said before, now I say again: If anyone preach to you something different from what you received, let him be accursed. For now do I persuade men or God? Or am I seeking to please men? For if I were yet pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ. I make known to you, brothers, that the Gospel that was preached by me is not according to man. For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught [it by man] but through the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

So what is going on? We think that the answer is that the people making this sort of argument have a somewhat pietistic liberal Protestant understanding of the nature of the Holy Spirit—that the Holy Spirit is a good feeling ‘created in Community’, that it is that subjective or inter-subjective feeling of piety that they have in Church, that it is something that Rudolf Otto would talk about—the subjective idea of the Holy. In other words, we think that when people have not encountered the Holy Spirit, they tend to believe that the Holy Spirit is a subjective personal feeling. And if they feel holy in Church while outside of Church they are participating in—let us be frank—sin, then they are possibly led to conclude that the historical moral teaching of the Church is wrong, that since they feel good in Church what they’re doing outside of Church is not sin at all.

However, what these people are experiencing in Church is in our opinion for what it’s worth most likely NOT the Holy Spirit. Their subjective good feeling in Church has nothing to do with the acceptability to the Holy Spirit of their practices outside of Church. That much should be evident from the Spirit-bearing Paul’s absoluteness.

Now it is not our place to judge; that is God’s; and it is the place of the hierarchy to judge the meaning of the Gospel (the hierarchy of ALL the Church, not just a few in a small jurisdiction somewhere). Moreover it is also the place of the Church to approach the sinner in humility—without however compromising the true teaching of the Orthodox Church. However, surely these people are destroying themselves.

Love and the Cross

2011-04-23T00:39:00.002+01:00

We would like to think about love in the context of the Cross, although the topic is probably beyond us: issues of Christology enter into the discussion, issues we would here like to avoid since at the moment we are not tuned in to the writings of St Maximos the Confessor.

Let us look at Jesus Christ in the hours leading up to his Crucifixion. We know that he prayed that ‘this cup pass from me; yet not my will but your will be done’. Luke, a doctor, records that Jesus’ sweat dropped like great drops of blood to the ground. This is evidently medically possible and on occasion recorded. It is clearly a sign of great distress. So we have a situation in which Jesus Christ, true man and true God, goes to his death in great love for Man but in great distress.

We know that before the Crucifixion Jesus insisted that he be allowed to wash the feet of Peter and also washed the feet of his betrayer, Judas. We also know that Jesus was greatly distressed that one of his disciples, Judas, would betray him. The fact that someone would betray him Jesus finds quite distressful despite being completely dispassionate. There must be something in the nature of things that makes betrayal by someone you love particularly painful. For it must be said that there is no reason at all for us to believe that Judas was treated any worse by Jesus than the other Apostles: there is nothing to indicate that Judas was justified in any way in betraying Jesus. So this betrayal was one of the arrows in Jesus’ heart during his Crucifixion.

St Paul remarks somewhere that in this God shows his love for us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. In the same passage, Paul remarks that one might dare to die for a ‘good man’, clearly implying that humanly speaking no one would die for a sinner.

What does Paul mean? What does he mean by ‘good man’? Clearly a ‘good man’ is a person who is ethically good. However, Paul was a Jew, not a Greek philosopher, and it is still not exactly clear what he here intends by ‘good man’. What he seems to mean is that humanly speaking someone might dare to lay their life down for a person whom they perceive to be good, although even that would not be certain. However, God commends his love to us in this, that while we were yet sinners—by definition, not ‘good men’—Christ died on the Cross for us.

Now Jesus himself, despite his anguish and distress, clearly had this love. This is what someone has called a ‘Gospel love’, a Christian love. It is not a love that derives from the flesh, but from God, of whom John says that ‘God is love.’ Since the love of God has been poured out into our hearts in Baptism, we too have this love. However, we are a bit like what Paul is talking about: we might show this Gospel love—we might dare to show this Gospel love—to someone who is good. But as Jesus points out in the Sermon on the Mount, even the tax collectors and sinners do the same. The problem comes when it comes time to show this love to our betrayer, to the sinner, to the man or woman who commits an injustice against us. Then we might be found to be imitating Christ on the Cross. This is the road of Orthodox spirituality: to cultivate this Gospel love.

In Corinthians, in the famous passage, St Paul explains this Gospel love apophatically, by saying what it is not. For we can never say what God is, we can only experience God. To the extent that we have this love through our Baptism, we experience this love, especially in the Divine Liturgy, although perhaps only ‘as in a glass darkly’. Hence we all have an inner criterion of this Gospel love when we face someone who has betrayed us. We too in our trials and temptations are able to exercise this love, but to the extent that we have not been purified from our passions (‘the old man’), this love is difficult for us to exercise if the opposite party is not a ‘good man’—a person whom we find lovable in the ordinary course of events.

What we would like to do is look at Christ on the Cross through the prism of this love, to look at his Crucifixion as an act of love for us. Since Jesus was true Man and true God and since, as St Basil the Great teaches us, as Man he was completely dispassionate (‘divinized’) from the moment of his conception, Christ does not have the problem of passions of the flesh interfering with his exercise of this love. His anguish before and during his Crucifixion is not a matter of unpurified human passions but a matter of basic human nature.

If we find the person to be good, it is easy for us to overcome the sense of betrayal—perhaps they are our sister whom we love dearly—but if we do not naturally find the person to be good, then our passions make it difficult for us to exercise this love and we have to work at it. In this we are different and distant from Christ on the Cross. But we also know that that is precisely the road of spiritual ascesis: actively keeping the commandments of God is what purifies us from our passions, especially the passions of soul such as pride. So on the one hand whenever we are treated unjustly we are faced with a choice to love or not—whether to make the effort to exercise a Gospel love or not—and at the same time we realize that the very act of forcing ourselves to love the other person purifies us from the passion that is impeding that love.

Christ on the Cross is that Gospel love incarnate.

Art and the Orthodox Church

2011-04-07T21:54:00.008+01:00

We have received an email asking our advice. The sender has given us permission to discuss his email here on the blog. Here is the email, slightly edited both to protect the identity of the sender and to correct a few typos:

Greetings in Christ,

My name is John and I am a baptized Orthodox Christian. I am an artist living in New York City, yet I feel everything I paint is worthless and vain.

Painting gives me no peace, only fills me with doubt and frustration. However, I feel like if I stopped painting, it would be because I am giving up, especially since I have a talent for painting. Some have asked if I would consider iconography, but that's not why I paint and I would only move to it because painting out of creativity was too hard and so I went to the path of duplicating icons in the tradition of the church. I paint because I want to be able to create imagery that bridges the gap between the Orthodox faith and the secular world. Not so much to convert people, but to transfer the impression of the Orthodox heart in a way a non-Orthodox may apprehend via a painting.

I have prayed about this, but only go in circles. I would appreciate greatly if you could share some thoughts on art and sin and perhaps why I make no progress with my work.

John

We are honoured to have received this email. Someone values our opinion. However, we are not sure we know anything about the topic and we are certainly not aware of any patristic writings on the production of art (apart from St Basil the Great’s endorsement of the study of pagan letters without the Christian taking seriously the pagan elements in them; and St John of Damascus’ defence of icons). So our readers, including John, should take whatever we say here as Orthodox Monk’s personal opinion. If any reader thinks that what we are saying is wrong then they should simply discard it.

There are a number of dimensions. Let us go through these dimensions. However, because we have not studied this particular issue in depth and systematically, we are to a large extent reduced to putting down random thoughts. It would be a long-term endeavour to write a systematic essay on John’s topic.

First of all, we would take it as a given that the artist expresses his interior state in his art. One of the main works that an artist has in life is therefore not only to learn his métier but to cultivate his interior life. Let us look at some artists, in various media, to see how this works.

Picasso was an artistic genius. Just as some people are tone-deaf and others have perfect pitch, Picasso was richly endowed with artistic genius. We once saw the bull’s head that he made out of a bicycle seat and handlebars. It was astonishing in the perfection of its execution. Here is a photo of that bull's head.

It is clear from Picasso’s early work that he was completely competent in draughtsmanship: it wasn’t that he painted abstractly because he didn’t know how to paint in a classical representational fashion.

We would also take it as a given that Picasso’s artistic evolution, seen from the point of view of his personal interior life, was a matter of developing an artistic language for the expression of his interior artistic vision. Picasso’s success in developing this artistic language is evident in his famous dove, where with a very few lines he conveys the ‘essence of doveness’.

We would also take it as a given that Picasso’s very late work in the Antibes is derivative and boring. He was past his artistic prime.

In his personal life, however, Picasso was anything but a devout Orthodox. We don’t go to Picasso to find the luminous humanism of Rembrandt.

We once saw a Rembrandt exhibition in the flesh and were somewhat disappointed: our own spiritual evolution seems to have taken us beyond that particular humanism. Here it must be understood that even though Rembrandt is a great artist, he stands in a particular historical, sociological and religious situation—as do we all, in whatever medium we work. Rembrandt had a very deep vision of man, as can be seen especially from his own self-portraits, but it is not clear that an Orthodox would remain with Rembrandt as he cultivated his own spiritual garden. The Orthodox comes out of a completely different historical, sociological and religious situation than Rembrandt. That is to say that we might not want to hang a Rembrandt in our cell although we might profoundly respect the man and his work.

It should also be understood that Orthodoxy does not have as strong a cultural tradition as the West of the artist as the independent creator. For example there is really no tradition of novel writing in Byzantium; the main form of letters was rhetoric. The rise in the West of the independent artistic creator culminating in the Romantic shaman-artist is a matter of the historical evolution of the West from the Roman Catholic Scholastic Middle Ages through the Renaissance through the Reformation to the dissolution we see today.

Kurosawa was an artist in film. He had a humanist vision which as far as we know was not Christian. At the end, he seems to have approached Buddhism. Yet his films are worth watching for their humanist vision.

In terms of technique Tolstoy was a greater artist than Dostoevsky but Dostoevsky was the deeper man.

To become a great artist, you must first become a person. You must dig into the garden of your soul and plant human compassion.

Shakespeare was an unparalleled artist of the word but there is no sense of the divine in King Lear. The universe of King Lear is a universe without God.

So at this level we would suggest that John cultivate a serious spiritual life as a member of his Orthodox jurisdiction. This would include regular confession and communion, the other mysteries (sacraments) of the Church, regular attendance at Church, the leading of a devout Orthodox life. We would also recommend that John take up the Jesus Prayer. Under the guidance of a competent Elder this will have the effect of stabilizing John’s soul. In the long term John will become a person who has an interior state the artistic expression of which will interest the onlooker.

The next point to realize is that John is entering into a profession which has a historical dimension. We are sure that John has studied the history of art so as to know much about the historical evolution of his métier. This historical dimension is problematical. For whatever historical and sociological reasons, in the 20^th Century, the visual arts entered an epoch of dissolution. We need not rehearse here the various schools of the 20^th Century. We would here, however, like to discuss certain aspects of patristic Greek ontology (philosophy).

Orthodoxy was planted in classical Greece, which had a Platonic and Aristotelian view of the representative arts. It would be useful for John to look at some picture books on classical pre-Christian Greek art, to look at how people are portrayed. This includes classical statuary:

However, we are more interested here in painting and mosaic:

John should look at the evolution of Orthodox iconography from the artistic point of view. It is important to understand the historical evolution from classical pre-Christian representational art to Christian iconography as a matter of art history.

What we are getting at here is this notion. In classical Greek philosophy what existed had form; what did not have form did not exist. Having form was being existent. One can see this in classical Greek statuary.

The artist is trying to approach the ideal form. One can see it in the Parthenon. And so on.

Now in the scheme of things, when this ontology was Christianized, that which did not have form—that which was not subsistent (anhypostatos)—was taken to be demonic. This can be seen in the ascetical fathers of the Church, where one aspect of the demons is their shifting form: since the demons are divorced from the true reality which is God they are unable to maintain a fixed form. This is also the realm of dreams. Dreams are shifting always.

Now this seems to us to say something of concern to the artist. From this point of view modern art has essentially taken the road of the demonic. It has taken the road of that which is not truly existent.

Now we are not saying here that the only Christian art is representational—we hope we are not so narrow-minded. We are saying, however, that from a spiritual point of view, modern art is divorced from the real, which ultimately is God.

We would think that surrealism, for example, is the road of dissolution, the road of the insubsistent.

Here is another example of surrealism, quite pleasant:

There is a problem in modern culture here. Because of the loss of the spiritual in our culture, surrealism can present itself as a means to break through the bondage of everyday perception to either the numinous or the genuine. However, as we can see from the above, from the Orthodox point of view this is a mistaken road.

There is another dimension that arises from the 19^th Century Romantic Movement: the artist as shaman. This is particularly true of the 60’s rock star:

but it is also true of all movements that attempt to annihilate everyday reality so as to break through to the unconscious. We do not think that it is accidental that just as with traditional shamanism often these attempts involve the use of drugs. But we can see that just as the shaman is using drugs to break through to the supernatural demonic world, the artist as shaman is trying to break through to what is essentially dreamlike: that which does not have participation in the ultimate reality which is God.

Here is an example of the exhaustion of modern sensibility:

What does Orthodoxy contrapose? The transcendent. The transfiguration of everyday life. Basically, rather than annihilate that which is seen in ordinary perception so as to break through to the unconscious, to the dream world, the Orthodox views his road as a transfiguration of the everyday world. Perhaps the most astonishing example of this is a religious rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Divine Liturgy. But there is also St Andrei Rublev's Trinity:

As we have pointed out, the road of the Jesus Prayer is essentially an interior journey through the realms of the demonic, through the realms of the unconscious, through the realms of the dream to a state of spiritual purity where the nous or spirit of man is transfigured by the grace of the Holy Spirit so as to be united to what is really real. An artist on this road would manifest his journey in his art, based on the principle enunciated above that the artist manifests his interior spiritual state in his work. One can see that St Andrei Rublev completed this road. But as we have also pointed out, the road of the Jesus Prayer is dangerous without a guide.

Let us return to the historical study of the evolution of iconography in the Orthodox Church. We think that John will be pleasantly surprised that there is much more to Orthodox iconography than the imitation of existing forms. Given the differences between the Macedonian School (14^th Century) and the Cretan School (16^th Century) in Orthodox iconography, how could it be merely a matter of the imitation of existing forms? We are not suggesting that John take up iconography—unless he wants to; that is his business—but we are suggesting that he make a study of it.

Here is an example of the Macedonian School, St Athanasios of Athos:

Here is an example of St Andrei Rublev's treatment of a saint, the Apostle Paul. This is a roughly contemporary work with Panselinos of the Macedonian School:

Here is an example of the Cretan School about 200 years later:

John might bear in mind in such a study of Orthodox iconography that the existent is that which has form. He might bear in mind that in icons of Christ the Ruler of All (Pantocrator), in the halo of Christ is the legend: ‘He who exists’.

In this regard, it is interesting to consider Japanese brush painting, where Zen spontaneity is married to calligraphic technique. In our view, however, there is here a great divergence here from the Christian Orthodox ideal of the real: the calligraphic brush painting of the meeting of two Zen masters is like a snapshot of the play of smoke rising from a fire in the wilderness: completely insubstantial. This is in accord with Zen Buddhist ontology but diverges radically from Christian ontology. We couldn't find the particular work we had in mind but here is a similar work:

Contrast the spiritual sensibility of the above with this Our Lady of Vladimir, a Byzantine icon probably of the Paleologan School (11^th Century, Constantinople).

In the Byzantine tradition, arising from the Greek philosophical and artistic tradition, that which is 'really real' is that which has form. In the Zen tradition, 'All is void and Void is all'.

Rachmaninoff did secular compositions; he did two large choral compositions which were sacred in nature. Bach did secular work; he also did sacred choral work. The day might come when John will want to try his hand not only at secular work but also at sacred work. But that is a matter of his personal spiritual evolution.

John might wish to study the life of Photis Kontoglou, who in the early 20^th Century reintroduced Byzantine iconography to the Orthodox Church. Kontoglou had studied in France and knew Western art; he did both secular and sacred art.

The reader might find this an odd post for Great Lent but we are simply responding to John's email.

The Jesus Prayer in the Roman Catholic Church Revisited (Updated Twice)

2011-02-15T17:04:00.007Z

A reader has sent us an email concerning the Jesus Prayer. We will call our reader Felix Courtney-Smith, not his real name. Mr Courtney-Smith has accepted that we discuss his email on the blog. Here is what he says, slightly edited:

I recently read your post about the Jesus Prayer and Hesychasm in the Eastern Rite Catholic Church.

I was looking up the Jesus prayer because a song writer I like was getting ready to publish a song based on it on his next album. He quoted Pope John Paul II as saying ‘The Church must come to breathe the Spirit of God with both lungs (Eastern and Western)’. It is a saying I've heard often and you may not be aware of it but there seems to be a growing resurgence and appreciation of Eastern theology within the Western church.

I was wondering if you could take some time to explain to me more fully what the concept of 'bringing your mind into your heart' means to you. You stated that the concept is at odds with 'Thomistic psychology' which I must admit some ignorance of, at least under that term. However the explanation of it that you gave seems perfectly compatible with Franciscan spirituality as well as the writing of St. John of the Cross, St. Thérèse of Lisieux and a somewhat new and mildly controversial practice promoted by the United States Catholic Bishops known by the name 'centering prayer'.

I was at a loss as to what the incompatibility that you see and what you mean by ‘bringing the mind into the heart’?

Do you believe your mind to have physical existence? By heart do you mean the red pulsating organ that physicians operate on? Or (as I assume) are you referring to some kind of conceptual constructs? Can you define or describe those constructs so as to explain what you mean by ‘bringing your heart into your mind’?

The idea of a repeated prayer that helps to keep one in constant union with Christ is one familiar to me both from recommended practices taught in various books—either the name Jesus repeated always or the phrase ‘Jesus have mercy on me’—and from various Roman Theologians such as Dietrich Von Hildebrand.

In any case I would like to understand what the differences are that you see between these two traditions on this topic (if you have the time and are willing to assist me).

Thank you sir,

Felix

Let see if we can address the issues. There is both a simple answer and a very complex answer.

The simple answer is that Mr Courtney-Smith would do well to use the right hand margin of this blog, where the labels are, clicking on ‘Jesus Prayer’ and reading all the entries in chronological order, from the oldest to the newest. In that series there is a set of posts entitled Jesus Prayer 1 through Jesus Prayer 7 that addresses some of his issues and also contains a small reading list.

Also there is a series of posts that constitute a dialogue with an Episcopalian who was practising the form of Centering Prayer taught by Dom John Main, OSB. The first post, dated December 16, 2006, is here. The reader should use the archive facility in the right hand margin and starting with the post indicated read each newer post until the dialogue finishes.

Finally the post that the reader originally cited contains links to a polemic with the Byzantine Catholic Forum. That would handle the ecclesiastical – theological issues.

Let’s see if we can now approach directly the issue that Mr Courtney-Smith is raising.

First of all, best wishes to his song-writer friend.

Next, we have never heard of Dietrich Von Hildebrand.

Next, we are aware of Pope John-Paul II’s dictum. However, although Pope John-Paul II is fast-tracked for canonization in the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox laity is as a whole indifferent. He is not looked at favourably, especially in Russia where his missionary actions were considered to be very aggressive.

Next, the very fact that Mr Courtney-Smith can’t make sense of what we might intend by ‘bringing the mind into the heart’—although it must be admitted that Orthodox often have difficulties with the concept—is an indication of what the problem is.

First of all, our mind is our consciousness. The idea of bringing the mind into the heart suggests that we can move our consciousness around, in particular making it descend to the physical region of the heart. The portrait of human faculties delineated by St Thomas Aquinas in the Summa simply does not foresee this. This is what we meant when we said that the practice was incompatible with St Thomas’ philosophical psychology. There is simply no provision in St Thomas for what the Orthodox Philokalic tradition teaches concerning the Jesus Prayer.

Moreover, St Thomas has a very restricted view as to what philosophically intuitive functions the human mind has, restricting human intuitive cognition to very simple axioms of logic. But the Jesus Prayer is based on intuitive cognition.

The result is that someone coming out of the Roman Catholic tradition thinks that apart from reason there is only emotion. That is why Roman Catholic spirituality tends to be either intellectualistic or sentimental. But the tradition of the Orthodox Church in the Jesus Prayer depends on intuitive cognition and eschews sentimentality. This is not to deny the role of Grace, but it is to suggest that the two traditions have different understandings of how the human person interacts with Divine Grace on the level of philosophical psychology.

Moreover, while Mr Courtney-Smith thinks that the practice of the Jesus Prayer must be consistent with St John of the Cross, St Thérèse of Lisieux and the Franciscans, we doubt this. St John of the Cross was a scholastic in psychology; St Thérèse was a 19^th Century French mystic who would have been following the spirituality of the Discalced Carmelites, derived from St John of the Cross and St Theresa of Avila. And we simply don’t think that the Franciscans bring their mind into their heart.

The Jesus Prayer is not only a matter of the repetition of a pious, repentant formula. There is more to it.

It is true that St John Cassian, who transmitted the Philokalic tradition in part to the West, would have had some indirect influence on St John of the Cross. But by the time the texts of Cassian would have reached St John of the Cross, they would have been reinterpreted in conformity with Roman Catholic scholastic understandings of the human person.

Where we can find a discussion in context of bringing the mind into the heart is in the Philokalia and in the Ladder of Divine Ascent of St John of Sinai. Also there is Elder Sophrony’s recent book on St. Silouan the Athonite. There are texts in the Philokalia, such as of St Gregory of Sinai (14^th Century), which discuss how to force the mind into the heart when it doesn’t want to descend on its own. We are not recommending that anyone take up this practice of forcing, but we want to point out just how important the concept of bringing the mind into the heart is to the spirituality of the Orthodox Church. However, precisely because the Roman Catholic tradition doesn’t foresee a basic aspect of this form of Orthodox Spirituality—intuitive cognition—Roman Catholic translations of Orthodox spiritual texts tend to present the texts in a sentimental light and are therefore to be avoided if one wants to understand how the Orthodox themselves view the Jesus Prayer.

It should be understood that the repetition of the Jesus Prayer is only the beginning of the spiritual road of the Philokalia. The other part is the battle against tempting thoughts. But this is an aspect of the Jesus Prayer that we dare say is completely ignored in Roman Catholic renditions of the practice. For an understanding of the Jesus Prayer at this level, we would suggest the Ladder of St John of Sinai and St Diadochos of Photiki. Our own translation of St Diadochos can be found in the archives for August, 2008. Our commentary on his text can be found in the archives for March, April and May, 2009.

Briefly, the practice of the Jesus Prayer as found in the Orthodox Church begins with the repetition of the formula, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’—although other formulas are in use—and proceeds to the continuous oral repetition of the formula. Then the practitioner proceeds to the silent repetition of the formula with the consciousness in the head. Then the consciousness is gradually brought into the physical region of the heart (this takes a number of years of practice of the Prayer under the guidance of an experienced practitioner). Then at some point, through Grace, the Prayer should begin to be repeated automatically in the heart. St Diadochos discusses in his 5^th Century work the repetition of the Prayer even in sleep.

As the consciousness becomes more focused because of the repetition of the Prayer the practitioner becomes more aware of tempting thoughts that intrude into the consciousness. The practitioner of the Prayer begins to combat the intrusive tempting thoughts under the guidance of his spiritual teacher. This is the mental ascesis that is so important a part of the tradition of the Jesus Prayer. St Diadochos has much on this aspect of the Prayer.

Hence, the Jesus Prayer begins with the oral repetition of the Jesus Prayer and ends with the conscious automatic repetition of the formula in the heart, all the while the practitioner keeping the consciousness clear of tempting thoughts.

We are of the opinion that none of this is foreseen in Roman Catholic spiritual practice.

May God bless you.

UPDATE 2011/02/18:

Mr Courtney-Smith replies as follows (see his comment below the post):

Mr Courtney-Smith writes:

You encouraged me to read so I read many pages of the suggested material on this blog. I also did a search for the phrase ‘mind into heart’ and read the very few places the phrase actually occurs in context.

Still I find there is no answer provided to what seems a simple enough question.

You have said it is important to ‘move one’s mind into one’s heart’. (Am I correct?)

To which I simply wanted to ask the question: “What do you mean?”

You said “we can move our consciousness around, in particular making it descend to the physical region of the heart”

I am asking sincerely, because in truth I am fully ignorant as I hope you will see.

Do you mean to suggest that it is your belief that it is possible to measure (in feet or cm) the distance of my consciousness from my eyes or heart or finger, or some other part of my body?

If I take the literal meaning of your words, that is what I would take them to mean. What do you mean?

I'm trying to be as specific as possible because I don't know what language you speak natively and subtleness can be easily lost in translation.

To me doing something 'physically' implies a change is some material the can be measured as a function of the physically properties of the object changed.

How do you mean the word physically?

These are reasonable questions. First of all, our native language is not in issue. What is in issue is a conceptual confusion. Wittgenstein wanted to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle of conceptual confusion; Orthodox Monk wants to show Mr. Courtney-Smith the way out of the conceptual confusion in his head and into his heart.

Mr Courtney-Smith seems to have been trained in the physical sciences, possibly chemistry. We would think that the only possible way to study the Jesus Prayer and the descent of the mind into the heart would be to have a practitioner from Mt Athos, if one could be found, to leave his cave and go to MIT to be studied in MIT’s program for studying meditation. There they use a functional nuclear magnetic resonance imaging machine to study the parts of the brain that are active during various stages of meditation. Presumably the practitioner would not be distracted by the machine environment and would bring his mind into his heart while the scholars studied what was happening to his brain function. How the practitioner would signal that his mind was now into his heart is unknown to us, so we don’t know how the scientists would calibrate their images of brain function against the Athonite cave-dweller’s subjective experience. Let’s suppose that it could be done. We don’t know what would be found, but we are interested. Orthodox Monk is an amateur but he would be delighted to go to MIT from his igloo in the Arctic for such a test.

Now while the Athonite cave-dweller was lying in the functional NMRI machine and bringing his mind into his heart, what would he understand? Surely he would subjectively understand that his mind was in his heart. What would that mean? Mr Courtney-Smith asks with exasperation. Well, let’s see if we can explain on the basis of our amateur understanding.

Since our mind is our consciousness, we can focus it on a point. Let us start with our finger. I can concentrate on my finger. Or I can concentrate on the mountain in the distance.

Now, remember that the Jesus Prayer is being repeated. It is a fixed formula. This has the effect of concentrating our mind on the words of the Prayer. It’s a bit like karate. The student of karate learns to concentrate on his fist the instant his fist makes contact with his opponent, so that all his mental energy is focused on the actual blow.

(Incidentally this is why you shouldn’t be doing the martial arts when you are doing the Jesus Prayer: they’re both tapping into some of the same human potentialities, but at cross purposes. This is true even of the ‘soft-style’ martial arts, perhaps even more so because the soft-style martial arts are more systematically training the practitioner in a form of oriental meditation. The principle, apart from dogmatic issues, is not to mix two forms of meditation. Moreover, although we have defined the mind to Mr Courtney-Smith as the consciousness with which we experience reality, it should be understood that the mind is also the created spirit of man, the highest part of the soul. It is with the mind that we apprehend spiritual realities, using the mind’s potential for intuitive cognition. The problem is to encounter Orthodox spiritual realities; the danger is that we might encounter Satan masquerading as an angel of light. Moreover, in our original reply to Sarah Jones, we recommended that she have a quiet time apart from prayer where ideally she would be working with her hands. Our reasoning is that the practice of a handicraft, well-attested in the ascetical tradition, helps train the mind.)

So instead of concentrating on my finger, or even on the karate blow I am landing, I concentrate on the words of the Jesus Prayer. But since the repetition of the Jesus Prayer is focusing my consciousness like a flame from a gas jet, and since I have an orientation in space and time, as I advance in the oral repetition of the Jesus Prayer, my consciousness is naturally focused on my tongue and mouth—after all that is where I am articulating the Jesus Prayer all day long.

Now let us say that I advance to the silent repetition of the Jesus Prayer. Given the preceding, it should be clear that the silent words of the Jesus Prayer will present themselves as physically located in my head—that’s where we think and that is where our thoughts present themselves to us in consciousness. Our mind has ascended from our mouth to inside our head. So far we are sure that Mr Courtney-Smith is following.

Now the next stage is to integrate the silent repetition of the Jesus Prayer with the breath. One mentally articulates the first half of the formula with the intake of the breath; one mentally articulates the second half of the formula with the outtake of the breath. Now since the breath is descending into the lungs, the effect of this is that the gas jet of consciousness is going to follow the words of the Prayer into the lungs and then out of the lungs again.

The next stage is to bring the mind into the heart. Here, the subjective experience is that there is a ‘road of descent’ into the heart that has been mapped by combining the silent repetition of the Prayer with the breath and that there is a place where the consciousness unites with the heart, taken to be the spiritual centre of the person. The fathers place this spiritual centre in the region of the physical heart. This is where the results of the functional NMRI would be interesting, although all it would show would be what the brain is doing at that moment, not what the heart is doing. We suppose that they might also hook up an electrocardiograph to the practitioner of the Jesus Prayer, but we don’t know what it would show. What the practitioner experiences subjectively is that his gas jet of consciousness is now centred in the region of his physical heart and that he is deep inside himself.

Mr Courtney-Smith wants to know what can be measured. Hard to say since we are dealing with consciousness and with subjective experience. Is it a mere fantasy? No. Without going into details, a Staretz can tell a disciple exactly where the disciple is silently praying the Jesus Prayer (in the heart? in the head?) and could probably even tell him what formula he was using in his silent prayer—and sometimes even at a distance. This is not just some Athonite mumbo-jumbo, self-hypnosis or whatever. There is an objective dimension, but as with all religious experience it isn’t easily susceptible to scientific measurement.

Moreover, St Silouan the Athonite (†1938) attests that he was given the automatic repetition of the Jesus Prayer in the heart as a gift while he was praying before an icon of the Mother of God. So we can see that there is also an element of the Grace of God in the practice of the Prayer. See St. Silouan the Athonite by Arch. Sophrony (Sakharov).

Now to make things clear we have presented the above as a method of meditation. Recall that in a previous post, Sarah Jones wanted to know about mechanical repetition of the Jesus Prayer and the danger of delusion. Here we can see more clearly what the danger is. Let us suppose that we are following the above schema (and it is schematic for ease of presentation) without being a committed member of the Church—the Orthodox Church. Sarah quoted to us in her email a passage that suggested that there is a serious danger of falling into delusion, the deception of the Devil, if we do the above in a mechanical way. We agree.

The descent of the mind into the heart is not only a phenomenon with spatial attributes but it is also a conscious penetration into the psychological regions of our personality that are usually called the unconscious or subconscious. The result is that descending with the mind into the heart brings about an encounter with personal subconscious repressed material. This material initially presents itself as an image that invites one to commit sin (of any number of kinds). The ascetical Fathers discuss this sort of thing. It is possible to force your mind into your heart before you are ready but you won’t have the strength to combat the tempting material you will encounter on the way. You can go mad.

We have presented this in terms of natural psychology but at this level the ascetical tradition speaks of temptations from the demons. This encounter on the road to the heart is also a spiritual phenomenon. Recall that the gas jet of consciousness is our created spirit and that its capacity for intuitive cognition enables us to encounter spiritual realities. The problem is that we are going to have to battle against demonic spiritual realities on the way to God.

To return to the issue of mechanical repetition, while the Jesus Prayer is being prayed in the above way, in the normal Orthodox case it is also ‘meant’ or ‘intended’. As members of the Church we are engaged emotionally, psychologically and spiritually with the meanings or concepts contained in the words of the Prayer (‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’) in the way people understand when they say ‘he is praying from the heart’. This is of course a different sense from what we mean by ‘bringing the mind into the heart’. The repetition of the Prayer becomes an emotional, psychological and spiritual encounter, although there is equally a danger if too much emphasis is placed on emotion—that could lead to emotional exaggeration, and its attendant imbalance of personality. Moreover, the Philokalia and all the other writings on the Jesus Prayer assume that the practitioner of the Jesus Prayer is a member in good standing of the Orthodox Church, regularly going to confession and when permitted to communion. The Jesus Prayer is a part of the life of an engaged member of the Church. Moreover, it is assumed that there will be a guide. In this see Way of the Pilgrim, trans. by French. Of course it is not clear if that book and its sequel is really a narrative of what actually happened, or else a literary creation in the form of autobiography.

We are not suggesting that anyone take up the Jesus Prayer without a guide. We are merely trying to clarify how it is prayed.

UPDATE 2 2011/02/18:

Mr Courtney-Smith has again replied with a comment:

Interesting. Thank you very much, that actually makes quite a bit of sense to me.

The description you give of the subjective experienced has strong parallels to the descriptions found in The Dark Night of the Soul [by St John of the Cross] which is the only book of its type I have ever fully read. To my recollection however The Dark Night does not give any specific instruction on how or what one should contemplate (other than God). So I can see how this information seems to make a nice complement too it. Inasmuch as they both describe meditation and its effects.

I looked up the Philokalia as I had never heard of it before. It seems like something that would be interesting to read. Although perhaps, like The Dark Night, it might be of limited value to me as I am not called to monasticism (at least not at this time). How many pages is it?

Also, since you mentioned it, could you explain why grace being created or non-created is relevant to the topic of ‘bringing one’s mind into one’s heart’? I don't see the connection.

Of course that is quite probably because the only definition of grace I was ever taught was ‘a gift freely given from God’.

It seems the purpose of prayer and meditation is closer union with God through Jesus, and I don't think there is any debate about the facts that Jesus is both uncreated Godhead and created Man.

Certainly we receive Jesus in the sacrament of Holy Communion (and this is all of him created and uncreated).

Isn't it the same being encountered in the sacrament but in deeper measure that the mystic hopes to encounter?

Let us give brief answers to the above. The full extent of our knowledge of the theology of St John of the Cross is found in this post.

The Philokalia is, in the standard Greek edition, a five-volume work of texts on the Hesychastic tradition (what we’ve been discussing) that go from the 4^th Century to the 18^th (we believe). The texts are arranged in chronological sequence. His Eminence, Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware), was chief editor of an English translation published by Faber & Faber. There is a good introduction. Only the first four volumes of the English translation have been published. We imagine that the five volumes of the English translation together would come to around 2000 pages. The unpublished 5^th volume is the one that contains material on forcing the mind into the heart; perhaps there was a fear that such information might be dangerous for the immature reader, we don’t know. There is no canon of the Philokalia: it is a literary compilation that is witness to an oral tradition in the Orthodox Church. There are editions of the Philokalia in Old Church Slavonic (liturgical Russian) and Romanian which are much longer than the Greek Philokalia. This simply means that the various editors had access to much more material they thought suitable for inclusion in their edition. The texts are written by the ascetical Fathers of the Orthodox tradition, so they are definitely at the level of St John of the Cross or St Theresa of Avila—i.e. not introductory.

At the level at which we have been discussing the Jesus Prayer in this post, the uncreated nature of Grace has nothing to do with it.

The uncreated nature of Grace is addressed by St Gregory Palamas (14^th Century), who was a practitioner of the Jesus Prayer. The issue has to do with the nature of light that Hesychasts experience: is it the uncreated effulgence of God or something else? That is, the issue has more to do with the end of the Hesychastic road not with the basic practice as we have been describing it.

While we understand what Mr Courtney-Smith intends by ‘uncreated Godhead’, it is more proper to say that Jesus is true God and true Man, where as God he is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. It should also be pointed out that the person of Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. That person took on a complete human nature. But that human nature has never subsisted in a person other than the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. To say otherwise is to fall into a Nestorian Christology.

It is certainly true that in the Orthodox Church it would be a perverse reading of Hesychasm indeed to say that there was something different about what the Orthodox Hesychast experiences receiving Holy Communion and what he experiences practising the Jesus Prayer.

Becoming Orthodox in America - 2

2011-02-12T10:16:00.001Z

‘Sarah Jones’, the subject of ‘Becoming Orthodox in America’, sent us a reply to that post. We have edited her reply rather more than usual so as to preserve her privacy, also integrating material from her subsequent emails. Here is what Sarah says:

Thank you so much for your response on the blog. It was beautiful. I find it so interesting that you mentioned pleasing my husband because I have just recently asked him to lead me in deeper ways so that I don’t have to swim in the big ocean myself.

In the context of makeup, he would prefer me not to wear makeup, but my issues with vanity sometimes make me desire it anyway. He would rather me be modest than represent the world. It’s tough for me because I often want to be beautiful in the world’s eyes, instead of being more concerned with my soul. Sounds horrible just saying it, but it’s something I struggle with.

I love what you say about America. I just asked our priest last week how the American Orthodox churches differ from those overseas. Because quite honestly, I feel like they are often exactly what you said. A Protestant version of Orthodox churches. Trying to fit in. Trying to make people feel comfortable. I find that strange because St. John Chrysostom did anything but make people feel comfortable in the world. He urged them toward God and away from the world. I love him for his boldness in those areas.

I also find it funny that you said this:

Is that all Sarah can look forward to? No. There’s more.

I actually do love being a wife and mother so much. It doesn’t feel like a burden to me. Even with the three kids under three I want another!

Sadly, we do not have good relationships with any of our family. My husband’s family is very much against Orthodoxy. He was raised as a fundamentalist.

My parents are Roman Catholic and would rather that I stay Protestant because, according to them, if I become Orthodox I am going to be excommunicated from their church and to them I won’t be “saved.”

To explain, I was raised Roman Catholic in a very general sense. When I was a young adolescent I learned about God in a Protestant church and from there stayed a “Protestant.” My parents later started to practice Catholicism and wanted me to come back to the Roman Catholic Church instead of staying at the Protestant church. Then I met my husband and his search through Church history brought him to the Orthodox Church. We will officially become members of the Orthodox Church in a few weeks. My parents have said, “We would rather you stay Protestant as you have been because at least then you aren’t excommunicated.” Whereas, according to them, if I become Orthodox I will be excommunicated.

I have a couple more questions based on your response.

You said my husband isn’t to be my elder or confessor. Every night we spend some time praying together and confessing our sins to God in the presence of each other. Is this okay?

I do have quiet time. Check. When the kids are all sleeping and my husband is working. The nice thing is that we both work from home so I have him to help me during the day. We share the load.

…

And my other question is this:

I love the Jesus Prayer. But sometimes I don’t feel worthy of praying it. This really concerns me because I’ve been saying the Jesus Prayer all day every day. And then I read someone’s words about humility and the Prayer:

“If we pray the Jesus Prayer mechanically without humility, we run the risk of falling into delusion.” [We have paraphrased the quotation – Orthodox Monk.]

And I feel like I don’t have humility so I’m not worthy of praying the Prayer. But I want to so much that it hurts and I just don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t tell if I’m doing it mechanically because I know I have so much pride. And then even when thinking of writing you about this I had a prideful thought like, “See, I can admit my pride, I’m so good.” And then I realize I’m even more prideful than I thought five seconds ago!!!!!

I want the Grace of the Holy Spirit, but how can I have that when I’m so prideful? And how can I continue to prayer without ceasing if I’m still so prideful? I can’t imagine ever not having these prideful thoughts and if they are always there how will my prayers ever be genuine and not mechanical? How do I have a true prayer with pride in my heart? I just don’t understand.

Must run for now.

Thank you for your guidance.

Sarah Jones

Let’s start with one of the basic issues, converting from what seems to be a fairly charismatic form of Protestantism to Orthodoxy.

Sarah writes: ‘My parents have said, “We would rather you stay Protestant as you have been because at least then you aren’t excommunicated.” Whereas, according to them, if I become Orthodox I will be excommunicated.’

We find it hard to understand the reasoning of Sarah’s parents, assuming that Sarah has got it right in what she writes. What does excommunication mean? In the Roman Catholic Church it means that although you remain a baptized Roman Catholic, your membership in the Church is impaired. The canons of the Roman Catholic Church which explain what offenses incur excommunication are to be found here.

It seems obvious that from the point of view of the Roman Catholic Church joining the Orthodox Church means falling into schism, which is punished by automatic excommunication (with the normal reservations in Roman Catholic theology about clear intention and conscious understanding of one’s act). However, from the point of view of the Roman Catholic Church joining a Protestant church means falling into heresy, which is also punished by automatic excommunication. Moreover, heresy is a more serious sin than schism, so from the point of view of the Roman Catholic Church, surely becoming a fundamentalist Protestant is worse than becoming Orthodox. The only way we can make sense of what we read is if Sarah’s parents understand Sarah’s participation in Protestantism to be a sort of acceptable ‘child’s play’ which doesn’t have anything real to do with Sarah’s membership in the Roman Catholic Church. Sort of like the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. But that surely is not the official position of the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law.

From the point of view of the Orthodox Church what does becoming a member of the Orthodox Church mean? It seems obvious that it means that you leave the old church or religion or belief system behind—whatever it might be—in order to enter the one true church founded by Jesus Christ on the original Day of Pentecost. Hence, it means that you are baptized into a new life in the Orthodox Church. In fact, this is precisely the reasoning of those jurisdictions which always receive converts to Orthodoxy by Baptism. In cases where a person is received by means other than Baptism (usually but not always Chrismation) the formal theological position of most Orthodox jurisdictions is that ‘economy’ is being exercised: the means exercised in the ‘economy’ give validity to the original mystery of baptism administered outside the Orthodox Church. There is another more recent ecumenical stream which treats Roman Catholic sacraments as valid but this stream is not fully received within the Orthodox Church.

Hence, among those jurisdictions that receive by Baptism—including those like the Orthodox Church in America that permit reception by Baptism if the mystery is requested by the convert—one dies to the old way of life. One then begins to share in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is not accidental that immediately after Baptism the newly-baptized person (even an infant) is immediately communicated with the Body and Blood of Christ.

Perhaps what underlies the comment of Sarah’s parents is the realization that by joining the Orthodox Church Sarah is making a definitive break with Catholicism—something that didn’t seem to them to be the case when Sarah was Protestant.

Be that as it may, it should be clear to Sarah and to her husband that joining the Orthodox Church is best understood not as joining one more denomination—Protestantism with icons—but as dying to the past. The reason to make this act of dying to the past is to put on Christ.

Now we would like to address Sarah’s more particular issues in the context of the above.

We would first like to look at the practice of Sarah and her husband of praying together every evening and confessing their sins orally to God in front of each other. We cannot say flatly that this practice is wrong. We can say that we have never heard of it being practiced in the Orthodox Church.

The norm that we have been taught is that in the best of all possible worlds, in the Orthodox Church a husband and wife have the same confessor. They confess individually and separately to the confessor, but the confessor guides the couple ‘as a unit’. That is, the confessor guides each member of the marriage in such a way that the two persons live in Orthodox Christian harmony. Of course, if the confessor is a clairvoyant Orthodox Elder, so much the better. But as we pointed out in the last post, where are Sarah and her husband going to find such a confessor, or such a clairvoyant Elder? We don’t know. Moreover, one cannot insist to their spouse that they go to their confessor for confession. This is something that has to happen by free choice. The spouse might go to another confessor, might not even go to confession at all. This is a reality that the other spouse has to live with.

We would think that Sarah’s and her husband’s practice in fact arises from a somewhat charismatic form of Protestantism. While we are not in a position to reject it out of hand, we would think that Sarah and her husband should discuss this practice with the priest that is receiving them.

Why? At the present time, Sarah and her husband seem to thrive, especially on the psychological intimacy and mutual respect implied by the practice. It is not clear to us, however, whether as the couple grows older—as we all do—that they will be able to maintain this level of zeal. They might; they might not; we don’t know.

There is another aspect of this practice that troubles us. Let us take a small charismatic prayer group—up to 10 people. It seems clear to us personally that in such a small group of people that is praying together regularly, there develops a psychological dynamic among the participants: someone becomes de facto leader of the group even if the formal belief system of the group is that there is no leader. Moreover, while the group prays orally there may be hidden or covert psychological cues as to what is acceptable to do or say or pray during or even after the group prayer meeting, cues that might be enforced by psychological or even physical coercion. This is what is known as ‘group think’. This is the sort of thing that a social psychologist studies—human group dynamics. There is a substantial academic and scientific literature on how people interact in small groups. By referring to social psychologists, we are not saying flatly that such small prayer groups are bad. We are saying that they can be dangerous. They can get out of hand. This is especially true if there is a charismatic element in them.

Similarly, a social psychologist observing the confession practices of Sarah and her husband over a period of days or weeks might note the psychological dynamics of the practice and its effect on the broader relationship of Sarah and her husband. The psychological dynamics might be great; they might be unhealthy. Orthodox Monk is not clairvoyant. He has no idea.

So we have a situation in which a practice which doesn’t seem to be attested in the Orthodox Church might carry with it some risks for the long-term stability of Sarah and her husband’s marriage.

But again this is something that should be discussed with the priest. As we pointed out, the whole point of becoming Orthodox is to die to the past so as to live in Christ in the Orthodox Church.

Sarah also remarks that she has recently asked her husband him to lead her ‘in deeper ways so that [she] don’t have to swim in the big ocean [her]self’. In the Orthodox Church, what is the relationship between man and wife at this deep level? This is an issue that Orthodox Monk, a celibate monk, doesn’t really feel competent to judge. We think that this is something that should be discussed frankly—with both members of the marriage present—with the priest that is going to receive the couple.

There is a cultural dimension here. Obviously Sarah and her husband are not going to reproduce an Arab Orthodox family structure in America given that neither is Arab. It is not obvious that the roles of husband and wife in an American Orthodox marriage would necessarily be the roles defined for Orthodox man and wife ‘in the Old Country’. In some aspects they would be; in others not.

There is also a theological dimension. St Paul speaks of the relation between husband and wife. However, St Paul teaches us not only that the wife should please her husband, but also that the husband should please his wife. It’s a two-way street in St Paul’s view. However, St Paul is clear that the man is head of the wife.

There is also a psychological dimension. As a professional psychologist can easily tell Sarah and her husband, in any marriage, husband and wife are united in ways that depend on the underlying character of the husband and wife. From the psychological point of view, there are marriages in which the husband is dominant; there are marriages in which the wife is dominant; and this depends on the character of the man and woman and how the two characters interact in the marriage.

This is something that Sarah and her husband are going to have to discuss among themselves and with the priest with a view to understanding what the Orthodox Church teaches.

Sarah’s next question is about her practice of the Jesus Prayer, especially given what she perceives to be her pride.

Sarah quotes someone to say that the mechanical practice of the Jesus Prayer often leads to delusion. Sarah is worried that she is praying the Jesus Prayer mechanically. Now our sense is that what the original author of the remark Sarah quoted meant is that someone who prays the Jesus Prayer ‘like a New-Age mantra’ without being a committed Christian runs the danger of being deceived by the Devil. We agree. We don’t think that the person meant that we always have to be in a state of ecstasy when we pray the Jesus Prayer. If that were so, we wouldn’t need to pray the Jesus Prayer—we would already be in a continuous state of ecstasy!

We would recommend that Sarah and her husband study the text and commentary of the Gnostic Chapters of St Diadochos of Photiki. It’s one of the labels in the right margin of this blog. St Diadochos spends much time discussing the connection between Baptism and the Jesus Prayer.

However, given the zeal that Sarah manifests in her second email, we would repeat that it is dangerous to practice the Jesus Prayer without a guide.

Let us take a particular example so as to see where the problem lies. Sarah has proud thoughts. She takes those thoughts as proof she is proud. She might be proud; she might not be—not being clairvoyant we have no idea—but Sarah’s thoughts are not the criterion to establish whether she is proud or not. They are logismoi: tempting thoughts. People who intensively pray the Jesus Prayer have all kinds of tempting thoughts. They are to be ignored or, if you have the spiritual strength, rejected. Part of the advanced practice of the Jesus Prayer is the battle against tempting thoughts. Now we are getting into serious Orthodox spirituality. But now we can see why Sarah needs a guide. Orthodox Monk is just an idiot on a blog. Sarah and her husband, in order to practice the Jesus Prayer seriously, need a flesh and blood guide who can see them regularly and discuss their spiritual life, so that, for example, Sarah can learn what it means to pray the Jesus Prayer mechanically and what a tempting thought is.

Let us return to the practice of Sarah and her husband of confessing their sins in front of each other every evening.

As we have heard from our old friend George who spends much time on Mt Athos, this is the sort of thing that a disciple living in a cell on Mt Athos with an Elder would do when he was engaged in the serious practice of the Jesus Prayer—when the disciple was praying the Jesus Prayer all day long like Sarah does. Every evening the disciple would confess his acts of sin to his Elder and also the tempting thoughts that were afflicting him during the day. The Elder would be experienced in the Jesus Prayer—chances are that he would have the internal automatic repetition of the Prayer—so as to understand from the inside the spiritual road that his disciple was on. He would also possibly be clairvoyant, so as to understand the thought-world of his disciple from the inside—in these cases the Elder knows what the disciple is going to say before the disciple says it. Even if the Elder is not clairvoyant and even if the Elder is not a formal priest and confessor, the disciple’s very act of confession has the effect of liberating the disciple from the tempting thought. In cases of serious sin, if the Elder were not a priest empowered to hear confessions, he would send the disciple to a confessor. By law on Mt Athos, the disciple can choose his own confessor, although if the Elder in the cell is himself a priest and confessor he probably would not accept a disciple that didn’t want to confess to him.

So we can see a number of similarities between the practices of Sarah and her husband and practice in a cell on Mt Athos. But Sarah and her husband are not monks on Mt Athos. And this is probably where the counsels for moderation from people around them arise. Sarah and her husband need a guide. Orthodox Monk is just the play of dancing electrons.

Moreover, Sarah and her husband would do well to reflect on the nature of their conversion to Orthodoxy, whether they are prepared to die to the past.

May God bless them.

Becoming Orthodox in America

2011-02-05T10:04:00.003Z

A reader has sent us a very interesting email. We will call her Sarah Jones, not her real name. She has accepted that we discuss her email on the blog. Here is what she says:

Dear Orthodox Monk(s),

I am so happy to have found this blog. For numerous reasons. I was going to write out a big, long email, but I feel like such a fool that I don’t even want to burden you with my thoughts. My thoughts are what I want less of.

My simple question is: for someone in the world who is married with children, how can I pursue the ascetic life? The more I seem to go in the direction, the more I hear that I am to be “moderate.” For example, having an issue with pride and vanity and in turn, not wanting to wear makeup or wear the latest fashions. That is seen as “extreme” and for “monks and nuns.” That monastic life isn’t for everyone. I understand that I am not a nun, but I so desperately want to grow closer to God and moderation doesn’t make sense to me.

What is moderation and how does it apply to the spiritual journey for those who are married? I am prideful, so prideful, and the more I look to God, the more I realize I need to get rid of my “self.” My opinions, my thoughts, my, me, me, me, my, I, me ... I am young. I am 25. I am married and have three babies. New to the Orthodox Church. I am young spiritually and in age. To me, it seems the only way to fill this insatiable thirst for God is to grow closer to Him and further from things of this world, but getting rid of worldly attachments, in some cases, is extreme, isn’t it?

I know I have probably come across as foolish. Forgive me if I have wasted your time. I know you get many emails. If you could discuss this on the blog sometime I’d much appreciate it.

Thank you so much,

Sarah Jones

Let see if we can address the issues. We won’t list what we think to be the points Sarah is making; her email seems too clear for that. We should point out that all we know about Sarah is what she says in her email.

The key issue seems to be this. Sarah has recently joined the Orthodox Church. She feels an insatiable desire for God. But she is being told that she is not a nun, that she must be moderate. She is also married with three babies, 25 years old. How is she going to go to God?

There are several dimensions to this problem—and it is a problem.

The first dimension is where Sarah is. She is in America. The state of Orthodoxy in America is problematical. There are jurisdictions which are rigorist—letter of the law types—and there are jurisdictions whose fondest wish is to blend into the liberal Protestant woodwork of America—American Protestantism with icons. Then there are jurisdictions whose fondest wish is to folk dance just like in the old country. In this context Sarah has become a zealous convert to Orthodoxy.

Next, Sarah is married. In our post ‘Questions about Orthodox Monasticism’ we quoted the Apostle Paul as follows:

He who is unmarried takes care for the things of the Lord, how he will please the Lord. But he who marries takes care for the things of the world, how he will please his wife. For the married woman and the maiden have been divided. She who is unmarried takes care for the things of the Lord so that she be holy in body and spirit. She who has been married takes care for the things of the world, how she will please her husband. … A woman is bound by the law as long as her husband is alive. If her husband passes away, she is free to marry whom she wants, only in the Lord. But in my opinion she is more blessed if she remains thus [i.e. an unmarried widow], and I think that I have the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 7, 25 – 40.)

...

Concerning, then, those things which you wrote to me, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. On account, however, of [the danger of] fornication let each [man] have his own wife, and each [woman] have her own husband. Let the man render to the wife the favour which is owed and likewise the wife to the husband. For the woman does not have authority over her own body but the husband; likewise the man does not have authority over his own body but the wife. Do not deny each other, unless it is by mutual agreement for a time so as to dedicate yourselves to fasting and to prayer and then to come together again, so that Satan not tempt you on account of your incontinence. I say this by way of concession not by way of command. For I wish that all men were as myself. But everyone has his own gift from God, one this way and one that way. I say then to the unmarried and to the widows that it is good for them to remain even as I am but if they do not keep continent then let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. I command those who are married, however, not I but the Lord, that the woman must not separate from her husband. But if she separates, let her remain unmarried or else let her be reconciled to her husband; and let the husband not leave his wife. (1 Corinthians 1 – 11.)

We would recommend that Sarah read the whole post and the following one, ‘The Monastic Vocation’. We do not want to make Sarah a nun. Sarah has three babies and a husband. No one, not even Sarah, believes that it’s time for Sarah to enter a monastery. However, we think that Sarah should study those posts because in them we discuss the vocation to marriage at the same time as the vocation to celibacy.

Sarah remarks that she feels very self-centred. We will remark on the spiritual aspects of this feeling below, but here we want to remark that St Paul provides in the first passage above one of the key methods of ascesis for the married woman—and married man! The married person is to cut his or her will off to the spouse. ‘She who has been married takes care for the things of the world, how she will please her husband.’ Moreover, we see in the second passage just how far this other-orientedness goes: ‘Let the man render to the wife the favour which is owed and likewise the wife to the husband. For the woman does not have authority over her own body but the husband; likewise the man does not have authority over his own body but the wife. Do not deny each other, unless it is by mutual agreement for a time so as to dedicate yourselves to fasting and to prayer and then to come together again, so that Satan not tempt you on account of your incontinence.’

So we can see that one of the main ways in which Sarah is going to become humble is to put these two passages into practice. With zeal.

In this regard it is worthwhile to direct Sarah to read St John Chrysostom, who was a monk and Patriarch of Constantinople and a great moralist, concerning marriage. He follows the indications of St Paul above. He does not suggest that man and wife live as brother and sister.

Moreover, in the Pidalion, the compendium for confessors of canons of the Church, with commentary, of St Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (of Athos), St Nikodemos instructs the confessor to discourage young married couples from living as brother and sister. He leaves the possibility open to older couples. This is something that has to be grown into by the husband and wife on a mutual basis.

Moreover, in the Life of St Hilarion, contemporary and friend of St Anthony the Great, there is the episode where a wife with zeal for God is refusing her husband. St Hilarion leads her to be reconciled to her husband.

Now a fundamental principle of asceticism is that it is by keeping the Commandments that we approach God. Bodily asceticism only has meaning as a tool to help us keep the Commandments. It is only after a long period of keeping the Commandments that we enter into advanced stages of prayer. The Dismissal Hymn of ascetics says something to the effect, ‘Keeping the Commandments (praxis) is the stepping stone to contemplation (theoria).’ What this means is that it is by keeping the Commandments that we are made able to enter into advanced stages of prayer and union with God, which is what Sarah zealously desires.

Hence, the basic matrix of keeping the Commandments is for Sarah, and for every married woman, to be a good wife and mother. This has a lot of implications. Sarah wonders, for example, whether she should avoid wearing make-up and the latest fashions. The first thing she is going to have to do is discuss this with her husband. What does he want? He might not like make-up; he might like it. Sarah is going to have to be psychologically available to her husband. This is what it means to please her husband. Similarly with the latest fashions. Sarah might not need to wear Prada—after all the Devil wears Prada—but there is a lot of room between wearing Prada and being dowdy. Sarah’s husband might be relieved that Sarah doesn’t want to wear Prada—it’s expensive—but he might prefer a little stylishness so that he’s proud to walk down the street with his wife. Sarah is going to have to have a serious discussion with her husband about these things. This cutting off of her own will is what will cure her of her pride—over a period of years; it is not something that happens in a day.

Moreover, with three babies, Sarah has to be available to her babies not only psychologically but physically. There’s a lot of obedience in responding to infants’ needs. Infants don’t understand, they want what they want NOW.

Is that all Sarah can look forward to? No. There’s more.

First of all, even in marriage each person has his or her own interior life. Although Sarah is to be psychologically available to her husband and her family in every way, that does not mean that her husband is her ‘Elder’ or ‘Confessor’. He has his own spiritual life and she has hers. He might go to Holy Communion; she might not; and vice versa. We are united in marriage but we continue to be separate, autonomous human beings before God. As the Gospel says, the husband and wife become one flesh. It does not say they become one soul.

Moreover, although the husband and wife become one flesh, that does not mean that the one partner should sin because the other partner wants to. Our road to God is to keep the Commandments. In cases where there is a tension between the wish to please the spouse and the requirement to keep the Commandments of God, one must keep the Commandments.

So in the context of pleasing her husband, Sarah should work on her personal spiritual life. Now we don’t know Sarah. We don’t know how educated she is, how intelligent she is, what aptitudes she has, her underlying psychological strength, her emotional maturity, her basic spiritual maturity. We don’t even know whether she has become Orthodox by Baptism, something we recommend. So what we are going to counsel Sarah is subject to the cautions that we don’t know the facts about Sarah and that Sarah has to be guided by someone who knows her. We can only enunciate general principles.

Now one of the things we don’t know is whether Sarah and her husband are living in a nuclear family or whether they have their parents and in-laws and relatives close at hand. From a practical point of view, if Sarah and her husband are getting along with their relatives and they are close by, Sarah could do with some assistance in the home. Three babies is a lot for a 25 year-old woman.

Next, it would be good for Sarah to have some private time each day. Subject to our cautions, it would be good for Sarah to have a private space where she would do something with her hands—paint icons, sew vestments or something. We would recommend something that is not an intellectual endeavour so that Sarah can pray the Jesus Prayer while she is doing whatever she is doing with her hands. But as we said, we don’t know Sarah’s aptitudes. The main requirement is for Sarah to have some time to herself every day, time that is quiet and non-intellectual, time that can be filled with the Jesus Prayer while she is working. This is apart from actual prayer time. That is something different. Of course, this raises the question of who is going to look after the kids.

Next, not only do we not know Sarah’s aptitudes, we also don’t know Sarah’s personal or the family’s more general economic circumstances. Are they poor? Rich? Getting by? Barely getting by? We don’t know. If there is an economic issue, Sarah’s quiet time could be used in an activity that might bring some income into the family. Does this sound crass and mercenary? The wisdom literature of the Old Testament praises the wife who works with her hands, accumulating linens she has woven, and so on. So while Sarah could be praying the Jesus Prayer while she works, she could also be helping the family out economically.

Moreover, it would be good for Sarah to have a skill to fall back on should something happen in the family and she needs to work to support herself or the family.

Of course, if Sarah has a Ph.D. in physics, from the economic point of view it might make more sense for her to get a job as a researcher, perhaps even by computer from home. But working with her hands she will be able to pray the Jesus Prayer in her quiet-time job.

Next, with the cautions we have expressed above, there is no reason that Sarah couldn’t be praying the Jesus Prayer while she goes through her day changing diapers for three babies, making breakfast for the family and so on. But this requires guidance. It simply is impossible to do this without danger and someone has to guide us. This is where we get back to the problem of becoming Orthodox in America. Where is Sarah going to find a guide? We don’t know.

Moreover, we would caution Sarah that it is not the way to go to refuse to kiss her husband because she is practising the Jesus Prayer all through the day and doesn’t want to lose the thread of the Prayer. This is the road to divorce court.

However, subject to our cautions, there is no reason that Sarah couldn’t practise the Jesus Prayer all through the day, being available to everyone in their time. It is possible to do this—to pray the Jesus Prayer continually, interrupting it to respond to the other’s needs, then to resume the Jesus Prayer.

But someone will insist that this is very advanced. And here is where we come back to the issue of ‘moderation’ in contemporary American Orthodoxy. There are two issues. The first we have already alluded to, that American Orthodoxy is not a ‘peak’ expression of historical Orthodoxy. It has problems. One of the consequences of the problems is that American Orthodoxy is at a very low standard spiritually, with a dearth of balanced confessors that can guide a zealous soul in the right direction.

There is a second issue of moderation here. ‘Moderation’ really means ‘the right measure at the right time for the person in question’. Moderation avoids extremes either of slackness or of over-zealousness for the person in question. But only a clairvoyant Elder can with assurance guide a person in moderation, since only a clairvoyant Elder has clear insight into the actual spiritual condition of the person being guided.

Let us make an analogy. As we said, we don’t know Sarah so we don’t know whether she is a born klutz or a born athlete. Let’s suppose, however, that Sarah has an interest in running. She likes running. She runs all day long. Now she thinks that it might be good to get a little professional training—maybe she might be able to compete in a local contest. Now depending on Sarah’s aptitudes, she might be an intrinsically lousy runner or she might be Olympic stuff.

Let’s suppose that Sarah lives some place where there are no professional athletes and no professional coaches. People around Sarah say, ‘You got to be moderate, Sarah! All this running is going to damage you!’ But Sarah wants to run. And run! The only solution is for Sarah to find a professional running coach and work with him. The coach might say, ‘Sarah, you’re a klutz. Run a couple of miles a day for relaxation and leave it; you’re going nowhere; it would be criminal for me to take your money to coach you.’ Or he might say, ‘Sarah, you’ve got potential; you’ve got to work on it but I can see you going places.’ In the first case, the coach’s advice for moderation would be for Sarah to run a couple of miles a day and to get on with the rest of her life. In the second case, the coach’s advice for moderation might be for her to run only 20 miles a day and to avoid performance-enhancing drugs. It depends on who you are.

The same holds for the spiritual life. This is the second issue concerning moderation. Moderation is keyed not only to our environment but to who we are.

So we would say that Sarah should make an attempt to find ‘a professional spiritual coach’ and get assessed. Hopefully she will be able to receive guidance on an ongoing basis from that coach.

In general, Sarah should express her zeal in the context of the Orthodox Church and in the context of her psychological availability to her husband and her children and in the context of her actual potentialities and weaknesses as assessed by the professional spiritual coach.

Finally, we would like to return to Sarah’s comment that she feels completely proud and self-centred. Sarah, we see this as a good sign. If we are not mistaken—and we usually are—this is a sign of God’s grace in you. It is when we don’t feel that we are so far from God that God has left us to our own devices. When we feel that we are so proud and far from God, it is often because the grace of God is upon us showing us what we have to do.

May God bless you.

From Kung Furious to King Calm

2011-01-30T17:35:00.003Z

Kung Furious is furious. We’re pounding on the martial arts. Here’s what he says in his comment on ‘A Lost Modern Man’ :

“...for reasons that would take too long to explain, should not practise the martial arts” [see ‘A Lost Modern Man’]

You also wrote the following in your ‘The Jesus Prayer 3’ post:

"Let's suppose that you're Orthodox. The first thing to do to begin the Jesus Prayer is to make a good confession to an Orthodox priest. [...] The first thing is your relationship to God. Here it is very important to make a very detailed confession to the priest concerning anything which might have disturbed your relationship to God. [...] Have you ever practised non-Christian forms of meditation and prayer, including hatha yoga, T’ai Chi Ch’uan and EVEN KARATE?"

What about judo or kickboxing or the mixed martial arts?

I know that the (eastern) martial arts are full of philosophical blabber and spiritual 'this' and spiritual 'that' but if someone tries to avoid these things and is only interested in the exercises, the kicking, punching, grappling and so on, then why shouldn't he practise a martial art?

Is it because of their aggressive nature? Or because of the "tribal ballet dances" (as I like to call the kata/taolu, the choreographed patterns of movements) and their strong emphasis on imagination? Or because of the breathing exercises?

Please explain. And if you know some stories and can give some examples, I would really like to "hear" them.

Thank you.

There are two separate issues about the martial arts here, Kung Furious. Let’s take the Jesus Prayer first. When we wrote ‘The Jesus Prayer 3’ we were concerned about having the aspirant to the practice of the Jesus Prayer in a serious, intensive way completely cleanse his or her soul from every non-Western, non-Christian experience they might have had so that the Jesus Prayer would operate in his or her soul as intended by the Fathers of the Orthodox Church. We still think the advice holds. If you want to practise the Jesus Prayer, cleanse your soul.

Now in the second case, we were faced with an email from someone that seemed to us to be under a great deal of nervous tension. We wanted to calm him down. Apart from the issue with the Jesus Prayer discussed in the previous paragraph, there is the fact that karate ‘hypes’ you up so that when you walk into a tavern your eyes immediately scan the room for potential attackers. We have seen this with a sixth degree black belt. Under the circumstances, we did not think that it was in the interest of A Lost Modern Man to have that sort of sensibility and nervous tension.

Well, what about T’ai Chi Ch’uan, aikido and so on? They’re soft style; they shouldn’t create this sort of problem. Well other issues arise, and the best thing to do when you are spiritually searching and need to calm your nervous system down is to stop all the martial arts, whatever the style. You should be getting exercise, certainly, but of a sort that isn’t going to create this sort of nervous tension.

Our advice to A Lost Modern Man was based on our assessment that he needed to calm his nervous system down. In the case where someone doesn’t have the nervous intensity that we sensed with A Lost Modern Man, the practice of a martial art as a sport would, with the permission of the confessor, be acceptable.

Moreover, in the case where someone is professionally obliged to practise the martial arts—for example, he is a member of the United States Secret Service—obviously he’s not going to stop.

The ‘tribal ballet’ aspect of the oriental martial arts doesn’t bother us. It’s fun to watch, although we’re not much for the extreme forms where the fighters ‘fly’ several hundred meters through the air on wires.

We were wondering whether to entitle this post ‘From King Kong to King Calm’. We also wondered if Theodor had shown up in a new incarnation.

John (Updated)

2011-01-30T16:55:00.007Z

We have received several comments on our post ‘A Lost Modern Man’. Let us take the comment by John first. He has actually submitted two comments, the second one being just an afterthought. We will discuss them together. First of all, here are the comments:

I sympathize much with "A Lost Modern Man"; I have been 'Orthodox' all my conscious life, but only recently became interested in my faith after reading Crime and Punishment [by Fyodor Dostoevsky].

After this I have tried to learn what I can, from the absolute basics, from books at home and the internet. I got mixed up between genuine Orthodox and those who call themselves Orthodox [see the post], but I hope that I am over the worst of that now having read what the modern Elders have to say on the subject.

I am still left with the fact that I see conflicts between my daily life and what I read I should do everywhere. Not only with my secularist friends, but at home too.

I am only 17, still living with my parents (who are separated), and am very much still under their authority. From things like prayer and fasting (or lack thereof), to things said which seem to contradict the Orthodox teaching, and I don’t just mean things that are perhaps best referred to as controversial contemporary issues.

Still worse, I don’t feel like I can trust my priest and confessor for similar reasons, both on praxis and theoria, although to a lesser extent.

I seem to be judging just about everyone I know in some way or another.

I know that obedience and humility are very important. I have also read that I should not “correct” others, but is this always the case? What if they ask me about the same things? What about since what my parents do directly affects what I am able to do? Also, does the situation change at all after I become 18 or go to university?

Any thoughts at all would be much appreciated.

And:

Forgive my ignorance.

I did not mean theoria, but I don't really know exactly how to say what I mean, although it has nothing to do with theoria. The idea of 'correctness' in Theology in a theoretical sense is what I mean I suppose.

There are a number of issues here. Let’s first outline, as is our custom, what we think John to be saying.

1 John is a cradle Orthodox, but he really didn’t become interested in his Orthodoxy until he read Dostoevsky.

2 He got mixed up with non-canonical Orthodox but has escaped from their clutches (we aren’t being sarcastic; we’re just expressing the point in a direct way).

3 He feels out of joint with his secular friends and with his home life. In particular there is a big tension between what he reads and what he sees around him.

4 He is 17 years old, living at home and under his parents’ authority.

5 His parents are espousing views and otherwise providing role models that contradict sound Orthodox teaching.

6 He feels he can’t trust his priest and confessor because of this contradiction between theory and practice. Evidently what John means is that what he reads (theory) and what he sees his priest doing (practice) don’t agree, so he feels he can’t trust (or presumably even confide in) his priest.

7 He feels that with this situation he is judging everyone, which he realizes is not good (if it’s true).

8 He knows that obedience and humility are very important.

9 He’s read that he should not correct others. Is this true in all cases? What if they ask him? (We think John means, what if others ask his opinion about these matters.)

10 What about the fact that his parents, who according to 2 above are not living or teaching an Orthodox life, directly influence what he is able to do?

11 What happens when he turns 18?

12 What happens when he goes to University (if he goes)?

13 He’s not sure if theoria is the right word. What he means is ‘theological theory’.

John is at an age when in the West men and women begin to grow apart from their parents. There is a legal, theological and psychological dimension to this. First of all, so that we don’t repeat ourselves unnecessarily, John should read ‘Justin’. Not all of that post will apply to him, but much of it will. And since we don’t really want to discuss the specifically psychological aspects of the situation here, John should look carefully at that post concerning the psychological aspects.

From a legal point of view John will have to check what the law says in his jurisdiction about the legal age of majority. It might be 18 but we are not legal experts, certainly not in John’s jurisdiction, and we cannot give legal advice.

Also John will have to check just what the legal age of majority implies. It might imply, or might not, we don’t know, that John can leave his parents’ house at the legal age of majority. It might also imply that his parents can turf him out of the house and quit feeding and clothing him, we don’t know. This is something that John will have to check. Where is he going to check? The local police might tell him; there might be some sort of free legal aid service that he can drop by and ask (without telling anyone); there might be other similar sorts of agencies either private or state-run that he can drop by and ask. This is merely to sort out his legal status. We’re not suggesting that he undergo counselling.

Next, the Ten Commandments are clear that we should honour our father and mother. Does that mean that we should sin because our parents are sinning? No. Does it mean John should correct his parents? Under the circumstances that he has described, as we understand them, no. However, because of the delicacy of the matter, it would be good to discuss these matters with a trusted confessor.

But John doesn’t trust his confessor. What is he going to do? Well, in extremis, he will keep his head down until he attains to the legal age of majority and then he will consult a confessor, wherever that confessor is located, that he trusts. We imagine that once John goes to University he will encounter other Orthodox priests and, if he has prayed to Lord to give him a confessor, one whom he can trust without forcing himself. It is very important to be intuitively comfortable with your confessor. We can’t emphasize this strongly enough. We have to trust the man.

We also imagine that his parents will not be monitoring John’s every footstep after he goes to University, so he should be able to travel a certain distance to visit with a confessor he thinks he can trust. John isn’t positive that he will go to University; we would recommend that he go if he can, unless the trusted confessor tells him that he has to break off relations with his family and that implies that they won’t support him to go to University, etc., etc.—we can’t describe every possible situation that might develop.

Of course, in University John will encounter other temptations.

What John shouldn’t be doing is arguing with anyone about the Orthodox faith, especially his parents. He should be praying for family and friends that he sees to be on the wrong road, without judging them—as John grows he will learn how weak he himself is and thus come to be more compassionate about his parents’ and family’s and friends’ weaknesses.

Under the circumstances, we suggest that John express his opinion when asked and only with the utmost circumspection. There is nothing good that is going to come of conflict and argument.

The words praxis and theoria ordinarily mean contemplation (theoria), especially contemplation given supernaturally by the Holy Spirit, and the active life of keeping the commandments (praxis). However, even Elders have used the words in a more commonsense way, where the words correspond to ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. So there’s nothing wrong with John’s usage.

Incidentally John, the road to God is through keeping the Commandments. Hence, what you should be doing is reading the Gospel, going to Church (without ostentation) and doing what the Church says.

If there are serious issues of sin which you cannot confess because you can’t trust your local priest, then you are going to have to not receive communion until you have made a good confession to a priest you can trust. You can receive all the other mysteries, however; it is only Holy Communion that has a strict requirement for the Orthodox to be free of serious sin. This is not to encourage people to attend the other mysteries in an unworthy way; it is to deal with the issue of a young man not being able to trust his local priest—until the time that he attains to the legal age of majority.

May God bless him.

UPDATE:

John has posted the following comment below:

Dear Father(s):

Thank you for your time and advice: I shall try to do (and not do) as you have advised.

Despite what I said, I am actually quite close to my parents; they and my priest are all nice people, somewhat nicer than I am. Unfortunately that does not invalidate my previous remarks.

There is one thing I would like to clarify, though; I said I didn't feel like I could trust my confessor. I remember Saint Pimen said you shouldn't open your heart to someone you don't trust from your heart, or something to that effect, not having the book to hand: does this mean I should not confess to him at all? At the moment I do (occasionally), although you seem to indicate that perhaps I shouldn't.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even if I'm not sure about what he does or says on a variety of matters, does that prevent me from confessing anything to him?

Writing this, I suppose it may seem that what I say appears to be contradictory. If this is the case, it is because such is the state of my life.

Pray for me.

John

In answer to your question, if you feel that you can confess to the priest without holding anything back because of your lack of trust for him, then there is no reason for you not to confess. In other words, you have to judge just what it is that you have done, and just what the problem is with the priest. Is he going to violate the confidentiality of the confessional? Is he going to gossip about you? Is he going to give you bad advice saying that sin is not sin and what is not sin is sin? Is he going to bind you in conscience to a penance that creates serious problems?

There are a number of levels of confession. I can confess that I have murdered my brother and presumably will do so before I’m hung even if I have my doubts about the trustworthiness of the confessor. The only thing that matters is if his priestly orders are valid so that his prayers for forgiveness are valid so that I can depart with a clear conscience.

It’s another thing, though, to ask a confessor for guidance. “I’m not getting along with my parents; they’re not providing a sound role model; and you’re not so great yourself. What should I do with my life?” Such a confession would be best reserved for a priest you can trust.

Orthodox Monk

A Lost Modern Man

2011-01-08T12:27:00.000Z

Fathers,

I have been studying Orthodoxy for about a year now and am currently attending a certain Eastern Orthodox Church in a certain city here in the United States. (This church belongs to a certain well-known jurisdiction.)

My question for you is how does one live the Gospel while still in the world?

Having come from an Evangelical and later an Atheist background all I know about ‘Christianity’ is that when you become a Christian your job is then to preach the Gospel. This has never sat well with me because the more I study the more I realize that I know nothing. So who am I to go out and share the Gospel when I am so weak and foolish?

I get confused because I like to read Philosophy and the Church Fathers. When I do this I feel like my mind is being pulled a thousand different directions. The one constant that I always come back to is that humanity is desperately hopeless without Jesus Christ. The struggle I have is that I don’t know how to go about living. For example, If Jesus Christ is all that matters what am I doing just going about my life and struggling for the things of this world i.e. career, house, car, and so forth?

I feel like my life is being lived in vain. I also feel like I have so much work that needs to be done on my soul. I am not disciplined, my prayer life is poor at best and I don’t think I really understand the power of the incarnate Christ, God who became Man.

Having read quite of bit of Philosophy I see the world as completely opposed to the Gospel. It appears that Modern Life does all it can to distract the soul. From endless mindless TV/Radio shows to a vast Internet that can satisfy temporarily all the earthly pleasures. To even the realization that Modern Life is a tier-based system of pleasure. Those at the top tier get all the pleasures of the world whenever they want. Those at the bottom also have access to pleasures but work for the ones at the top. It seems like the world we live in is centered around the divinity of man and in complete contrast to Christianity.

That being said its easy to point fingers. Even if the world is so terribly upside down, so is my soul. My soul is what God has entrusted to me. So my question is: How do I live the Gospel knowing that the world is? And knowing also that my soul is also upside down? How do I act? What are my primary concerns in life?

Thank you for your consideration.

A Lost Modern Man

There are a number of issues here. First of all let’s run through what we know and don’t know.

A Lost Modern Man lives in a certain American city. We happen to know that that city is characterized by a banal materialism. ALMM doesn’t say what his age is but he seems a relatively young although mature man. He also doesn’t say what his education is, although he seems quite intelligent. He doesn’t say what his professional and economic situation is but we infer that he has a job which lets him get by and even consider obtaining material goods such as a house and a car.

ALMM started off Evangelical—whether by a youthful conversion or by family upbringing he doesn’t say. Evidently disillusioned he left that for Atheism. Evidently finding that Atheism didn’t give him the answers, he has been studying Orthodoxy for about a year. He has attended an Orthodox Church in his city for at least part of that period. It’s not clear to us if he attended other churches, whether Orthodox or not, before coming to rest, at least for the moment, in the particular Orthodox Church he is now attending. From what we gather he has not been received into the Orthodox Church, since we are sure he would have mentioned that.

Now the first issue that ALMM raises is how he should live the Gospel.

The next issue he raises is his reading Philosophy and the Fathers of the Church, which makes his thoughts ricochet around his mind like pinballs.

However, and this is the next issue, he realizes that the only answer is Jesus Christ.

The next issue is that he feels he is living his life in vain.

The next issue is that on the basis of his readings in philosophy, ALMM feels that the world is completely opposed to the Gospel.

Moreover, the next issue is that modern life does all it can to distract the soul with temporary pleasures.

The next issue is that there is a tier-based social structure to the system of distracting pleasures.

The next issue is that this system of distracting pleasures is founded on the divinity of man.

The bottom line is that the world is upside down, just like ALMM’s soul. What should he do?

We have spelled the issues out in a formal schematic way because we think we have to address each of them.

Let us start with ALMM’s position at the Orthodox Church he is attending. There seems a problem here. ALMM has been attending the particular Orthodox Church he has for a while and still has very fundamental issues of alienation from the society he lives in. It doesn’t sound like the particular Church he is now attending (we know NOTHING about it) has been able to respond to him pastorally. It may be that ALMM should be looking around at other CANONICAL Orthodox Churches, perhaps in the vicinity, perhaps—if he is able to continue his career elsewhere—a little further afield.

There are a couple of points we would like to make here. The particular city that ALMM is living in is a banal, materialistic American city. At the best of times, it’s not going to be a particularly spiritual place to live although there might be a community of interesting and accepting canonical Orthodox somewhere close to where ALMM lives. It might be that ALMM can and should move elsewhere, to where he can find a more congenial place to live. Of course this is assuming that he doesn’t have obligations that keep him where he is. However, we’re not sure that moving to Manhattan would solve ALMM’s problems. People are interesting in Manhattan, yes—perhaps too interesting.

Next, ALMM really should be undergoing a course of instruction, preferably one-on-one, in Orthodoxy. This is not an intellectual endeavour the way they teach courses on Orthodoxy in University, but a spiritual preparation for Baptism. Here we wonder if the ‘pastoral team’ at ALMM’s current church is really able to respond to ALMM’s needs.

Here what ALMM should understand is that entering the Orthodox Church is a mystagogy: a spiritual passage that leads from one spiritual place (where we are) to another spiritual place (membership in the Church, being a member of the Body of Christ).

Moreover, we would emphasize to ALMM that the proper means of being received into the Orthodox Church is Baptism. This is not fanaticism on our part. We can see that ALMM is out of joint with the society around him. What he needs is a transforming experience that puts him into joint with Christ. The only sure transforming experience to do this is Orthodox Baptism.

Indeed, if it is necessary, when it is time to enter the Church, if ALMM’s current Orthodox Church will not accept to receive him by Baptism, he should move on to another CANONICAL jurisdiction that will. This is not to say that he has to live the rest of his life in that new jurisdiction, but that he should be received into the Orthodox Church by a canonical baptism in a canonical jurisdiction. We would caution ALMM to avoid non-canonical jurisdictions in and around his city; they will destroy him.

It is very difficult for someone with a strong Evangelical background to convert to Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is a way of life, not an ideology. And it is a completely different way of life from what someone would have lived among the Evangelicals. We often encounter a situation where someone makes a physical conversion from Evangelical Christianity to Orthodoxy but persists in thinking like an Evangelical. It is only Orthodox Baptism that has the power to change this. Moreover, even with Baptism it can take years for the baptized person to slough off the Evangelical mind-set.

We would recommend that ALMM read our translation of the Gnostic Chapters of Diadochos of Photiki (look in the right margin at the topics). St Diadochos spends much time discussing the actual results of Baptism on a person. After a fashion, St Diadochos is analyzing the mystagogical path from where we are to where we should be.

Now how should ALMM live the Gospel? When we are medical students, we learn; we do not heal, except perhaps under the direction of the Professor. Moreover, when we are patients in the hospital we do not even learn; we merely follow the doctors’ instructions. ALMM should be learning what the Orthodox Church teaches about God, Man and Society. He should be learning, not teaching, and he should not feel obliged to proclaim the Gospel—except, if he wishes, to answer someone simply if they ask him what he believes. But if the other party wishes to get into a debate, ALMM should simply say that he is learning and not in a position to debate issues.

Given the fact that reading Philosophy and the Fathers of the Church makes ALMM’s head spin, we would recommend that for the moment he stop reading Philosophy and restrict his readings in the Fathers of the Church to St John Chrysostom, in particular St John’s Commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew.

This is not to close off ALMM from serious thought but to stop his mind from being a pinball machine. We suspect that ALMM is cut out for the study of theology but now is not the time. Later, after he has become a member of the Orthodox Church, he can turn to a more systematic study of Philosophy and Theology.

However, it is far too early for ALMM to begin such a formal academic study of Philosophy and Theology; it would only damage him. What ALMM needs is to hook up with someone who can ground him in Christ in the Orthodox Church, someone who will guide him spiritually to baptism and the practice of membership in the Orthodox Church, also giving him a strong basic Orthodox intellectual formation. That Orthodox intellectual formation will be necessary when ALMM turns to the systematic study of Philosophy and Theology, to give him an inner criterion to separate the wheat from the chaff.

For similar reasons, we would recommend that ALMM lay off coffee, tea and whatever other stimulating beverages he drinks (including too much beer), and turn to drinking herbal teas. Again, this is to get ALMM’s mind to slow down.

ALMM should do exercise, but for reasons that would take too long to explain, should not practice the martial arts (assuming that he does).

ALMM should make an effort to be polite to people.

Some temporary pleasures are acceptable to the Orthodox Church. ALMM should have some recreation that is not inimical to the Gospel. We think he knows that that means.

Next, ALMM raises issues about the structure of society. St John Chrysostom challenged the Empress Eudocia concerning a widow’s vineyard that the Empress coveted and seized. He was exiled by the Empress. He was force-marched to death, dying in the Caucasus. Both in his Commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew and in his own personal life, St John Chrysostom showed us the teaching of Christ concerning human society: what the Orthodox Church accepts as being legitimate structures of human society and what it condemns.

Concerning the issue as to whether the world is inimical to the Gospel, it will be important for ALMM, both as a thinker and as a person, to learn just what the Orthodox Church’s teaching is on the world. Here we should point out that just as the Orthodox Church does not take the position that man is completely depraved by the sin of Adam, utterly incapable of doing good except through salvation by divine election—as the Calvinist strain of Evangelical Christianity teaches—so it is important for ALMM to learn that the Orthodox Church is more about transfiguring the world than condemning it utterly and irrevocably. Here it might be useful for ALMM to read the Life of St. Seraphim of Sarov.

What is important for A Lost Modern Man to understand is that Orthodoxy is a way of life, a new way of seeing the world, a way of seeing the world that is transfigured by the grace of the Holy Spirit given in Baptism and Holy Communion, along with the other mysteries (sacraments) of the Church. It behoves him to meet people who manifest that new life in their being and actions, and if he so chooses, to prepare himself to participate in that new life beginning with a canonical baptism.

May God bless him.

Fasting in the Orthodox Church

2010-12-30T13:06:00.000Z

After our post on meat-eating in the Orthodox Church, we received a comment from ‘Melissa’:

Great post! I would like more information on the role of meat in the Orthodox Church. I know that abstaining from meat is a part of many fasts. Where does this come from historically?

This got us to thinking. And we thought and thought. Which is why this post is so delayed. Those of our readers who are already celebrating the twelve days of Christmas will wonder; those who are still in Advent will understand. However, just because we have thought about this post doesn’t mean it’s any good.

If one goes to Melissa’s profile page one finds links to a couple of blogs that Melissa runs. It seems that Melissa follows a diet called ‘Paleo’. This is new to us. Briefly, without our having investigated it very much, ‘Paleo’ is a diet that orients its follower to eating the way the Palaeolithic natives ate in the region where the person lives. Presumably, a person living on the Great Plains would eat much the same foods that a Plains Indian would have eaten before Cortez came. This got us to thinking about discussing why the Orthodox fast, and how.

First of all, at the risk of irritating ‘Paleos’ with our ignorance of their diet, we want to make one remark. It is all well and good within reason to eat the way a Plains Indian ate if you live on the Great Plains, but only if you live in the same conditions that the Plains Indian lived. The energy consumption of a pre-Cortez Plains Indian in winter was completely different from the energy consumption of someone living in Indianapolis with central heating and an automobile. (By ‘energy consumption’ we here mean the number of calories burned to keep alive, and the dietary source of those calories, not any issue with carbon footprints.) Similarly, there was an adage on the tundra that you had to drink fresh reindeer blood to stay alive. But who living in a centrally heated home in a town on the tundra would think that today the thing to do was to drink fresh reindeer blood? What we are saying is that a ‘Paleo’ diet has to be adapted to the actual conditions of life today of the person who wishes to make use of the insights of the Palaeolithic natives of his region.

However, and now we are turning to the actual purpose of this post, we would like to discuss why the Orthodox fast, and how. The origins of fasting in the Orthodox Church are to be found in the Old Testament. There, fasting is a sign to God of, and also a means of, our repentance. It is a sign to God of our repentance because it is a visible act that ‘God can see’ that I am sorry for what I did: I am denying myself because I am sorry. That is why Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, is a strict fast. Even Jews who are otherwise unobservant might find themselves keeping that fast. The key to understanding this is to see that what is refused in this sort of fasting is what we normally are entitled to: normally there is nothing wrong with eating the sheep in my flock. Indeed, as Abraham demonstrated, it is good to slaughter the sheep in your flock to feed the stranger who has come to you. However, by denying ourselves that to which we are entitled we are showing to God we are sorry.

Similarly, fasting was historically tied to sexual abstinence. During a fast a man was not to touch a woman. We imagine that this is still true among more Orthodox Jews. This is also true in the Orthodox Church today. It is also true in Islam, for example during Ramadan.

Fasting is a means of repentance because it takes us away from the flesh to the spiritual. The flesh withers, as it were, but in our bodily weakness, our spirit is made more pure and more able to turn to God in prayer. In this regard, one should consider the references to fasting in the New Testament. Jesus is clear that while the Bridegroom is with them, the disciples cannot fast, but they will fast when the Bridegroom is taken from them. Moreover, there is the case of the demon that the disciples could not cast out, which type the Lord said could only be cast out with fasting and prayer (following the textus receptus version of the passage).

So now we can understand the role of the great fast periods in the Church, particularly Great Lent. It is a period of repentance in preparation for the joy of Easter. Similarly with the 40-day Advent fast before Christmas. Similarly with the 15-day strict fast before the Dormition of the Mother of God in August, and the milder fast that extends from the Monday after All Saints (the Sunday after Pentecost) to the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

Moreover, in the New Testament the Pharisee fasts twice a week. The Orthodox Church has kept those two days of fasts—Wednesday and Friday. Monks also fast on Mondays.

So we can see that the Holy Spirit has woven an intricate web of fasts that extend throughout the whole year.

Now how do the Orthodox fast? This is a little difficult for us to explain theoretically but easy to explain practically. Let us start with the practical issues.

There is a list of types of foods, as follows, from the richest foods to the poorest foods. :

1. animal meats;

2. dairy products (milk, cheese, eggs, butter, yogurt etc.);

3. fish;

4. wine and olive oil;

5. cooked food;

6. raw nuts, fruits and vegetables.

The principle is that if on a certain day you can eat an item on the list, you can eat all the items below it on the list but none of the items above it on the list. If you can eat animal meat on a certain day, say Christmas, you can eat anything. Hence the way 5 is to be interpreted is that it is food cooked over the fire without wine or oil or anything else above it on the list. A thin vegetable soup. But at least it’s cooked; if you’ve reached 6, you’re left with raw nuts, fruits and vegetables.

Now we have to define what an animal is for the purposes of the above list. An animal is a land creature that has blood. A goat is an animal. A snail is not an animal.

Next, what is a fish? A fish is a sea creature with blood in it. A tuna is a fish. An octopus or a clam is not a fish.

What happens to snails, clams and octopus? They can be eaten on days that animal meats and fish are forbidden, for example during Lent. However, they have to be prepared with things permitted for the day in question. For example we do not eat meat or dairy products during Lent, so while we could eat clams, we wouldn’t be able to eat a New England clam chowder soup—it has milk, butter and pork in it. However, we could, if we wanted to, eat a clam chowder soup on Easter. Obviously these fast rules were not designed with Howard Johnson’s in view.

Now what we can’t tell you is why the list is structured the way it is. First of all, it does seem to make intuitive sense: animal meat is more energizing than cheese or yoghurt, which is more energizing than fish (some people might dispute the second assertion).

The list also clearly derives from the experience of the Mediterranean Basin. It indeed has much in common with what is known as the Mediterranean Diet. If you follow the fast rules of the Orthodox Church, you will be eating a Mediterranean Diet.

Of course, this presents issues if you’re an Orthodox in Northern Alaska or Northern Russia. In very different climates there is the matter of the climate itself. Different climates have different demands in terms of the foods that a person needs. Someone living in Egypt has different bodily demands than someone living in Siberia. This is where ‘Paleo’ comes in again. But while the climate plays a role for anyone living in a region, there is also an issue with how you’re living. A reindeer herder in Lapland has different metabolic demands from the sedentary doctor living in a centrally-heated house in Lapland and driving a car to the reindeer herder’s tent.

There is also the matter of the foods which are locally available. Olive oil is very important to the Orthodox fast regime, but olives do not grow above Romania because of the climate. Compared to the Greek, the Russian or the Finn is going to eat more animal fat than he is going to eat vegetable oil. But part of the problem with urbanization is that people in the city continue to eat just as their parents ate on the farm before mechanization. Then they die early.

Moreover, the Orthodox fast regime is an issue even in the Far East, since dairy products are an important component of the Orthodox fast rules and many Far Easterners have a genetically-based intolerance to milk products.

We are not promoting one or another solution to these issues; we are merely pointing out that the issues exist.

Now how do we know what we can eat when? This is a matter of the liturgical typikon of the Orthodox Church. The liturgical typikon is a calendar of all the days in the year and the feasts that fall on each day, including movable feasts such as Easter. For each day the liturgical typikon prescribes what on the list can be eaten and what can’t. Now the liturgical typikon is very complex, being about 1000 pages long, and has to deal with such issues as ‘What happens if Good Friday falls on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation?’ This can happen. It has to analyze what services are performed and what can be eaten.

Now let us turn to a very basic issue. As we pointed out, the Holy Spirit has woven a very complex web of fast rules for the Orthodox, which fast rules were, we said, designed to help the member of the Orthodox Church repent and turn to God. But there is nothing really in the theology of the Orthodox fast that discusses the health of the faster. In other words, fasting in the Orthodox Church is not a matter of adherence to a program of bodily health or psychological well-being based on the foods we eat. We do not fast in the Orthodox Church to feel good, to reduce our blood pressure or to overcome genetically-based health issues. We fast to turn to God.

Well, then what about the health issues? The Orthodox Church respects medicine, so if a medical doctor were to tell someone to stop eating animal fats because of his high blood pressure, the Church would accept that. But the medical judgement is not the business of the priest. The priest is telling you how to get to God, not how to lower your blood pressure.

Now, the confusion starts with dietary regimes that are philosophically based. In ancient times, for example, the Epicureans recommended eating bread and cheese as a healthy balanced diet conducive to the state of mind that Epicureanism wished to promote in its adherents (a sort of equanimity). The Stoics had another diet that derived from their own philosophy. Today, there is a diet called ‘Macrobiotic’ that derives from certain Japanese philosophical principles; that diet too is what we might call a spiritual path. Similarly for the dietary aspects of hatha yoga. These are really philosophical systems that use diet to achieve certain philosophical goals for the adherent of the philosophical system.

So the first problem is with diets related to philosophical systems that ultimately have a completely different world-view from the Orthodox Church, making quite different claims about Man and God.

The confusion increases when the philosophical system makes scientific claims. While it is not a diet, acupuncture comes to mind. It seems to be empirically demonstrable that you can stop pain with acupuncture. Western science accepts that but no one knows how it works. The philosophical explanations given in Chinese medicine bear no real connection to Western physiology. So is acupuncture a scientific medical treatment? Is it an Eastern philosophical tradition in competition with Orthodoxy? We are not proposing an answer, but there is room for serious confusion.

There are diets, for example the Macrobiotic, and perhaps even the ‘Paleo’, that occupy a similar grey area between science and philosophical system. In such diets it is not merely that there is a philosophical system connected to the diet, but that there are also scientific claims made about the results of following the diet. These claims might or might not make sense in the context of Western Science. Here the Orthodox, or even the practitioners of the diet looking at Orthodoxy, have to be clear in themselves just what it is they understand to be the teaching of the Orthodox Church and whether that would be in conflict with any aspect of the diet taken as a philosophical system. That is not to say that you should kill yourself eating things that destroy your body. It is to say that there might be a conflict between the theology of the Orthodox Church and the philosophical principles of the diet in question.

For those of our readers who are awaiting Christmas, we wish you all a blessed and holy Christmas and Theophany. For those who are already celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas, may God bless you.

–Orthodox Monk

Meat-Eating in the Orthodox Church

2010-11-25T00:00:00.004Z

We have received a request for a post and we would like to respond. This turns out to be our Thanksgiving post. But the question is about the Orthodox attitude to meat-eating. We think the timing is coincidental. But here you have our 2010 Thanksgiving post, those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving today.

The request goes like this, (slightly edited, see the comment on our post New Look for the original text):

I would be interested in reading a post that addresses compassionate diet and its relation to Orthodoxy. To elaborate, over time I have become increasingly concerned with unnecessary animal suffering as a component of human dietary patterns. Of course, this concern presupposes:

that animals are capable of suffering; as may be evident from:

(1a) scientific evidence wherein we can observe biological prerequisites for pain;

(1b) psychological evidence wherein we can observe stress, pain avoidance patterns, etc;

(1c) human-commonality wherein God-image differentiated sentience does not seem to confer an entirely unique mode of suffering (i.e. when I suffer, there is a strong existential analogy to how animals suffer, and as such I should be able to empathize in a real way);

that there is a standard of necessity; ostensibly that:

(2a) necessary suffering either has some teleological good in view (i.e. if I choose to suffer breaking my attachment to meat as a way to reduce animal suffering) or it is unavoidable in the course of mitigating or preventing an even greater suffering;

(2b) pleasure (at least impassioned) is not a teleological good if it is acquired in a manner which causes suffering (sadism?). If the basis of this concern is well-founded, then it seems that there is a good warrant to examine one's own dietary practices.

In addition to the above, I wonder whether a diet which minimizes death and suffering is:

prophetic insofar that it points to an eschatological reality where death and suffering are no more (perhaps akin to how celibacy may be prophetic);

a way to be more consistently pro-life;

part of a compassionate Christianity which is not surpassed by Buddhism's regard for animal life;

consistent with a eremitic/monastic precedent (which would seem related to the prophetic aspect at least).

What has to be discussed is Orthodox anthropology in relation to animal suffering and in relation to Buddhist anthropology.

Let us state the obvious. Christianity arises out of the Old Testament and can only be understood in that framework. This is not to say that both the Lord and the Church did not look at the Old Testament in certain ways that are now normative. It is to say that ‘Salvation is from the Jews’, as Our Lord said; that he was a Jew according to the flesh; and that he followed the Mosaic Law.

The basic element of Orthodox anthropology that concerns us is the creation of Man, and the relation of Man to the animals. Man is different from the animals in that God himself fashioned Man from the dust of the earth and breathed into him a breath of life, later taking a rib from Adam from which to fashion Eve. In the case of the animals, God merely gave a command and they were created.

Man was created in the image and likeness of God. The animals were not. There is a disjunction between the nature of Man and the nature of animals.

This is different from Buddhism in that Buddhism treats all sentient beings (‘sentient’ means ‘having sensation’) as being the same sort of thing. In Buddhism there is a continuity between Man and the animals. Indeed Buddhism treats all animals as ‘mothers’ to Man because of the doctrine of reincarnation: all animals were once men and all men were once animals. So there is a very big difference between Orthodox Christian anthropology and Buddhist anthropology.

St Gregory of Nyssa addresses the creation of Man in a work called On the Making of Man. This work was written to finish his brother St Basil the Great’s own work On the Six Days of Creation, interrupted at the creation of Man by Basil’s death.

The interesting thing that St Gregory does in On the Making of Man is combine Aristotelian psychology with the Genesis creation narrative in a way which really seems to foresee the Theory of Evolution. In Aristotelian psychology, there are a number of souls—the plant, the animal and the human—which coexist in Man. We might look at these various souls as functionalities in man. The Vegetative functionality is mere cellular nutrition; the Animal functionality is the sentient experience of one’s environment; the Human functionality is the image of God in Man. Man as the union of body and soul has all these functionalities.

Moreover, according to St Gregory these different souls or functionalities were created by God in stages (the days of creation). The Vegetative soul or functionality was created when the Lord created the plants. The Animal soul or functionality was created when the Lord created the animals. So in On the Making of Man we have the outline of a theory of evolution which treats of the gradual development of vegetative and animal functionalities in the world; and when man is created and given human functionalities, it is on the foundation of these lesser vegetative and animal functionalities which already exist in Creation.

Now the issue that ‘Memory of Death’ is raising revolves around the nature of suffering. Is it merely something that Man has because he has the Human functionality (soul) of the Image of God, or is it something Man shares with the animals as part of his animal functionality?

Clearly, all animals, by definition sentient, can feel pain. No one ever suggested that only Man can feel pain. Moreover, we do not think that anyone would want to insist that animals cannot suffer.

However, in the Old Testament, despite the fact that they can suffer, animals are eaten and sacrificed to God. When Our Lord cleansed the Temple, he did not suggest that sacrificing animals to God was wrong; he was reacting to the avarice of the men buying and selling in the Temple. At no time did Our Lord ever say that we should not eat meat. While he himself is recorded in the Gospel of John only as eating fish (after his resurrection), he attended various meals during his ministry and meat would have been served at those meals. At no time is he recorded as objecting to the meat.

Moreover, Our Lord at no time taught that sacrificing animals was wrong. Indeed, he directed at least one person he healed to show himself to the priest and to make the prescribed sacrifice so as to demonstrate that he was now clean.

Our Lord’s mother and Joseph the Guardian offered the prescribed sacrifice of two young birds when Our Lord was presented in the Temple on the 40^th day after his birth.

Moreover, Our Lord, as a devout Jew, would have eaten the Passover lamb every year. The Mosaic Law is clear that anyone who does not eat the Passover lamb is to be cut off from the Jewish people. Clearly, if Jesus was not keeping the Passover, that would have been one of the charges against him in his trial.

(We are referring to the sacrifice of animals not in relation to Thanksgiving but to discuss Our Lord’s attitude to animals. Thanksgiving is a secular feast having its roots in Puritan culture in early America; it has nothing to do with Orthodoxy.)

In the New Testament, it is evident that some Christians (including, we believe, St James the Brother of the Lord) ate only vegetables. In the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem where St James was present, the Gentile converts to Christianity were exempted from the ritual provisions of the Mosaic law except that they were not to eat blood or animals that had been strangled (both things forbidden in the Mosaic law). Clearly, meat-eating was permitted.

In Acts St Peter was shown a vision of a sheet held up by its four corners that was full of all the animals of the earth and told to eat of all of them. He at first refused, saying that he had never eaten anything unclean, but God insisted. Hence, God explicitly allowed the eating not only of animals but of animals that Jews had previously considered unclean.

In his Epistles St Paul legislates that meat-eating is acceptable. He makes some points: we should not eat meat that we know is sacrificed to idols (although we can eat meat sold in the market without raising questions on the grounds of conscience if we do not know if the meat was sacrificed to an idol); we should not have disputes between those who eat only vegetables and those who eat meat: St Paul would rather not ever eat meat than cause scandal to a brother who eats only vegetables. Hence, St Paul has no problem with meat-eating but he also has no problem with people who are vegetarian. He thinks that the issues are elsewhere.

It should be clear from the above that there can be no dogmatic basis in Christianity for a ban on meat-eating.

Some points.

From the beginning, being vegetarian was acceptable—but as a personal choice, not as a dogmatic position.
Monks in the Orthodox Church do not normally eat meat. This derives from 4^th Century Egypt. We don’t really recall a long explanation of why. If there is a prophetic or eschatological element in this, it is not emphasized. Moreover, in cases of serious illness monks are served meat.
If an Orthodox Christian follows the fast rules of the Church, he will not eat that much meat. This is good from the point of view of the person’s health since a high-meat diet is dangerous from a medical point of view. The fast rules of the Church are based on the Mediterranean Diet, which is considered beneficial.

(The situation among the religious in the Roman Catholic Church is somewhat more ambiguous: the older orders with deeper roots in Egyptian monasticism do not ordinarily eat meat. The Cistercians come to mind. However newer orders which are not really monastic, such as the Jesuits, do eat meat.)

Now given that animals do suffer, should a Christian take this into account? We would imagine that a Christian would want to slaughter an animal with the least suffering simply on the basis of being a human being with a conscience. But we have never heard of the Bishops of the Church occupying themselves with slaughter-house practices.

It is true that industrial meat-raising—such as of pigs or chickens in sheds—is terrible from two points of view. First the animals are treated as commodities or machines, so they presumably suffer. Second, they are filled with all kinds of drugs and chemicals and whatever to get them ready as fast as possible for slaughter at a good price, and the food these animals are provided is an unnatural concoction. Apart from any issue of compassion for sentient beings, this makes the meat potentially dangerous for human consumption. But it is a long way to go from finding these practices distasteful to reaching a dogmatic position on meat-eating.

It should also be pointed out that although Buddhist anthropology makes the human nature continuous with the animal nature, Buddhist norms on meat-eating are by no means consistent across all forms of Buddhism. The Dalai Lama, for example eats meat, by all accounts with a good appetite. Only some schools of Mahayana Buddhism absolutely forbid the eating of meat. Hence, trying to accommodate Orthodox Christianity to Buddhist compassion for all sentient beings is to follow a will-o’-the-wisp.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers!

–Orthodox Monk

New Look

2010-10-10T12:41:00.002+01:00

We decided to use labels on the blog. That forced us to upgrade the template, and to a new design. It’s not bad. We’ve tried to bring the labels up to date.

The Gift of Tongues

2010-10-07T12:00:00.001+01:00

We have received an email from a man in

Brazil

who wishes to learn how the Orthodox Church views the gift of tongues as practised among the Pentecostalists of the ‘Assemblies of God’. The Assemblies of God is a classical Pentecostalist church that derives from the Azusa Street Revival of the early 20^th Century in Los Angeles. This is the church that in Wasilla Sarah Palin grew up in and was re-baptized in (she has since changed churches without publicly renouncing any of her beliefs). However, Palin’s particular Assemblies of God church in Wasilla evidently taught a doctrine that was condemned by the majority of other Assemblies of God churches in the late 1940’s.

We have already discussed Pentecostalism a number of times. In our post called Pentecostalism and the Jesus Prayer, we made some remarks on the contrast between the operation of the charisms among Orthodox saints and among the Pentecostalists. We received two comments, which we printed on the post, and exchanged emails with the persons making the comments. In those comments a variety of issues were raised, to which we responded in another post called Ecclesiological Dimensions in the Pentecostalist Practice of the Jesus Prayer. So this is a third time in recent history that we are addressing Pentecostalism and Orthodoxy.

Here is the man’s email. Since he is clearly a non-native speaker of English, we have had to edit his text. We have appended his original text as a footnote. We have changed his name both in the text and in the footnote. The name he gives in the text does not in any event agree with the name on his email address, so it is not even clear to us that the name he provides in his email is in fact the man’s real name.

Hello,

My name is Alphonso Luis Borges and I am a Pentecostal Christian, currently attending the church called the ‘Assemblies of God’ located in

Brazil

My question is about the ‘Gift of Tongues’.

The Pentecostal gift of tongues is the ability to speak languages and/or dialects. These dialects may be known, unknown or so-called dialects of angels.

I grew up with and lived with this phenomenon for 30 years. I recently met a friend who is Orthodox Christian and he told me the gift of tongues is not the ability to ‘speak new languages’.

From what he told me that I could understand, the gift of tongues happens silently in the heart of every Son of God and when this person has the gift of interpreting languages, he can then through the voice build up the Church (people) with prophecies, teachings and so on.

I would humbly ask that you explain to me what then is the ‘Gift of Tongues’ in the tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Hugs.[1]

First of all, let us look at what Alphonso thinks his friend is telling him about the gift of tongues in the Orthodox Church. Now we frankly are not clear what Alphonso means or what his Orthodox friend actually told him. It appears to us that what was said by the Orthodox friend is that through assiduous practice, the Jesus Prayer becomes automatic, repeated in the heart.[2] Then through further grace, the practitioner of the Jesus Prayer is given the gifts of the word and prophecy in order to edify the church. This would be the condition of an Elder of the Orthodox Church.[3] So what appears to us to be meant is the known progression by means of the Jesus Prayer, say among the Elders on Mt Athos, or at Optina in the 19^th Century, of the monk from beginner through to the condition of Elder. Examples would be the Elders of Mt. Athos or Optina or, most notably, St Seraphim of Sarov. It should be noted that a monk proceeding on this road normally has an Elder to guide him.

If this is what Alphonso’s Orthodox friend means, we have no problem with any of it. This is a well-known progression. The only caveat that we have is that not everyone on Mt Athos is an Elder, and not everyone at Optina was an Elder or Staretz (Russian for Elder), and not everyone at Sarov was a Saint.

Next, we emphasized the historical background of the origin of the Assemblies of God about 100 years ago to emphasize the difference between such a new and young church and the Orthodox Church.

Next, we have to look at how the Orthodox Church looks at the spiritual life, the charisms and in particular the Holy Spirit. We have discussed much of this in other posts, but we think it important to repeat all of this material in one place for Alphonso.

The Orthodox Church teaches us that we receive the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Baptism. This Baptism cleanses the nous or innermost soul of the person from the Devil and from all demons and demonic influences. Baptism then grants the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the innermost soul of the person. This indwelling of the Holy Spirit is lost only in cases of denial of Christ—if we join another religion for example. In the Orthodox Church, Chrismation—anointing with specially blessed oil—corresponds to the laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Spirit that the Apostles did after they baptized converts. In the Orthodox Church Chrismation occurs right after Baptism, at the same time. Since the person has in Baptism received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, this laying on of hands or Chrismation is for the reception of the Holy Spirit in the way the Apostles received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and through the laying on of hands subsequently transmitted it to others who were baptized; it is for the reception of the power and charisms of the Holy Spirit.

Even if after your Orthodox Baptism you commit murder, you do not lose the Holy Spirit—you are in bad shape but you are still Orthodox and can still repent and still go to confession and still ultimately receive communion and be saved. But if you deny Christ, say by becoming a Buddhist—even without doing anything bad like killing someone—you have lost the Holy Spirit. You are no longer Christian. You cannot merely go to confession. What happens in these cases, and only in these cases, is that the person is received back into the Church through a second Chrismation. Normally he or she is not allowed to receive communion until he or she is on his or her death bed.

Since the Orthodox Church practises infant baptism and Orthodox receive the Holy Spirit in Baptism, all Orthodox have the Holy Spirit. But clearly not all Orthodox are Elders. There’s more to it.

Now it has to be understood that the interpretation of the laying on of hands for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as implying the ability to speak in tongues in the way Pentecostalists speak in tongues today derives from Protestant experiences in 19^th Century

England

Wales

and the

United States

. There was no such doctrine or practice before that. There are certainly episodes of speaking in tongues in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles of Paul, but it is not obvious that the same thing is being referred to.

Let us look at Acts. On the day of Pentecost, Scripture records that the Apostles were praising God and that the Jews who came at the sound of the mighty wind heard the Apostles praising God each in his own language, which were all the languages under Heaven because the Jews had come from everywhere. Elder Porphyrios (1906 – 1991) interprets this to mean that although the Apostles were speaking in Hebrew, through the Grace of the Holy Spirit each of their listeners heard them in his own language. Peter speaks Hebrew; Solomon from

Persia

hears him in Persian; Barnabas from

Cyprus

hears him in Greek.

In the Orthodox Church, it is recorded that St Ephraim the Syrian visited St Basil the Great (4th Century) and the two communicated by this means: each spoke his own language and the other understood.

In the actual life of Elder Porphyrios, it is recorded that an atheist French woman visited him in

Greece

and the two communicated in this way: Elder Porphyrios spoke Greek; the woman spoke French; and the two understood each other. The French woman was later received into the Orthodox Church. She is, as far as we know, still alive. This event would have occurred within the last 50 years.

Now in the Epistles of Paul it is recorded that a person might speak a new or even angelic language. However, the question arises, did a Church service that St Paul attended sound like an Assemblies of God service today? We really do not have any way to know. There is simply not enough information for us to judge.

However, there is no recorded case that we are aware of that following voluntary Orthodox Baptism and Chrismation of an adult, that person spoke in tongues in the way people who have been ‘baptized in the Spirit’ do in the Assemblies of God or any other Pentecostalist or charismatic church or group. It just doesn’t happen in the Orthodox Church. Moreover, practice on Mt Athos, that beacon of discernment, is to receive members of the Orthodox Church who convert to Pentecostalism with rebaptism by the Pentecostalists and who then return to the Orthodox Church—to receive them back into the Orthodox Church by Chrismation after certain other prayers.

Hence, it is quite clear that there is no tradition in the Orthodox Church of speaking in tongues in the way that it is done in the Assemblies of God.

Now the question arises of charisms in the Orthodox Church. Here there are two points to make. St John Chrysostom (died 5^th Century) discusses the question of the cessation of the charisms. We do not recall exactly what his answer was; our point is that the growing rarity of the charisms was already an issue then.

In the Orthodox Church, great Elders and great Saints do exercise the charisms of the Holy Spirit. Great miracle workers and healers and prophets who come to mind are St Seraphim of Sarov (died early 19th Century), St John Kronstadt (died early 20^th Century), Elder Paisios (1924 – 1994) and Elder Porphyrios (1906 – 1991). There are many others. However, what characterizes all these great healers and miracle workers and prophets in the Orthodox Church is that before they either received the charisms or publicly exercised them they went through the preparation of a long and arduous asceticism so that they might be spiritually cleansed from their tendencies to sin. Such Elders and Saints are characterized by great personal holiness. Such Elders and Saints are also characterized by their rareness.

This is different from Pentecostalist circles where the charisms are acquired quickly (sometimes it seems that all it takes is to go to a revival). The charisms are also quite common (how many persons are claiming to be Apostles and Prophets today?). These charisms are exercised quickly after their reception (no preparation for a public ministry). These charisms are often exercised by persons who might not only lack distinction for their holiness but might even be involved in serious sin. There’s nothing odder than a great miracle worker who gets a divorce on account of his adultery.

What Alphonso has to understand is that Orthodoxy is a completely different road from the Assemblies of God.

[1] Hello

My name is Alphonso Luis Borges and I am a Pentecostal Christian, currently has attended the church called the Assemblies of God located in

Brazil

My question is about the "Gift of Tongues."

In designing the Pentecostal gift of tongues is the ability to speak languages and / or dialects known (these dialects may be known, unknown or so-called dialects of angels).

I grew up and lived for 30 years this phenomenon has recently met a friend who is Orthodox Christian, and he told me the gift of tongues is not the ability to "speak new languages."

From what he told me and I could understand, the gift of tongues happens silently in the heart of every Son of God and when this person has the gift of interpreting languages, can then through the voice build up the Church (people) with prophecies, teachings and so on .

I would humbly that you explain to me what then is the "Gift of Tongues" in the tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Hugs.

[2] The reader can find much material in the early posts on the Jesus Prayer.

[3] An Elder is a senior monk in the Orthodox Church, one distinguished by his gifts of clairvoyance and prophecy. We have various posts on the blog that discuss Elders.

September 14 Elevation of the Holy Cross

2010-10-01T09:24:00.002+01:00

The Elevation of the Holy Cross is the first feast of the Master in the ecclesiastical year.

Let us begin with the Synaxarion. The Synaxarion records the vision of St Constantine the Great, Equal to the Apostles, before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312. St Constantine had a vision of a cross above the sun in the midday sky and around the cross a legend in Greek, ‘In this sign conquer’. St Constantine had a standard made according to the vision, which standard led his troops into the battle. St Constantine’s troops won a decisive victory.

Subsequent to this, St Constantine’s mother, St Helen went to Jerusalem to find the Cross of Christ. She found the Cross and also the crosses of the two thieves who were crucified with Christ, but only the Cross of Christ did a miracle, raising an old widow from the dead, and so the thieves’ crosses were discarded. St Helen and her retinue venerated the Holy Cross. The Christian population of Jerusalem also wished to venerate the Cross but were unable to because of their number. Therefore the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Makarios, standing in the pulpit raised the Cross up with his two hands before the people, who responded by repeatedly chanting ‘Lord have mercy’. Since then the elevation of the Holy Cross has been celebrated every year in the Orthodox Church. Part of the Cross was brought to Constantinople, along with nails of the Crucifixion, while part of the Cross remained in Jerusalem.

St Constantine granted toleration to Christianity in 313 by the Edict of Milan and St Constantine himself certainly favoured Christianity but it was Theodosius the Great who made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, in 380. The Byzantine Empire was a Christian empire, indeed an Orthodox Christian empire, until it fell in 1453. Similarly the Russian Empire was an Orthodox Christian empire until it was overthrown in 1917.

In 614 the Zoroastrian Persians sacked Jerusalem taking the Cross as booty. The Persians then ransomed the Cross back to the Greeks. (In those days there was no reason to destroy someone else’s relic—it was worth money.) Then in 628 Heraclius invaded

Persia

and achieved victory. When he returned to Constantinople he had the Cross raised before the people in the main church of St Sophia the way it had been raised in Jerusalem three hundred years before.

This historical background helps us to understand the Apolytikion and the Kontakion of the feast:

Save, O Lord, your people and bless your inheritance, granting victories to the Kings against barbarians and guarding your nation by means of your Cross.

(Apolytikion of the feast.)

O Christ God, you who have voluntarily been raised on the Cross, grant your mercies to the society called by your name. Make our faithful Kings glad in your power, dispensing to them victories against the enemies. May they have your alliance in battle, which alliance is the weapon of peace and the unconquerable standard.

(Kontakion of the feast.)

Let us now look at the deeper meaning of the feast on the basis of a number of hymns from the service.

When you were raised on the Cross, O Master, you raised together with yourself all the fallen nature in Adam. Therefore raising up your spotless Cross, O Lover of Mankind, we ask for your power from on high, crying: ‘Save us, O Most High, showing mercy as God to those who honour the reverend and light-bearing elevation of your divine Cross.’

(At Lord have I cried in Small Vespers.)

As we can see, the Church does not lose sight of the central mystery of the Christian religion: when Christ was raised on the Cross, all of Man’s fallen nature was raised with him. In what sense did Christ raise with him on the Cross all of Man’s fallen nature in Adam? In two senses. First Christ died for our sins—for the sins of all men. Salvation is open to all men and women without exception. No one is predestined to damnation. There is a second sense, however, in which on the Cross Christ raises the fallen nature of Adam. As we have learned from the Gnostic Chapters of St Diadochos of Photiki, Baptism restores the image of God in us, cleansing us from all sin and all influence of the Devil in our innermost self, and granting us in our innermost self the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is of course for us after our Baptism to work with the Holy Spirit to restore in ourselves the likeness to God. As St Paul puts it, if we have died with Christ in Baptism we shall surely share in his Resurrection. Here is how the service puts it:

The Cross when it is raised calls the whole creation to praise the spotless passion of him who was raised on the Cross. For he revived and beautified those who in the Cross kill the one who kills us, those who had been put to death; and as compassionate because of exceeding goodness he made us worthy to live a life in Heaven. Whence, having rejoiced, let us elevate his name and magnify his extreme condescension.

(At Lord have I cried in Great Vespers.)

September 8 Birth of Our Exceedingly Holy Mistress, She who Gave Birth to God

2010-09-18T10:57:00.005+01:00

The first major feast of the ecclesiastical year, which begins on September 1, is the Birth of Our Exceedingly Holy Mistress, She who Gave Birth to God.

The most concise explanation of this feast is found in this hymn, attributed to Sergius, chanted in Vespers of the Feast:

Today God who abides in the heavenly thrones has prepared for himself a holy throne upon the earth. He who in wisdom established the Heavens has in love for mankind created a heaven with a living, rational soul. For from a barren root he has made to grow for us a life-bearing plant, his Mother. O God of the wonders and hope of the hopeless, glory to you!

God who abides in the highest order of angels, who gaze on him through the Word of God, has for the sake of his Incarnation prepared for himself a holy throne upon the earth. God who with wisdom established the Heavens with their multifarious stars and constellations has in love for mankind stooped to create a new heaven upon the earth, a heaven that will contain his Son, the Word of God. And that new Heaven has a living, rational soul: that new Heaven is a person like us, Mariam, the daughter of sterile Ann and her husband the blessed Joachim. The daughter of the sterile woman gives birth in virginity to the Word of God made flesh. O God of wonders and hope of the hopeless, glory to you, who have loved mankind which remained in despair after the fall of Adam and Eve.

Blog Post 250

2010-09-12T17:34:00.004+01:00

We noticed both that we were completing our 5th Anniversary as ‘Orthodox Monk’ and that our next post would be No 250. So we thought we would take the opportunity to make a few brief ‘looking-back’ remarks.

We have written an average of approximately 1 post a week for 5 years. The number of words in the collected posts is around 300,000. That’s a lot of words.

Readers come and go. Some readers ‘sign up’ for a period of time and then drop the blog, evidently moving on to something else. That is normal.

Many people come to the blog from a Google search on becoming an Orthodox monk or nun, perhaps after having been divorced. We are rather surprised at the level of interest in becoming an Orthodox monastic. We have written specific posts on those subjects and those posts show up in the Google searches so there is no need to repeat the links. We would like to emphasize, however, that the blog was always conceived not as a running forum that discusses the issues of the day and then moves on, but as a place where we set down for permanent reference our considered thoughts on topics with which this blog is concerned. We therefore encourage all our readers, if our views interest them, to make the effort to go back to the beginning of the blog and read it in ascending chronological order. An alternative would be for readers to use the search field at the top of the blog to search it on a topic that interests them. As readers can see, we are not a fan of ‘tags’ and don’t use them.

Would we do anything over again if we could? Our biggest mistake has been to engage in private email correspondences. We should have established a policy from the beginning that emails would be answered only on the blog, with full or partial quotation of the email at our discretion. Of course if someone sends us an email marked ‘not for publication’, we will respect that—but we will not engage in an email correspondence except to send our email policy. We have put the email policy in the margin of the blog.

Because this is not a forum, it is not automatic that we will want to discuss your email. We have to think after prayer that there is reason to. The same applies to comments. If you just want to argue, there are a lot of blogs and forums that love ‘vigorous discussion’. This isn’t one of them. We also like vigorous discussion but the discussion has to be both literate and substantive from the point of view of how we conceive the blog.

Are we literate? Yes. Are we holy? No. We are sometimes quite sharp with our correspondents, at the risk of wounding their pride. There is a fine line between using scorn to bring someone to his senses—sometimes only when you are publicly laughed at do you realize you are wrong—and using scorn out of pride and arrogance. If we do use scorn it is, we hope, as a rhetorical device. We would like to think that the underlying tone we have established on the blog is one of Christian charity and courtesy.

All our positions are rationally defended. Is this a sign of the Holy Spirit’s absence? We do not claim to have the Holy Spirit except by Baptism and Chrismation but we also do not think that the presence of the Holy Spirit is necessarily characterized by incoherence. Moreover, sometimes there is a problem when we have to stand up for what we think is right and the other guy or gal disagrees.

Let’s see how the future will go.