Getting New Blog Posts

Someone has written to us. They are a University instructor. We point this out because apart from complimenting the blog they state that they can only make comments on the blog if they open a Google account but they want to see how many years they can go without opening one. So what we are saying to this person is, there is already enough about you on the Internet that we know where and what you teach: is having a perhaps anonymous Google account going to be more revealing of you? Be that as it may, in answer to your question about receiving new blog posts without a Google account, if you look on the right hand margin of the blog below (after) ‘Topics’ you should see this:

 

If you click on ‘Posts,’ you should see this:

Click on ‘Atom’ and follow the instructions. This will generate an automatically updated bookmark in your Browser.

Also, in ancient times we found that allowing anonymous comments created problems so we selected the option that requires you to have a perhaps anonymous account in one of a few places.  We don't see how we could change this. 

Return to the Blog

We just wanted to let our readers know that having finished our project we are back on the blog.

Someone has submitted a comment to Medical Aspects of the Monastic Vocation. We do not wish to publish it in full. In part it reads:

The late … in … suffered from bi-polar disorder. Much of her … [work was] produced during her manic periods, because she either did not or could not take the proper medication. And don't forget St. Pimen the Sickly of the Kievan Caves, a bed-bound invalid, who was miraculously tonsured by the Holy Angels themselves. The State Church of Greece, unless I am mistaken, has provision for women to be tonsured as nuns and maintain their own residences and livings. …

We will comment on this in a separate post.

In addition we would like to ask how many of our readers would be interested in a full, formatted print-out of the blog. Please let us know in a comment.

—Orthodox Monk

Question Time

Someone has sent us a question. In full the email reads: 

Where ru a monk 

Answer in full: 

Here

Update on the Gnostic Chapters of St Diadochos of Photiki

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?

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.

Ich bin ein Weltanschauungfixer

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

New Look

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.

Blog Post 250

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.

Patience Please, Part Three

We just wanted to add the following to our remarks in ‘Patience Please’ about saying something new. Recently we assembled the complete blog for a friend who wanted to send it around for publication. Without comments the blog was a little shy of 200,000 words. Since we don’t copy and paste other peoples’ work—although we do quote our readers when we want to discuss what they say—that means that we have already written about 200,000 words on this blog. Since a devotional work for publication is around 60 – 65,000 words, that means that we have already written the equivalent of 3 books. Perhaps there are others who can say something new every day for a lifetime, but we’re not one of them. (‘Part Three’ because we used the title Patience Please once in 2007.)

Patience Please

BlackIncense wrote us a very nice little note asking us to come back and post something. We haven't abandoned our blog--although after several years of posting our attitude has necessarily changed. We will be posting as we can over the next while. One of the problems is always ‘saying something new’. There's no point to saying the same thing over and over again, even though dedicated readers might enjoy it, just as we might enjoy hearing a piece of music again and again.

Who is Orthodox Monk?

‘Garasanin’, whoever he or she is, has sent us the following comment:

Hi,

I've been browsing through the internet recently looking for Orthodox blogs and have come across your one. You have some really insightful commentary that I have enjoyed reading.

One area I look to clarify with Orthodox sites that I come across is which branch of the broader Orthodox church the author belongs to. I haven't yet come across any of your posts that mention this. I apologise if I'm asking about something that you don't feel a need to share but I was hoping to know whether you are part of a community that belongs to a SCOBA jurisdiction?

‘Garasanin’ is smart. He or she is checking to make sure that he or she doesn’t get into trouble relying on something on the Internet that presents itself as ‘Orthodox’ without proper credentials. We heartily encourage all our readers to exercise a healthy scepticism on the Internet.

That having been said, in this post we gave this brief explanation of who we are:

First of all let us clarify our terminology. Ordinary usage, as can easily be verified by searching the Web, makes ‘Eastern Orthodox’ refer to members of churches in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. These churches are often known by their national appellations: Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox and so on. Ordinary usage makes ‘western Orthodox’ refer to a person who belongs to an Eastern Orthodox church but who follows a western rite, whether Episcopalian or other. Nowadays, a phrase, ‘Oriental Orthodox,’ is sometimes used to refer to members of churches not in communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople, churches which the ‘Eastern Orthodox’ have traditionally referred to as Monophysite or Nestorian. These churches are often known by their national appellations: Armenian Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Chaldean Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East and so on.

...

For the record, ‘Orthodox Monk,’ the author of this blog, is a member in good standing of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He is a canonically tonsured monk of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He belongs to a canonical Eastern Orthodox jurisdiction. He follows the traditional Orthodox rite of his jurisdiction, not a western rite. By preference he uses ‘Orthodox’ instead of ‘Eastern Orthodox;’ throughout this blog the two are synonyms.

Sorry, that’s all we can say about ourselves.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
—Orthodox Monk

Patience Please!

Orthodox Monk is busy and unable to post for a short while.

Question from Reader 1: Are you reading the Bible in Greek?

QUESTION: Are you reading the Bible in Greek?

ANSWER: Yes.

First, the Old Testament. In the Orthodox Church, the Old Testament is read in the Septuagint Version. The Septuagint is in ancient Greek, in a form of Greek called 'Hellenistic'. In the case of Orthodox Churches that are not Greek-speaking, the Old Testament is translated into the national language from the Septuagint.

The Oxford English Dictionary says this in its entry for ‘Septuagint’:

The Greek version of the Old Testament, which derives its name from the story that it was made by seventy-two Palestinian Jews at the request of Ptolemy Philadelphus (284-247 b.c.) and completed by them, in seclusion on the island of Pharos, in seventy-two days. (Denoted by LXX.)

The authority for the old story is the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates, long known to be spurious, which purports to give contemporary evidence of the undertaking. The translation is now held to have been made of Egyptian Jews, independent of each other and living in different times.

There is a web site (link updated August 29, 2010) that has comprehensive information on the Septuagint, with many links.

The canon of the Septuagint is broader (it contains more books) than the Protestant version of the Old Testament, based on the Masoretic edition, and broader (but not much) than the Roman Catholic edition of the Old Testament.

The Septuagint exists in a fairly limited number of versions (ancient manuscripts). There is a critical edition.

The psalms are of course included in any edition of the Septuagint. In the Septuagint, the numbering of the psalms, and to a certain extent their division into specific psalms, differs from Western translations of the Old Testament based on the Masoretic edition of the Old Testament. The Septuagint also includes Psalm 151, not accepted in the West.

However, for the translations of the psalms, I have been using a service book called the Psalter. This contains the psalms with the readings, numbering and divisions of the Septuagint, but arranged for recital during the services in Church. The edition I am using was published in Athens in 2005. When I’m stuck for a word to convey the exact nuance of the Greek, I sometimes refer to the Revised Standard Version, even though it is based on the Hebrew. This is not very useful. The King James Version is more useful.

Next, the New Testament. I use the textus receptus of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It is in the original Greek. In the critical apparatus of the edition of the Greek New Testament called Nestle-Aland (26^th Edition), the readings denoted M (Majority) more or less correspond to the textus receptus, as the editors of Nestle-Aland themselves point out. Nesle-Aland is the standard critical edition of the New Testament in the original Greek. It contains most of the variant readings found in the manuscripts of the New Testament.

For the Gospel in particular, I depend on an edition of the original Greek originally published in Venice in 1847. When I am interested in the variant readings of a passage, so as to shed further light on the meaning of that passage, I refer to the variant readings in Nestle-Aland.

In translating the New Testament, if I am stuck for a word to convey the nuance I am looking for, I prefer to look at the King James Version, but I also refer to the Revised Standard Version. However, I do not have much confidence in the King James translations of the epistles of Paul, since those translations depart quite visibly from an Orthodox interpretation.

In cases of serious doubt about the meaning of a passage of Scripture, whether in the Old or in the New Testament, I refer to the commentaries of the Fathers of the Church, starting with St John Chrysostom.

In the case that I am translating a passage of Scripture as it is used in the Church services, I refer to the service books of the Orthodox Church for the exact form of the text to translate. That is why the translation of the Gospel in the previous post begins ‘The Lord said’. Reference to any edition of the New Testament, including the textus receptus, will show that that phrase is not in the Bible. In the service books of the Church, it is added to the Gospel passage in order to make the reading in Church smoother. Similarly, my choice of where to begin and where to end the Gospel passage was dictated by the service book for Orthros of the Feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross. It was not arbitrary. (Orthros corresponds in the West to ‘Matins’, the early morning service.)

The Beginning

To be a monk is to live a life of prayer. Our ascesis is subordinated to the life of prayer. Orthodox monks pray the Jesus Prayer. We will say something about the Jesus Prayer.

The most important thing in the life of the Christian is spiritual love. This is not sentimentality but the Holy Spirit. Many people talk about the Holy Spirit, but how many people have it? ‘The wind (pneuma) blows wherever it will; and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes and whither it goes. So it is, everyone who is born of the Spirit (pneuma).’ (John 3, 8.)

Part of the nature of God--God is love--is the freedom associated with love: there is no spiritual love without freedom. Where you see compulsion, there is no true love; when you encounter spiritual love in a person, you find freedom in that person.

It is the same with God.

This spiritual love is different from Eros.

Christian prayer is a relationship between two persons: the monk and God. Eros can enter into this relationship. But the relationship of prayer between the monk and God is ideally a relationship of spiritual love supported by Eros.