St. Gregory Palamas on Prayer without Ceasing

St. Gregory Palamas

Let no one think, my brother Christians, that it is the duty only of priests and monks to pray without ceasing, and not of laymen.

No, no; it is the duty of all of us Christians to remain always in prayer.

For look what the most holy Patriarch of Constantinople, Philotheus, writes in his life of St. Gregory of Thessalonica. This saint had a beloved friend by the name of Job, a very simple but most virtuous man. Once, while conversing with him, His Eminence said of prayer that every Christian in general should strive to pray always, and to pray without ceasing, as Apostle Paul commands all Christians, “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17), and as the prophet David says of himself, although he was a king and had to concern himself with his whole kingdom: “I foresaw the Lord always before my face” (Psalms 15:8), that is, in my prayer I always mentally see the Lord before me. Gregory the Theologian also teaches all Christians to say God’s name in prayer more often than to breathe.

So, my Christian brethren, I too implore you, together also with St. Chrysostom, for the sake of saving your souls, do not neglect the practice of this prayer. Imitate those I have mentioned and follow in their footsteps as far as you can.

At first it may appear very difficult to you, but be assured, as it were from Almighty God, that this very name of our Lord Jesus Christ, constantly invoked by you, will help you to overcome all difficulties, and in the course of time you will become used to this practice and will taste how sweet is the name of the Lord. Then you will learn by experience that this practice is not impossible and not difficult, but both possible and easy. This is why St. Paul, who knew better than we the great good which such prayer would bring, commanded us to pray without ceasing. He would not have imposed this obligation upon us if it were extremely difficult and impossible, for he knew beforehand that in such case, having no possibility of fulfilling it, we would inevitably prove to be disobedient and would transgress his commandment, thus incurring blame and condemnation. The Apostle could have had no such intention.

Dedicated Servant of God St. Nicholas of Myra

St. Nicholas of Myra

More than 1,600 years ago, in the year 270 AD, St. Nicholas was born not far from Myra, in a land that is  now part of the country of Turkey. In those days Orthodox Christians were persecuted for their faith. It wasn’t easy to be a Christian. Many of them were tortured and executed because they believed in Christ.

Nicholas was taught by his parents to love the Lord with his whole mind, heart, soul, and with ail his strength. When they died he inherited their money. He used this to help the poor, the hungry, and the sick. Whenever he helped anyone he did it secretly, so that only God would know, He did not want praise from people; he wanted his reward to be only in Heaven.

After he gave away the money his parents had left him he decided to become a monk. He went to a monastery where he lived and worked and prayed, intending to spend the rest of his life repenting of his sins. But soon it became clear that God wanted him to be a priest, and so he began to study the Law of God.

St. Nicholas became the parish priest of a village church after his ordination. He worked very hard, instructing his flock and helping those in need. He also performed all the Divine Services and was a spiritual father to all.

He Becomes Archbishop

One day the Archbishop of Myra died. The other bishops, as well as the priests and people of the town, gathered to choose a successor. They couldn’t decide who should be their new archbishop. They kept a vigil and prayed all night long in the cathedral, begging God to guide them. God revealed to one of the bishops that the first priest to enter the church in the morning should be chosen as the new archbishop. At sunrise, a simple priest, Father Nicholas, came quietly into the cathedral to say his morning prayers. In this way the Lord God revealed His choice for archbishop.

Fr. Alexander Schememann on the true meaning of a Sacrament

Fr. Alexander Schmemann

A sacrament-as we already know- is always a passage, a transformation. Yet it is not a “passage” into “supernature” but into the Kingdom of God, the world to come, into the very reality of this world and its life as redeemed and restored by Christ. It is the transformation not of “nature” into “supernature,” but of the old into the new. A sacrament therefore is not a “miracle” by which God breaks, so to speak, the “laws of nature,” but the manifestation of the ultimate Truth about the world and life, man and nature, the Truth which is Christ.

Except taken from the book: ‘For the Life of the World.’

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”

by Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev

“Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe”. That is how the apostle Thomas answered the Saviour’s disciples when they told him that they saw the risen Lord (Jn. 20:25).

“Unless I see I will not believe”. This is how people who demand from us logical, tangible proof of the Christian faith often answer us, the faithful. But there are not and cannot be such proof, for the Christian faith is beyond the grasp of rational thought, being super-rational. Nothing in the Christian faith, be it the existence of God, the resurrection of Christ or other truths, can be proven logically: one can only accept them or reject them on the basis of faith.

“No one has seen God at any time”, writes John the Evangelist (Jn. 1:18). Nobody has ever proved the existence of God. And nobody has ever born witness to the resurrection of Christ in such a way that it might become an obvious fact for all of mankind. Nevertheless, regardless of the seeming lack of proofs of the Christian faith, millions of people came, still come and will come to Christ; they believed, believe and will believe in His resurrection; they accepted, accept and will accept the existence of God. Why? Because they encountered God in their lives, and no additional proofs were necessary for them.

How does this encounter with God take place? It is different for each person. For some it occurs as an unexpected revelation and vision, when people suddenly realize that God is right next to them, that He sees and hears them, and they see and hear Him. For others it happens as a gradual acknowledging of the risen Christ, when the sense of God’s presence grows in them to such an extent that they come to believe. Christ also reaches out to people and knocks on the doors of their hearts, but sometimes they do not realize this or only later do they begin to understand that what they had experienced was an encounter with God. This is exactly what happened to the two disciples returning from Jerusalem to Emmaus, who did not recognize Jesus in the traveler they had met on the way since His appearance after the resurrection had changed. The Lord conversed with them during their entire journey, entered the house with them, and only when He was breaking bread did they recognize Him. But immediately He became invisible. The disciples then said: “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked with us on the way?” (Lk. 24:32). With joy they went and told the disciples of their encounter with the risen Lord.

Advice for Singers/Chanters in the Orthodox Church

Choir Girls-by: Tatiana V. Yanovskaya

- Always get the Priest’s blessing before directing the Choir.

- When teaching this music to a choir or other chanters, know at least the melody well enough to sing it by yourself. If possible, learn the bass part (if you are female, then learn the bass part in the alto range.)

- Unless specified, using a unison “Amen” is preferable.

- Before having a choir sing this music, play the audio file for them so they get a keener sense of what they are trying to create.

- Do not over-direct this music. Begin together, end together, and provide accents points and small motions with the hand which indicate steady movement. Don’t over use the down-beat.

- When using the music for Liturgy, in many cases, by using the same numbers for each piece (i.e., First Antiphon #1, Only Begotten #1, etc.,) you can often keep stylistic continuity throughout the Liturgy which is imperative for proper Orthodox Liturgical worship.

Concerning Fasting- By: St. Ignatius Brianchaninov

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov

The head or chief of the virtues is prayer; their foundation is fasting.

Fasting is constant moderation in food with prudent discernment in its use.

Proud man! You think so much and so highly of your mind, while all the time it is in complete and constant dependence on your stomach.

The law of fasting, though outwardly a law for the stomach, is essentially a law for the mind.

The mind, that sovereign ruler in man, if it wishes to enter into its rights of autocracy and retain them, must first submit to the law of fasting. Only then will it be constantly alert and bright; only then can it rule over the desires of the heart and body. Only with constant vigilance and temperance can the mind learn the commandments of the Gospel and follow them. The foundation of the virtues is fasting.

Newly-made man when placed in paradise was given a single commandment, a commandment concerning fasting. Of course, only one commandment was given because that was sufficient to have kept primitive man in his innocence.

The commandment did not speak of the quantity of food, but only prohibited a kind or quality. Let those who recognize a fast in quantity of food only and not in quality be silent. By devoting themselves to a practical study of fasting, they will see the significance of the quality of the food.

So important was the law of fasting declared by God to man in paradise that with the commandment was pronounced a threat of punishment for breaking it. The punishment consisted in the striking of men with eternal death.

And now a sinful death continues to strike the breakers of the holy commandment of fasting. He who does not observe moderation and due discernment in food cannot preserve virginity or chastity, cannot control anger, yields to sloth, despondency and sorrow, becomes a slave of vainglory and an abode of pride which gets into a man through his carnal state, which is caused most of all by luxurious and nourishing food.

St. Mary Skobtsova of Paris on Ritualism

St. Mary Skobtsova

The next type of religious life, that of the strict ritualist, bears traces of an entirely different origin. Compared to the synodal type it is archaic, but it has never died out. It intertwined itself with the synodal piety, standing over against it, but never struggles with it. Synodal piety encountered strict ritualism in the Church from the moment of its own origin, since the whole of Muscovite Rus’ was permeated with its spirit. The Old Believer Schism grew out of it and absorbed its strengths into itself. By modifying itself and becoming more complex, it has endured even down to our time. It is, perhaps, the most frightening and inert remnant inherited from Muscovite Rus’.

There is no doubt that the creative and theological level of Muscovite piety was extremely weak. Moscow adopted many things from Byzantium, but somehow managed to miss its creative intensity. Moscow reforged all the turbulent and antinomian vibrancy of the Byzantine genius into an immovable form, a cult of the letter, a cult of tradition, a repetitious rhythmical gesture. Moscow was able not only to freeze its Byzantine heritage, but even managed to dry up its Biblical heritage, ossifying it and depriving it of its grace-filled, living spirit. In the words of an ancient prophet, it started to pile up “commandment upon commandment, rule upon rule.” It perceived the splendid flow of Byzantine rhetoric as something that should not be touched, introducing it into its own obligatory order of service, ritualizing every impulse, enveloping every religious lyric with the form of law.

The extreme expression of this stagnant, splendid, immovable, protective spirit was the Old Believer Schism. In a sense it has great merits: it has preserved for us examples of ancient icon painting, it has preserved the ancient chant, it has kept in a safe place, away from the flow of life, one moment in the development of piety and fixed it once and for all. But with all this it confused the hierarchy of values of the Christian way of life, preferring torture and even death not only in defense of the two-fingered sign of the cross, but for the right to write “Isus” instead of “Iisus.”

Old Believers

Here it is not a question simply of illiteracy. The issue is much more serious, as became obvious in the following period. We are dealing here with belief in a particular kind of magic, not just of a word, a name, but of each letter which makes up the name [i.e. Isus]. A frightful retribution has been visited upon the Old Believers for their treatment of Christ’s truth. Go inside an Old Believer meeting house. It contains everything which they have held dear throughout their whole history. It has priceless icons in the ancient style; it has ancient books; it resounds to a special chant sung according to the old kriuk or “hook” notation — all those things for which they struggled and endured martyrdom. It lacks only one thing: its magnificent iconostasis, completely covered with icons in massive metalwork covers, shelters nothing, it preserves nothing. For behind the iconostasis is a blank wall, to which the iconostasis is fixed. There is no sanctuary, no altar table, no table of oblation, since there is no Mystery, no Sacrament.

Life of St. Cosmas of Aetolia & His quote on Mercy

St. Cosmas of Aetolia

The holy, glorious and right-victorious New Hieromartyr and Equal-to-the-Apostles Cosmas of Aetolos was born in 1714 in Aetolia, Greece, to a father who was a weaver and a devout mother. He attended public schools, but was tutored by an archdeacon. He taught and then attended a school on Mt. Athos. He became a monk and later a priest at Philotheou Monastery there. After a time, he felt a calling to do missionary work in Greece, especially in the remote areas where there was a lack of churches and priests for the many unbaptized adults. As an aftermath of four centuries of Turkish oppression in Greece, Cosmas received the patriarchal blessing to travel wherever needed, for however long, with complete independence, to breathe life back into Christianity in Greece. Cosmas traveled in Greece, its islands, and Albania for 25 years, founding over 200 schools, as well as charities and rural churches. He traveled by foot, by donkey and by ship. When he came to a village he would ask the villagers to plant a large wooden cross in the village square. Then he would mount a bench next to the cross and preach to the villagers about the love of God and the Orthodox faith. The Muslims tried him on charges of conspiracy and sentenced him to hang in August 1779 in Albania. However, one account reports that he prayed and gave up his spirit before this could occur. St. Cosmas received from God the gift of prophecy, and was known to have prophesied of the telephone, airplanes, and aerial bombings. Patriarch Athenagoras glorified him in 1961.

Starting with perfect love, he says:

If you want to find perfect love, go sell all your belongings, give them to the poor, go where you find a master and become a slave. Can you do this and be perfect?

You say this is too heavy? Then do something else. Don’t sell yourself as a slave. Just sell your belongings and give them all to the poor. Can you do it? Or do you find this too heavy a task?

Sayings of Elder Epiphanius of Athens

Monks on Mount Athos

Elder Epiphanius of Athens, was the founder of the Monastery of Keharitomeni (Most Graceful) Mother of God in

Trizina, in the Peloponnese.

“How crafty the devil is! To young people who managed to unite in Christian marriage he whispers, ‘How much better you would be if you went to the monastery and lived the heavenly spiritual pleasures, far from the cares of family life which sever you and keep you down!’  While to those who went to the monastery, as they desired the life of virginity in Christ, he whispers, ‘How much better you would be, if you got married and made your home a temple of God, living the joys of marital life, far from ascetic mortification and the loneliness which depresses you!’ And if the married one became a monk and the monk married, he would tell them the opposite. All this to throw the person into despair and to pull him from the path of salvation. For the path of salvation is both blessed marriage and virginity in Christ.”

” Speak more to God about your children than to your children about God… The soul of the teenager is in a state of an explosion of freedom. This is why it is hard for them to accept counsel Rather than counseling them continuously and reproaching them again and again, leave the situation to Christ, to the Panagia (All Holy Mother), and to the Saints, asking that they to bring them to reason.”

“God appointed the salvation of the world to His Son and not to us.. We must first look at our soul, and, if we can, let’s help five or six people around us.”

Traditionalism VS Renovationism

Fr. Seraphim Rose

Traditional
The Church’s system of liturgical services (i.e., the Typicon) is the divinely inspired mature growth of the Apostolic embryo. The full flower of God’s revelation to His peopleas embodied in the Divine servicesorganically emanated from the seed of the early Church.

We should have faith in Divine Providence and that the same Spirit who “guides us into all truth” also ordains the Church’s order of worship (see quote by Fr. Michael Pomazansky, below).

The fourth century (in the wake of the “Peace of Constantine”) saw a Spirit-guided organic development in the Divine services, as confirmed by the witness of the Church’s consciousness in the following centuries up through our present day.

Our Task:  to understand and grasp this revelation of God to His people as contained in the Divine services.  This requires humility and ascetic struggle with a view towards purifying our hearts.

Renovationist
The Typicon as we know it today has become somewhat unintelligible and tremendously cumbersome; for it is encrusted with layers of extraneous and repetitive material that reflect a significant shift away from, and degeneration of, the worship forms of the early Church.