Where Have All the Elders Gone?- By: Fr. John Moses

Father John Moses

I have heard it said since the very first day I encountered Orthodoxy: “There aren’t any elders anymore, at least not like in the old days.” And I was told that I shouldn’t be looking around for any.

In preparation for our class, I’ve been reading ahead in The Arena, by St. Ignatius. Even in his day, he bemoaned the lack of true elders and he warned against false men claiming the title. He suggests that we find our guidance in the writings of the Fathers alone. Sound advice.

But why has it come to this? One idea is that the times are too evil. We are too modern, too sophisticated, too materialistic, and too hedonistic.

All true, of course. Yet there has always been evil in the world (at least according to my history books). People have always pursued pleasure, godlessness, and material well-being at the expense of someone else. To quote the Preacher of Ecclesiates, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Why is today any different?

Another idea is that Orthodox monasticism is in its infancy in the West. The monasteries that exist have not had time to sink roots deep enough to produce the fruit of spiritual eldership.

I am no expert on monastic life, but I can see the point. We all need to pray for our monasteries that God will protect them from demonic attack and give them space to plant deep roots in the soil of the Gospel.

Still, I have a conviction that I know another reason why God has given us so few (if any) spiritual elders. Let me quote from the book of Proverbs:

Five Good Reasons NOT to Visit a Monastery- By: Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA

Metropolitan Jonah (OCA)

By: Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA
This article was written while he was Hieromonk Jonah (Paffhausen)
of the Monastery of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco.

The priest looked out of the altar, checking to see if the choir director was ready to begin the hours before the Divine Liturgy. Just as he was ready to say, “Blessed is our God,” his newest convert, Bill, made a grand entrance into the church, having just gotten back from his latest pilgrimage to another monastery. Bill — or Vasili, as he now insisted on being called — had been a normal young evangelical convert, clean-cut, single, and working his first job out of college. Then he discovered Orthodoxy in a bookstore, and with great zeal embraced the Faith. He was chrismated after a usual six-month catechumenate, during which he read just about every book in print on the Orthodox Faith.

After a year or so, Bill had decided to go visit monasteries. This is where his change began. He became more pious and more serious about his faith, but also started to become, well, weird. Like this Sunday morning. Bill/Vasili was not content to come in like everyone else. Rather, prayer ropes flying from his wrists, he made grand bows at the entrance to the nave, and again, the entire congregation watching, with a flourish prostrated before virtually every icon in the church. It was such a display that no one listened to the hours.

Then, just before the time the Liturgy should have begun, Bill came up to the door of the altar and announced he must have confession, or he’d be in big trouble with the holy elders. Father, being patient with zealous youths, went to hear the confession.

“I am the worst of all sinners!” Bill began as usual. Then he read his list, only four pages this morning. “And I only could do two hundred prostrations, not my usual three hundred, and only read four akathists, so I am not fully prepared for communion,” he said. “Besides, I just had to have a cup of coffee, but since everyone else does anyway, can I still go to communion?”

The priest had heard it all before. What does one say? “You did all those prayers, and still had to have a cup of coffee?”

“Well, the Elder said I had to do the prayers, but I couldn’t stay awake to finish them all. So I had some coffee. But doesn’t everyone in this jurisdiction even have breakfast before Liturgy? I heard that Bishop So-and-so even had coffee with those godless Catholics right before Liturgy. Besides, it was at three a.m. when I had the coffee, and it’s almost ten now.

A little after, thought the priest. “Why didn’t you start your rule a little earlier?”

“Well, the book I just read said it must only be done after midnight, as that is the time to battle demons. Besides, Madonna was on Saturday Night Live.’ Uh. . . the video clips of hers really led me into a big temptation . . . so I did all those prostrations.”

St. Cosmas of Aetolia On Earning Paradise

St. Cosmas of Aetolia

The Martyrs earned paradise with their blood; the Monastics, with their ascetic life. Now we, my brethren, who beget children, how shall we earn paradise? With hospitality, by relieving the poor, the blind, the lame, as Joachim (the father of the Theotokos ) did…. Almsgiving, love, and fasting sanctify man, enrich him in both soul and body, and bring him to a good end; the body and the soul become holy.

Source

St. Theophanes the Recluse On Prayer

St. Theophanes the Recluse

On the feast day of the Entrance into the Temple of the Most-holy Theotokos, I find it timely to give you instruction in prayer – the main work of the temple. A temple is a place of prayer and arena of prayer’s development. For us, entry into the temple is entry into a prayerful spirit. The Lord has the kindness to call our hearts His temple, where we enter mentally and stand before Him, ascending to Him like the fragrant smoke of incense. We are going to study how to attain this state.

Gathering in the temple, you pray, of course. And in praying here, you surely ought not abandon prayer at home. Therefore, it would be extraneous to speak to you about our duty to pray, when you already pray. But I do not think that it is extraneous in any way to give you two or three rules about how to pray, if not in the way of teaching, then simply as a reminder. The work of prayer is the first work in Christian life. If in everyday affairs the saying: “live and learn” is true, then so much more it applies to prayer, which never stops and which has no limit.

Let me recall a wise custom of the ancient Holy Fathers: when greeting each other, they did not ask about health or anything else, but rather about prayer, saying “How is your prayer?” The activity of prayer was considered by them to a be a sign of the spiritual life, and they called it the breath of the spirit. If the body has breath, it lives; if breathing stops, life comes to an end. So it is with the spirit. If there is prayer, the soul lives; without prayer, there is no spiritual life.

However, not every act of prayer is prayer. Standing at home before your icons, or here in church, and venerating them is not yet prayer, but the “equipment” of prayer. Reading prayers either by heart or from a book, or hearing someone else read them is not yet prayer, but only a tool or method for obtaining and awakening prayer. Prayer itself is the piercing of our hearts by pious feelings towards God, one after another – feelings of humility, submission, gratitude, doxology, forgiveness, heart-felt prostration, brokenness, conformity to the will of God, etc. All of our effort should be directed so that during our prayers, these feelings and feelings like them should fill our souls, so that the heart would not be empty when the lips are reading the prayers, or when the ears hear and the body bows in prostrations, but that there would be some qualitative feeling, some striving toward God. When these feelings are present, our praying is prayer, and when they are absent, it is not yet prayer.

It seems that nothing should be simpler and more natural for us than prayer and our hearts’ striving for God. But in fact it is not always like this for everyone. One must awaken and strengthen a prayerful spirit in oneself, that is one must bring up a prayerful spirit. The first means to this is to read or to hear prayers said. Pray as you should, and you will certainly awaken and strengthen the ascent of your heart to God and you will come into a spirit of prayer.

St. Silvanus the Athonite On Loving One’s Enemies

St. Silvanus the Athonite

Everyday experience shows that even people who in their inner depths accept Christ’s commandment to love one’s enemies do not put it into practice. Why? First of all, because without grace we cannot love our enemies. But if, realizing that this love was naturally beyond them, they asked God to help them with His grace they would certainly receive this gift.

Excerpt taken from the book: St. Silouan the Athonite- By: Archimandrite Sophrony

Just Say No- By: Fr. John Moses

Fr. John Moses

The study of the works of St. Theophan the Recluse is always a challenge, but the study of his book, The Path to Salvation , has been a true blessing. I am sorry for those of you who were not able to attend our class. Do read the book and take time to study it and digest well the truths that it contains.

St. Theophan says that when we are baptized, God places a seed of His Grace within us. There have been a few rare souls in whom this seed immediately blossomed into the fruit of holiness and a Christ-like life.

Rare, indeed.

While this holiness was possible for all of us at our baptism, for most of us some part of our nature remains unconverted or unchanged. St. Paul calls this unconverted part of our nature “the flesh” In several of his writings he talks about “fleshly” or “carnal” Christians.

Having both the seed of Grace and a carnal nature means that spiritually speaking we are schizophrenic. We live between two inner realities – the Spirit and the flesh. St. Paul tells us that the flesh wars continually against the Spirit.

So, in the face of this schizophrenic spiritual reality, St. Theophan asks the question, “How do we live a God-pleasing life?”

Wait a moment. This question may make us think that we have to do something for God to love us. No, not at all. The Scriptures and the Fathers are clear about this. God loves us now, just as we are. As St. Paul points out, even while we were sinners and His enemies, God sent Christ to die for us. St. John writes, “God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son…” God is unchanging eternal Love and not some angry Father that we must appease by our good behavior.

Yet certainly, God does not want to see us laboring under the slavery of sin. In Exodus, God tells Moses that He had heard the cries of the people under the whips of their taskmasters. He would send a deliverer to free them.