A. Posing the Problem How else could I begin my talk except by expressing my genuine gratitude for the honour of being asked to speak at your conference? It may be that you, as intensive care specialists, have encountered the greatest ethical dilemmas and are confronted by the most intense medical challenges to the conscience, more so than your other colleagues. And we, as the Church, if we want a connection with our mission, are constantly involved in the tension created by the way each person is hovering between life and death- literally and metaphorically- unfailingly seeing death in life and constantly discerning the outline of real life in death. The workplace of doctors such as yourselves is called Intensive Care or ...
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’. Come, let us ascend the mountain of the Lord 1. Who among those of us gathered here is worthy of becoming a disciple of the Lord and, with Him, to ascend from poor and lowly thoughts to the spiritual heights of sublime contemplation? This mountain is free of any shadow cast by the looming hills of wickedness and, at the same time, basks in the splendour of the true light. And within the glow of pure truth, it makes visible ...
In the beginning we’re drawn by God with the gift of grace, and once we’ve been drawn to Him, then starts a long trial period. Our freedom and trust in God are tested, and tested hard. At first, our petitions towards God, whether small or great, even our pleas which have only just been expressed, are usually fulfilled in a swift and marvellous way by God. When the period of trials comes, however, then everything changes and it’s as if the heavens are closed and He’s deaf to all our supplications. For fervent Christians, everything in life becomes difficult. People’s behaviour towards them worsens: they cease to respect them; don’t make allowances for them as they do with others; and pay them less ...
The Transfiguration, byzantine icon, 12th Century The story of our creation in Genesis is interrupted. The Divine Council says, “Let us make man in our own image,” and the work begins. But man’s creation is not like the creation of anything else. For the stars and trees, the earth and the sky, God says, “Let there be…!” And so it is. God looks at what He has made and declares, “It is good.” But for man, there is the discussion, “Let us make…” There is the formation from clay and the breathing of life. But God does not stand back, look at man and say, “It is good.” Indeed, God stands back, looks at man and says, “It is not good…” The first ...
The Transfiguration of the Saviour occupies a central position in the Orthodox Church and theology. It is the event that reveals the glory of the Church and of the faithful. It is the evidence of the new situation that entered history through the advent of Christ. At the Transfiguration, Christ manifested through His human nature the uncreated glory of His Divinity. At the same time, He caught up the men with Him in the uncreated divine glory. Moses and Elijah share the same brightness as the Lord. The only difference is that Christ is the source, whereas they are the recipients of divine brightness. The reason why Christ was transfigured before his disciples was the approach of the day when he would ...
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. There are blessed or tragic moments when we can see a person revealed to us in a light with a depth, with an awesome beauty which we have never suspected before. It happens when our eyes are open, at a moment of purity of heart; because it is not only God Himself Whom the pure in heart will see; it is also the divine image, the light shining in the darkness of a human soul, of the human life that we can see at moments when our heart becomes still, becomes transparent, becomes pure. But there are also other moments when we can see a person whom we thought we have ...
I want to go to Heaven even if I am the last one in, after the worst person in the world. May God place me in Paradise even if he’s put Nero and Hitler there, as well, even if it means that I shine their shoes. What do I care who God puts in Paradise? It’s His for Him to do what He wants with. It’s not up to me to say anything. I want to be saved and the rest is up to the Lord.
If you were God and chose to be incarnate for the purpose of redeeming fallen humanity, what method of redemption would you choose? What sort of earthly life would you ordain for yourself? If (you forbid) you are like me, then you would save mankind without incurring any inconvenience to yourself. You would choose to be born into a wealthy family, and discharged from a first-rate hospital (your mother would be assisted by a celebrity doula, of course). You would belong to a free and powerful nation. You would live in the most technologically-sophisticated era so that you can enjoy the greatest comforts that human society can afford. You would destine yourself to inherit or acquire power. Needless to say, ...
Before I read of You In charts of the night, Oh, soliloquy of light, Everything was dark as rye, silent and deaf and dry. I belonged to someone else, To a king of charcoal and eucalyptus, It was as if I had survived in a hole of opaque mists Buried to my soul - But a silent memory of You Told me where to go. Among the cedars and silent pines, Everything within me was dry. We chewed dark breads, the sleeves of our coats Cut out from the night. With lambs, sheep and goats We crossed dunes and ruins Of palaces, and faces Blank as ghosts. But I did not understand, as if walking in my sleep, This message blotted from the land, erased From the minds of men. You see them, Walking to and fro, lost in a confusion Of ...
The vision of God is presented in the Holy Scriptures in two different forms which appear to be mutually exclusive. Some passages characterize the vision of God as an impossibility. In the book of Exodus, for example, God tells Moses: “You cannot see My face; for no man can see My face and live,” while the psalmist notes that God “made darkness His hiding place.” In the New Testament, the Apostle and Evangelist John writes: “No one has ever seen God”, And the Apostle Paul adds that God is He “whom no one has ever seen or can see”. At the same time, however, the Holy Scriptures also detail numerous theophanies. For instance, Jacob says: “For I saw God face to face, ...
b) Sermon, mass and hymns There is a wide-spread impression that Luther gave prominence to the sermon to the detriment of the mass, but in fact he restored the latter, which had been completely marginalized. His aim was to establish a balance between the pulpit and the altar. Scripture was heard only from the readings and the hymns, which were in Latin. He restored it to its rightful position in the services. Apart from this, the sermon had become entirely distorted and its place had been taken by myths, legends and pagan lore. By the same token, the mass gave the message that the faithful would gain the favour of God and their salvation by retiring to monasteries and making donations ...
The great adversary of truth, which today brings people to perdition, is delusion. Because of delusion, dark ignorance reigns in the souls of those who are idle, alienating them from God. They don’t acknowledge Christ as God, Who enlightened us and brought about our rebirth, or they believe in Him and acknowledge Him only in words and not in actual fact. They believe that God revealed Himself to people only in days of old, but not any longer. They think that the testimonies in the Scriptures regarding God don’t concern them, but others or those who wrote them and they blaspheme the teachings concerning God, since they renounce true and conscious reverence.
Post-Apostolic Development Again, it is not the purpose of this essay to provide a detailed narrative of the development of the Orthodox Christian liturgy. Such a task would be, of itself, a very lengthy one. Instead, we shall briefly sketch the development of the liturgy up until the fourth century, highlighting certain common themes constantly present during this development. We will do so by looking at a few representative early Church documents: • The Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles through the Twelve Apostles, commonly known as The Didache. There are many theories about the origin and purpose of this early work. Paragraphs 9 and 10 are relevant to our discussion. Their primitive character is attested by their lack of ...
Everything benign and good comes from God. There’s no kind thought which isn’t from God, and no evil thought that’s not from the devil. So, whatever good thing you think or say or do, is all courtesy of God. ‘Every good and perfect gift comes down from above’. Everything’s a gift from God; nothing is ours.
Eastern Orthodox mysticism Two great artesian wells of mystical experience, upon which Orthodox Byzantine mysticism drew in its first phase, were Saint Gregory of Nyssa (335/340-394) and the monk Evagrios Pontikos (345-399). The former stressed that the soul can reach Him, Who is beyond any intellectual concept whatsoever, in the “bright darkness” and also defined the mystical experience as union with God in love. Evagrios placed the nous, the organ of direct understanding, at the centre of mysticism. In the 5th century, works attributed to Makarios formed a new source of inspiration for Orthodox Christian mysticism, underlining the concept that the centre of the human person lies in the heart. Under the influence of Neo-Platonic philosophy, Evagrios saw the person as a ...
